This video is absolutely worth watching. It's a recent interview with Rodney Charters, ASC (NAB?). He gives a pretty much dead on state-of-the-art discussion about cameras and cinematography 2010. The discussion is frank, much to the chagrin of Sony I'm sure. It's great to see someone in his position not pulling punches. I think it's part of the new reality for all of us, people are better informed than ever and they have their BS meters on sensitive and don't want to hear corporate propaganda or shilling. He even talks about something called "film." The only thing I would have liked more of is a discussion of where he sees the new RED's fitting into the picture. It was only a year and a half ago that I was at HD Expo watching him show travel footage he shot with his RED and Canon film lenses!
His most important point passes so quickly that if you aren't paying attention you'll miss it: everyone has access to technologically advanced pro level gear. If you want to stay on top as a cinematographer, you'd better know how to light. These are really wise words. Even if you lean heavily on your gaffer, which is a beautiful thing, you have to know when things are right and when they're not. On indie and corporate projects, there will be times when you're in a hurry and you need to fix things yourself. Your gaffer may be setting up the next scene or, in the case of corporate, you're wearing multiple hats. I am really glad that instead of buying a Varicam, I spent my time on sets learning how to light and slinging cable.
OK. First thing, I am not an expert on VDSLR's. Stu Maschwitz and Ben Cain are really amazing at providing all the technical analysis you'll need. And you know where to go for your fix of camera test porn.
I realized last week that I needed to regroup a little and pull together what I needed to know to use them successfully. So, instead of going out on a beautiful Sunday, I turned my apartment into this:
Don't worry, there will be no screen grabs of waveforms or vectorscopes.
What have I learned?
1. DSLR's are really simple to use. That's why people who buy them are like crack addicts with them. They are pretty much a pick it up and shoot kind of deal. Sure, you can get into superflat curves and whatever, but the real truth is that you can take the standard setting, knock the artificial sharpening down most of the way (lowers the amount of aliasing) and the contrast down some and you are good to go. Just make sure you know how to white balance the camera correctly. That is the one aspect that is a little confusing and the one area where I consistently see issues with the finished footage.
2. White balance- the instructions are more complicated than they should be. Find a white object. Focus and expose it correctly and then take a photo (you can do this in movie mode) of it. The camera uses the rectangle in the middle for the white balance calculation, so the whole frame doesn't need to be white. Then go to the menu, select the 2nd tab (a camera followed by a colon), scroll down to CUSTOM WHITE BALANCE and select it (the "set" button). Select the image you just shot with either the QUICK CONTROL DIAL or the MAIN DIAL and hit "set" again. Select OK. Hit the MENU button again to exit the menus. Use the WB button on the top of the camera to select CUSTOM WHITE BALANCE and you are good to go.
3. Heat- if you shoot with the camera running all the time, it may overheat. If it is your only camera, you are shooting documentary footage, and it is warm out, bring an ice pack and a wash rag to keep the camera cool.
4. Data Corruption- I have pieced together the following procedures to help prevent data corruption. Yes, it happens quite a bit. I've personally seen it and it's all over the boards.
Format the cards only in the camera
Be careful putting the cards into readers/cameras. Bent pins can cause corruption.
Make sure that the camera is done writing and that the computer is done offloading before pulling the card out of the reader/camera. Always unmount the card before removing it from a card reader.
A remote, but real, possible cause of corruption are computer viruses.
Buy only UDMA cards. I think that the all the SanDisk Extreme Cards are UDMA.
Format the cards in the camera before leaving for each shoot to ensure that they are good.
Don't use a super cheap CF card reader. I use the SanDisk Extreme FW 800 Card Reader (they also make a USB 2.0 version). The SanDisk Extreme cards seem to be the consensus card I see in production environments, so I bought the reader that they made to go with the cards. Believe me, I didn't want to spend the extra $40.
5. For most shooting situations, set your shutter at 1/60th.
6. If you can afford it, get a lens with Image Stabilization. Shaky footage seems to be a real hobgoblin with these cameras, particularly on a long lens. They are hard to hold steady. I've met one person who is an absolute genius at operating these cameras, keeping them really steady handheld and being able to "blend" the out of focus moments really nicely on the fly. Most people just can't concentrate enough or practice enough to reach that level. Or there's always the monopod.
7. Focus- you wanted shallow depth of field, you've got it now. Now you know why there's someone on narrative films whose sole job is to ensure that the image is in focus at all times. Outside of sound issues, an image with "searching" focus is the most issue likely to draw your viewer out of the story you are working so hard to tell. You don't have to have a follow-focus, fancy mounting gear, etc. But you do have to concentrate always and practice a lot beforehand. It isn't easy.
8. Sound- the sound is not very good on these cameras, everyone knows that. Great sound is essential to any project. Google "dual system sound DSLR" or something like that and you will get all kinds of solutions.
I just tried the new Canon E-1 plugin for Final Cut. I'm sure it'll work fine, but I deleted the thumbnail files, and I think you need them to make it work. My one complaint is that it's getting ridiculous trying to keep up with all the plugins necessary for all the codecs out there. Somewhere along the line it's easy to lose track of upgrades. I actually used MPEG Streamclip to batch convert the H.264 files to ProRes today. It works, is free and is faster than Compressor.
The 7D is an amazing camera, it made a ridiculous, backlit shot of my dining room table look all sexy and romantic. If I had shot it with my HPX 170, it would have looked like a backlit bunch of stuff on a table. Just remember, that along with the good comes some annoying and sometimes ridiculous issues. I promised myself that I wasn't going to post any footage, but it's short and it makes me laugh out loud. Can someone please explain this? I've seen lens breathing before but not like this. Why is it that the white bar only moves? The dynamic range of the camera explains itself.
Have fun, but for god's sake, don't make your dramatic climax a rack focus shot of a Kodak Super Gray Card.
UPDATE: I got this explanation from Charles Haine, uber-technologically adept DP/Colorist:
A lens will breath differently for different colors/wavelengths of
light, since everything wavelength of light will bend differently.
Since white light has all the wavelegnths of light in it, it'll spread
much more, and in more directions. I think that's why you see some
color fringing on the white boxes. Since the black boxes are the
absence of light, they won't spread as much.
VDSLR's are amazing. More precisely, they are amazing still cameras that shoot acceptable video. Why only acceptable? Read Ben Cain's blog, there are about 10 posts with solid DSLR technical analysis, ranging from dynamic range to the benefits of lenses with image stabilization.
Acceptable video, but yes, sexy acceptable video. Like any camera, it's horses for courses. I was on a documentary interview shoot this week and the second camera, a 7D, kept overheating and needed to be shut down several times. It was pretty warm in the rooms but not really hot. I can't point out enough that it's essential to know your camera and what its limitations are before you start shooting. If the 7D had been the only camera, it would have been a disaster because these were people who did not have time to schedule a second interview, or wait for a camera to cool down.
My New Year's resolution is to spend less time running to keep up with technology and finding more time to creatively explore the technologies to which I already have access. Speaking of old technology, I finally got to operate a carbon arc lamp recently (thank you, Corwin Nunes at Mole Richardson). The light that they generate is incredible. It wraps around faces beautifully and creates incredible eye highlights, little teeny diamonds. No creepy HMI spectral discontinuities, just pure lighting goodness. Sigh.
I also got to go to screen dailies for a project that I worked on that was shot in 35mm on the new Fuji Vivid Eterna 500. It is a quite nice stock. It's color reproduction struck me as a little more subdued than with the Vision 3, with very subtle flesh tone gradations, especially to black. Word that I heard is that Fuji is committed to film (it is a very small part of their overall business) for the long-term. It's nice to remind yourself of the subtle joys of "analog" now and then.
Next week I will be color grading my first 5D Mark II project (the same camera that took this still). I'm very curious as to how well it will hold up.
The idea of "living magazines" is one example of how media is changing, of how forward-thinking media makers will be able to find new opportunities as old ones evaporate. It also is an example of the "smaller" opportunities (as opposed to the dream of creating motion pictures, big budget T.V. or commercials) that will be available to media makers in the future. I suspect the future will be full of these smaller "disposable" media experiences throughout the day with the more engaging content being interactive.
I do have big concerns about e-waste for this type of media, especially magazines. What are the ramifications of creating largely single-use high tech media experiences?
The downside of this convergence between still photography and motion photography is that both traditional motion picture producers and still photographers are now competing for the same opportunities. In the end, the old rules will still apply: those with a good eye and who can shoot quickly and economically will thrive.
The old ways of doing things are passing more quickly than many people realize. Or as Ted Hope succinctly puts it:
Cinema, in its current concept and execution, is both derived from and depending on a world that we’ve passed by. • It is no longer is the most complete & representative art form for the world that we inhabit. • It no longer mirrors how we currently live in the world. • Cinema is now a rarefied pleasure requiring us to conform to a location-centric, abbreviated, passive experience that is nothing like the world we engage with day to day.
Mobile, light, nimble, ....those are the future media makers. It's actually really exciting, technology is moving so fast that it is already leapfrogging those who want to create old style media by using new technology (that would be the deluge of stuff out there that tries to pass itself off as innovative web-content or some indie film that really is just a low budget imitation of Hollywood film). More people seem to like to do things now, or at least they want interactivity. That's a good thing, right? Does anyone really think that the old passive entertainment model was that great, aside from T.V. network executives? Social media is just one example of people shaping media to their own world.
The new DSLR's are awesome, especially for people like me who like the discipline of distilling a story down to one frame; the addition of HD video/depth of field is like a gift. But there are lots of little miracles out there that will help change the way we tell stories, so I am equally excited about the S1000PJ's of the world as well (what was used in the Helicopter Boyz performance). What will write the future is how you, the creatives, put it all together. Don't mourn the passing of the old, keep your mind open to the answers that appearing daily and have fun playing with them.
Regardless of how you feel about the Red One as a tool, it certainly seems to have changed the camera marketplace. Camera companies tend to pace the introduction of new technology, both hardware and formats, allowing them to draw out the introduction of innovation in order to milk the maximum profit from it. (Yes, there are other reasons: for example, other companies need time to create products that support both the end formats and the hardware.)
HDV is an example. Originally created for the Japanese wedding market, the camera makers found that it was a marketable format as a step up (quality-wise and cost-wise) from DV. Several years later and many of the companies were still selling this "accidental" format, with Panasonic being an innovator with their P2/DVCPRO HD format. I won't go into HDV at depth, other than to say that it is what it is and it does what it does. I chose not to participate, for the most part sticking with DV and film.
What does Red have to do with HDV? Well, once the Red One was introduced, people started expecting (rightly or wrongly) an accelerated pace of innovation (both in hardware and formats) from the major camera companies. The real bombshell was when Red announced the Scarlet camera, a "3K" camera for "under $3K". What needs to be made clear is that the big camera manufacturers make nearly all of their profits from camcorders, from small-fry like us, and not from their high-end cinema cameras. The high-end cameras serve a role: R&D, prestige and also as an always changing "professional" standard that the prosumer market looks to with desire and dollars.
What has been the result of the Red marketing revolution? To a certain extent it has tied up the prosumer to low-professional level of the marketplace. Why? Because it seems many people are saving to buy their Red One, their Scarlet or an equivalent from one of the major manufacturers. The result is that you are seeing cameras coming out from Sony and Pansonic at a substantially lower price point than initially announced. For example, the HPX-500 has had a $2000 rebate for the past 6 months (the retail list being about $11.5K, with it actually selling at $10K and ending up at $8K with the rebate) and the Sony EX-3 was announced at about a $13K pricepoint at the 2008 NAB, yet is selling at $8300 at your local dealer 4 months later.
Now Red may be doing a little scrambling of their own with DSLR camera makers like Canon (5D MkII) and Nikon (D90) releasing cameras capable of 720p or 1080p. Earlier this month, Red announced that they were going to make a "replacement" for the DSLR market and that it would not be a replacement for the planned Scarlet or Epic. Yesterday, Red announced that, "We have changed everything about Scarlet because the market has changed and we have discovered a lot of things in the process. We have a new vision...." It appears as though they are starting over again with both the Epic and the Scarlet. What will that do to the projected release date of both products and to the seeming army of people waiting to buy them?
If you have any interest in DSLR filmmaking, here is a film that was shot within the past month on the Canon 5D MkII by Vincent Laforet. Remember, this is primarily a still photo camera.
I am not going to go into the technical/aesthetic issues between Red and other digital cameras. That is going on endlessly on boards. I did participate in a shootout last fall involving the Red One, 35mm and an HVX 200 (shooting Lomo anamorphic glass through a RedRock adapter). It is discussed here on Cinematography.com and the HD file of the test is available for download here. The best comment on the thread, for me, asked whether the accompanying photo was a still from "Revenge of the Nerds." YES!!
Where is it all headed? Is it the best of times or the worst of times? Will the format you buy into today be acceptable a couple years from now? Here's the best advice that I've received from a couple of pretty smart people: "Get only what you need to reach the quality level necessary for your next show." And, "Why buy when you can rent?" My head is spinning after researching all the cameras and formats out there right now for the documentary I am shooting. All I can say at this point is that I'd like to buy as little as possible and spend more time worrying about telling stories than obsessing about the technology. Or, as my former advanced cinematography teacher put it, "There was a time when DP's didn't worry about data rates." And to stop asking, like kids on the family vacation, "are we there yet?"
If reading this hasn't exhausted or bored you, here's an interesting article written by Rian Johnson on Red hype, resolution, color depth, the Sony F 23, and the Genesis.
Old media, multi-platform distribution, social, interactivity, 3D TV, curation, content strategy, surviving in the new media economy...welcome to my circle of confusion.
Please don't forget, it's still storytelling.
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