Hello everyone, I was lucky to take part in a two days digital cinema workshop presented by Marquise technologies and Free Studio in Geneva.
I will not try to relay all the information we received in this thread as I am not qualified and it would be a daunting task, but I will rather give you my thoughts on the workshop and give you a little wrap up of the event.
The workshop covered dailies management and data handling, debayering, the ACES color space, post-production, and DCP.
Special guests were Jean-Piere Beauviala founder of Aaton and DP Caroline Champetier (holy motors).
It also included a shootout between the following cameras that we compared on the second day from the dcp files in a movie theater:
The first thing that surprised me was how big the F65 was.
I did not tape measure them but I felt size wise from smallest to biggest was like this:
red epic, arri alexa, AAton Delta, Sony F65
Here another view of the fully equiped Sony beast:
[img]http://www.freeimagehosting.net/newuploads/a3qc9.jpg[/img]
Each camera was presented to us and when discussing their features the most intriguing one was the Delta.
A couple things separate it from the others:
- An optical viewfinder,
- a very big ventilator to reduce sound emission
- integrated ssd recorder (4 of them stacked up in raid 0) non proprietary you can use the brand of your choice
- a little screen on the other side of the camera with the basic info so you can check them on both sides
- mechanical rotating mirror shutter
- the sensor that physically moves from half a pixel during recording
more info here: [url="http://nofilmschool.com/2012/10/aatons-penelope-delta-camera/"]http://nofilmschool....e-delta-camera/[/url]
The last feature was the most interesting one but we could sadly not see it in action as the prototype camera did not feature it yet.
According to the founder of Aaton, the variation in the image this shift produces forces our brain to stay more focused on the images.
You can see the big ventilator and small side screen here:
Another interesting feature was on the Sony F65, which has a special pixel array arranged in bee hive structure.
Which adds up to an odd ratio of 8192 by 2160 pixels even though the final aspect ratio is 17:9 close to 2:1.
She tested the camera among others before shooting one of her films and really dislikes it.
The skin tones and color rendition are terrible in her opinion.
She says that that camera is a very good television camera but definitively not a cinema camera.
I was quite surprised at how categorical she was on the Alexa because of how good Skyfall looked to me.
So I was looking forward to seeing that "television" camera compared in the theater on the next day.
But it was no fair fight.
They received a faulty Gemini so they had to record prores instead of raw on the Alexa.
And it showed.
The subject is very subjective of course but there are a couple things that showed clearly and are not subjective:
- On one of the shots with half of a wooden box in the shade, the Alexa and Epic showed no information what so ever, pure black.
On the Delta and F65 the wood texture and details were clearly visible, a big difference in visible dynamic range there.
Now of course on the epic you would be able to pull some info from the blacks. But straight out of the cam was pure black.
- ProRes is not good enough for cinema. It looked very bad. The colors on the girl skin tones and hair were very weak and the clouds looked really muddy. You could really tell the difference. Wish they had shot with ArriRaw so that it would have been more fair.
- The Aaton displayed a very smooth gradation between shades of grey. Not a huge difference with the f65, but it was very smooth.
Now the rest is subjective:
In my opinion there was two groups, the bottom group with the alexa (sadly ProRes) and the Epic.
And the top group with the Delta and F65.
The F65 red haired woman shot was simply superb!
The skintones and hair color and detail rendition were amazing.
The Delta delivered a more contrasted image which I liked less.
Interestingly the colorist that was presenting the shots said he would rather grade a more contrasted shot like the Delta instead of having to add contrast and the guess work that comes with it like on the f65.
Both theses cameras displayed a superior dynamic range and most importantly superior colors imo.
(The sony was shifting towards yellow in the highlights a bit)
The camera that delivered the most complete and appealing image to me was the F65.
But when discussing this with the other attendees as you would expect everybody had a different favorite.
All in all it was a very fascinating workshop.
Big thank you to Marquise Technologies and Free Studios for this.
[url="http://www.eoshd.com/comments/topic/1255-shipping-thread-blackmagic-cinema-camera/#entry17476"][b]Scroll down to here for latest update[/b][/url]
This is the thread to post your updates related to shipping here. If you get news from a dealer, or if you phone up - let us all know.
[b]My current shipping update[/b]
CVP retail unit - no firm date yet. Number 7 in line. Rumoured first batch contains 30 cameras. IBC shipping announcement rumoured from 6th. So hopefully an update on this will come soon.
Blackmagic - Demo units were allocated to beta testers since late August, not for marketing reasons. The beta test program is very small. At my count there are around 10 cameras out there. Major sites such as Gizmodo, Engadget and DPReview are not beta testers so don't have a camera yet.
Joshua Helling (Director of World Wide Support) and John Brawley (main beta tester and DP) said on the 31st August the camera was 'shipping to dealers' but in small quantities. However 1 week later (Sep 5th) no dealer is prepared to give shipping date to customers, or have yet taken delivery of stock.
Blackmagic's CEO Grant Petty says they want to hear beta tester feedback before shipping. As the beta testers only got their cameras at short notice at the end of August it is unlikely this feedback is on Grant's desk yet. It could be that the beta test feedback will be considered before shipping ramps up.
Hopefully dealers are taking the spotlight provided by IBC on the 6th to flick the switch and ship their just-recieved stock to the first customers in line.
