Jean Dodge

The comments on the vimeo site for that hard rock video (see link above) say that it was shot with one camera. Not sure what shots are supposed to be with the HVX200.... or why. Could someone clarify?

The comments on the vimeo site for that hard rock video (see link above) say that it was shot with one camera. Not sure what shots are supposed to be with the HVX200.... or why. Could someone clarify?

One major question is going to involve WHERE the overcranked shots come into the story. You can probably match the look of the footage outdoors on a sunny day by switching to a different camera fairly easy compared to what is possible when you are working at the edge of what 5dmk2 and 7D are capable of doing in low light. Don't forget there are simple tricks to make things APPEAR overcranked too - tighten up the shutter angle and have the actors move slow, then speed up the action in post if you want.... get creative. Working out your ENTIRE post production workflow is going to be essential to the production - there are issues regarding color space, frame rates, storage, backups, syncing sound and motion footage etc that are all budget related. KNowing who will do the blow up in advance and getting them fully on board is essential from the start. I have seen footage from the canon 5D mk2 transferred to 35mm and projected on a big screen. Some of it looks great, other parts are still frustratingly cheap looking but I can tell you that the worst aliasing does get smoothed out slightly in the process. Preserving the dynamic range and keeping the blacks from being crushed is something you need to fully understand and test in order to get the full results from the camera. FOCUS is your main challenge when the footage is blown up to a large screen. The monitors on board the camera, ANY monitors you chose to rent/buy/ employ are unable to show you the critical focus you need to see when recording, and the cameras are capable of so much more shallow DOF than you can judge... so be aware that you are not going to see if your movie is acceptably in focus until the blow-up is done. You are asking your 1st AC to do an impossible task, essentially - to keep the motion picture in focus at all times without ever having his choices and work reviewed by anyone along the way. If a big part of why you like the look of the vDSLRs is the shallow DOF look, keep in mind you get one look on a tiny computer screen and quite another on a cinema screen. Also, the ability to have multiple monitors running for both the operator and the director to view is a huge challenge with these vDSLRs. Unless you have researched, tested and seen with your own eyes the difficulty involved you don't yet know what you are up against. I won't say it is impossible, but it is certainly difficult. HDMI is a bad system for running multiple monitors form. Is your director willing to trade off the ability to see his own monitor a lot of the time for the look he will get with these vDSLRs? Make sure he understands the limitations. Yes, the canon vDSLRs show a lot of promise - but no, they are not built for this type of work and if you are mounting a production as large as you have to in order to make a feature length film you are wise to consider other options. Working with these cameras requires a different style of shooting to get the most advantages while avoiding the pitfalls. A fiction film that is scripted leaves many of these advantages unused... such as the stealth factor, for example. Another difficult thing to realize until you do a test is how little you will want to hand hold these cameras without some serious efforts made towards stabilizing the image. When you see "shakey cam" on YouTube it is a lot less distracting than it becomes at ten meters tall....

I have zero experience to offer but the general path would seem to be trying to tether both cameras to a single laptop or remote device via canon's own software and hope that by starting both cameras with one device you could achieve sync, but I have no idea if this is actually possible. Canon software is one avenue, canon hardware the other, ie, buy a hong kong cabled remote and build a splitter cable. Another idea would be to begin each take by randomly starting and stopping the cameras manually, aiming the lenses at a video monitor to judge sync somehow. When the pictures of the progressively scanning lines on the tv match one another, begin the take. Again, this is complete guesswork on my part and just a humble suggestion as to where to begin testing. Various tricks like turning the monitor 90 degrees to camera come to mind but without some tools in my hand I can't recall all the tricks. Another analog timing device you could try would be a cheap desktop fan, with two blades, or colored blades perhaps, and running on a household dimmer to slow the rotation to a constant, slow speed that appears steady at your chosen frame rate. Manually start and stop one camera until the pictures agree on blade positioning. Be sure to let us know what you have tried yourself and what your experiences are. Sounds like a challenging project. How do you plan to get the lenses the proper distance apart?

This of course is a film made infamous in some circles as one that Howard Hughes, stuck in some form of obsessive madness watched over and over again for days and possibly weeks on end, locked in a Las Vegas screening room. Just think, if it had been pan and scan he might have REALLY been crazy. Like so much of the cold war, it was a bloated exercise in excess. Too long, too slow, too complicated and yet, a memorable movie.

If you have ever shot in Monument Valley you know it is an amazing place. The red dirt is always in the air and makes for great sunsets, and the vistas are breathtaking. But you don't "get lucky" there, you have to work for it. Even now it is quite remote from the comforts of civilization. Trucks bog down easily in the soft sand, and storms like that will stand your entire company overnight if you are not careful. John Ford tells a funny story about how he hired the same Navajo shaman for all his pictures to control the weather, bragging that the guy was once asked for clear weather all week and then snow on the weekend, and he delivered. Peter Bogdanovich was asking the questions when this story was written up, and Ford told him that for his last picture in navajo country (Cheyenne Autumn) he was forced to hire the medicine man's son. Bogdanavich asked Ford to rate junior's performance and was told "he always got me the right kind of clouds but he couldn't put them where I wanted them as well as his dad did." It's also a famous story, possibly apocryphal that Winton Hoch on SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON filed a written protest regarding shooting a technicolor sequence as a storm approached for a key sequence of the cavalry retreating under duress. The film won awards for cinematography and many recall the film best from that sequence.

I was lucky enough to see this years ago on the big screen, i think as part of a larger Eric Von Stroheim retrospective. He of course plays Rommel. Much of the film is inside the hotel but plot is compelling and like all of Wider's work, very smart and a lot of fun to follow. Seitz also shot the silent film TRAIL OF '98 that shows on TCM and of course DOUBLE INDEMNITY and LOST WEEKEND, too. Quite a lengthy career.

I was lucky enough to see this years ago on the big screen, i think as part of a larger Eric Von Stroheim retrospective. He of course plays Rommel. Much of the film is inside the hotel but plot is compelling and like all of Wider's work, very smart and a lot of fun to follow. Seitz also shot the silent film TRAIL OF '98 that shows on TCM and of course DOUBLE INDEMNITY and LOST WEEKEND, too. Quite a lengthy career.

One thing you may want to do is carefully and politely push each production you are hired onto to help you acquire new gear. Explain to the people in the office that you need certain items to make the shoot go better, and see if there is any money allocated already to the camera department for "expendables" like chip charts, gear bags, slates and french flags, etc. There is a little bureacratic (i hate the word so much i cant spell it) game that gets played on any production called "the squeaky wheel gets the grease." There is some figure allocated in the budget that your department is expected to spend, and if you don't spend it then it goes elsewhere. But if you do spend it right up to the last dime but not a penny over it is often a feather in the cap of the person who managed the budget - they get to say "see, I budgeted just the right amount for camera department." Everyone comes off looking like a winer. It's very important to handle this the right way. You don't want a reputation as a gold digger, brown nose or skinflint but at the same time the people you work regularly with are making an investment in you, and when it is no skin off their nose to buy you a new changing bag you are better off having production take care of it if you can. On some longer shows you can even make deals with the production manager - they buy the gear you say you need and you buy it back at a discount at the end of the show, like a two wheeled dolly for example or brand new slate, etc-that's a win-win for both of you. Just be persistent about how these "new and better" items are going to help make the job go faster, smoother and look better on screen, protect the rental gear from hazards, etc. and often most important to a commercial production company impress the client/ agency people who are overly concerned with outward appearances since they don't know what everything is or does, and neither should they be expected to. It's a sad rule that an assistant who writes neatly on the slate is usually judged as good by people outside the department - what else are they supposed to go by? The conversation usually goes something like this: "gee, the DoP sure is great... he's very professional, don't you think? He wants to shoot a chip chart before every new setup, which is the way we all like to do it since it really helps make the color timing go faster. I know I have some charts of my own left over from that last show but they are kinda dirty. If I had some new ones I'd make a nice chart with the production's name on it and it would really impress everyone at the post house...." etc. At the very least it gets you face time with the production manager who sees you as informed, professional and someone who works as a steady advocate for his department. Whether or not the production is granting you a box rental is a factor you deserve to make them aware of. "You know, when I get my box rental I spend that money on new gear that benefits you guys...." Identify your chief allies in this endeavor and treat them well. I've seem department heads buy flowers for the production office coordinator that smoothed the path to thousands of dollars in tools being purchased... it's not what I'd call kosher but once in a while the exploitation aspect of the movie business works in the little guys favor.

Let me start off by saying your passion for a novel isn't going to carry much weight with the people who are most likely making the final decisions here. It's frustrating, since you love the work and want to be part of the team but you may be better off tempering your expectations now... as in, don't get your hopes up. Even if you were the lover of the author himself you aren't likely to be included in any "must hire" arrangement. The director himself will have to justify every person he recommends for a position and if someone is his best friend he still may not get hired if he isn't also the most qualified for the position. In the USA the system is rather informal but it works in a hierarchy from the top down. The director and producer select the DoP with the approval of the studio, and the DoP hires his crew based on who he is comfortable working with, while negotiating with production about the expenses of doing it various ways. First, he tries to bring all his regulars with him but often it isn't possible since it is cheaper to hire local crew and not have to pay housing. So one opportunity you might pursue is to work hard to discover the location and hope for a remote one, where you make yourself available in advance to work as a local hire. The chances of you being selected for hire and having your travel, union and work visa arrangements made by production are pretty much zero, I'd say. You need to increase your odds considerably to make it worth the effort. The gaffer, once selected by the DP and approved by the production manager then hires his best boy who is the "straw boss" and often makes individual decisions about who gets the most days work and who to call for pre-rigging and extra hand days on the biggest nights' setups, etc. If the gaffer is from "out of town" he fights for his favorite best boy but often loses out to the budget and is influenced to hire local, especially since a local will know who among the freelancers is actually the most experienced and safest/ pleasant to work with. For someone like yourself, this is where the real decision making will take place, and it will occur at the last moment before filming begins since the "top hands" are booked most often and end one show and start another in a serial fashion, often as a select gang or regulars that controls the game. Infiltrating a group such as this takes luck, skill and determination but mostly it takes time - time spent working in the same general milieu as the Best Boy so that your reputation at least is known, if not yourself personally. Sadly, enthusiastic letters to the producer and director are long shots at best in situations like this. A best case scenario has your resume being added to a stack that gets considered by various people, none of whom you know and none of whom know you. People hire entry level and below the line positions based on who they know, or at least who they can see standing in front of them and make a fuller judgement about than can be gleamed from a resume. You may have better luck volunteering as an unpaid intern in the camera department, since this can sometimes smooth over union and work permit issues. The best way to get hired for a low level position as an unknown outsider is going to involve a great deal of luck and perfect timing. If you were to find out the location and travel on your own expense to the production office on the very first week of actual pre-production where the production team is assembled, and politely and persistently introduce yourself to the various department heads you will be received in a mixture of politeness, and skepticism as someone who may be an unstable fanatic rather than a real professional. "You flew here from France? That's insane!" This might impress someone enough to give you a chance. Or you might find yourself asked by security to leave and not come back. But that is the week and there is the place where the decision will most likely go down as to who is the office intern and who is the art department PA. So you see the safe way to apply for a position is going to be a long shot that most likely gets ignored, and the bold way is risky too since you will have to spend your own money to present yourself to people, assuming you can even figure out the timing. You are also assuming a lot when you say this movie is going to be made at all... until there is a cast attached and a notice posted in the trade magazines it is most likely just one of many projects being considered at the moment. I don't wish to be the one to ruin your dream but if you love this writer's work, read his next novel and write him a letter of appreciation and forget about being a crew person on the movie. Honor your good taste and enthusiasm by building your own career in the usual way and maybe someday you and he can work together as equals, or else your work will just be something that was influenced by his. It's very likely that whatever film is made from this novel you love will be a disappointment to you, anyway. Having said all that, I can tell you that if you listen to the naysayers (pessimists) you won't find your lucky break. Good luck and don't be afraid to try several approaches - just be respectful and honest and polite and knock on every door you can. Yes, try the likely rental houses and ask the director's former collaborators, why the heck not, you never know when you might find the one friendly person who can steer you in the right direction. There is no right way to do this, other than the polite and professional way. Bon chance.

Also keep in mind that just because a DVD lacks bonus material, this doesn't mean the footage isn't out there. Often the licensing rights preclude the deal being brokered easily and so the DVD distributor doesn't expend the effort to secure them. Criterion DVDs are so loved and collected because they go the extra mile to ferret out all this footage and include it. Critereon's first popular Laserdisc that packaged extras in a memorable fashion was the RAGING BULL release, that included the director's pidgin scrawled storyboards for the various fight sequences. This, to my knowledge is what created the modern demand and set the bar for quite some time as the coolest fetish object for home theater fanatics.

The easy answer there is to say that promotional films with behind the scenes footage began as soon as self blimped 16mm cameras became widely used, since that is the means usually employed by studios to make them. That would be after the introduction of the Eclair NPR, etc which is approximately the mid 1960s, if I recall correctly. A more specific answer would have to be researched. There used to be ONE voice over talent who would narrate the bulk of these that appear on the revival circuit and on TCM, but keep in mind that is because it's largely the output of one or two studios that are owned by Turner - MGM chiefly. The style of narration is bombastic and semi-comic to hear now, but memorable and it certainly did the job back in the day. I can recall WHERE EAGLES DARE and NIGHT MOVES specifically as having these promotional shorts made but I am sure I have seen many others for USA studio product. These were films that the studio hoped to make a good return upon, with name cast and directors involved and a budget that could support what we now call an EPK crew's expenses. EPK = electronic press kit. Technical advances and visual effects movies were often the excuse to record and distribute these films, which were likely shown to exhibitors at conventions to ensure theaters continued to book the studio's product. One early notable example of a behind the scenes promo is available for us to see on DVD, and that is a television special made to promote John Ford's THE SEARCHES that aired prior to the film's release mid 1950s. Some claim that is the first of its kind, but newsreels date all the way back to the dawn of cinema, and there is behind the scenes footage of Charlie Chaplin making his early comedies, and some rather famous footage of all the MGM directors standing in a line in the mid 1920s that was shot on a "Studio tour" short subject. Gone With The Wind had many "searching for scarlet" casting newsreels produced. You are going to have to define your terms better to arrive at various "firsts," but the basic answer is, since the beginning.

BAD idea, and I hope you don't have scratches/ pressure marks/ cinching damage. At the worst you might have considered running the film through the camera in the dark while hand holding the coned reel as a way to wind it onto the takeup side of a mag, then reversing it off the takeup reel by running the camera backwards but then your image would have passed through the gate three times before processing. A better way would have been to simply feed the film onto the takeup by hand using the rulon drive gear, possibly. Then with two empty mags in the dark, reverse the wind onto a second takeup side of a mag, using the magazines as a crude rewind table. It would likely take four hands and be a touchy procedure. Still in an emergency I would trust that over the option of forcing the reel flat. The proper EMERGENCY remedy is to use rewinds, carefully and slowly so as not to create static electricity sparks. The nearest cinema would have them but of course you would need to move them or construct a temporary darkroom... the best way would be to do it at the lab, at the earliest opportunity. The recommended way would be to reject the film out of hand as unacceptable. If it is worth shooting it is worth shooting right. Most importantly I hope the assistant consulted the DP before attempting any remedy. I'm not sure what your time constraints were but a reshoot takes longer than anything.

You may be correct, or "grammatically correct" in that on second look I can see it is not a tilt, it is a rise. A move like that could be done with a tripod that has a geared riser column that is driven by a crank. Or, like you say it was done in post production by zooming in on a frame. I think it was done with a geared riser in camera, but I am biased because that's the way I'd do it.... A few months back I even sketched out a plan for a tall twin column riser made from nesting PVC pipe that would work with dripping water to lower a camera slowly for a time lapse move that isn't a pan or a tracking shot, and doesn't require electronic motion control. Haven't built it yet, though. In any case it's a pretty cool video.

This is simply time lapse footage, from long exposures... longer than two seconds, I would say judging from the spirals visible from the possibly wounded bugs that are auguring in from high, creating the vertical spirals that span the full height of the frame. Maybe four to six seconds on some of the shots? The depth of field suggests that the long exposure time is compensated with a high f/stop. There is a part toward the last where the camera pans SMOOTHLY up the telephone pole that seems like motion control, as well. The tilt up is gradual and controlled, in any case. Perhaps a geared head of some sort was employed, although it may be improvised from something simpler, and manipulated by hand between frames. A worm gear on a tilt plate would do the trick, if the operator remained vigilant and used a wrench to give the same measured turn after each shutter click.

Getting back to the original question, the answer is that a "Straight to DVD" film doesn't really exist anymore. It's more "Straight to digital" since a lot of revenue can be sought through Video on Demand, streaming, television sales, foreign sales, etc. if the movie has any aspects that can be marketed/ exploited, etc. and anyone who wants to sell or buy a film is going to want those rights to be part of the deal as well. There are established genres like "horror" and "mexican narcotraficante" that can be pandered to, but even those have a wide range of sales figures. Recent indie fare from second tier festivals are "enjoying" deals like, "IFC would love to distribute your touching personal drama," for NOTHING, sign here" and picking up product from directors and producers who jump at the chance to have their film shown in any market. So the money figure you wish someone would cough up here isn't going to be an easy one to quote. It is rumored that the 70 million dollar budgeted CHE duo of films sold to IFC-on-Demand for 100k. Everything else that they have bought recently has been for significantly less, ie, nothing or next to nothing. And they are "the only ones who are buying nowadays'" according to some. Then again, the answer you are probably looking for is that if a distributor can manage to sell a film to various tiers of sales, there are reasonable figures you can attach to the idea. The make-or-break point in the USA usually comes when the buyer from large outlets like Blockbuster or Best Buy, Fry's, etc decides whether or not to order the film. Their criteria is going to be, if Joe Six Pack spends twelve seconds looking at the box on the shelf, is he going to say to himself, "oh yeah, I've heard of (fill in the blank) and I love movies where people (fill in the blank), especially when the smokin' hot girl on the box here is going to (fill in the blank) with the (whatever... there are some sick people out there) then he stands a reasonable chance of renting or buying it, having heard NOTHING at work or on the radio or on television or internet or in a magazine about the actual movie itself. He's ONLY going by what is on the box itself and what he's heard or more likely IMAGINES he has heard about the movie's "elements" in conjunction with OTHER, more successful films from the past. This is why "Underwater Zombie vs Ninja Sex Change Buddy" movies still get made, and star D list actors who fail to carry the plot from A to B, much less engage a couch potato who has smoked ten bong hits and drank a twelve pack hoping against hope that THIS underwater Zombie ninja teen sex change comedy will be better than the last ten he rented. And aren't we lucky? If you can get K-Mart, for example to order the film "Billy's Little Independent Christmas Slasher Sled Dogs Movie" starring the corpse of Bela Lugosi's Pomeranian and Pamela Anderson's illegitimate daughter (or similar semi-marketable names) then you might eventually approach six figures, but I wouldn't bet the farm on it. More like "you are so lucky to be offered five figures, take it, I know you are losing money but take it." And yes, one is a figure that can have four zeros behind it. In the past, if an established distributor saw the potential for a film to get some attention and attract a renter on a shelf based on KNOWN salable elements of any kind, and they really LIKE the film and trust themselves, they might go as high as a 30-50k advance, knowing that these are levels at which they can afford to take a risk, based on sales they know they can push through. That's assuming the film has the production value of a 500k film (regardless of it's actual cost, but trust me, there is usually a way to tell if you have spent less. It's called "this looks like poop and sounds worse!). Of course, the structure of such a deal is everything. You, the film maker or investor/producer may be offered (if you were so lucky) a deal in which you "take the risk" with the DVD distributor and get your tiny advance but share in a better split after costs are recouped (this is cheaper for them, obviously) or you might try to negotiate a deal where you the film maker gets as large an advance as the distrib has ever offered, but if your movie somehow becomes a runaway hit you don't share in the windfall. But those sorts of deals are gone with the wind. All of this adds up to, please don't make another film the world does not need, or cannot use, even if you think you have a novel approach to add (but THIS TIME the emo asian shark is really a ninja zombie ghost assassin in disguise, and the hero has an iphone app that will unleash the teenage lesbian army to defeat the bad sharks!) Or, short answer... none. The AVERAGE straight to DVD film loses money because the hoped for sale never happens because the film is never even shot, much less completed. And of the ones that are released, the AVERAGE figure is very very low. Upper four figures, lower five figures at best. But again, keep in mind we are talking about the best, most successful ones here.

http://onlyangelshavewingsblog.blogspot.co...ks-like-we.html here's a step by step method that uses FCP's compressor and NeoScene HD from Cineform- the directions are for 30-24p but should be the similar. I've had good results with this method in a test environment. If you have the time to do some tests, let us know what method you liked the best.

What kind of answer would you expect in a forum for professionals? Of course you should always have a full prep day... But let's for a moment assume there was a REALLY good reason to try something different. If you absolutely wanted to save money, you might possibly talk to your first AC and figure out a way to schedule YOUR shoot day for a day or two after a bigger job wraps, a job where your first AC is working with the EXACT same package and can certify to you that he or she prepped the gear well and that it worked perfectly... and then hopefully the rental house didn't mess it up checking it back in and then out to you.... see what I mean? Even then it is a gamble. And you can BET that the one piece of gear that is different - something as simple as a tripod spreader - could fail and ruin the entire shoot when you suddenly get the dreaded "bambi on the ice" moment and have no one to blame but yourself. Never mind all the finicky, delicate ELECTRONIC parts of a Red package. Your best bet would be to schedule two or three jobs of your own back to back that have the same requirements for a camera package, prep them once and use the same crew and gear for all jobs, shot quickly in succession or even simultaneously - shoot three green screen and three tabletop setups in a row, with different products or spokesmodels, etc for example and then bill each client for the same prep day, I guess. Doesn't sound totally ethical but it might be one way to go if you are determined to shave some bucks off someplace. There is always the temptation to ask yourself "What would Roger Corman do?" but the answer is, he would get EVERYONE to work for free but two people - the first AC and the sound mixer. Everyone else on set is primarily a creative person and willing to work hard and professionally for the experience - and none of them would bother to waste their time doing so with questionable gear package and prep. So in the end you see that you are trying to reinvent the wheel here and that in the real world it can't be done. Either you take a huge risk with no prep day or you do it right and be a professional.

I am no RED expert, nor do I possess any inside information. Just passing this along to this forum. Some software ships today; some actual photos of an EPIC brain in various configs and a lot of new news (ie. vague but hopeful announcements) and as usual it may take a bit of time to decipher exactly what is happening here. But from a quick glance it seems that there is a real super-35mm sized sensor in a prototype brain out there in the world now and it can take Nikon F, canon EOS and PL mounts. And... Jim J. has the only one. But they have hopes for a beta testing program that puts EPIC modular camera systems in the hands of some pioneering users by the end of the year, which to me signals that they must be pretty close to finishing with only a few more problems, software based mostly, to be ironed out. Then there are various announcements regarding prices and the schedule of trade-ins vs upgrades etc, which is a very hopeful sign that they really must be close to a shipping date for the beta models - they know what it costs to build the hardware, at the very least. I'm glad for RED, they seem to really be working to adjust amidst the changing economy and competition, manly from Canon in the form of the pro-sumer 5D and 7D cameras and also the GL-1 from panasonic. The announcement cites problems with some of their suppliers going under in this bad economy, as well as veiled but tacit admissions that Canon and Panasonic and Nikon are kicking their asses when it comes to selling SOMETHING to a large sector of the market where they had hoped to create inroads - the consumer/prosumer buyers. RED seems to really be responding to the changing market - and they are going to do it by attempting to serve the professionals first, which makes sense. They are an innovative company with a niche market in mind. And they probably can't sell a consumer/prosumer camera just yet and make a profit doing so, which is perfectly understandable. Instead they are relying on creativity, sensitivity ( by that I mean listening to cinematographers) and innovation to challenge their competitors. I think they have consistently strived to put out a product that will do what no other cameras can do; and the bar is getting higher to clear but they seem to have a good track record at doing so. One of the innovations they seem to be close to being able to achieve is going to be a touch screen focus feature that will control autofocus canon and nikon lenses within a motion picture shot, and their own line of autofocus lenses in the future.... which is somewhat revolutionary, assuming it will work. And can be made quiet enough for motion picture sync sound work.... Another proposed innovation concerns a way for a camera to record metadata that makes a record of what moves were employed in a shot; so that it will work with CGI post production better. This may be a serious selling point for FX feature and commercial production. Kudos to the people at RED for soldiering on. They do seem to be on the brink of a new era for the company, and we all stand to benefit from their hard work.

If you are in NOLA, you might want to check out the exact rules for tax exemption status regarding film production - your state has a good incentive package going right now. I bought a 5D mk2 in texas with a form from the film commission that exempted taxes, from a Best Buy with a 10% off coupon for "any item" I got off the internet and saved a bundle, cheaper even than "beards and hats" store in NYC. And I didn't pay any shipping, either, or have to wait for the postman which was nice. But beware grey market and scammers. You WILL get burned. It's not often you can do better than Samy's or B+H prices on new gear. How do they do it? Volume, volume, volume - plus a LOT of satisfied, return customers.

As always, the answer is "better how?" and "better for whom?" This is the answer that could probably be tagged onto every post with "vs" in the subject heading: SHOOT YOUR OWN TEST AND JUDGE THE RESULTS FOR YOURSELF (and then post the results for others....) So yeah, borrow or rent them together and do a serious test in the conditions that fit your project/s. That said, here are some gross generalizations: If you are shooting low light, you are going to like the 5D better. The 7D has the benefit of newer firmware and 24p is indeed slower (meaning longer exposure per frame) than 30p, but the larger sensor on the 5D has an interesting factor going for it, and that is the ratio of usable photosites to the ratio of unusable area on the sensor - the dividers, as it were between each little lens that makes a pixel. The better that ratio, the smoother the image and that adds up to less noise at higher ISOs. (Keep in mind however that the newer pro canons will improve on the low light/ high ISO stuff as they are released, too and may quickly outpace both of these prosumer cameras.) If you are planning on finishing to 35mm film for theatrical presentation, you are going to want to shoot 24/25p and should pick the 7D if you are shooting right away. But be advised that the 24/25p firmware update for the 5D mk2 is now officially in the works from canon, but may not be here for a few more months. They are saying "first half of 2010" which seems to mean "after we sell all these 7Ds in the warehouse for christmas." If you are hoping to use some PL mount lenses, go with the 7D. Many cine lenses will be compatible, and people have built PL adapters already that fit longer focal lengths and some zooms as well. The wide lenses that are not retrofocus are a problem, since the rear element does not clear the SLR mirror. What are your intentions, who is your audience and what presentation format are you hoping for? What is your budget/ experience level and artistic intentions? What will the size/ breakdown of your crew be? What lenses do you already own? What is your editing workflow likely to be? All of these are factors you need to consider in choosing one camera over the other. Lots of questions before you can say one is better than another. Also, keep in mind the overall cost of your entire shooting/ editing package and plan accordingly. The money you save buying a 7D can be applied towards getting a better follow focus or a better monitor, etc. and possibly even some more lights which you will need to shoot indoors with....

The AI manual focus nikkors work quite well with the canon 5D mk2. Some lenses do indeed have a half circle flange that protects the rear element that will hit the mirror - look out for the 24mm, the 20mm and possibly others. The nikkor 85mm f 1.4 is a great lens for low light shooting, and the 85mm 1.8 isn't bad, either. I like the f2.8 24mm and the f1.4 35mm, quite a bit. As with 35mm motion picture, the nikkon 300mm f 2.8 is a great lens, too. Some eos to nikon F adapters are better than others, and some lenses that still have "ears" for coupling with non-AI bodies may have to have the ears removed to fit fully. Novoflex makes the most expensive - I won't say the best - but the most professional adapter. The way that the adapter locks onto the nikkors, however leads one to the conclusion that putting adapters onto each lens is the best way to work, and that steers you towards buying hong kong adapters (less than ten dollars each) and also getting some canon rear caps so they lenses can travel and store at the ready. There will be some quality control issues with the cheap adapters - you may want to order a few extra, or try more than one brand to see which you like the best. I've had good luck with Bogens, but YMMV. Working in low light is where this camera out preforms others, but the caveat is that the sensor and lenses are more sensitive and faster, etc than the camera's ability to allow you to monitor critical focus, so if you think you have a sharp image, don't count on it until you review the shot in full HD on a good sized monitor.

No, the exact quote is "first half of 2010" not beginning of 2010. Cultural differences aside, that could mean June 29th... or whenever Canon feel like it has sold enough 7Ds and other back stock. <_< I seriously doubt there is a lot of work involved in developing this software/ firmware upgrade. A few lines of code somewhere need to be re-written. It would be nice if they were to fix the color space issues as well so that it worked right with Final Cut Pro. Still, it is better late than never. But it merely proves it was never a hardware issue, and that they could have delivered it over a year ago had they developed the camera with digital cinematographers and indie film makers in mind from the start. The 5d mk2 was developed by the still camera division, without a lot of consulting from the video engineers and developers. A fascinating combination of accidental brilliance and insanely bad oversight.

Glad to see you join the disucssion Jonne. Your experiences are helpful to hear. I'm curious what anyone thinks about the idea of adapting the Russian 35mm cine mount lenses to a Canon camera. Having a cine lens with the attendant rack focus control and spacing seems like a no-brainer for achieving quality, careful motion picture use. Having said that, how would anyone who has experience with the iscoscope lens AND has shot and or assisted w 35mm motion picture lenses compare the two? I'd be curious to see what a Clairmount tilt-shift lens rig in the hands of Jonne would be like, especially if it was mounted with a cine anamorphic lens to it, if that were even possible given the weight.