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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 :)

Tested Monstro vs. Helium

Thai Christen said:
Are you sure? Why didn’t they shoot with A7S then? Much much cheaper (would have saved tons of dollars), lighter and more portable considering the circumstances they faced during production.
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Yes,

A7S is good in low-light (and nothing else to be honest, we have 2 A7S2's)

8 bit codec, 100 Mbit/s long-gop, latitude 10.5 at iso 3200, 18.7 bits color at iso 3200. Not much of a high quality cinema camera in my opinion.

p.s. you can find the Alexa65 specs here: http://arrirentalgroup.com/alexa65/
 
Misha Engel said:
Yes,

A7S is good in low-light (and nothing else to be honest, we have 2 A7S2's)

8 bit codec, 100 Mbit/s long-gop, latitude 10.5 at iso 3200, 18.7 bits color at iso 3200. Not much of a high quality cinema camera in my opinion.

p.s. you can find the Alexa65 specs here: http://arrirentalgroup.com/alexa65/
Click to expand...

I think you missed my point.

If you mostly shoot run gun style and have no budget for crew and lighting, you better stick with A7S2 or GH5s for low light. Red (or Arri) might not be the right market for you.
In a typical production you rarely have to go beyond iso 2500.
Of course there are exeptions like wild animal in the dark, night photography and such.
 
Aaron Lochert said:
You can still light. You just don't need such large light fixtures. On the other hand, you'll probably need to do more work with blacks and flags since the camera is just that sensitive to light.
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Sure, but if you have crew and budget, you really don‘t care, do you? (I mean you don‘t care that your camera is less light sensitive).
 
Thai Christen said:
I think you missed my point.

If you mostly shoot run gun style and have no budget for crew and lighting, you better stick with A7S2 or GH5s for low light. Red (or Arri) might not be the right market for you.
In a typical production you rarely have to go beyond iso 2500.
Of course there are exeptions like wild animal in the dark, night photography and such.
Click to expand...

Next time I see him, I'll will tell Alejandro Iñárritu to shoot the successor of The Revenant with the A7S, when he has questions, I will give him your contact details.

When you have no budget at all (like us) you shoot low-light with an a7s or GH5s.

When you have an extreme budget you can shoot Sony Venice with it's 500 iso and buy a power plant to light the shoots.
 
Aaron Lochert said:
You can still light. You just don't need such large light fixtures. On the other hand, you'll probably need to do more work with blacks and flags since the camera is just that sensitive to light.
Click to expand...

Or lower iso or use ND filters https://kippertie.com/revolva/
RED claims 16 stops of latitude at iso3200, so enough room to play (human eye is between 10..13, maybe even 14).
 
Thai Christen said:
Sure, but if you have crew and budget, you really don‘t care, do you? (I mean you don‘t care that your camera is less light sensitive).
Click to expand...

There's always a budget, whether it's big or small. If I've ran the testing and found that 3200 is what I want to shoot at vs. 800 on another camera, then instead of lighting with M18s and M40s, you can now use Joker 400s and 800s.

The money saved in the lighting package could be used elsewhere.
 
Thai Christen said:
So what?
Who shoots at 6400? Even at 12800?
Don‘t you proper light guys?
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easier power runs, less power draw, more room in the truck all sound good for lighting department

Now if a client wants 120fps at T4 I can press a button and take off as well, not everyone shoots at T2.0

The versatility certainly would be a game changer for what you can do on budgeted money or time
 
Misha Engel said:
Next time I see him, I'll will tell Alejandro Iñárritu to shoot the successor of The Revenant with the A7S, when he has questions, I will give him your contact details.

When you have no budget at all (like us) you shoot low-light with an a7s or GH5s.

When you have an extreme budget you can shoot Sony Venice with it's 500 iso and buy a power plant to light the shoots.
Click to expand...
You still don’t get my point. But that’s ok :-)

Misha Engel said:
Or lower iso or use ND filters https://kippertie.com/revolva/
RED claims 16 stops of latitude at iso3200, so enough room to play (human eye is between 10..13, maybe even 14).
Click to expand...
So if you have to use NDs or lower your ISO, then the gap between a low light camera such as Gemini will be smaller compared to Helium 8K.

Aaron Lochert said:
There's always a budget, whether it's big or small. If I've ran the testing and found that 3200 is what I want to shoot at vs. 800 on another camera, then instead of lighting with M18s and M40s, you can now use Joker 400s and 800s.

The money saved in the lighting package could be used elsewhere.
Click to expand...
Whether you rent Arri M18 or Joker 400, price is not much of a difference. So it only comes to power draw IMO.

Anton Shavlik said:
easier power runs, less power draw, more room in the truck all sound good for lighting department

Now if a client wants 120fps at T4 I can press a button and take off as well, not everyone shoots at T2.0

The versatility certainly would be a game changer for what you can do on budgeted money or time
Click to expand...

Agree. Lets add highspeed low light to the list.
 
Aaron Lochert said:
Where I live, an M18 is $200-$250 a day and a Joker 400 is $100-$130.

Are M18's really that cheap where you are? Or are Jokers cheap where I am?
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M18 125-150/d, M8 100-110/d, Joker400 90/d. All in Swiss Francs of course.
Swiss Francs and US$ have parity (1:1).

So yeah, it is cheaper and price difference between them is negligible for a typical production budget.
 
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Misha Engel said:
Yes,

A7S is good in low-light (and nothing else to be honest, we have 2 A7S2's)

8 bit codec, 100 Mbit/s long-gop, latitude 10.5 at iso 3200, 18.7 bits color at iso 3200. Not much of a high quality cinema camera in my opinion.

p.s. you can find the Alexa65 specs here: http://arrirentalgroup.com/alexa65/
Click to expand...

Kind of disagree.
I know several folks who actually got the A7SMII for a corner cam to complement their RED setups and actually have found themselves using the little sony more and more often. The quality of the image paired with SLOG and a recorder is also really quite excellent. Yes, you don't have the degree of information in post as a full scale cam, but if you control your output like a professional it is often more than enough to get the job done. I think where it falls down is simply a question of prestige (you need a Red, Arri , F55 or Varicam to appear credible in the eyes of a client at a certain level (or you rent), but the truth is that a lot of footage from these little mirrorless cams is finding its way into the final product without the client being aware) AND also in terms of movement. Nothing reveals a DSLR/Mirrorless cam more quickly than rolling shutter. Solve that issue and hopefully with the further integration of Prores RAW outputs into the next gen of these small cams and the need for the big guns becomes less and less a necessity.
 
IMO, from the armchair, I can't see why you'd prefer an expensive camera to the recent CSC ('mirrorless') bodies for a lot of commercial work.

Forget messing with the image in post - decided on your look in-camera, and the colorist just has to tidy everything up afterwards. The X-H1 has Eterna simulation built into the thing, for goodness sakes. The other X bodies have Fujichrome simulation which looks surprisingly good, too.

Only recently have photographic cameras reached a point where I'm changing my opinion - but only up to a point. I include Micro 4/3 cameras in that. It's worth pointing out that the BMPCC is arguably a better tool than anything else for some jobs. Why put up with larger rigs and higher costs? It makes no sense.

If you're shooting a big budget feature film you would be criminally negligent if you did not use the best camera you can afford. Using a DSLR, or even a CSC (Fuji/Sony/Leica/M4/3) is not cool, hip, edgy or fresh. I don't need to explain why to anyone here.
 
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