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Your opinion on my betrayal of Jim Jannard

Your opinion on my betrayal of Jim Jannard


  • Total voters
    43
If Scarlet isn't available to be in my hands until January 2010 or later, I won't be at all surprised -- or bitter, or critical of Red. That's the kind of thing that happens, and the possibility is stated plainly right there in Jim Jannard's signature....

What makes you think you can get Canon 5D mk2 by January?
 
The answer is, of course, buy a RED One instead :-)
...or a scarlet, which I think(hope?) is going to be a stunning underwater camera for "hobbyists" like me that want more than HDV but dont get paid to make movies ...
 
I think that Jim Jannard and Red are likely responsible for lighting a fire under Canon's ass, from which the EOS 5D Mark II is soon to emerge. Without Mr. Jannard's pioneering and hugely risky efforts, Canon may not have un-crippled one of their DSLRs to give it the rudimentary motion-picture abilities a Canon DSLR obviously could have had years ago.

Also: I just asked for my Red One deposit back and am planning to buy a Canon 5D Mark II to shoot my next indie feature.

I was already questioning whether the big leap from HVX200 to Red One made sense for me. It was far from a done deal. But still I feel a bit guilty. Red Digital Cinema put the idea in my head that I could use awesome glass like, oh, the EF 85mm f1.2L without the unacceptable kluge of a 35mm adapter (don't get me started) and with a generously sized sensor capturing the light.

When I thought about the Red One, I thought, awesome glass/big sensor/awesome glass/big sensor/awesome glass/big sensor over and over until I was swimming in my own drool.

And now the Canon 5Dm2 comes along. Same glass. Bigger sensor. And the price is my Red One deposit plus $1000.

When I think about the 5Dm2, I picture a full-frame sensor with a big pile of my money next to it. I fully acknowledge that the additional details matter. A lot. But still, Redcode Etc. vs. Big Pile of Money is a tough choice.

The devil on my left shoulder is telling me to go for the money. The angel on my right is telling me not to give in. But I'm thinking I could buy the angel off with some of the money.

How guilty should I feel for planning to take advantage of the changes Jim Jannard forced onto the market while not giving Red a dime?

Only if you could see the RDONE footage on a 10b ft screen. The D5 footage everyone is assumming at this moment of time. Also try out putting 5D to film???
 
Nikon...

Nikon...

My only question is: are you happy with that example?

Do the Nikon cameras still have autoexposure in video mode?

Not being able to lock the exposure has two problems,

1) The footage is useless.

2) You cannot underexpose for Digital Cinema post to hold highlights.

What were they thinking?
 
You should not feel guilty, and your choice is totally dependant on your needs.

If you need a great stillcam that shoots crappy video at a fixed and odd framerate with little controll over the image and a not very suitable codec for film post, BUT that will give you a chance to do a lot of practise on shallow-DOF manual focusing at low cost - with still-optics, Then you should go Canon. Jim will survive, and you can go RED later, when you see the needs.

If you need a versatile 4k camera with an easy "videoworkflow" and a filmlike "filmworkflow" in the same cam, which can drop into established film-sets because it uses standard glass and accessories, but isn't really that great for stills - then go RED.

RED ONE is infinitely more expensive to kit up, but the production and work opportunities in a professional setting are not limited by the camera - before the next new thing shows up on Thursday... :) (The ONE won't go bad on Nov the 13th, but a lot of higher budget productions wikll most likely favor EPIC over ONE, once it is released...)

With the Canon, you're more or less on your own, so if that is the current situation (you're not delivering images to professional productions), and you're happy with the Canons technical limits - Please: Go Canon

Or do the smart thing, and start off with Scarlet...
 
How guilty should I feel for planning to take advantage of the changes Jim Jannard forced onto the market while not giving Red a dime?

No guilt.

Things will get interesting enough when you start making a movie with a stills camera with significant skew, lousy frame rate & image control and heavily compressed data.
 
Wait for Scarlet, noob.

he he for some persons it's maybe better to buy Canon or Nikon now so he can find out why by himself :)
 
Will the 5D2 be a false economy though? How will you deal with the 30.00fps? What is the workflow for editing h.264 files?

I'm working on a solution to the 30 fps -- one that I readily admit could not likely be used by any professional owner/operator working for a client. (That's not me, though.)

At present the workflow for h.264 appears to be editing the files natively -- despite the increased processor load -- while rendering to ProRes. Editor/instructor Peter Salvia ran into issues with footage he transcoded first...

http://vimeo.com/petersalvia

Obviously not a settled matter yet, as there is so little real-world testing.

I'm very keen to see what people can do with the Nikon D90 and Canon 5D2. I'm sure there will be some great content made with their video modes. However, call me fussy (call me biassed), but I don't like their image quality one little bit.

If you're talking about 90% of the 5D2 footage that has been presented to date, I would merely call you sighted.

The vast majority of 5D2 footage in circulation on the web is poor to sickening. I believe it is no coincidence that most of it was shot by stills photographers using this neato thing called video for the first time. They baked in ridiculous looks when they could have shot at the "Neutral" setting and done the look in post. Their accustomed technique of dealing with limited dynamic range is bracketing. So with video they just ignored dynamic range issues and shot horrible blown-out highlights. They chose lame subjects and often handheld a DSLR with a 200mm zoom.

Most of the 5D2 footage deserves the contempt it is receiving.

However cinematographer Alan Doyle managed to use the camera like a cinematographer:

http://www.vimeo.com/2053280

This stuff is unfortunately twice-compressed (once by the editor, once by Vimeo's robot), so it is of limited usefulness in many regards. (Not as useless as hyperbolic pronouncements by insecure fanboy opponents, er, distinguished critics who have neither used nor seriously researched the camera, but I'm an HVX200 owner -- I'm used to filtering out noise.) However the footage does demonstrate that 5D footage doesn't have to look like...well, the other videos.
 
Would be interesting to know how you would approach sync sound (i.e. recording separate sound, not on the camera) too.

Yes, I definitely consider the Canon 5D to basically be a camera without sound capabilities. The track recorded by the internal mic might be useful as a reference for syncing, but that's about it.

So it's back to double-system sound. And I'll use...whatever they're using these days. Probably not a Nagra. I'll just use my HVX200 (actual real XLR inputs, Redboys, nyah nyah nyah, your penises are so small) as a stopgap until I do more research and figure out the best way to do double-system sound.
 
Wow...the title of your thread is a little melodramatic methinks! I'm sure it's not going to keep JJ up at night if you buy a Canon :)

Thank you for your reassurance.

And thanks to all who chose "Good For You!" in the poll. Your support means a lot to me.
 
Thank you for your reassurance.

And thanks to all who chose "Good For You!" in the poll. Your support means a lot to me.

I was about to write that! lol :)

I know you wouldn't write Go F@#$ Yourself. :ohmy:
 
I think there is a very important question that all DOP has to ask before choosing a technique.

And this is not if it is "good or bad quality", if the workflow is good or not, if 24 or 30 frames/seconds... because RED has also his downsides agains 35mm and you use RED for many other reasons than technique (I hope).

The question is : does your project improve or gain by shooting with this type of camera? I know the most well known director from Europe who plans to shoot a feature with it. I think nobody can tell you : don't shoot a feature with this because of technical data.

He makes this kind of choices based on how the technique will improve his way of making a movie.

You have to know how the result will look like to be sure if it is the most appropriate tool.

Patrick

PS: who spoke about non professionnal optics when he spoke about Canon?
 
Guys, Graeme is bit bias, just a bit, towards RED, what do you think, is he?

The problem is H.264, how will you grade this thing?
It is like grading still photography in .jpg
Good for home movies.

Unless someone knows what I don’t know, in terms of grading compressed data?
 
Yes, I'm biassed, but it's all about expectations. If the 5DII stills are are good as you'd expect from Canon, it will be a mighty fine stills camera. However, I don't think that from what I've seen that the video images are up to that same standard. I expect, as a customer, that the video is as good comparative to how good the stills image is.

Graeme
 
I think the D90 and 5D are OK for web videos. But the direct 1080 out of a 5D does not hold up well on a large screen compared to a 2/3" HD video camera, much less a RED. The H.264 encode is definitely consumer home video quality.
 
The problem is H.264, how will you grade this thing?
It is like grading still photography in .jpg

Even worse.

Red 2:1 2k:
10bit dpx = ~8MB per frame
jpg maximum quality = ~ 0.8 MB per frame
h.264 frame out of 20 Mb/s footage = ~0.1 MB per frame

You could do a very light grade with .jpg. You can't do anything with H.264 without blocking and banding. At least not with 4:2:0 version.
 
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