THREE RULES

1) Write and direct original screenplays

2) Make them with the most modern technology available

3) Self-finance them

EOSHD takes a look at Francis Ford Coppola’s approach to filmmaking with the help of the 99%

Francis Ford Coppola (Apocalypse Now, The Godfather) recently did a very candid interview with the 99% a blog by Behance (not related to the anti-capitialst movement)…Rather than just re-print it all I going to give you what I think are the most crucial bits of advice and my thoughts on it…

Filmmaking can never be mastered

“I just finished a film a few days ago, and I came home and said I learned so much today. So if I can come home from working on a little film after doing it for 45 years and say that – that shows something about the cinema”

A director is constantly coming up against new techniques and technologies. Coppola has a 3D section in his latest movie which is inspired by a drunken dream. To stay on top of the new stuff is vital. The world is a dynamically shifting place. Before you master something it will change. Coppola says he refused to teach a Master Class because he believes he’s still a student. I believe the best way to learn filmmaking is to just do it.

Risks are essential

Above: Francis Ford Coppola and Sofia Coppola. With advice this good no wonder Sofia Coppola is a great filmmaker in her own right. This is a glossy ad for a fashion giant, and it pays the bills for his self funded titles.

Don’t rely on selling your art directly

“Try to disconnect the idea of cinema with the idea of making a living and money. Because there are ways around it. You work another job and get up at five in the morning and write your script. Maybe the students are right. They should be able to download music and movies. I’m going to be shot for saying this. But who said art has to cost money? And therefore, who says artists have to make money?”

The idea of people paying to watch films is outdated. In 5 years people will not pay to watch your film, they will not pay to listen to your music. Instead the new distribution model is crowd funding – where you give someone a sense of ownership of the film along with merchandise and a credit as a producer, or working a day job. This could be anything from an office job, to writing for a magazine, or blogging, or teaching workshops on filmmaking, or being paid to produce content and films for businesses.

Where I disagree with a lot of people here however is about the purity of an artist’s hand. Don’t use your hand to promote a product. Use your reputation or personal endorsements but not your hand. If Coppola had shot and directed a glossy ad like the one above, it would devalue his hand as an artist. His hand should be used for art, not selling.

Listen but filter intently

“A screenplay has to be like a haiku [Japanese poetic form]. It has to be very concise and very clear, minimal. [But when you come to shoot it] you’re going to listen to the actors because they have great ideas. You’re going to listen to the cinematographer because he will have a great idea. You must never be the kind of director, I think maybe I was when I was 18, “No, no, no, I know best.” That’s not good. You can make the decision that you feel is best, but listen to everyone, because cinema is collaboration. I always like to say that collaboration is the sex of art because you take from everyone you’re working with.”

I agree here only to a certain extent. Listening is one thing but the really important thing is filtering and judgement. A filmmaker must absorb the world around him but if your internal filtering lacks taste, you will create shit. You will act on the wrong ideas. You will involve the wrong people. You will choose the wrong gear. You will send out the wrong message as a filmmaker. I believe the ability to filter crap is the filmmaker’s biggest intuitive asset and very little of that is learned later on. The rest of it comes from within, from your upbringing and the culture of where you grew up and what you absorbed.

Even as a cinematographer in a specialised role, creating a composition and framing the shot – you are constantly relying on your filter to pair down the shot to something beautiful. The art of photography is reductive not additive. To throw out the stuff that looks bad and only include the stuff that looks good, you first have to know what is good and what isn’t. That is a real talent.

Even writing a blog like EOSHD is a challenge for filtering. If I drew attention to the wrong stuff, it wouldn’t be interesting, but what is interesting is in the eye of the beholder. So as an artist, it helps to have sympathy with your audience.

When making a movie focus on a theme

“When you make a movie, always try to discover what the theme of the movie is in one or two words. Every time I made a film, I always knew what I thought the theme was, the core, in one word. In The Godfather, it was succession. In Apocalypse, it was morality. The reason it’s important to have this is because most of the time what a director really does is make decisions. All day long: Do you want it to be long hair or short hair? Do you want a dress or pants? Do you want a beard or no beard? There are many times when you don’t know the answer. Knowing what the theme is always helps you.

“I remember in The Conversation, they brought all these coats to me, and they said: Do you want him to look like a detective? Do you want him to look like a blah blah blah. I didn’t know! And [because the theme was privacy] I chose the plastic coat you could see through. So knowing the theme helps you make a decision when you’re not sure which way to go.”

A tight focus – this is what makes a film more effective, more moving, more beautiful. If you don’t have anything driving that focus, you’re not directing. You’re guessing. The cinematography I’m most proud of on EOSHD came from when I had a tight focus on a theme. With Modernisation it was a poor / rich divide and the old world being overtaken by a powerful new one. With For a Minute I Lost Myself it was the terror and disorientation of out of control capitalism in a crazy metropolis. For Longshan’s People II it was the people and tradition versus 1000 missiles pointed at Taiwan by China. In each of these cases each idea was gifted to me by the location, I didn’t invent anything. These were all emotional factors driving the compositions. If the place you live in does’t give you any new inspiration, the answer is to travel. If the people you have around you don’t give you any inspiration, the answer is to meet new people. The life you live is essential for giving you the ideas to base films on.

Cast with improvisation sessions

“With improvisations, they really stick if there’s something sensual connected with them, like food or eating or making something with their hands.”

I think improvising is better than sticking rigidly to a script when casting an actor, because the actor is forced to give more of their personality. Rather than forcing them to get their head into a character, see what they are like as a person and what they bring to the film as a character in their own right, see if they are a fit to the script. I believe the best actors should be like close friends on the same page as you, and firing ideas back and forth. It takes a long time to find a creative team, including actors, writers and other collaborators in filmmaking but it is worth persevering.

Don’t force anything.

Above: Coppola with Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese in New York

Have conviction in your vision and ‘bake the scene in the oven’

“When I was young on a movie set, I would try to stage the scene and the actors would read it, and I said – Well, you stand here and you sit there…[But] They would say – Well, I don’t think I should sit there, I should stand there. And I don’t think this line is right….And they would begin to challenge the text. What I learned, which is a simple idea, is that if you hold out with your vision a little bit, it’s like a cake being put in the oven. The scene doesn’t work immediately, you have to bake it a little bit. It’s unfair, when you begin to create a shot, say, or a scene, that it’s going to immediately be like those beautiful scenes in the movies. It needs a little bit of time to mature.”

Kubrick was famous for take after take, after take. This is a bonafide working technique that delivers. A scene morphs and shifts as it bakes in the oven. The trick is to know when to take it out.

Don’t lie to yourself

“You never have to lie. If you lie, you will only trip yourself up. You will always get caught in a lie. It is very important for an artist not to lie, and most important is not to lie to yourself. There is something we know that’s connected with beauty and truth. There is something ancient. We know that art is about beauty, and therefore it has to be about truth.”

I think the worst scripts are those where someone acts as they wouldn’t do in real life. It takes me right out of the film. Avoid bullshitting your audience and don’t insult their intelligence with the obvious. Pair down the shots to those that move the story forward. Nobody wants to see a character walking around from room to room in a lame attempt to introduce some tension, pacing or build up. The hand of the artist, when writing and directing, is all about touching what provides atmosphere, drama, emotion and intrigue and what is just surplus to requirements.

Have confidence

“The artist always battles [their own] feeling of inadequacy. Self confidence is the biggest barrier to becoming a filmmaker. We are very insecure. People are insecure, not just young people. Everyone is insecure.

“They say that Barbara Streisand, when she goes on, she has a panic attack. She feels she can’t sing. Of course, she can sing. I believe that when you write something, when I write something, I turn it over and I don’t look at it. Because I believe the writer, the young writer, has a hormone that makes them hate what they’ve written. And yet, the next morning, when you look at it, you say, “Oh that’s not bad.” But the first second you hate it. ”

Even the greatest artists have doubts. Can I do it? Filmmaking is such a mammoth effort that you have to be crazy to devote so much time to something you think you might not be any good at. But it is far easier (and less risky) to fail due to lack of faith than it is to fail trying.

The full, frankly amazing interview, is at The 99% here

I’ve had my suspicions for a while now about AVCHD footage having a different exposure on my Mac to on the camera. When I edit my GH2 and FS100 stuff natively in Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5 or the new CS6, or preview AVCHD MTS files in VLC Player (Quicktime X still does not support AVCHD) blacks are crushed and the image is darker overall with far less shadow detail than on the camera’s LCD.

The problem isn’t limited to shadow detail. Highlights are clipped as well. This is very noticeable on the FS100 where the camera has a steep roll off from highlights as it is.

Overall the dynamic range of the camera is reduced 1-2 stops by OSX.

Why?

I am not sure whether this negative affect is baked into the footage or if it is related to a playback issue in Quicktime’s H.264 decoder. I’d say the latter because my existing footage shot over the last year, which is up on Vimeo doesn’t seem to suffer when viewed via a TV set.

But the problem is, many many people download or watch DSLR / Vimeo footage on their Mac’s display. The problem remains throughout the workflow and on your audience’s hardware when they watch your footage.

The solution

You must transcode FS100, GH2 or NEX AVCHD footage to ProRes using 5DToRGB. Fail to do this and you risk baking in severe clipping in the shadows and highlights, which will harm the way your footage looks on Vimeo and when watched by other people on their machines.

Avoid:

• Editing native AVCHD clips in Premiere Pro
• Playing FS100 or GH2 AVCHD in VLC Player

• The fix is to use 5DToRGB Batch (I currently have version 1.5.9) and transcode to ProRes with the following options:

There’s no need to touch the gamma correction box, or chroma mode and post-processing. Just make sure you use BT.601 as the decoding matrix and Full Range for Luminance Range.

Now you can import the resulting ProRes clips into your NLE of choice and edit with the accurate exposure and dynamic range at the time of acquisition. Below is an example shot on the FS100. The native AVCHD frame grabs are from Premiere Pro CS5.5.

What about Canon stuff? H.264 seems unaffected in Premiere Pro or Quicktime but VLC Player does pull the gamma down a tiny bit. It does not seem to clip the blacks and highlights.

I really think Apple need to take an urgent look at this bug as it has been around for ages now. I’ve had two MacBooks (my new one is the latest refresh of the quad core MacBook Pro 17″) one with NVidia GFX, one with ATI GFX and be it a Snow Leopard or a Lion they both exhibited the same issue – on an external monitor as well as the MacBook screen, but NOT on a TV via HDMI (which only does 15-235 broadcast safe 709 unlike a computer display which is 0-255 601).

Opinion is divided as to the cause. Some claim it is to do with the broadcast range of 15-235 BT.709 footage not being converted to the full 0-255 of your display when it is decoded (for playback) resulting in a severe clipping of the blacks and highlights. Others say it is a Quicktime gamma issue. Which is it Apple? I for one am waiting for your answer…

View the full comparison frames at EOSHD’s Flickr account here

This is a torture test of the low light abilities of 3 cameras. There are three test scenes in a battered old ex-factory in the east of Berlin. The first consists of a completely pitch black room with glowing pearl lighting. The next one is in the roof is lit using a single iPhone 4S torch with the cameras ramped up to ISO 12,800. The third scene is again a pitch black dark room with the lights of a building outside reflecting in a mirror on the wall.

This was a test shoot for the kind of extreme lighting I’ll be exploiting for a project I’m working on at the moment called Blind Hell. So far it is has been great to exploit a cleaner (almost noise free compared to film!) image at ISOs like 1600. But when you push amazing tech like this to ISOs like 12,800 you see things which have never before been utilised in the history of film. The way light behaves at this level of sensitivity goes beyond what human vision sees. The way it reflects off surfaces, the way it dances and moves – and my aim is to exploit this new territory to the full, creatively. It is far more exciting than just getting a cleaner image with less noise.

Above: my 5D Mark 3E!

The 5D Mark III in this test has the OLPF / anti-aliasing filter removed for better resolution. This also makes the camera sensitive to a wider wavelength of light including infrared. Again this is opening up a new creative road because I can now shoot video using just the infrared wavelength which is invisible to the human eye. The way this is done is simply to put a visible light wavelength blocker over the lens. My modified 5D Mark III is also useful for shooting the heavens since you get more light overall coming from the galaxies, so it is great for astro timelapse. Most of the time you can get away without a full IR-cut filter in the camera (the iPhone 4 didn’t have this for example, and neither did the Leica M8) but when infrared light does adversely affect the image under certain types of electric light and with black fabrics turning purple, I use an IR/UV-cut filter. Because the Leica M8 did not have a full optical IR-cut built in Leica made some very very high end IR-cut filters. I have some of these on the way.  There’s no chance a Leica filter will adversely affect sharpness like the OLPF did. You have to be careful with filters in front of the lens that they don’t cause issues with ghosting flare as well. The Leica ones can be had for around $70 on eBay, new they are double that. Either way they are worth the extra over cheap stuff.

This test was shot with a series of Leica R lenses which I picked up from the window of a camera store in Berlin for 99 Euros / $130 a piece. These were so undervalued as they were not the more modern ROM versions, but since I wasn’t going to be using them with an R body it didn’t matter. The lenses date to around 1968, optically they are as fine as the 80′s and 90′s versions.

• Leica Elmarit-R 35mm F2.8
• Leica Summicron-R 50mm F2
• Leica Elmarit-R 90mm F2.8

The first two scenes are shot in black and white to clearly show what resolution the cameras deliver and with how much noise. The final scene is a test of how well the cameras handle colour and specular highlight roll off. Here I found that although the FS100 holds onto saturation just fine even at ISO 6400, the 5D Mark III had better looking highlights. On the FS100 the red and blue channels clip quite suddenly and there isn’t that nice smooth roll off you get with film, to put it lightly. I’ve optimised the image quite intensively trying to mitigate this as much as possible, and you can see my FS100 picture profile settings later this week.

As I don’t yet have the latest firmware which displays ISO as well as Gain on my Sony FS100 I used AbelCine’s chart to match the video camera to the DSLRs. In order to update the firmware sadly you need to use the AC cable (mine is currently back in the UK!) which is not great to be honest. A power cut can brick your camera. In all the furious firmware updating the GH2 hack community has seen, all the bricking incidents have come from people using the AC cable (loose connection, power cuts, faulty cable, tripping over the wire, etc.) so I think Sony really need to take a careful look at this and reconsider their advice. It is MUCH safer to use a fully charged genuine battery in my opinion. AbelCine’s chart actually resulted in the FS100 being a little bit underexposed compared to the DSLRs at the same ISO going off that chart. I feel that maximum 30db gain is more like 12,800 and 0db is more like a base ISO of 400. I was using the FS100 as my reference for exposure on this test so the DSLRs are a little bit over (at the same settings). Bear this in mind when looking at the highlights on the DSLRs, Mark III especially and the bleached colour saturation of the mirror shot at ISO 6400. I wouldn’t have shot it like that outside of a test. Here’s a 5D Mark III 22MP still for reference of how the highlights in this scene should look (I concentrated on the mirror to the left) -

Noise / performance

The GH2 is surprisingly a real match for the FS100 and 5D Mark III in low light up to ISO 1600. After that it does have far more noise. All these cameras are capable of producing amazing extreme low light results. The 2nd scene in the test is just between the 5D Mark III and FS100 because it is ISO 12,800. The third scene tells you about the problem the GH2 has at ISO 12,800. Although it is noisier than the FS100 of course, it does maintain a fine grain of noise and plenty of detail – but it has quite a serious banding issue in the lower third of the frame. Colour is hopeless at this extreme (hacked) ISO as well, so it is really better to shoot B/W when using ISO 12,800 on the hacked GH2. I’ve had some lovely results but it isn’t up to the standard of the FS100 when you go past ISO 1600. Below that, it is competitive and for $600 that is pretty astonishing!

I feel the structure and grain of the noise is most attractive on the FS100, and least attractive on the 5D Mark III where it is blotchy and very un-film like unfortunately. However for many of the shots here I’d say the 5D Mark III came out looking the most cinematic.

It really is very noticeable on the plain wall in the 3rd scene how much difference an illuminated surface makes to noise levels, especially the visibility of banding and fixed pattern noise (FPN). This is why high ISO performance on well lit test subjects is never the whole story, so take most reviews with a pinch of salt (including DXOMark).

Dynamic range aesthetics

Whilst the FS100 tends to do very well in the lows and badly in the highlights, the GH2 does badly in the lows and just ‘ok’ in the highs. There’s some clipping and crushing of shadow detail going on with that camera in extreme situations especially at the higher ISOs on display here. The FS100′s footage grades better than the 5D Mark III’s codec especially in low contrast shadowy scenes like this, there’s far less rubbish in the lows on the FS100 despite the bitrate being just 24Mbit in 24p mode compared to nearly 90Mbit on the 5D Mark III.

Sony did a great job with the dedicated video encoder chip there despite it being a good notch or 2 down from the one in the more expensive F3.

Removing 5D Mark III OLPF filter a nice improvement

Without the OLPF filter I am MUCH happier with the 5D Mark III’s image and it has freed me from the burden of sharpening in post. This footage doesn’t have any post work done on it at all, it is all straight off the card. No sharpening added to the 5D Mark III yet it is pretty close to the FS100 even at these high ISOs. On shots of people especially close up it looks even closer to the detail level you get on the FS100.

Later this week I’ll have a full video shot on the OLPF-less 5D Mark III and possibly a comparison between the Nikon D800 and the OLPF-less 5D Mark III. Maybe I should call it the 5D Mark 3E!

Final note… Audio is going to go through the FS100′s XLR jacks on the shoot. There’s nothing in the test video but here is a sneak preview of the equipment we’re using on the audio side…

In an interview with the British press in Berlin this week, Leica head of the supervisory board Dr Andreas Kaufmann revealed that they have been working on implementing video on their digital rangerfinder line or possibly new products.

To be unveiled at Photokina in September where Leica will take over Hall 1 in it’s entirety due to “such a huge product roadmap at the moment”.

“[There are some challenges] the data rate, the heat, and the battery lifecycle, but I think we solved that. No comment until we show it on existing and new models. HD video is interesting, and a lot of photographers would love to have it.”

Until now Leica’s cameras haven’t featured video or live view due to using slower CCD type sensors rather than CMOS.

There’s rumours Leica are working with STMicroElectronics on future sensors for their medium format S range but the German company also recently said they will continue to work with the ex-Kodak imaging division (now branded Truesense Imaging).

Leica’s M9 has a very low resolution LCD and awkward access to the card slot and battery, and such purist film-day philosophies will need to be tweaked if video is to succeed on a Leica. Price is usually very off-putting with Leica for many, but I think actually a video capable M10 would be pretty appealing close to the FS700′s price if done well. To finally get a full frame mirrorless that does high quality stills and video is a dream.

In my opinion it unlikely Leica’s non-compromise approach to image quality will translate into a Alexa-like video mode and it is more likely such a feature will be the by-product of a live view mode. Leica are very late to this game but lets see what they come up with at Photokina. I’ll be there to find out!

From the EOSHD archives – when Leica made movie cameras – the Leicina Special

Read the original article at the British Journal of Photography (via 1001NoisyCameras)

A few days ago I spoke to Jeff Gibbs, a lifelong friend of Michael Moore, a composer, a producer and a filmmaker in his own right. Most significantly of all, Jeff is also an EOSHD reader!! So last week we had a long transatlantic chat on the phone about filmmaking, DSLRs, 4K and Jeff’s new film. Currently in the edit suite, this is a wry but thoughtful documentary called Planet of The Humans about “what happens when six, no make that seven, billion clever apes overrun an entire planet.”

The feature, shot partly on the GH2 and 5D Mark II, takes a cynical view of the green energy industry, bio-fuel and questions what the future is going to look like after oil runs out. Jeff had some great insights into the world of cinema, DSLRs and The Hobbit…

On The Hobbit / 4K resolution

In Jeff’s opinion, there’s been a steady decline in the quality of film prints and that the extra resolution offered by 4K should be welcomed. 48fps however, he sees as risky and ‘an experiment’.

“And I wouldn’t blame cineplexes or Hollywood. I actually would blame our artsy indie film sensibility first, confusing “the film look” with grain and darkness, muted colors. At the same time there has been I believe a slow degradation in the quality of the film prints delivered in general, something that has crept in so slowly we don’t realize what we’ve lost!

“The epiphany came when screening a print vs [a 1080p] blu-ray for our local community theater’s showing of “White Christmas.”  The blu-ray was astounding – like someone had cleaned the glass. You could see detail and color that were unbelievable. But then it occurred to me – the blu-ray was made FROM THE FILM MASTER and could be no better. THAT was what audiences were seeing in the 1950′s. Film in all its glory.

“I am in favor of what Jackson [on The Hobbit] is doing with higher resolution BUT the 48fps experiment is just that. I believe 24p is not a conspiracy or a learned thing. It stood the test of the human experience of disappearing the hand of the filmmaker, and part of that was forcing you to not have flying, sliding, wobbling cameras. I think that limitation forced directors away from tricks and into story. As “cinematic” as the filmmaker may feel lots of movements make a film look, it is also not how the human body or eye moves and however subtly calls attention to the hand of the filmmaker.”

On Timelapse / Vimeo

“Storytelling is a very, very high level skill that few put the requisite work into mastering. Easier to buy a new slider and call it good.

“Everyone just wipes out the nat (natural) sound and puts in music ala Philip Glass (and I love Philip Glass!!). What’s the point of that? Nat sound is MORE important to film/video than music – and I am a composer!  I think we’ve lost our way and ego rules the day. I guess that thought offends 99% of the people on Vimeo. Oh well.

“How can you even know what the right music is until you understand the voice tones as well as the sound of the background?  At least that’s how I work. Nat sound, even more than what we see, is what brings us emotionally and experientially into a place. Music is in support not just of the visuals, and the story, but the soundscape.”

In my view the DSLR community does need to challenge itself more with getting the voice & opinion of the filmmaker across, through the use of natural sound and storytelling (doesn’t matter if it is documentary of fiction – it is the message that counts!). Showing a high standard of production with a slider is easy. It is easy to get a ‘wow’ effect with timelapse, the scene (nature) is directing itself. A high resolution camera pointed at something pretty. There’s no message there. Koyaanisqatsi had a firm message and made an art of the technique of timelapse. Without the art, timelapse remains just a technique.

On Michael Moore / producing Bowling For Columbine

“He is a lifelong friend, we have known each other since high school. I stumbled into filmmaking when one day they were short a field producer for Bowling for Columbine and I stepped in to help and within hours had set up two interviews that made the film. Of course Michael and I had been watching movies together since high school so I think we share the same sensibility. I am a MOVIE fan first and foremost. 2001. Alien. October Sky. Koyaanisqatsi. Woodstock. Lifelong fan of Tolkien as well. The art-house indie film world bores me to tears most of the time, but sometimes there are real gems. Troubled Waters (a film from Norway) comes to mind. Run Lola Run.”

Jeff says Michael used Super 16mm and HDCAM to shoot his documentaries on the most part. Not for him the stealth factor when approaching a corporation, rather all guns blazing!

“The very first film I ever worked on, Bowling for Columbine, really did bridge the gap between film and digital. It was a very surreal experience working on “Bowling for Columbine” in many ways. I had never worked on a film before, and the first day Michael asked me to help out on what seemed a lark just happened to be a day I had off work. Actually he instant messaged me something like “what are you up to?” and I said “not much” and he said, “you think you can help us out for a while today?”  I said sure why not, being eager to see what a film crew looked like. At this point I had no idea even what a DP was and had certainly never met one.

“As luck would have it that very first day I was able to stumble into finding what would turn out to be two key characters for the film, and by the time we wrapped up filming and got home it was 4 am. Michael asked me to stick around for the rest of the week. I faxed in my resignation to my day job, and secretly prayed that I just didn’t hurt my friend’s film. Of course as it turned out Bowling for Columbine smashed the box office record Roger and Me set by about four times, then a couple years later Fahrenheit 9/11 smashed Bowling for Columbine’s record by another four times. I guess things turned out okay.

“It was a lucky time to get involved in these breakthrough films, and a good time for some on the job training because Bowling for Columbine was shot on just about every format imaginable. We began with super 16mm film, necessitating stopping every twenty minutes, a camera assistant in the ready with fresh film, a store of films of different speeds waiting in a nearby van. I remember someone saying in a mere few days of intense shooting we had run through our entire budget for film.”

Jeff did use a GH2 on his documentary ‘Planet Of The Humans’ – mainly for interviews (where, he says, the subject relaxes far more in front of a small camera compare to an HDCAM) but is still put off it somewhat for documentary because of rolling shutter jello and a lack of headphone socket.

On DSLRs

Jeff’s current cameras are – the XF300, GH2, and 5D Mark II. A Canon Vixia camcorder was used to shoot an eviction on Michael’s recent documentary Capitalism: A Love Story.

“That an eight year old consumer product [the Vixia] should have more resolution than the Mark III is just bizarre. I have used the 5D MARK II for my film, and the useable stuff is just gorgeous. But for run and gun shooting when you want to capture every frame in a usable way, its a problem, or for wide shots of cityscapes or landscapes, where the resolution is an issue. I love the look it and wish they had given the 5d Mark III the resolution that most filmmakers need. If the 5D Mark III had the resolution of the GH2 it would be my dream camera, all I would need for a long while.”

The catch is that Canon did give us the resolution, but decided to charge $15,000 for it in the Cinema EOS 1DC, taking it out of the hands of the masses or smaller scale film projects.

“I really believe that the tools at hand, internet access, cameras, and the people that use them, play a critical role not just for you and me, but for justice and democracy around the world. They may have a lot to do with how the time were in turns out, for good or evil. I also really believe that storytelling is critical to the human condition. The arrival of affordable tools is fantastic for all us, but nor more likely to produce great films than the arrival of word processors was to increase the number of great novels. It did not. I cheer on all who try their hand at storytelling, and encourage us to understand that great storytelling is an high level, hard-won skill taking years or decades of hard work and failure. Looking for visual shortcuts or tricks or being a bit too obsessed with cameras is a wrong turn. Storytellers don’t call each other in a cold sweat over Red vs 5D Mark whatever, they call each other in a cold sweat late at night worrying about their STORY. The best that technology can do is get out of the way of the story.”

Jeff makes a good case for why accessible affordable cameras are important, and EOSHD is about pushing the manufacturers to make them as good as possible. I often get slammed for calling them out when a product disappoints and whilst I am far more a cinematographer than a writer or story teller (so the cameras play a big role for me) I completely agree with Jeff’s point on the importance of the story and the message. Much of filmmaking is a major force for good in the world.

Canon DSLRs have been busy on the set of Marvel’s super hero flick The Avengers directed by Joss Whedon.

“They are great for shooting additional angles that give film editors more options for creating powerfully immersive and kaleidoscopic views of action scenes,” Seamus McGarvey (Cinematogapher, The Avengers)

A total of five 5Ds were used along with two 7Ds, says McGarvey.

“The cameras’ small size was a major advantage to us. We were able to place them in tight locations that were really close to the big stunts, which would be too risky to do with bigger cameras that would require an operator and two assistants”

So far so ‘done before’…

Rumour has it that the source of The Hulk’s rage in this film is precisely the 5D Mark II. His attempts to smash up the overrated cameras he claims as only doing ‘moire ridden 720p’ is the basis for the entire third act. Rather than the full 1080p Canon say they do, these filmmakers would have been better off with a Panasonic GH2 or Nikon D800. (You won’t find this in the official PR statement at Canon here).

At first this kind of thing was genuinely ground breaking, but I now feel it has been rather hijacked as a marketing device.

Hyperbole – A note on filmmakers used as marketing tools

There’s actually a very fine line between being perceived as independent and becoming a cheerleader.

I view it as a real shame that some filmmakers have become almost like manufacturer mouthpieces rather than pushing them to improve. One of the reason the 5D Mark III stayed almost identical to its predecessor is because the pros advising Canon on it are so positive.

Filmmakers like Shane Hurlbut, Ron Howard and Philip Bloom are – in my opinion – too cozy with various manufacturers. Their close links and friendships in the industry suffocates their ability to be truly negative about a product’s shortcomings.

There’s a lot to be positive about regarding Canon DSLRs and what they offer despite their shortcomings but you’ll rarely hear a negative word from some guys about a product, and if you do it won’t get the attention it deserves because they won’t emphasise it or push it.

Here’s a quote from a filmmaker who is not being loaned cameras by Canon and Nikon, is not shooting promos for Sony, is not running Rode sponsored workshops, is not an Explorer of Light and isn’t running Canon sponsored film competitions…

Jeff Gibbs (Michael Moore collaborator) – “That an eight year old consumer product (Canon Vixia) should have more resolution than the Mark III is just bizarre”

One of the biggest changes to Premiere Pro in the new version is a renderless timeline which supports OpenCL capable graphics cards. Previously Adobe only supported NVidia’s CUDA standard for GPU acceleration. Mac users with ATI cards missed out on the huge performance gains from a GPU accelerated video editing package.

Previously even MacBook Pro users with high end (for the time) CUDA capable NVidia graphics found themselves without quite enough video RAM and in need of a hack to get it to work.

That has all changed with CS6.

I have a MacBook Pro 17″ 2011 with ATI Radeon card, running 64bit Lion and the performance in Premiere Pro CS6 is a big leap up from CS5.5, in terms of general responsiveness, editing, playback, FX, etc. especially when editing 1080/60p from the Sony FS100.

The interface has been streamlined and most FX and colour correction tools work seamlessly with no rendering required before you playback the timeline at full resolution. There’s also a full screen mode for full 1080p playback of the timeline at a keystroke.

As I’ve only just begun using the software (although I’ve been using Premiere CS5.5 over FCPX for nearly 12 months now) I won’t be offering my full thoughts on the software just yet, but there will be a ‘first impressions’ soon and a review later.

Some highlights of what is new…

• New camera support – ArriRaw, Alexa, C300, RED Scarlet-X and EPIC, etc.
• Improved 3 way colour corrector
• Advanced multicam editing (sync with timecode, adjust multiple shots at a time, swap between tracks in real-time)
• Warp stabiliser is now built in (no need to go to After Effects)
• Rolling shutter repair tool
• Support for Adobe SpeedGrade CS6 grading software
• Can now be rented at a monthly rate from Adobe CreativeCloud

You can see what it is like yourself by downloading here the free 30 day trial at Adobe.

Putting the life into an image is an art.

It isn’t always about Canon L glass.

Here I’ll explain exactly why this is and how to get the most from the more ‘unusual’ lenses on eBay.

Beautiful but vacant imagery in the vain of a glossy network TV show - this isn’t really my cup of tea.

I’m more interested in adding a very personal mark to my cinematography – what is the point of mimicking Game of Thrones or Lost? It’s already been done, in crisp clean HD where available™

I just shot this single cover for a musician friend – why the hell do I need a sharp lens to do this?

Listen to the track here

I have never felt compelled to look at MTF chart when buying a lens, rather, I look at the images it produces on Flickr. Here’s an example of something unusual… a vintage cinema lens, the Cooke Kinetal 12.5mm.

It is far from technically perfect. The coating is 1950′s technology. There’s a rainbow all over the right hand side. The bokeh is very textured with halos around it that somehow emphasise the presence of the bokeh, rather than making everything creamy clean and boring.

And you know what? It works.

Above: Cooke Kinetal sample on Flickr

This lens was crafted by hand in England through the 60′s and 70′s. A computer didn’t come close to it. Ditto the Kern Switar 26mm F1.1 which was made by the hand of a human being not a machine.

Somehow these lenses breathe life into the clinical sterile world of HD (and 4K). My firm advice is to embrace the unusual and split your collection between the technically superb and the creatively unreal.

Whilst it is true that sharpness, lack of flare, zero vignetting and perfectly creamy bokeh is desirable…that kind of lens is but one expression in the language of cinema.

Here’s the Olympus 38mm F1.8 from an original PEN-F, made in the 70′s, on the Sony FS100.

This lens mimics the look of full frame rendering on a crop sensor. The lens is designed for a half-frame film camera (the original Olympus PEN), so the edge of the (smaller) image circle is closer to the edge of the frame on crop sensors like Micro Four Thirds, APS-C and Super 35mm. Much closer than it is with your typical full frame Canon L lens.

As a result you get a tunnelling effect to the bokeh, a curving of light at the edges and a gentle vignette in the corners. It’s beautiful.

Click to enlarge:

This week I found a very old Leica Elmar from the 50′s. These are all over the place you just have to look for them.

I picked this up for just 95 EUROS which by Leica moneybags standards is a pittance. Sure it is only F4 but that gives me a beautifully sharp image with manageable focus. It is a full frame Leica M mount lens but I use it on the Fuji X Pro 1 and Sony FS100 which are 1.5x crop. A lot of old Leica glass like this are considered collectors items but this one is cosmetically damaged near the mount. I don’t give a crap about this and I wanted it because of the character of images it produces. It is a low contrast lens which seems to increase the dynamic range of the camera, delivering velvety smooth tones like film. Here’s one from the Fuji X Pro 1 taken with the Leica M Elmar 90mm F4.

I also enjoy pairing Russian optics with anamorphic lenses. Now the Iscoramas are expensive but a Kowa 2x lens gives you a very similar image (if not a tad sharper!) for locked off shots for around $500, if you don’t mind the slow focussing mechanism of matching the focus point on both the prime and the anamorphic.

Here’s the look you can get when you pair a very very basic $20 Russian Helios 44M-2 lens with an anamorphic (in this case my 2x Isco CentaVision)….

Click here to view the embedded video.

So next time you are about to drop $1500 on a lens – make sure it is either an anamorphic, or something unique. Picking a modern piece of glass, with sterile multi-coating and perfect MTF chart is not always the best look for cinema.

One of my favourite lenses on the GH2 (if not the favourite) and the one that gets the most use is the Voigtlander Nokton 25mm F0.95. It offers unrivalled shallow DOF on the GH2′s 1.86x crop sensor and superb low light performance.

However it is a photographic lens not really designed for cinematographers. Now SLR Magic are producing a cine lens rival for the same price – with minimal breathing, 10 blade aperture for smooth bokeh when stopped down and clickless aperture ring.

Although these shots are from an early prototype they are already looking sharper than the Voigtlander wide open.

At this stage the lens has more distortion and purple fringing wide open compared to the Voigtlander but SLR Magic tell me the current images are only 70% representative of the final production lens and these attributes will be optimised. SLR Magic are a very small producer of optics based in Hong Kong and considering their size they’re doing some very eye-catching and cinematic pieces of glass with aggressive specs.

The estimated price of the 25mm F0.95 is circa $1000 (similar to the Voigtlander Nokton 25mm F0.95).

Top is the SLR Magic and bottom shot is from the Voigtlander – both at 25mm wide open (T0.95 and F0.95)…

As you can see it is a very sharp piece of glass – if SLR Magic can get that purple fringing under control wide open (it can also be corrected in post) this will be like a cinema optimised version of the Voigtlander 25mm F0.95 and slightly brighter. The lens aims to have a similar mechanical design to the full frame CINE 50mm T0.95 but is lighter due to being optimised for the smaller Micro Four Thirds sensor rather than full frame Leica M mount.

David vs Goliath (Leica)

Here’s a comparison of the SLR Magic (top) at F1.4 against the Leica 25mm F1.4 for Micro Four Thirds (again shot on the GH2)… These are 1:1 crops from 16MP stills…

Not bad for a small team versus the best lens manufacturer in the world, huh?

SLR Magic will be at Photokina in September - Hall 3.1 at booth B059

If you are waiting for the out of stock Nikon D800 – it seems your wait might have to go on for a while yet – since the D800E might be the one to get.

The lack of anti-aliasing filter does not seem to make moire and aliasing in video mode any worse. There’s nothing very noticeable here in this video despite all the fine detail like hair, bricks and fabrics. Rather, it has a positive affect and fine detail really pops.

I wasn’t expecting fine detail to be this clean on the E… Removing the anti-aliasing filter seemed like a recipe for disaster. But this footage is very encouraging. When you also bear in mind this is compressed footage from in-camera, rather than via the Atomos Ninja, it truly seems like a very nice result from the rare ‘E’ version.

I recommend clicking the link below to Vimeo and downloading the full 1920x1080p file.

Mosaic Engineering are working on an anti-aliasing filter for the D800, so if you do need to add one later to your ‘E’ that will be available before long (the prototypes are already in the wild).

I’ve been busy the past couple of weeks so haven’t had chance to test my OLPF-less 5D Mark III against a Nikon D800, 5D Mark II or standard Mark III yet but the tests and final conclusion are coming before long. If you are in / near Berlin and have a Nikon D800 or D800E let me know, I’d like to do a shootout with my OLPF-less 5D Mark III and your Nikon! The D800 is out of stock everywhere at the moment and like gold dust.

Here is the link to the video. Please download the video don’t stream the crappy 720p version. Go to the download section and select 1920×1080 (You may need to be a Vimeo Plus member)

Ground control to Major Tom – Today Panavision unveiled a new Dynamax sensor for the TV and scientific industries, which does 12bit 2K and 1080p with a global shutter. It turns out this sensor contains NASA developed technology from the US state funded Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

It’s capable of an insane 120db of dynamic range in HDR mode (13 stops in 12bit is around 88db) but is not destined for a digital cinema camera. Rather it is for machine vision, industrial processes and is roughly 16mm sized to be used with c-mount lenses.

But the key thing here is the link between NASA developed imaging technology and the film industry giant Panavision.

NASA have been working on new processes for silicon based CMOS sensors regarding the way they capture light. The aim is to create more sensitive image sensors for telescopes like the Hubble Space Telescope.

NASA provided a technology called ‘delta-doping’ in the creation of the new Panavision CMOS (specs here) – and it seems more and more ‘alien’ technology will be finding its way into the hands of filmmakers.

The Blackmagic Design Cinema Camera already uses technology from the scientific community, with its BAE scientific CMOS (sCMOS) sensor.

There’s a scientific paper at NASA on their digital imaging research. Although if you don’t understand it, don’t worry, I didn’t either!

Peter Jackson is unfazed by criticism The Hobbit looks un-cinematic by saying the clips shown at Cinemacon were unfinished and their duration not long enough for the audience to acclimatise.

Speaking about the 10 minutes of EPIC shot footage in 3D at 48fps which is the source of the criticism, Jackson remarks:

“It does take you a while to get used to. Ten minutes is sort of marginal, it probably needed a little bit more. Another thing that I think is a factor is it’s different to look at a bunch of clips and some were fast-cutting, montage-style clips. This is different experience than watching a character and story unfold… I personally wouldn’t advocate a 48-frame trailer because the 48 frames is something you should experience with the entire film. A 2 1/2 minute trailer isn’t enough time to adjust to the immersive quality.”

According to the Hollywood Reporter article, Jackon watches dailies at 48fps every day, sometimes up to 2 hours worth.

“You get used to it reasonably quickly,”

Jackson says that having aclamisted to the new frame rate he feels the shortcomings of 24fps more and more.

“I’m very aware of the strobing, the flicker and the artefacts.”

Presumably the artefacts he mentions are related to 3D 24p. He goes onto explain that the footage at Cinemacon had not gone through the final post production process and that the final film would look a little less like I Claudius HD.

“We have obviously seen cuts of our movie at 48 and in a relatively short amount of time you have forgotten (the frame rate change). It is a more immersive and in 3D a gentler way to see the film. We are certainly going to experiment with different finishing techniques to give the 48 frames a look that is more organic. But that work isn’t due to start until we wrap photography in July”

The footage is being shot in 5K on the EPIC, and lacks the traditional motion blur associated with film’s 180 degrees shutter at 24p.

Simplistic and dream-like or glossy and crisp? I suppose it a sense I like my art to be primal, raw and primitive and the constant march of technology and my urges for better images run counter to that. Maybe it is time to take stock and look at the old cover of The Hobbit below (though not the original 1937 first edition version – that was even more primitive!) to realise what we’re missing in many modern motion pictures.

A very similar thing has happened in the evolution of video games – in the way the touch of the human hand during the retro days of hand draw sprites has been swept away by more and more photo realism, 3D and high frame rates. There will always be room for the artistry of a human hand however primitive and much as I love technology, 2D cinema is going nowhere in my opinion. And this isn’t some nostalgia thing!

Via the BBC
Source Hollywood Reporter

Prototype Zeiss anamorphic coming at IBC in September 2012

From a Zeiss product manager:

We only showed a Concept Anamorphic at the NAB Show. [This] Concept anamorphic is the result of a technical study which shows advanced and outstanding 
technology which is already well improved and will be further developed and focused by our
 product management. We decided to name it a concept following the example of the automotive industry.
 We will show a first prototype on IBC 2012 in September and release all the technical details as well.

Thanks Stéphane

Nikon D3200

The Nikon D3200 could be interesting for DSLR video shooters not ponying up to recent pricey models such as the Nikon D800 and 5D Mark III.

I’m curious about this camera because it partners a ‘Nikon developed’ version of Sony’s NEX 7 sensor with the very capable EXPEED 3 processor – the same found in the D800 (and $6k flagship D4) which does a rather good job of video (at least in the D800!). How will it compare to the already very capable NEX 7?

The camera also has a few ‘bonus’ features that you wouldn’t expect for the price – like on screen audio meters and full manual control of video, PAL / NTSC worldcam switchable 24p and 25p, 60p in 720p and a 921k LCD. ISO goes all the way to 12,800 in video mode.

HDMI is fit for monitoring but isn’t clean of icons so no external recording to the Atomos Ninja on this one (unless the final firmware is adjusted to support this).

It is unlikely to offer a better image in video mode than the GH2 but it is worth keeping an eye out for proper sample footage (not heavily compressed YouTube stuff) ahead of its release in May.

Above: a Magic Lantern test running on a real living 5D Mark III in the wild

Initial tests by Alex and the team at Magic Lantern show the hack will work with the 5D Mark III. Canon recently posted an updated firmware for the camera, allowing the file to be analysed and it seems Magic Lantern can be ported to the new camera.

For me his hack will be interesting, as this is the first DSLR with the new DIGIC5 processor as opposed to the processor all previous Magic Lanterns ran on – DIGIC4.

More power should allow the camera to be pushed much further in terms of image quality, frame rates and bitrates this time.

It will be great to have all the extra features Magic Lantern offers that Canon doesn’t – like peaking for one!

I wonder if the sensor can do 1080/60p if pushed with the variable frame rate patch?

The big one for me is unlocking uncompressed HDMI and improving the rather soft resolution (without the need to disassemble the camera like I did!)

Source: Here’s the initial developer’s thread at Google code for Magic Lantern on the 5D Mark III

The future is here but it seems nobody checked to see if it looked any good.

Shot with a 3D Red EPIC rig at 48fps, Peter Jackson’s return to the world of JRR Tolkien has been ‘stripped of the magic of cinema’ according to many who saw the advance press screenings by Warner Brothers.

This from Devin Faraci at CinemaCon [reading the full article here is highly recommended]:

“The 48fps footage I saw looked terrible. It looked completely non-cinematic. The sets looked like sets. I’ve been on sets of movies on the scale of The Hobbit, and sets don’t even look like sets when you’re on them live… but these looked like sets. The other comparison I kept coming to, as I was watching the footage, was that it all looked like behind the scenes video. The magical illusion of cinema is stripped away completely.

[The Hobbit] looked like a hi-def version of the 1970s I, Claudius. It is drenched in a TV-like – specifically 70s era BBC – video look. People on Twitter have asked if it has that soap opera look you get from badly calibrated TVs at Best Buy, and the answer is an emphatic YES.”

Oh dear!

The view is common – here is another who says it reminded him of 70′s episodes of the BBC’s Dr Who.

This guy had good things to say about the sweeping helicopter shots and landscapes (real landscapes) but it seems that 4K 3D at 48fps is so revealing and clinical that it reveals ‘the gaffer tape holding the set together’ and the makeup on the actors. Such a level of reality is good at reproducing reality but it seems Jackson and Red forget it wasn’t much good for creating fantasy.

“[The] landscape shots are breathtaking. 48fps is the future of nature documentaries. But if it’s the future of narrative cinema I don’t know if that future includes me.”

The big question for me here is – will people acclimatise to the high altitude and get used to accepting ‘the 48p’ look as cinematic (once they forget 70 years of history and Hitchcock) or will the be spewing into their popcorn for a good deal many years to come? How will set design keep up with the advancing resolution and frame rates of cinema cameras? Is the answer to have a 100% CGI based set? I hope not.

It seems filmmaking is becoming a science first, an art second?

As for Red – they have a helluva lot staked on this movie. If it ends up looking as bad as these early viewings suggest then people will squarely pin the blame on the camera company rather than just the filmmaker. This is an unusual situation because the technology has been ‘going steady’ for years so I cannot for the life of me remember when the camera company was blamed rather than the filmmaker for a film’s failure.

I admire their guts for trying such an audacious change but maybe the magic of soft looking 24p is not ready to go quietly into the night.

In the last few weeks the already large number of options for filmmakers have been shaken up. Current cameras all seem to fall into different niches.

There are the depth of field specialists – 5D Mark III and D800 with full frame sensors. There are the resolution and raw codec specialists the Blackmagic Design Cinema Camera and Red Scarlet. There’s the slow mo specialist the Sony FS700 and my personal favourite all-rounders the GH2 and FS100 which just keep getting better with firmware updates (the FS100 is now a world cam with latest one from Sony).

What happens next will be a fascinating fight. EOSHD rounds up the contenders.

Canon

Should it exist, the C100 is going to have to be cheap. Putting a stripped down C300 out there for $8k isn’t going to work. Putting it between the FS700 and C300 won’t do either, because frankly that isn’t possible – the FS700 is already better specced than the C300 for half the price. It is 4K ready so more future proof, and does 240fps 1080p whilst the C500 will come in at a LOT more – $30,000 in fact. I think the C500 is going to be great for Hollywood and future proof broadcast acquisition in 4K – a viable alternative to the Alexa but there is an awfully big hole under $30,000.

The 4K DSLR is basically a 1D X stills camera and lacks fundamental features like 25p, robust ports like HD-SDI and XLR, or any usability concessions like peaking. A serious mistake in my view and a very very cynical product. It is also said to be disappointing in terms of the image (not true 4K and only a 8bit codec). The 1080p mode is multi-region but said to be no better in image quality than the 5D Mark III or 1D X, which is just crazy! Everyone is in love with full frame and the DSLR form factor for video. Canon should be providing a proper 2K raw DSLR for $6,000 with an electronic ND filter and XLR in a battery grip, scrap the wobbly HDMI port and with a product like this Canon will clean up. There’s simply no excuse not to sacrifice some margin and give us a proper next generation camera, otherwise they risk losing their accidentally won foothold completely.

Blackmagic Design

I have to admit that when news of this camera came out I had a vision of the future as clear as day, and I’ll be very surprised if the BMD Camera does not push virtually everyone else to compete, like the iPhone did in the mobile market. Yes there will be a slew of imitators BUT the great strength of a post production company like Blackmagic is their expertise in software and recorder hardware. Their Cinema Camera raw recorder is fully integrated and proven hardware. DaVinci is highly desirable as a professional post production suite. Their in-camera firmware and touch screen interface is also leaps and bounds ahead of Japanese software design.

Above: 12bit RAW at 2.5K resolution for $3000 – the sensation of NAB 2012

Red

Like Canon, Red seem to be highly focussed on providing for the very high end with industry tools and not so much the lower end. The Scarlet’s ‘brain’ at $10,000 is pretty reasonable. The rest of the kit to get it operational is extremely expensive. I am not paying $3200 for an SSD, I don’t care if it is used by Fincher and Jackson, that price is out of my imagination. Red’s chief competition at the moment is Arri, Sony and Canon. Panasonic have their 4K Vari-Cam coming but until then aren’t in the digital cinema game. Arri have carved up the lions share of both film and TV. Red have a great run with many high profile shoots but their smaller support network causes doubts in the minds of many producers especially in Europe. Sony’s F65 will provide stiff competition at the very top end – though the Epic has the edge on chassis size.

Red like to portray the image of a lone gun-man fighting against the corporate might of Japan. Indeed the big question here is whether Red are corporate enough to fight Arri & Sony in the digital cinema industry or whether they are too much a loose cannon and too small to compete with large multinationals, with their wide support network, trusted brand names, huge engineering resources and strength in depth. Red do well to win high profile shoots like The Hobbit but they need more scope. Lower down, nearly everyone at NAB was in agreement in saying the Blackmagic Design Cinema Camera could be a serious blow to Red’s hopes of securing a mass market footing with 3K for $3k. As for 4K – though we don’t know the price of the 4K recording unit yet, the Sony FS700 certainly seems to undercut the Scarlet – as well as offering higher frame rates (without a crop of the sensor).

Sony

The FS700 is the bomb. It covers broad range of customers from FS100 upgraders to potential C300 buyers – so right the way from well off consumers to broadcast television, not only as a 1080p camera but as a future proof 4K ready one that does 240fps super slow mo. The 4K add-on later is a touch of genius by Sony because it gives them the luxury of being more flexible with their market approach. The market is changing so fast, Sony can wait until the others have their 4K offerings out and bend to their pricing strategy; They only have to take into account the manufacturing and development cost of the external recorder, since the camera already has a 4K sensor and 3G-HD-SDI for $8k.

Hopefully the external recorder will be small enough to integrate into the camera like the current SSD unit on the FS100 does.

Above: Photo from Too Much Imagination’s shoot with the FS700

Panasonic

Panasonic’s GH2 is brilliant and the momentum keeps building (the GH3 is due this year). The hack shows what low end hardware is capable of when truly unleashed. That camera’s sensor and image processor could be in a C300 competitor if it had the same build, built in ND filter wheel, better LCD, better audio and sturdier connectivity. That Panasonic can put a consumer camera like this out with such a knockout image for $600 makes you wonder what they are capable of at $8000 when freed from the kind of unimaginative thinking that plagued the AF100. AVC Ultra seems positive but I have a couple of concerns about Panasonic - the under specced AF100 is a problem as is the lack of a replacement any time soon. Also AVC Ultra is not a raw codec. Canon have EOSRAW, Blackmagic have uncompressed raw, Arri and Red have their own codecs. Where’s Panasonic’s?

Above: the current Varicam is small chip CCD. Where is the Super 35mm version or a higher end offering above the already dated AF100?

And the winner is…

JVC! Only joking.

I originally began this article before NAB and one piece of the original text is quite pertinent now…

“At some point this year there will be a gap that one of these manufacturers will literally walk straight into, whether it is Sony with slow-mo on the FS700, Panasonic with their 12bit codec or Canon with a 4K DSLR.”

Well it turned out to be Blackmagic Design who walked into a gap.

We’re not talking about a small gap either, rather a gaping hole.

I’m astonished how unimaginative the big guys have been in their approach to bringing the mass market to the digital cinema market. The people who will buy the Blackmagic Design Cinema Camera won’t just be a tiny niche of indie filmmakers – they will be stills photographers, camcorder users, DSLR owners, students, artists, freelancers, journalists, small production studios and even some of the bigger ones, broadcasters, wedding videographers and even Philip Bloom.

That is some broad appeal!

Purely by virtue of silly pricing, Canon’s Cinema EOS stuff doesn’t have the same broad mass market appeal and their stills DSLRs aren’t giving us what we want (a major missed opportunity).

Whilst the Blackmagic camera is great remember however that it is only one product. Although the singular Apple iPhone mopped the floor with manufacturers who had 100′s of different models and variations on the market, filmmaking is more diverse than the world of pocketable Nokias. I think by virtue of pushing so hard on specs and being aggressive on pricing Sony are going to come out top dog. The F65 is more powerful than the Alexa for a similar price – $65k. The FS700 offers just so much for $8k it is mind-blowing. The FS100 for low budget shooters is a much better option than a Canon DSLR. Sony are also being pretty brave with their DSLRs as well – first to put 1080/60p in there – first to do a pro mirrorless camera with the NEX 7 and their sensor in the Nikon D800 is probably the best full frame sensor in the world right now. I can’t wait to see what their full frame A99 is capable of in video mode (remember it is in their new business strategy to push 4K tech to consumers).

So I can see Sony cleaning up in a broad range of areas, Blackmagic cleaning up at the $3000 point, Arri maintaining a good footing in worldwide high end production and everyone else picking up the crumbs from under the king’s table.