Should I get Scarlet? (Scarlet for still camera?)

[Karim D. Ghantous]

It's a no brainer ... use a Stills camera for Stills.

You have read all the posts in this small thread and yet you still believe it is a simple matter?

Perhaps we can look at it like this, to sum up the points:

1. Digital still cameras can do up to 80Mpx per frame (one shot, no cheating with stitching); MF film is even better.

2. Scarlet-X is the cheapest camera that can offer high-res movies from which you can pull a very good still.

Point 2. allows you to make use of the total silence with which the Scarlet operates - you can shoot on movie sets without a blimp and get much better than 1080 lines of resolution. Before Scarlet (and its predecessors) you would rather have a blimp than put up with 1920x1080 stills.

The Pentax 645D costs the same as a Scarlet-X. It's 40Mpx vs 14. You all know how to proceed from there.

I hope that I am not being repetitive or going around in circles.

 

[Vince Doran]

Sorry Karim but you are going around in circles with that post, I didn't understand what you were trying to say. Is it that you mean 1920x1080 is going to give you the best image rather then a 5k + still camera?

 

[Karim D. Ghantous]

Sorry Karim but you are going around in circles with that post, I didn't understand what you were trying to say. Is it that you mean 1920x1080 is going to give you the best image rather then a 5k + still camera?

Oops. I'm sorry about that! Okay, let me try again...

For example, let's say I want to shoot on a film set - today. I can use a Scarlet-X and shoot 4K @30fps in total silence. I do not need a blimp. If not a Scarlet-X, then a ONE or EPIC, but they will cost more.

But before those cameras existed, what choices did I have for silent shooting? I had two:

1. 1080p video camera.
2. DSLR or 35mm SLR with a sound blimp.

For stills, I would rather have option 2. Yes, it's more annoying, but I would get better resolution from 35mm film @ISO 1600 than a frame from 1080-line video.

So, what is my point? If you want to shoot stills, a dedicated still camera is not necessarily the best option. Today, you can choose between a high-res DSLR or RED DSMC. For some applications, I would prefer the silence of the RED than the very high resolution of a DSLR (such as a Pentax 645D).

 

[Owen Rennie]

Hope this questions isn't too stupid... shooting boxing at high shutter speeds above 1/640th will the scarlet do this? While shooting motion as well? I would have thought that shooting motion you'd be using a shutter of 1/50th or close to so a frame grab would be useless in freezing motion?

 

[Paul Russell]

If you want to shoot stills, a dedicated still camera is not necessarily the best option.

It depends where you want to publish those stills. A 14MP shot isn't going to cut it with a stock agency like Corbis or Getty, nor an advertising agency looking for something they can put on a bus, a double page spread or an outdoor poster.