Christoph Heimer

Well, I was not the director, but am only the editor of the movie, so I didnt have any influence on what was going on during the shoot with the camera. But what you tell me there is what I had feared worst. They shot everything on 1/24, and like that the footage does look indeed. It's horrible, we had another shoot with the same dp one year ago on a xl1s and he always wanted to go 1/25 because it "looks so cool". I tried to force him to use 1/50 as often as possible because imo it looks more film-like, but obviously he is not able to see the difference... 4 years of studying cinematography did had no effect on him at all as it seems... Argh I'm freaking out!! What an idiot :angry:

Hello, I just finished a shoot on the varicam and do now have to cut the movie. I was not the DoP and so was not allowed to change any settings of the camera. On the first day of the shoot I looked on the preview monitor and thought "that looks like 1/25 shutter on my dvx100". "Is the shutter speed set to 1/50?" I asked the DoP (who had never shot on a Varicam before) "the shutter is off -> in standard mode -> on 1/50!". Ok I thought, when the shutter on my dvx100 is deactivated, it works in 1/50 mode, so I guess he has to be right... But now in postproduction, I see the Varicam footage every day and there it has so much motionblur that it can't possible be shot in 1/50 mode. The shots look very video-like, nearly like interlaced, but are 720p 23,96fps. Does anybody who has shot something on the varicam know how the shutter speed settings work? I would like to know if anybody else has made the same experiences and how to avoid it on my next shoot! Thanks in advance :)

Well, just wait some time, You won't get any ArriD20 to your hands in the near future too, because they are working on it while the Drake is developed too. Be patient... B)

I tested the Mini35 from my dvx100 with the Z1 last week too and the results where awesome! On a SD TV you simply could not make out any difference to a 35mm film commercial. I did not see the footage on a big screen yet, but I cant wait to.

Hello fellows, it is one week ago, that I had the Drake in my hands and shot some test footage. There are some interesting things to note about the camera. http://tuxsolutions.de/chfilm/drake1.jpg (Don't mind the prehistorical look of the camera, 2 weeks ago on a roadshow both d20s from arri did NOT work, but the drake did, so its unimportant how it looks atm) I tested the 8bit version of the camera, but i also saw some footage of a new prototype which records 12 bit and yes guys, you are right, the 8 bit IS undersaturated. But the 12 bit is NOT. You have a converter software with the camera which allows you to simply change EVERYTHING. It is like when you have raw images of a canon 300d in photoshop, and that footage is definitly not undersaturated or anything else. This one ist not yet ready too, but they're working on it. In the meanwhile, we have to be happy with the 8 bit camera which is not bad at all. The handling of the camera has to be optimized, but the technical part works fine. There is no compression and though it has only 8 bits, you are able to push the saturation. I uploaded 3 test shots: http://tuxsolutions.de/chfilm/judith_hd.wmv http://tuxsolutions.de/chfilm/vogel_hd.wmv http://tuxsolutions.de/chfilm/chris.wmv There is some dirt on the lense, please don't care about it. I am quite happy with the cam, but it's a pitty that the contrast is way worse that i thought it to be. We filmed a house against the sky and it looked nearly like dv because the sky was all white while the house looked quite normal. Well, we have to use ND filters, but maybe, we will be able to shoot our movie with the 12 bit equipment and that does really rock! :) @mike: I have not tested the drake on a remote head, but there is one great feature: You can remove the camera head from the recording part and you have a camera which is smaller than a fist so could do great things with it like moving it through veeerry small doorgaps or something.

I can't say anything about the scale which the company will have once it is founded, but i'm sure, that you will have very good support, at least if you live in europe. I don't even know if they want to ship the camera to u.s. ... :huh: But 4:4:4 720p 8 bits COMPLETELY UNCOMPRESSED will definitly be a lot better than DVCPRO HD of HVX200. And what you allyways forget is the possbility of mounting lenses of all kind on this camera which gives you the possibilty of having a DOF like 35mm if you have (like we have ;) ) a f0,7 Schneider lense. You are allways complaining about the washed out colors. I saw an example clip where the colors were everything but not undersaturated. Wait a few weeks (maybe two or three) and we will have some OWN test footage.

"Will color be good with a 1 chip camera?" Yes, color is quite astonishing film like! It seems to be a bit undersaturated, but it looks just like film!! They are still optimizing the colors, but think of the arri d20 which has only one singel chip, too. Drake uses a Cmos sensor which gives you really impressive colors like with a dslr! "Does it have a DSP for gamma, knee, color matrix etc?" There will be lots of presets for gamma and color, about 30 afaik and you will be able to set the curves manually in a real GUI, not like at the dvx100. "By the way, when will it ship, if ever?" This camera will definitly ship! They are organising the first deals to film academys right now. If you order one camera, you will get one! As soon as they have the first 3 customers, they go to a factory, give them the cad files and wil produce a larger amount of cameras mechanically. "But 19k sounds too expensive for a home made camera. Specially now with the HVX200 for 6K. The HVX200 shoots 108024p which the Drake does not and also has variable frame rates. It's a 1/3", but it has 3 chips at least. " Now, with the HVX200 released for 6k , I have the same opinion like you about the price. But otherwise look what you will get: The Drake is really woth the price and it is A LOT more closer to the dream of all the Indi filmmakers to get the Filmlook than any 1/3" CCD Camera will ever be. The colors are really astonishing and the contrast range is phantastic. especially in comparison to the one of normal video cameras. If 35mm film has a contrast range of 80, the drake has 70 and pal minidv has 35 or so. At least thats what they told me! And think of the date rate and the 4:4:4 color compression. Over 400mbit/s in comparision to the 60 or so of the HVX200 in 720P! The record medium is a lot cheaper, but thats a little problem: The HUGHE amount of filmdata which you will get. That's our problem at the moment too! Well, that's all i can tell you about the drake, but I think, it is a very great camera! :)

At dvxuser.com there's a big preview about the camera with many details! Sounds too good to be true. The only problem seems to be the price for P2 cards... :(

Thanks for your fast response! To answer a few questeions: We thought of a 3ware Escalade 9500S-8 Raid Controller on a Tyan Thunder K8W S2885ANRF Mobo. But if think that the dual Opterons have too much performance for us or at least that we can get away with a less powerfull system, this would be great because we havn't that much money. Do you think we will be able to edit Online on a Fast PCI X Board for P4 3,6 or so with the same raid controller? :)

Hello, (please excuse my english) I live quite next to the guys woh built the Drake Camera and was able to convince them to borrow us the first functional one for a student movie, 90 minutes. The camera gives us a data stream of 22mb/s raw files on portable notebook hdds which we have to convert to 66 mb/s uncompressed avi. The quality is incredible! But we ask ourselves, how to edit this movie. In any case we have to buy equipment, because the only thing we have right now is a P4 2,8 , 1Gb mem for dv editing. It would be nice to edit online but we calculated a bit and came to a price of 6k ? . Dual Opteron 2,2 2Gb ram many other stuff (mobo, s-ata controller, graphics card etc) 8x400 GB Raid 5. The controller gives us a max read speed of 400 Mb/s. Do you think this would be fast enough to edit online? Which software would you recommend? I'm a (dont hurt me) Adobe Premiere user. I was not able to find a way to display HD footage on a 2nd tft monitor via Premiere?! Is this possible? Other solution would be a dual g5, but that would come even more expensive (and don't forget: student project -> no money ;)) The final solution would be an offline workstation. P4 3,6, 2 GB Ram + Raid 5. Possible? Or Macintosh with FCP5 which was announced yesterday at NAB ? What do you think? We are looking for a cheap possibility and i don't have people in my neighbourhood who know about such stuff ;) Are you able to help? I would also post some results of the camera in daylight situations weh we have shot some test footage in may! :)