Buy Or Rent A Great Cam Or Stick With My K-3

SavageBastard · February 18, 2004

I'm just starting out here, deadly serious with limited funds. I've started building my editing bench with a magnasync,rewinds,splicer,viewer. Still in the writing stages but the choice of cameras and whether to buy or rent is weighing heavy on me already. I refuse to shoot video. Any help is frickin more than appreciated.

Mitch Gross · February 18, 2004

Well if you have the K-3 and it works for you, go ahead and use it for everything that you don't need sync sound, shots longer than 30 seconds or a camera running at crystal speed (fluorescents will flicker with your spring wound mechanism). When you do need to shoot a scene with sync sound, rent a camera then. If you really want to match the lenses, you can get your K-3 modified to take Arri bayonette lenses. But it likely won't matter for you, especially when just starting out.

What else do you want to know? Specific questions lead to specific answers.

GeorgeSelinsky · February 18, 2004

I'm just starting out here, deadly serious with limited funds. I've started building my editing bench with a magnasync,rewinds,splicer,viewer.

If that's your editing bench you're either shooting and cutting reversal original, or you are going to end up paying a lot of money for a print. Neither of which I suggest...

As for rent versus buy: rent for continuous blocks of filming (like 1 month), buy if you're going to make it on weekends for a long time.

Had a K-3. Sure, you could make a feature with it if you want to post dub all your sound (and kill your arm winding that thing up). I am post dubbing the dialog for mine. Not fun but it works for what I need.

J. Lamar King IMPOSTOR · February 18, 2004

Being a multiple K-3 owner and user I can attest that if you don't need sync-sound (and you have a great post facility to work with) you can make a film that will stand up to any other 16mm film quality wise.

In fact I started a short documentary film to be shot entirely with K-3's and posted out to HD. I tested this process and it works great. Only problem is that once I got started shooting, the story of the documentary turned out to be way more involved than what I had planned for. So now it's a full length project that needs sync sound segments which I'm seriously considering shooting on the DVX-100. The impact of someone breaking down and crying in "voice over" audio is nowhere near that of watching it. In fact it's a little comical. But that's the nature of documentary. If your doing scripted narrative or music videos you might be able to absolutely rule out the need for sync-sound.

A major factor in the rent/own decision is the cost of insurance. I haven't found a rental house yet that will rent me a film camera without insurance. They might exist, maybe others can inform us. That's why I'm considering the DVX because I can rent one without insurance and it is an acceptable alternative to 16mm film IMHO. I also haven't found low priced insurance (if that's even something you should consider, like a low cost nuclear bomb).

If you have the money for insurance look at getting a producers policy which you can get for a whole year for the same cost as a couple of weeks of rental insurance. Which also happens to be enough to buy a good sync-sound camera. :blink: