Alister “One of the tests I did with the PMW-F3 in Oslo was to look at the cameras noise and grain. There was nothing sophisticated about the test, simply shooting a few clips with the gain set at 0db, 9db and 18db. You can see the results on the left. I had to blow up the image by 200% as at 100% you could barely see any difference.

Even at +18db the noise level is remarkably low and I would not be afraid of using 18db of gain if I needed to. This lack of noise is one of the benefits of a large sensor with big pixels”.

Funnily enough when Philip Bloom and myself were looking over the Sony F3 at the London launch a couple of weeks ago Phil noticed that the camera was set to 12db to which I never paid much attention to at the time but looking back on it and the footage we shot on the day it was remarkably noiseless.

I have to agree with Alister’s findings that this camcorder even at 18db is unreal, I have never seen a camcorder to date that will give you usable pictures at 18db and if you are shooting low light moody productions this camcorder will fit the bill.