Content area
Full Text
Shooting with Sony's PMW-F3 Camera
The Sony PMW-F3 breaks new ground in the ever-growing large-sensor camera marketplace. An admission to my readers: I was one of several journalists present when Sony rolled out the camera m the fall of 2010. Rather than waiting for a loaner Camera, I bought an F3 jUSt prior tO Writing this evaluation. I Will evaluate the F3 on the basis of why I decided the camera was right for me as well as what I have observed both from initial use and experiences with it prior to my retail purchase.
Sony bases the camera around an Exmor Super 35mm equivalent CMOS sensor in a camera configuration similar to that of the EX series. I own a PMW-EXl and have owned an EX3, making the transition to the F3 much more transparent. But the F3 is much more than simply the EX series with a larger sensor.
The Super 35mm CMOS sensor contained within the F3 measures 23.6mm ? 13.3mm. By comparison, the image size of a 3-perf Super 35mm film frame is 24.9mm ? 14mm. Sony's sensor represents effectively 95 percent of the image size of the 3-perf.
In yet another comparison, the Canon 7D/60D/T2Ì/T3Ì APS-C sensors measure 22.3mm ? 12.5mm, or 90 percent of the Super 35 film image area.
Finally, the full-frame sensor in the Canon EOS 5D measures 36mm ? 20.3mm, or 145 percent of film. (Thank you to Mitch Gross of AbelCine for these metrics.)
The nature of the Exmor sensor and Sony's back-end processing gives the camera a distinct advantage over the simuariy-Sized DSLR sensor. DSLR sensors image in multiple megapixel resolutions since they were tended to create sharp enlargements of images. When trying to write the data to video, however, they need to skip imes because they are unable to process that much data that quickly. The result is the potential for aliasing and so-caued-jeuo vision."
The larger photo sites of the Exmor Super 35 sensor and lower megapixel resolution (estimated around 3.4 megapixels) means the processor does not need to skip lines, thereby reducing the appearance of aliasing. All CMOS chips will be subject to flash banding to some degree and to the JeIlO-vision rolling shutter defects. The F3 is far...