Rolf Silber

This is how it works:
 
"Pirates" open the harbours and lands (in this case the realms of creativity) under the flag of creative/information freedom - they destroy in the process the idea of creative ownership and/or that people should pay the artist for what he/she does - they attack the "old industries" and call them "content mafia" - they "sell" the pirated content by building a coalition with the advertising industry and later with the labels which run for cover under the attack (you can also call it extortion) - they keep the most of the money and get even bigger ... and the moment they are big enough (now), they put the pirate costumes away, bring out their pin-striped suits, send their lobbyists to town .... and then they kick us all in the behind, having become mega-industries themselves and show all of us the finger.
 
Brave new world - 2.0.

There will be no Ãœber-camera, me hopes. Never. Ever. I love to walk and work in a camera-zoo, where strange creatures lurk in light or dark. For instance I love MFT-sensor cameras to be able to attach via an adaptor almost any "big sensor" lens. I also would like to own a Phase One middle format camera for stills at times (budget wise and what my wife thinks, I won't).

So instead: Lets be happy about all the strange beings, each adapting to different requisitions. No one to fit them all. Each interesting in their own way.

Cameras are tools.
Like any craftsman/woman, you should have a range of tools,
Some tools are better at doing things than others.
Going out to a job with just one spanner doesn't always cut it.
 
I keep an old Vidicon tube camera at hand just for special use. It has a dreamy unreal look which is hard to do in post. I pump its output (remember BNC?) into an old DV walkman deck. I also keep my old Super8 gear although film processing is getting harder to do.

That's not rolling shutter.  Those trains are actually bending the space-time continuum.
 
;)

Most do not understand the color depth advantage of higher resolution and only see the "sharpness" advantage of higher resolution.
 
There are common misconceptions about this scenario, so here are some basic facts.
 
First of all, BIT DEPTH ≠ COLOR DEPTH.  This is the hardest concept for most to understand, but bit depth and color depth are not the same things.  Basically, bit depth is a major factor in color depth, with resolution being the other major factor.
 
A fairly accurate formula for the relationship of color depth, bit depth and resolution is:
COLOR DEPTH = (BIT DEPTH X RESOLUTION)3.
 
This mathematical relationship means that a small increase in resolution can yield a many-fold increase in color depth.
 
The above formula is true for linear response, RGB pixel group sensors.  When considering non-RGB sensors (eg. Bayer, Xtrans, etc) and sensors with a non-linear response, the formula gets more complex.  In addition, the formula does not take into account factors of human perception of differing resolutions, nor does it account for binning efficiancy when trying to convert images from a higher resolution to a lower resolution.
 
More detailed info can be found on this page.
 
 

Funny, that most of you here in the forum comment the absence of RED on the Oscar nominees by technical picture details (pro and cons).
 
May I give a hint to a possible reason not yet mentioned here:
 
The RED Epic is a quite noisy camera (soundwise) and degrades the quality of actors dialogue to a huge degree. If I was a producer and I would pay millions of dollars to get the best actors in the world to play for my movie, I would not work with a camera, which makes half of their work (dialogue) go directly into the trash bin!
 
Even ten years after their first ONE camera, RED hasn´t managed to produce silent cameras, a big obstacle for scenic movies (if that´s the right expression?). The Epic fans only go down to 30% speed while recording - not 0% - a mess!
 
Yes - there have been movies shot with RED. But either the directors/producers didn´t care for actors ADR, or it was such a SFX-movie, that the dialogue couldn´t be captured at all, as most of the other SFX equipment is even more noisy than the camera.
 
But if you want to shoot an indoor scene with a big portion of dialogue and actors presence, then RED is not the choice for a good movie. Maybe that´s a reason.
 
Best regards,
Andreas
 
 

Even when shooting with the ARRI "The Fridge" D 20 back in the "old days" the decision to use it instead of a RED was a decision for the aesthetic character of the image, it's "film-likeness", that made people to put up with a camera which was kind of hard to handle concerning size and weight. This concept - stay as near to film aesthetics as possible - was quite efficiently transferred to the Alexa which provides great DR plus excellent colour rendition, especially skin tones. Also Alexa fitted better into the existing workflows. A decisive bit less franken-rigging. Very nice and not overly complicated menues. Sturdy body. And great reliabilty.

What befuddles me is that the rental costs of a camera should be a big factor in a major production of a narrative film or even an average one. For a German TV-Movie costs for camera (excluding lenses) is maybe 3% of the budget or even a bit less. The cost-factor should be really only kicking in, when you go small to low budget or your production manager is named Scrooge. Apart from questions of aesthetics - you like or dislike a certain characteristic delivered by a sensor (which really is there or maybe only assumed :-)) - again workflow on set and in post is also cost-wise the decisive factor to take this or that camera. Not rental costs.

In the end all a camera is is a tool. And Alexa seems to fit in better under most circumstances for middle to bigger budget productions of narrative films. No miracle here and definitely no "fanboy'ism".

alexa over red
kodak overall

Even when shooting with the ARRI "The Fridge" D 20 back in the "old days" the decision to use it instead of a RED was a decision for the aesthetic character of the image, it's "film-likeness", that made people to put up with a camera which was kind of hard to handle concerning size and weight. This concept - stay as near to film aesthetics as possible - was quite efficiently transferred to the Alexa which provides great DR plus excellent colour rendition, especially skin tones. Also Alexa fitted better into the existing workflows. A decisive bit less franken-rigging. Very nice and not overly complicated menues. Sturdy body. And great reliabilty.

What befuddles me is that the rental costs of a camera should be a big factor in a major production of a narrative film or even an average one. For a German TV-Movie costs for camera (excluding lenses) is maybe 3% of the budget or even a bit less. The cost-factor should be really only kicking in, when you go small to low budget or your production manager is named Scrooge. Apart from questions of aesthetics - you like or dislike a certain characteristic delivered by a sensor (which really is there or maybe only assumed :-)) - again workflow on set and in post is also cost-wise the decisive factor to take this or that camera. Not rental costs.

In the end all a camera is is a tool. And Alexa seems to fit in better under most circumstances for middle to bigger budget productions of narrative films. No miracle here and definitely no "fanboy'ism".

While the Academy itself is all about politics, which is the only reason I can think of why both Only God Forgives and To the Wonder are missing from Best Cinematography, the Arri cameras are being picked by DPs because that's what they want to shoot on, for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with politics.
 
This is also the first year where a majority of the nominees are digital origination versus film, 3:2 where last year it was 2:3 and the year before it was 2:3 as well (with one RED film, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and one mostly film with some RED b-cam, Tree of Life).  A lot of European DPs prefer Arri cameras just in general and then you add to that the Alexa's more immediately pleasing, baseline output which is less dependent on DIT support, post, etc.
 
Let's see what Cronenweth Jr. and Fincher can get in there for next year though.

For Her, they initially discussed shooting 35mm during the day and Alexa at night but Jonze liked the way the Alexa looked in daylight as well, stating it "has a really beautiful creaminess that worked great for this movie."
 
Like the other films, they altered the look of the photography depending on what was happening, with specific lenses for flashback, high speed and everyday, including the DPs own set of uncoated Cooke Panchros and an old set of Zeiss Superspeeds and a Canon K35 zoom specifically for its flare.
 
It was a really tight budget with a tiny crew.  The ACM article makes no mention of any specific instance where the C300 was used.  I haven't seen the film yet but I'm betting, being they shot in LA, on location, with almost no money and a tiny crew, it was used to impromptu steal a shot or location discretely or just get a camera crammed somewhere the Alexa was just too big to go.

Captain Phillips seemed to have the most disparate use of cameras.  Quickly skimming the Nov'13 ACM it appears they used Super-16mm (Aaton) shooting on the water, especially for the Somali only parts of the film, in the skiffs.  Being so remote without support they didn't trust digital for this kind of shooting.
 
As soon as the Somalis step onto the boat and Tom Hanks' portion of the story starts it switches to 3-perf 35mm.  For the arial stuff showing the extremities of scale they shot Alexa.  GoPros were used to capture the SEAL parachute drop.  VistaVision was used for VFX plates.  They don't mention the C300 at all in the article, nor do they list it at the end, so I'm betting it's inclusion above is mostly about marketing.
 
Wolf of Wallstreet was split 4-perf 35mm and Alexa to ArriRaw.  Here again the filmmakers went with different shooting styles for different stages of the narrative, mainly with different optics, lighting and color.  Depending on the character's state of mind they shot either spherical Arri Master Primes and the Hawk anamorphics, heightening DiCaprio's mania by shooting a lot with the 35mm and 28mm anamorphics, switching to spherical when his state of mind is more clear and precise.
 
For DiCaprio's "quaalude look" they shot 20mm on an Alexa at 12fps with 360 degree shutter, then step-printed to resample back to proper time.  And a prototype C500 was used by the second-unit/VFX to shoot ariel photography.  It was small enough they could rig it to the nose of an RC Octocopter.  The RC copter was necessary because the location in Long Island didn't allow full-size choppers as well as allowing them to get shots that would have been impossible with a full size chopper.

Oh... and btw .... you see how finally lenses and cameras are finding a new relation ... with cameras becoming one day what I thought all the time: Throw-away sensor boxes... ;-)
 
GM1 + Sigma 170 - 500

Okay..... Just did run around the block ..... It's so light, it tends to wobble a bit in your hand ..... But I really like it......

Oh... and btw .... you see how finally lenses and cameras are finding a new relation ... with cameras becoming one day what I thought all the time: Throw-away sensor boxes... ;-)
 
GM1 + Sigma 170 - 500

I think it's kind of mute to set the GM1 against the BMPCC other than Andrew did - show that the video side of this little box is also unexpected great. One is a happy little work-pony, the other a high velocity bonsai-cheetah. RAW is better than AVCHD? Yes, it better should. But AVCHD is not all that bad.

GM1 is a 700 € sneak & carry lightly photocamera that has, nearly as a side-effect, great video. Have mine since yesterday and it is really interesting what it is able to achieve. And it comes with a slow but excellent zoom. I may later get an BMPCC too, if my wives budgetary plannings allow it :-) ...and yes, this one is probably in a different class .... but also price-wise. For good reasons.

For people who also want to take excellent photographies & video & want to get a pack of features coming with the camera, the GM1 is an excellent addition, especially to an already in place MFT system. And Andrew is right - my Voigtlaenders started a new love affair with this one.

Everyone from our little community in this forum has a distorted perspective. The profile of the quality-aware, lowest budget "indie-filmmaker" doesn't concern Son, Can, Nik or Pan very much. This profile is taken care of by BlackMagic almost exclusively.
 
It's primarily that profile that needs an update. The world is changing, and we are mentally blocked and don't see it. Both cinema (our holy grail) and TV are becoming niches in the eyes of the young. They couldn't care less about the niceties of aesthetic distinctions we try to nail down comparing (see thread) GH3 with BMPCC, for an instance. They also don't care about resolution.
 
The big business, the world of Hollywood and it's 3D- CGI-heavy- 24-channel-videos doesn't even notice our existence, and, let's face it, we'll never be able to reach their technical standards, let alone their implied 'production value'. By no tricks we will convincingly become Goliath.
 
The situation is daft. There is an ever growing (literally) audience, profoundly missed by the ones best equipped (technically: already, in spirit: no) to get their attention. These kids from the smartphone generation are held hostages by an industry that sells them entertaining bits and pieces, leftovers from once independant popular arts. Doesn't anybody share my impression that there are only 'cover versions' everywhere? In music as well as cinema?
 
The distrubution chains are changing radically. The 20-year-olds starve for drama, they want to get some sense, but they are denied it. The whole internet, the biggest platform imaginable, is filled with rehashed content. And we long to produce more rehashed content. What is that good for?

[quote name='endlos' timestamp='1354194534' post='22628']
And where is the evidence of that? Your not referring to the tired and outdated arguments against Final Cut X are you?
[/quote]

Right in front of your eyes!
DVD Studio Pro has been discontinued. Logic hasn't seen an update in years. Same for Aperture. There hasn't been a proper Mac Pro update in what, 3 years??? The iMac is their fastest machine at the moment!
They're obviously focusing all their efforts on iPads and iPhones and consumer stuff, I don't think you need any further proof of that...

The Alexa has become a favourite in film due to its amazing picture quality, and in broadcasting due to its picture quality AND prores support.
The RED didn't have prores until very recently and on paper it's always been better than the Alexa, but that wasn't enough for many top cinematographers.
I'm afraid these specs are more closely evaluated by people like us than actually top cinematographers, because they just hire one of each and run a bunch of test shoots, and in the end their decision is based on the image quality when they run the tests on a big screen. High fps will hardly be a deciding factor unless the film in question relies heavily on it. I've worked on films where the RED was only used because it's easier to use for stereo shoots, not because of image quality, so that has been a huge advantage for them.
Sony will have to deliver in image quality too if they want to succeed, these cameras are not cheap enough for the spec sheet reading enthusiasts and for the pros it doesn't really matter if they're slightly cheaper than an Alexa or RED. If they deliver though, then it might shake things up even more, and who knows soon we'll even be able to afford one!

Canon's C series cameras are great at what they do, you could almost say they're perfect for a bunch of different tasks, including indie filmmaking (maybe 60fps would make them even more perfect), but looking at what everyone else has on offer at the moment, I don't think I'm being unrealistic when I say that all their C cameras should have their prices dropped to half.