For me, S-16 is almost obsolete. It hurts, but what can I do? I´ve been through good and bad times with my SR2 - she never let me down - but the superb S-16 is not good enough any more for my clients.
As a wildlife filmmaker and enthusiastic S-16 shooter I have been depressed about the strict and seemingly irrational HD policies of many channels for quite a while ? and I was convinced that Sony and Panasonic had bribed some important people into HD. Part of the story may go like this (it´s what a friend told me after he had worked for the BBC ?planet earth? series): NHK (japanese state TV) commissioned the BBC to produce ?planet earth?. NHK would pay 70% of the production costs, but of course the series had to be shot in HD (or 35mm). Sony or Panasonic HD. Real, big japanese HD. Most BBC freelance DoPs ? after long and basically happy marriages with the Arri SR2 and S-16 being better than ever before ? were probably not pleased at all. I was excited about the aerials in the series ? wow, HD looks great - until my friend told me they were mostly shot on 35mm. Which makes complete sense given the costs of the helicopter hour, the strive for longtime archival value and the somewhat poor resolution of the Varicam which becomes more obvious in landscape shots than in animal behaviour sequences.
But unfortunately it is true that film grain and compression do not go together well. Of course we can suppress S-16 grain in the telecine process, but we will get new artifacts or at least a very electronic, cold look ? so why shoot film then?
I bought ? after a lot of crying and cursing ? a Panasonic AJ-HDX900. There was no other way out. In international wildlife film, it´s HD or not to be. See above. At least, having waited a year longer than most colleagues, I saved about 25 000 Euro because of the massive price drop due to Panasonic´s new product and marketing strategy. Thanks, Panasonic. The camera body costs about the same than film stock, film processing and Spirit telecine on Digibeta for a 50mins wildlife film, so even economically HD may start to make sense. Image quality with a good lens, 25p, cinegamma and cinegamma correction on the monitor is amazing in 95% of all situations. Definitely film texture, not video. And right out of the camera with only a little monitor trickery. There can even be some grain (quite a lot, if you underexpose)... For me, HD´s biggest disadvantage imagewise is blooming. Biggest disadvantage in the field is weight and power consumption. Biggest advantage apart from the godsent 7s preroll: Tapes don´t care about being x-rayed. And quite sure, because in HD you go for the important highlights, not the shadows like in film, the whole system is several stops more light sensitive than S-16 with 500 ASA. Which is really really nice.
At the bottom of my heart, I hope S-16 will flourish for years to come and that finally I will sell my HD camera again, get 15kg off my rucksack and have an A-minima MK2, Kodak Vision 3, a decent zoom and an affordable Arriscan scan for the best looking HD imagery in my career. More probable, in 4-6 years it will be a 1080/100p HD camera half the size half the weight than today´s cameras.
