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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Anyone else make it to the 5D MKII Event a Birns and Sawyer tonight?

A

Aaron Newsome

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Awesome event. The part I really wanted to see, they saved for last. The short movie shot with Lumix GH1, 5D MKII and a Red One. That was pretty awesome.

The first run they just showed the clip and all the cameras looked pretty good. It was cut so fast, it was hard to tell what camera was which clip. I tagged a few mentally that I thought was the Red and I was right on each one.

The overcranked clips were obviously Red, since neither the canon or lumix can't do that.

The really low light ones were obviously canon, since the red and lumix are not that sensitive.

Then they showed the short again, with lower thirds indicating the camera/lens setup for the shot. No real surprises there.

Amazing that they did the thing with ZERO LIGHTS. Who says you can't do good work with no lights.

I thought the DSLRs faired very well. Obviously the Red looked as good as you would expect.

Anyway, was anyone else there? What did you think?
 
I'm not a Birns & Sawyer fan, I'm sorry. Every time I went there in the past, and I bought a fair amount of equipment from them, it was always marked up, and their opinions / advice were ridiculous. When someone is recommending HDV over P2 workflow, you know they are insane and don't actually work in the film industry. HDV is terrible, and nothing is worse than crappy interlaced footage coming out of some Canon HDV camera. Ick and ick. But that was exactly what one of the sales guy said -- forget HVX200s, go with the Canon HDV camera I want to sell you. Umm, yeah, ask any professional and they'd never recommend using any HDV camera over an HVX200, which is industry-standard at that price range for acquisition.

Then I heard from TWO of the Birns & Sawyer dudes before RED came out how it was vaporware and how there was no promise it would ever even exist, and that I was hinging my hopes on a camera by a company with no experience and that wouldn't be able to deliver. It would have numerous problems and probably wouldn't look very good at all. That's what they told me. I had two RED One's on order and I was not a fan of that kind of commentary. Then when it did come out, it was all like, well, yeah, it's out, it's pretty good, but it's still not that good, there are tons of problems.

I got sick of the negativity. It's just not a company I will give my business to when there is that level of negativity, especially about the best company. I don't know if they just get more money from Canon and Panasonic or what, but when I want advice I want it given people who know what they're talking about. In every experience I had, they were people who maybe do some amateur work on the weekends, I don't know, but obviously thought they knew everything when their advice was... not good.

I'm glad to hear they had a nice demonstration, though. Maybe their attitude has changed now.
 
Well I actually like these guys *because* of these events. I really don't know of a lot of these kind of events that draw in industry people that I can bounce questions off, etc.

I went to the RED event a few weeks back and it was very enlightening, as some pretty well known DPs and directors got up and talked about actually shooting RED.

What I thought was awesome was it wasn't a fanboy event (and neither was the Canon event tonight). They actually pointed out some useful things that could be better with Red.

I also checked out the vehicle rigging event and wanted to check out the green screen event but I couldn't make it.

But I did want to make a comment about the HDV recommendation they gave you. HDV sucks. Period. I'm no professional guy with years of experience by any means but it's easy enough to see that HDV sucks. And this is coming from a guy who owns a JVC HD100 (HDV) camera. I love that camera, I think it's a nice camera and I always tell myself that I can record the 720p/24 signal from the component 4:2:2 and get beyond the HDV, but I never do. So the fact still remains, HDV sucks.

It's REALLY hard to believe that anyone would recommend an HDV camera over anything in the same price range.
 
HDV is fine if you use a discrete frame codec like Cineform.
Lots of pros use it. And a lot of pros don't like the HVX because of its softness and pricey media.
 
HDV

HDV

Not to split hairs or anything, but if you don't record in HDV then its not really any longer an HDV camera / recorder.
 
Stuart English said:
Not to split hairs or anything, but if you don't record in HDV then its not really any longer an HDV camera / recorder.
Click to expand...

Thanx, Stuart. It's not splitting hairs, it is an important distinction in that AFAIK HDV is a specific codec/tape/data rate spec that was great in its day for moving HD onto an existing (DV) tape format - but it seems that with the drastic increase in storage capability/speed on memory cards we have really moved well past it even with the AVCHD type codecs in the consumer camcorders - yet many people don't seem to be aware of how much difference it can make and are stuck in the tape world.
 
Brian Gaither said:
HDV is fine if you use a discrete frame codec like Cineform.
Lots of pros use it. And a lot of pros don't like the HVX because of its softness and pricey media.
Click to expand...

HDV converted to Cineform doesn't help. The HDV 8 bit and 4:2:0 has already ruined it.

Recording to Cineform out of the camera is no longer HDV and therefore doesn't suck.
 
HDV

HDV

HDV converted to Cineform doesn't help. The HDV 8 bit and 4:2:0 has already ruined it.
Click to expand...

Yeah, and not only is it 8-bit 4:2:0, but its also LONG GOP which means the image quality has been degraded even more.

(LONG GOP MPEG-2 or 4 compression was designed for program distribution, never intended for acquisition / editing use )
 
Stuart English said:
LONG GOP MPEG-2 or 4 compression was designed for program distribution, never intended for acquisition / editing use
Click to expand...

Large format, Bayer pattern sensors were never intended for real time motion picture capture, but that hasn't stopped Red, Arri, Dalsa, Nikon, and Canon from modifying and using them for that purpose. It's become something of a rule of modern technical life that things will ultimately be appropriated for uses they were never designed for. I'm not saying that long GOP MPEG formats are ideal for original capture, but the fact that they weren't designed for it is not in itself an argument against their use. And for the record, I've seen and dealt with HDV footage that was far superior to almost any DVCPro HD footage that I've ever dealt with.
 
M Most said:
Large format, Bayer pattern sensors were never intended for real time motion picture capture, but that hasn't stopped Red, Arri, Dalsa, Nikon, and Canon from modifying and using them for that purpose. It's become something of a rule of modern technical life that things will ultimately be appropriated for uses they were never designed for. I'm not saying that long GOP MPEG formats are ideal for original capture, but the fact that they weren't designed for it is not in itself an argument against their use. And for the record, I've seen and dealt with HDV footage that was far superior to almost any DVCPro HD footage that I've ever dealt with.
Click to expand...

Couldn't agree more. The optical lens wasn't designed for oil-painters, but it didn't stop the creation of the camera obscura which ultimately revolutionized the art world.
 
Quality

Quality

I'll stand by my comment about LONG GOP based (v's I-Frame based) video compression.
 
I had a JVCHD100 before my Red and you know I loved that camera. I used it intensively over several years and it became a very intuitive tool for me for documentary work.

I shot my last film on it and I love the look of the images it produced with all their limitations.
 
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