Canon and Nikon...

[Ketch Rossi]

This section has run wild lately... for no really good reason.

Canon and Nikon are great companies that make great products. They just have a different plan than RED. Neither plan is necessarily better than the other.

Canon and Nikon make outstanding stills cameras, now with prosumer quality motion capture. That isn't to say that you can't use prosumer quality in a professional application. Many will choose to do so. And the price is certainly right.

So why is it prosumer quality motion? The sensors are slow at full resolution capture. Pretty simple. Terrific for stills but in order to squeeze HD motion out of them, they do "techniques" to get the job done. Line-skipping is one such technique. And it is completely understandable why they do this. It saves sensor development costs (and time), processing power and heat generation. Using a compression codec like H264 is a reasonable part of their plan. It is a compromise, but then again it is an inexpensive solution. Nothing wrong with this plan... it is what it is. Anyone who says it is not valid, given it's constraints and price, is just not right.

RED is a professional motion capture tool that is improving all the time. RAW for motion and stills. It takes a fast sensor which is a much more difficult and expensive trick. It takes processing power times forever (over 100 times more powerful than a DSLR) and heat management. It just costs more to pull this stuff off...

All of the above companies make tools for your needs and price /performance for different customers. I think that we (RED), and maybe our hardcore customers, tend to get antsy only when people don't fully understand the difference between the two concepts.

If you are on a budget and can live with the compromises of the new DSLR motion capture systems, they make a good alternative. If you want uncompromising motion, we think that RED is a much better solution.

In the meantime, respectful debate and discussions are welcome here at reduser. If I have in any way inadvertently encouraged disrespectful dialog, I apologize. Let's all start again with a clean slate.

Jim

Very elegantly said Jim, and I my self totally and completely understand this, and will never compare the Canon/Nikon to RED, completely and fundamentally different company which produce entirely different products!

I have apologized for my rant on Canon, but this however was not do to their quality of products, but only to their way of marketing strategies, were they give so very little increases with each line of product, always holding back, and getting you time and time over, as most of us in the Pro world like and need to stay on top of the new and present our clients with the best tools available.

In this I applaud RED's for how RED has chosen to operate and present even and upgrade path for those that have a almost two year old camera, allowing them to get a completely new one at a reasonable price, but most of all allowing for an upgrade path that will put a superior system in their hands at NO LOSS!!

To me this is not only COMMENDABLE but it is Priceless customer SERVICE.

I have used Canon for EVER, in fact it was my very first camera given to me by my sister when I was 17, and i guess I just have not learned to like how they do business, or just am a Gear Slot, and always want the best and newer available, but got tired to have to pay so much in losses.

At the end, price for their gear I think is right, and the quality offered is in line with it, just hope that Epic will allow me, at last to only have one system to do it all.

 

[Eki Halkka]

What I want to do well..

S

Well, D90 should be able to do a bit better than that with video too, at least as far as exposure is concerned. You can get proper exposure by adjusting exposure compensation, then locking it.

The other problems will remain, but at least you're in the ballpark...

 

[Tim H.]

Morgan.. all that mechanical crap has bugged us for quite some time as well

heh heh heh...

Getting the checkbook ready in one hand and my L series lenses in the other.

 

[Eddy Robinson]

These days it's all about what you feel comfortable with to tell your story. Every camera has its own benefits and restrictions. I have one friend who's gearing up to shoot a feature on 35mm - he loves the anamorphic look, they have a decent budget, and he know very specifically which look he is going for, which film stock etc.

At the other end of the scale, there's a movie in theaters now called 'Paranormal Activity' that was shot in 2007 for a total of $15,000 - a couple in a new house suspects they have a ghost or so, so the husband buys a HD camera (a Sony FX1 - nothing special) to play 'ghost hunter'. It's getting great reviews because it is well planned and edited (and marketed) and is said to be really scary.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranormal_Activity_(film) for background info and you can find many trailers online. I don't know what settings were used, but that camera only shoots 1080i, it's nothing special in terms of image quality. I am not into the 'Blair Witch' style of first-person video storytelling - and that formula cannot be used too frequently - but I know the audience doesn't care about the look very much, just the characters and story.

Of course you can't use a cheap solution if you are shooting something epic. But if you are making an epic film, you are probably also spending epic money on costumes, sets, lighting, locations, actors...once your budget goes past $100,000 the cost of the camera is an increasingly small item. And even then, people make weird choices. Public enemies was shot mostly on an F23 with some EX1/EX3 work, and I hated the way it looked (although this is not just about the cameras, to me and others it seemed as if they ran out of money or time for the post-production).

I think the NikCanon comparisons mainly come about because of the pricing issue. If your camera budget is under $3000, then these DSLRs are extremely competitive in image quality compared to prosumer camcorders - less good in terms of pure sharpness, but with big advantages for lenses, DoF, and low-light usability. Ergonomics not so great, but then neither are the ergonomics of a 35mm adapter; I would personally rather shoot double system (external sound) and sync it all up manually for a month - in fact, I have done it several times for indie films-shot-on-film - than use an adapter and spend 30 minutes every day adjusting the mount and the back-focus and all that. For others, managing a separate sound workflow is a horrible nightmare and they need good onboard audio; they'd rather have an extra AC than an extra sound person. There is no single correct answer.

If the forthcoming DSMC line started at $8000 and went up from there we would probably not have most of these arguments - we'd look at the DSLRs and say 'great job for the price, CaNik'. Much of the agnst stems from the fact that we anticipate a Scarlet appearing for somewhere around $4000 and have every reason to expect excellent 3k image quality (though I pretty much guarantee there'll be 50 threads along the lines of 'why doesn't my 3k footage on a 2/3" sensors look liek $17000 RED one waaaaah!!!eleven!').

So if your budget is in the $3-5k range then considerations of value are a big deal, an it's no small thing to consider spending a chunk of that on a DSLR to shoot now, and see the resale value drop as soon as you open the box, vs waiting a (currently) unknown amount of time for RED's offering. The less money people have, the more expensive such distinctions become, as do the costs of making a 'mistake'. My feeling is that if you have material you want to shoot, and you feel it's truly ready, there are great cameras on the market right now, go shoot and sell the camera afterwards, you'll get most of the cost back. If you can't bear to take risks with image quality, then wait and use the time to polish the writing, save more money, find and rehearse actors, draw storyboards and so on. You need to do those things anyway because every day of pre-production will save you from expensive mistakes and indecision during production and post, no matter what camera you have.

 

[Tim Hole]

There are many breeds...for example I use both a motion and still camera. The stills camera I use for texture and plates for VFX. I am looking forward to the new range where I will be able to use one camera for both jobs. The great thing about this is colour matching/treatment which will assist in easier composites, as we know different cameras treat colour very differently and DSMC is a dream come true.

SIDENOTE: Everytime I write the words RED, I always write it in uppercase. Just wrote the word RED Herring in my script development - get out of my head!!

 

[morgan_moore]

Well, D90 should be able to do a bit better than that with video too, at least as far as exposure is concerned. You can get proper exposure by adjusting exposure compensation, then locking it.

The other problems will remain, but at least you're in the ballpark...

The exposure was locked before the rider paddled out - then the
sun came out - i should have used auto in this case -

acccesing everything in the houseing is not straightforward

Of course canon 7d doesnt seem to do auto with +/-, another bit of idiot design

The nikon of course has little control at all apart from guessNlock