jan von krogh

we have dell 2407 and hdlink, but for di/colorcorrection, i would not recommend -any- lcd monitor. let me explain why. first the pros: lcd is sharp, ideal for 1080p. lcd is inexpensive, ideal for budget. lcd looks good, good for customers. lcd is leightweight and compact, good for portability and interior design. lcd uses less energy, good for the environment. lcd has no alignment / convergence problems, crt have lcd is easier to maintain lcd isn´t harmed by magnetic fields. now, lets look at DI. #1 lcd has -NO- black. by design. no eCinema, no eizo, no dell, no apple. there is always added light to the image. this will reduce your ability to finetune blacks. #2 lcds color and brightness are angle-dependent. the better ones, just slightly, what makes things even more complicated. so you will never see exactly what youre doing, you will always be +/- some percent. compare that to audio, oh, we were "only" 2db to hot, or 2db less loud... #2b due to lcds being angle dependent, clients will always see something different than you do. the dop on the right side, the director even more to your right and you in front will all see -different- colorcorrections. #3 no interlace. if you do not only p, but only i, many problems which have to be found in cruicial final monitoring can escape you. #4 no internal 12/10 bit. besides the electronics, the panelcontrollers are the bottleneck so far. even when dithering, they can show banding and, even worse, due to their internal dithering, may not expose posterisation artefacts which then will become obvious when going to filmout or evaluating the movie on a class 1 crt. #5 no autocalibrating (human error can occur quite easy when calibrating) #6 no IRE colors and phosphors, colors will always be slight off what they will be in final use. there are several more reason why lcd is a poorer choice for DI. now, if you still intend (or have to due to budget) to use lcd for critical master monitoring, some tips to reduce the problems: - it is a very good idea to have a inexpensive calibrated class1 CRT, sony BVM14 HD as reference and use the lcd as production monitor, and the crt when necessary for critical monitoring. - measurement equipment (vector & wave) is must have when using lcd, alone to find the dark - enhance the distance between you/client and the monitor, the variation in color you and the client sees is reduced by this - make sure the lcd is at height of your head. looking up or down at a lcd will change the color. - enhance the ambient light above the standard black/di to the level where you don´t see the light of the lcd in the dark anymore but real black. - use a hd-sdi/dvi converter who allows lut & calibration, or at least gammacurves. back to your original question: we would recommend the dell 2407 together with hdlink for a budget solution. besides 5 sony BVM class 1 monitors, we have this combination in house (for production, not for mastering) and tested many other offerings before going for the dell. good price/performance, much more inputs than the apple, controls can be adjusted without computer and and ok image are the main reasons. the eizo was excellent as well, image impression best of all, but the automatic imageenhancments were problematic for production needs. the apple had not enough inputs and wasn´t adjustable without additional apple computer and showed a slight inperfect illumination when completly white. however, this was the last, not the actual apple cinemadisplay. besides the blackmagic hdlink, i would recommend to have a look at the offerings from aja, which are a little bit more expensive, but offer upscaling, while the hdlink is cropping. also, i would not go for the expensive "our own critical lcd-monitor" most of the features are pure snakeoil, and luts/gamme can be adjusted on the inexpensive aja/blackmagic products as well. also, and none of these "special monitoring lcd" can afford to built their own panel, so they are using the same standard lcd-panels as dell, apple, lg, hp, eizo, phillips etc. in the case of sony and panasonic, most of their "mastering" lcd don´t even offer physical 1080 panel... what basicly is a joke. maybe they will introduce better ones this nab, but even if, you would be better off with 1080p computerdisplay and a good converter. p.s. if you are in the usa, you can try to find a discontinued sony pvm 20/l5, this crt hd production monitor is quite inexpensive and is pretty near to bis bvm class 1 refernece monitors.

Hello Andrew, theoretically speaking, it should even be possible to construct more information by comparing sequences of cmos-raw, basicly an inverted mpeg encoding, not to reduce, but to gain information. however i am 100% positive that this is, even for graeme nattress, to much rocket science in 2007. besides, doing that on 12.6MP@12bit@60p would, ahem, require a slight little bit to much of computation overhead for typical long-form productions. or the camera dept. rushes into the VFX/CGI departements and steals their rendering racks B) however, i am quite interested what we can do with recording 4K@60p for output on 2K@24/25p. in the last decade, we overcranked for purpose, as it was expensive on 35mm. now, as its seems becoming basicly cost-neutral, i am looking forward for new styles and tricks in the beginning era of, lets say, "oversampled" shooting. And yes, graeme is certainly a real asset for red. i had some short personal mail exchanges with him in the past, and he is a very qualified person.

indeed, the bbc could perform a degrain before encoding S16/16 to mpeg. but it really seems that they are decided to stop s16/16 production and broadcasting, at least for their HD broadcasting. at their conference in the BBC television center discussing their "road to hd", their executives made pretty clear statements. some quotes: ?Drama on film has got to stop.? Alan Yentob, Creative Director of the BBC. ?With HD cameras, we can do anything we want them to?. ?With HD you can move more quickly and less encumbered?. Jane Tranter, Controller BBC Fiction. ?There will be no Super 16mm on the HD channel? Andy Quested, Principal Technologist BBC. i really hope they reconsider, it would be a shame to not see so many brilliant 16mm productions, especially old ones, once more in HD. but the trend is not only at BBC. recently when doing some documentary postproduction, a frightened producer informed us that we might have to rescan large parts of a historical documentary, as it wasn´t scanned 35mm but only 16mm telecined to pal and then upconverted. now, this is nothing special - the footage was from 1920-1940, and almost all archieves don´t have them higher than pal or ntsc, and they don´t give the negatives out, and they don´t have 2 or 4k scanners. besides, especially historic documentary as a genre would become much to expensive when all the vintage filmstock would have to be rescanned. i am not entitled to disclose who this broadcaster is, who seems to silently also ban 16mm, but it is one of the worldwide top 3 documentary broadcasters. also i hope that this method was only applied to this special documentary, as it is a very prestigious one.

Hello Andrew, they published all the specifications of the sensor a long time ago already, and they can be found on their website as well. i was quite impressed that red always informed anyone about the aspects where they didin´t reach their original designgoals. weight was an example, or the fact that some colorspaces & resolutions originally planned will be later on etc. however, and this is cruicial to understand: red has published all industry technical specifications, as sensor resolution, size, arraymatrix, sensitivity, dynamic, noise etc. what they, and other cameramanufacturers don´t disclose, is the "soft" part of their deisgn. red can record raw, and how you translate a raw image to a rgb image is not -hard- science alone, but a great part an artistic decision. you can aim for sharp, you can aim for soft, all basing on the exact same given readouts from the sensor. judging the quality of digital interpolators is, as with most A/D and D/A designs, balancing several tradeoffs. as the raw->rgb/yuv/xyz conversion can be done in a standalone software when using red, these softwarebasing aspects can be changed at will anytime by red, red could even offer different methods how to decode the sensors data. i recommended that red could offer a userselectable debayering in the software, maybe even with the option for 3hrd party designs, but this isn´t priority number 1 atm. but all of this doesn´t influence the hard design of the camera, its sensor, its noise, weight etc. i think a pretty good analogy one should keep in mind is that we are dealing with a pipeline as in film here, some things in this pipeline are fixed, others are not. simplified, on 35mm we have lens->camera body->stock->lab and on red we have lens->camera body->sensor->redcine now, what happens in the lab or in the software is a flexible choice, while the first three steps aren´t. (hopefully, as long the filmstock has been handled in an appropriate way in the case of 35mm). the hard techspecs, camera & sensor have been published by red, for the lab/redcine we will certainly see several tunings/changes/option becoming available - and all we could do there is speculate. however, i really look forward to take delivery of our red cameras here (we have a ~200 and ~900 reservation, so we luckily won´t have to wait until 2008) and then put them through our own measurement.

Hello Mr. Ray, the sensor used by red one has 12642000 elements, in a 4900 (h) x 2580 (v) matrix. i recommend not to go into another discussion regarding the different design approaches regarding the outreading, patternrebuilding, debayering, rbg orderingmethods, amount of individual colored pixel etc - as this information is not public and i suppose won´t become public by monday as well. be it panavision or arri, hasselblad or leica, nikon or canon, red or dalsa - camera manufacturers usually don´t discuss all these details in public as they are considered business secrets for good reasons. i was positivly surprised that some developers from red shared via pm & talks some details with me, but as that was back in sept. and december 06 they might have changed anyhow for the industrialproduction models.

You are wrong here, RED is 4k and the higher resolution of 2540P at 60 progressive frames in 12bit. however there are 3 different recordingmodes and one of them indeed has a max of 2K. method 1 Sensor shooting 4k or 2540p up to 60p, 2K up to 120P For recording this uncompressed the RAW output is used. You will need a powerful array for 2540p/4k@60p@12bit. method 2 4K @ 30P, 2K @60P Record to compact digital media, which includes CF-Flash, SATA on Card, REDRAM, attachable diskraid, Expresscard. This is redcode, which is compressed RAW. You can buy most of the standarized medias direct. method 3 1080 @ 30P, 720 @60P. The "classic" pipelines for HDCAM SR, 2K DDR etc a la Panavision Genesis, Sony 750-950, Arri D20, GV Viper etc. This route is done via HD-SDI. For a full overview visit: http://red.com/formatoptions.htm If you want a good introduction to the red camera and some 35mm/16mm scan comparisions in 2K/4K: http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=1487 BTW - i have 2 directors in thessaloniki, greece, who are very interested in the camera. we have 2 red cameras ordered, one of them quite early last year, so we are in the group who doesn´t have to wait until next year to get their cameras. we plan on meeting in greece this summer to have some meetings regarding new coproduction in greece, and to give them the possibility to use the red for some testshots. if you are interested to join, just let me know.

i wish them all the best, but with red & dalsa in the markets now, it will be already more than hard for the longtime mayor players to sail the coming digital hurricane.... and niche players a la kinetta will have a impossible mission without sustained and massive financial backup. however, would kinetta have been able to deliver, they would have had a killerproduct. but i suppose it seems another american company now is about to fullfill what kinetta dreamed of.

Hello, we are in the EU (Germany), but we do offer that service. We provide 10bit NTSC blackmagic decklink and HD blackmagic decklink to PAL DigiBeta, DVD, HDCAM and HDCAM SR. we mainly offer that service before berlinale and the other mayor European festivals. Most customers from the americas however don´t send disk, but transmit their movies electronically (we have 32 Mbit donstream here) a week or so before they need their tape and we fedex the tapes to the festivals then. I am not in that dept, but if you are interested just leave me a mail and i will forward it to the mastering folks. don´t know the exact prices but if i remember correctly it was in the 300-400 bucks range with 23.97->25P framerate conversion and quadchannel soundexpand. Another tip - checkout the studios of the mayor European broadcasters in your area (ARD, BBC, ZDF, TF1, RAI etc). they often have PAL digibetas in their foreign studios and rent them out.

i do agree that 10-20 years might be a realistic timeframe for the last SD-TV sets to be turned off in the industrialized countries, rather 15-20 imho. the broadcast stations & productionhouses who want to produce certainly have less than 10 years, the ones who dont have hd yet already have to catch up. however, new sets and new sales is a different story - i cannot predict the future, but i would be surprised to still see sd-home TVs in 2010 as mayority, especially because the price difference in flatpanels is basicly nullified. also, i assume that trendleading movies won´t be reaching #1 sales anymore, when only available in sd within very few years from here. dvd just recently showed, how fast consumers buying behaviour change those years. i try always to be very careful, when predicting the future... steenbeck/moviola->nle, 33lp->CD, typewriter->wordprocessor, print->dtp, multitrackaudiotape->daw, telex->web, 8mm->vhs->dv & dvd, crt->lcd, slr->dslr.... once digital systems reach a critical price/performance level and a certain quality level which is as good or better than their analogue precessor, they have the nasty habit to dominate down their markets quite fast.. the only exceptions to this rule we have seen since the beginnings of the digital era 20/30 years ago were, and will be for a longer time, fine mechanics which then became, speaking in digital terms, a/ds... such as microphones or loudspeakers, certainly lenses. but film vs. sensor..... as mentioned i would be really careful making predicitions here, i remember quite precise what just recently happened to the still photography market. especially if red (or another player in the biz) really fullfills, the change might be quite faster than even digital snobs expected. here i have to disagree - typically we will find more than 10 businesspeople on 1 artist in the movie, especially in the broadcastindustries. sadly, the huge mayority of movies & tv meanwhile is mostly done only by money as motivation. i agree. personally i do agree, but i am surprised that the audiences perception is changing quite quickly. what is really pondering me, and i am really against these developments, is that broadcaster as the BBC now begin to ban 16mm film - i didn´t see that coming. (btw there are many petitions online to join who intend to make the bbc overthink the decision to ban 16mm film, i strongly recommend to sign them soon! good starting point is http://www.dff-dk.dk/dff/newssinglepage52.aspx?NID=65 ) lol for the content and lol for the german :)

lol.... let me add: you can have 9 women, but you won´t get the baby within a month (old producers saying regarding size of the crew)

i was not referring to a camera or digital or photochemical production in general. i remarked that extreme styling in CC & DI have became quite popular, no matter what camera has been used, no matter if shot on negative or sensor. i additionally mentioned renaissance btw, as there were no cameras involved directly in producing the final images of the movie. if one is looking for naturalistic skin & fleshtones, i suppose that neither 300 nor next aimed for them, as surpringsly numberous movies in the recent years did as well. by the way: the speculation that a heavy colorcorrected and styled movie shows the underlying colorrendition of the used stock or even camera is probably wrong in most cases. we own & operate 2 DI/CC systems and we are seing this trend becoming more and more popular for many clients.

also, commercials and clips have influenced many people - ultrastyled look ala renaissance, sin city or 300 is now accepted and often praised by audiences. also the numberous adaptions of comics... errr graphic novels have had thei influence for sure. i did notice that many of our clients & coproducers begun going for a more stylish look in the recent years, independent of photochemical or digital. i am still undecided if i do like or dislike this new trend, but it seems the audiences prefer it at the moment. and i think your wording is on the point - i did understand at once what several people wanted to describe with the term "plasticy", but thought to myself that this sounded just not right.... glossy fits better imho. btw, as we used that certain look in recent prokects, i can give a 101 how this look is archieved in DI in a few steps- a) use some mild grainremoval (this basicly reduces fine differences in contrast and leaves stronger ones alone) b) if you go for skins, pull a key of the faces before adding and blurr the resulting mask c) invert this mask and increase shadow & highlight contrast d) add colorcorrection of choice. i saw this look emerging in the, irrc, mid/late 90, back then mainly to "autobeautificate" elder talents in commercial and clips and we have used it meanwhile on several fullfeatures.

i suppose so, here in germany the boom started much later, so it seems we luckily see much more of the "newer" gear, sometimes starting later can be of advantage. i fully agree. there are some HDcameras which have a sweet spot and are fine to use on many projects, but all have typical shortcomings. varicam is nice for 60p, but offers bad resolution for 35mm filmout. sony 750/900 dont go beyond 30p, but have the resolution. the genesis has a 35mm sensor, but is imho to bulky to be used as one/two person camcorder or for handheldstyle. viper in raw doesn´t have the ideal monitoring, D20 lacks a appropriate recorind for its resolution and has "only" an optical viewfinder, which sometimes is better, sometimes is worse etc....etc...lets hope red delivers. i really recommend that you look at the 900R - its ~ half the weight of the 900, uses ~30% less power and has lots of the things built in, for which you would need additional gear on a 900/II, like downconverter, hd-sdi etc. same is valid for the 750, which many people use in europe for cinematic productions. lol! the nickname has officially arrived in berlin now :) i can feel your pain ... really, check out the 900r asap if you are doing steady. its nicely in the middle between 200 and 900/3 when it comes to weight and much less bulky than its precessor. all steadycams operators i talked to within the last 3 years have switched away from 900/3 to 900R and/or 750. 750 sadly isnt an option in the usa, as it does 25/50 or 29/60. here in germany we do many cinematic shootings @25, but i suppose that this rarely or never the case in the usa.

both options are availabe. oversampled 4k to 1080p will give you better images and the 35mm DOF, and max 60p. S16 and 2/3 cropped sensor are also available, if you want t double 35mm glass or use s16 or 2/3 glass. one of the sweetspots of the red isn´t available via HDCAM SR (or hd-sdi), that is 120P@S16croppedsensor@2K, this is only available via the rawport. a full list of the formats can be found at http://red.com/formatoptions.htm

Hello Mr. Mullen, i can really confirm what you say. my experience with directors and dops who use di & highend-cc for the first time, is that, especially for genre, aim at heavy styling, ofte much to heavy styling and forget about skintones or shades of natural green within days - pandoras box. another aspect is that many dops meanwhile shoot quite flat images, because they do know that they will add full black & white and saturation later on in di/cc - with this style of shooting of course then it is quite more tempting to go for a more extreme style. i might offer svereal explanations for this phenomen. naturally it seems bizarre that you are happy with a digitally produced on the large screen but then suddenly find it underwhelming on a small ntsc-tv. reason a) -wrong colorspace conversion at different stages of the pipeline- typically in fullfeature digital, people aim at the filmout. typically, we have a cc/di. digital can originate in YUV or RGB. now, a experienced colorist anticipates the testscreening, the filmrecorder, the used stock and the colorconversion. when the testscreening makes dop & director happy, the film is reorded and printed. ....meanwhile... in the background the tv/dvd masters are done, and yes, often enough in the wrong ore simply legalized colorspace - i have often gotten material for trailers which didnt have any black but startet at 16 instead of 0 - clear case of legalised footage, done one step to early, while the filmoutmaster where correct. this is -not- the correct procedure, but still i often see it done that way - which could explain in your case the absence of real dark black. the level of confusion is still pretty high in this area, even among industy veterans, especially where people from broadcast and cinema, distribution and mastering have to cooperate hand in hand, instead one after the other. and many people dont even know if they are in rgb, 709 or 601 at that particualr stage of the pipeline, when doing their tv or dvd out, which nor requires different standards for different norms for different resolutions and so on and so furth. often, the faulty colorconversion is done at the broadcaster, as they get a 601 basing legalized copy but do expect a 709 as it is HD, or vice versa get 709 non legalised and expect 601 as its SD - or even worse, add a third wrong conversion. reason b) -scaling & distribution- i recently had a typical experience with these problems. i know our productions in 1080p, 2k, 4k digital and on film. the last one (1080p@yuv) was recorded on fuji @ 2k rgb. all conversion were done, testout was fine. then i saw it at a presentation on a digital 4k - it looked wrong, not as good as in 2k, not as good as the 35mm filmprint.(the noise was blocky and thin lines sudenly had aliasing as well as the blacklevel was a little bit to high) after checking the sony srx 4k projector and the dvs clipster ddr we found the reason in the scaler, which was set wrong and -added sharpening and did pal->601 conversion, even as the source was rgb. now, in every tv-station you usually have a plenthora of up/down/cross-converters in the signalpath, and they are often autoswitching. just think about what can go wrong in a series of autosensing 720/1080/ntsc distribution amps when someone didn´t turn off sharpening in one of the many different crossconversions... closing, let me say that these reasons might or might not explain your observations - but these problems do exist and can go wrong.

always when it is too late. i suppose you are talking about the ancient f900 models, I/II/II, which are no longer manufactured, not the actual 900R, correct? as you are certainly aware, there are many noiseless and silent hdcameras, including the actual sony 900R and 750. the discountinued 99-05 f900 series indeed had a fan which genetrated approx ~22db iirc when the camera was heated up (it wasn´t running when the camera wasn´t heated), so can we please leave the polemic out of this thread as freight trains seem to be a slight little bit louder. it seems there are several hdcameras you dont know.. let us just name 2 examples of igekami, one interlaced, one progressive, one seperated, one boxtype. lets start with the ultracompact hdl20, which, btw is completly noiseless and was introduced iirc 4 or 5 years ago. weight of the camerahead is 250 grams. 1.6 x 2.1 x 2.8 inch dimensions http://ikegami.com/image_j2/hdl20_s1s.jpg http://ikegami.com/br/products/hdtv/hdtv_camera_frame1.html a typical example of the design approach with seperated ch and ccu. the other style of ultracompacts, box-cams, would be represented by the hdl40 in the case of ikegami. http://ikegami.com/br/products/hdtv/hdtv_camera_frame1.html. (1800g) or in case of sony, quite more popular but lesser imagequality, it would be the http://bssc.sel.sony.com/BroadcastandBusin...19&id=80176 (1300g) there are many others competeting cameras, and their main use is documentary, sports, special photography or when one has to hide the cameras. hiding cameras as well as microphones can be cruicial. not only for investigative documentaries, but often also if you want to hide from the audience in the set or given location. weight is often the limiting factor of the maximun extension you can use a crane, especially on lightcranes, especially with leight heads - and there are plenty of scenarios where you don´t have the time or space to use teknocrane or similar stronger built stuff. thank you, and please lets not derail this thread in one of the really pointless digital vs. photochemical discussions, i have stated precisely that i am no one from the digital aquisition is better than all camp, mentioning several scenarios in which i would prefer film, as well for creative or budget-basing reasons - but after 5 years of also producing digital i suppose i know which advantages and disadvantages both system inherently have.

hmmm... i suppose your are speculating or do you have any figures to back that up? because my experience over the years tells me different, as audience, festivals, distributors and broadcasters are getting more and more used to digital production. some examples. broadcasters bbc (and other european broadcasters) banned 16mm film for their HD-distribution.. (i am strongly against this btw, i would like to ask anyone to consider joining petitions like http://www.dff-dk.dk/dff/newssinglepage52.aspx?NID=65 ) festivals i didn´t have any problems anymore sending HDCAM & SR masters to berlinale and the other usual suspects in the festival world, who required filmout even 2 years ago, they now all seem to have some decent 2k christie and at least a j-h3 in their pipelines. in fact, i don´t now any mayor european festival who requires filmout, but i knew dozens 4 years ago. distributors while we had lots of discussion when selling 1080->film in the early years (2001-3), this berlinale not a single distributor or producer i was doing biz with at the filmmarket questioned the decision to produce digital, which might be influenced additionally by the fact, that in 2006 several #1 hits in the german cinemamarket were intentionally produced digital (some btw really subpar). additionally, several thousands of cinemascreens have been converted to digital in 2006, i think carmike being the most prominent in the usa. general & audience in professional still photography (where the transition started earlier and moves faster) i saw the opposite - many agencies who -strictly- required film 5 years ago now require digital only. and i don´t have the impression that the "general public" still values film as better, at least only very few consumers still buy filmbasing still or moving-cameras while the market for digital cams is skyrocketing.

SCNR : it seems that a many of "we" disagree here, or are you only referring to voices in your head?

thanks, some of them i had to learn pretty painfully and/or expensive :) i have the position that the audience has to decide, and as much as i hate it to admit, the audience is hard to predict and will most often prefer spectactular images over images of higher quality. with few exceptions, i personally really dislike the use of low-fi cameras (8mm, DV24/25p) or low-fi stock, but i do realize that, especially here in germany, you can have position 1 on the charts with DV-out-to-film. i think this is a bad sideeffect, and i strongly dislike this "everything goes". but when it comes to higher-end digital, HDCAM and above, and higher-end film, i have the position - best camera depends very much on the visual style the film is aiming for - it doesn´t matter that much if you use sony HDCAM (sr) camcorder, viper, genesis or good 35mm as, sadly, in most situations, the cinema -itself- and the release prints have become the weakest points of quality meanwhile, with any of the listed cameras. its a little bit like with the audio - i have overheared discussion if neumann $3000 or horch $5000 microphones would be better "sounding", at the end of the day it will be listened by 90% of the audience through dolbyd, mp3 or below... - image -impact- and image -quality- are valued different by people who make movies and by people who only watch movies, we see so much more in -any- movie as the usual audience does, and even for us its already tough to differentiate - having a -really- good colorist and a -really- good lightning and a -really- good dop and outstanding hair&makeup, is more important than to have the fanciest ueber-camera, be it digital or photochemical. heck, even the lenses are more important meanwhile as most high-end cameras easily show their flawns.. i have experienced the following situation twice: colorist and anti-digital dop bet that he would easily find film and find digital. the colorist had the 35mm 2k scans degrained and added the scanned grain onto the digital 1080p source, additionally he used shots with quite closed iris from the 35mm scans and fully opened iris ~200mm close-up shots for the the digital shots... both dops guessed wrong (i would also have been fooled by the grain, if i wouldn´t have know the trick). so the discussion is mainly academic meanwhile. still, there are several shooting situations, where i would use film when i just can book one camera- flexible overcranking is one of the top reasons. however, i have to admit that film, which was ~90% of all topbudget shots for us here from late 80ies to 2001, meanwhile is at ~25-30%, and i suppose, that if RED fullfills (we have 2 on order), the amount of digital shots will become absolutly dominant in our production/co-production/rental business. i think the main reasons to use digital instead of film are ergonomics, flexibility and production - not image quality. image quality with digital aquisition is easily good enough for blockbustermovies as well for your niche-arthouse-film, who says different denies reality. BUT none of the actual digital high-end cameras is really better (and i have seen almost any digital camera besides the phantom 65 on 2k or 4k first-generation or 35mm out) than 35mm in terms of image quality, maybe at par, but not better. the digital cams have advantages, but so do the 35mm, and to be really clear, the differences are meanwhile basicly not worth all the discussions which do go on. the important point is, we have excellent tools, be it digital or photochemical, and there is no reason to complain, and we can make outstanding movies with both technologies. what is sad to see is that there are many uneducated people on both sides of the fence. young indies buying a fully geared HVX200 @~12.000$ for their shortform instead of spending that budget for used 35mm with great glass or renting the oldschool 35mm package for even less money and then reducing lightning and crew to skeleton are as naive, as experienced DOPs who complain about details like shadowcontrast levels or saturation of skintones of fully digital produced movies which spendt -months- in top-end colorcorrection and had any luminance&color handtuned to the wishes of dop/director.

seems they are rather starting with new zealand.... heres is one of jim jannards businessjets visiting peter jackson 2 weeks ago. http://redcamera23.blogspot.com/2007_03_01_archive.html furthermore, in germany several of the top10 rental houses have ordered the maximum amount of 5 red cameras. we only ordered 2 so far, as we want to fully understand all aspect of the camera in the field before expanding our order - what we will have to, it seems.

the list is to long to name all the points. i will list some few examples. -higher security of production --you can run to several VTR/DDR instead to one negative. that reduces risk considerably, allows real backups -higher control over what is shot on set -- due to the "what you see is what you get", once cruicial problems (are you certain we got the shot?, problems with stock, people moving light w/o commuication etc) show up at once instead after dailies. -longer runtime, especially for any kind of special photography -- 40-50 min on tape, virtually infinite when cabled or DDR are highly welcome for any kind of production, but especially important for underwater/aerial/any kind of intervalometer etc. -really silent cameras -- many shots can be done closer, soundsynced, unblimped etc -synced digital audio on same medium -live -- especially for events (superstar concerts, really expensive danceshows etc) where one needed a) multiple cameras and b) had tons of reload issues digital is a blessing. also no longer the decision do we aim @theatrical release or @live broadcast, now one can have both with the same cameras. -new workflow if needed or wanted, which can be much faster or focus artistic work w/o travel or splitting up tasks etc --good examples are shows who use CC on set (battlestar galactica comes to mind, the dop does CC while shooting) --online preedit is running while shooting, same day. --producing witj several units in different locations allows faster collaboration due to no longer needed scans & the possibility to electronical transfer on&offlines even with crews in remote locations -ultra compact. ultra lightweight HD-cameras with remote heads. -- shots at more extreme perspectives & angles, longer cranes, speedier motioncontrols, less requirements to integrate hiding points in the set etc. -less steps to administrate in post -- alone getting rid of the whole overhead for handling dailies is a blessing, everyone who already had a runner from the lab involved in a carcrash with the original neg in the car knows how much stressreduction we are talking here. -massive amount of stocks can be transported -- i am personally still amazed by the fact that it is now possible to have 20 hours++ in one suitcase which the AC takes onto the plane as cabin luggage. better measurement of final result on set -- blue/greenscreen lightning is not what it was in 90ties anymore, luckily so much easier for lightning & camera with a decent vector/wave directly monitoring the clean master. the list could go on like that for many sides, regarding almost any department. btw - from a financial perspective, digital can be cheaper, but often it isnt, film is often cheaper, especially for shortform. i don´t know the prices for genesis/hdcam/d20 in LA, but here in germany the packages are typically quite a bit more expensive than an actual photochemical arri-package. also dont forget training cost for the staff.

a photo of the camera, the viewfinder, the monitor, power system, 15/19mm rod&rails and some more accesories which red sells - and which will be @ NAB in 4 days can be found here: http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=1419 the question now at hands now is rather how many cameras per month will be delivered, and how fast red can ramp up serial production. it seems they are targeting a rate of ~200 cameras a month, as jim jannard has stated that he would like to deliver the orderbacklog of all existing ~ 1500 reservations in 2007.

digital or photochemical shooting, handdrawn or computerbased animation - none is a reason or excuse for a good or bad movie, sucess or flop. there is plenty of excellent and bad photography, digital and photochemical. there are plenty of A, B and C-Budget, digital and photochemical. there are blockbusters and flops, digital and photochemical. its about talent, marketing, story, production luck, acting etc. which type of camera, stock or technical aspects are meanwhile not the main factors anymore, compared to those important aspects which define a good movie, when you use upperclass gear. i will always prefer an ace on digital vs. a mildy-talented shooter who insists to shoot 35mm, and vice versa. its the musician, not the instrument, which makes the music. The level of quality we have today even with setups for ~100.000$, be it film or digital, is pretty amazing, DI and colorcorrection have reached levels which sounded like dreams 15 years ago. what i really learned to appreciate, however, over the recent 5 years are 2 fundamental changes: the advantages of shooting digital from the point of view of the producer & that the possibilities in CC and DI meanwhile have become extremly powerful - moviemaking as it is today, has become much more a painterly art than a photographic art.

the astro monitors also get a recommendation from here. a bit more expensive, but even more measurement (as TC basing readout checks, log-interfaces etc) offers http://www.leaderuk.co.uk/product.asp?ProductID=154 ultracompact: http://www.hamlet.co.uk/products/Flexiscop.../menu/frame.htm

Hello David, yes i also thought that this was what you wanted to say. Just wanted to underline that (important) point. However, i met people who had the false impression that HDCAM cameras would be 1440, not 1920 -i think they were confused by HDV- and then after 1440 would have another 75% reduction in luma bandwidth. If we are speaking of internal VTRs, HD Cameras and subsampling - i have heard from customers that DVCPRO when it gets 1920 reduces to 1280 and then applies 4:2:2. I doubted that, but didn´t reach my panasonic contact yet to confirm - do you know something about this? Its of no relevance for the 27 Varicam, but for the 900´and 400´ it would be important to know.