Jump to content

Robert Ruffo

Basic Member
  • Posts

    8
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Profile Information

  • Occupation
    Cinematographer
  1. Sytem won't let me edit my own post - last sentence above should read "those same Alexa-choosing DPs" meaning great DPs, handed an Epic, can and do get great results, just like they do with Alexa.
  2. I've seen that shot - and that was a grading choice I agree is ugly. We've shot lots of dramatic high-key set-ups without any issues like that. Highlight roll-off can look as creamy as Alexa highlights, you just have to know how. I think a reason Alexa is perceived as so much better is that better DPs tend to get Alexas to work with, DPs with more experience. Red has become a bit of a film school camera, so you see endless bad work on Vimeo and in no-budget music videos. That doesn't mean that those same DPs, after learning the system, could not give you as good results with an Epic.
  3. Uh... Here in Montreal many DPs own no gear at all - they get work based on their reel, and rent what they need. We only own an Epic to make a few extra bucks renting it back to our own production (although with recent price drops, that has actually been a money loser, in the past our Red One paid for itself many times over). What gear you own or don't will not affect your career at all, one way or another -it's just a business investment you can make as a DP, knowing that you will be a regular client of your own rental company.
  4. That's an undefended, ignorant position. Blanket statements like that are unhelpful, and when I see so little information added to that kind of "opinion" I tend to guess the person making the statement has no information to back it up, just a bunch of FUD they read on the internet. Those who adopted early made a ton of $$ on rentals and made all of their money back, then had an outrageously generous trade-in to Epic. Now, people shoot beautiful things on Epics and Red Ones that can look just as good as Alexa and F65 in the right hands. (NOT in incompetent hands that do not understand raw post and grading) That said, I think technology is moving so fast now that buying any camera may no longer be a wise investment. It will loose too much value too quickly, so no way for 90% of buyers to recoup in time, not even quite busy ones. I guess we are shifting back to a more rental-oriented model. 6 months ago the Epic sold for $34 500 - now it's $17 500 - to have made that much money in rentals in such a short time, you'd have to be pretty busy, or a dedicated - and very popular - rental house. Brain only in our market rents for about $500 (more for a full package, I'm saying just the brain) so that $17 000 in lost value = 34 rental days, or 11 "3-day weeks" within just 6 months. I can tell you that we were NOT that busy. Most people would be far better off renting for the number of shoot days during that period when they needed the camera, especially those doing ads/corpos/music videos where there is a lot of prep and selling time vs few actual shooting days. Also, by not owning any camera, you can rent whatever si truly best suited to each individual shoot day. Oftentimes that may well be an Epic, other times a Phantom, other times a C500 for ultra low light - each gig is different.
  5. That's an undefended, ignorant position. Those who adopted early made a ton of $$ on rentals and amde all of their money back, then had an outrageously generous trade-in to Epic. Now, people shoot beautiful things on Epics and Red Ones.
  6. 4K has been around for acquisition since 2007 Phil - and Blackmagic don't even have a camera that does that yet available for purchase so your predictions about how Blackmagic will change the world I'm not sure I buy into The demand for 4K monitoring has never been all that huge, however, probably since human eyes at normal viewing distances cannot tell the difference between that and 2K, and a fair number of people can't even tell between 720p and 1080p (I'm not saying they don't care - that's another issue - I'm saying their eyes leave them physically unable to see it). I co-own a boutique post house- we work on $1 million 30 sec spots sometimes. We see no ned whatsoever to buy 4K monitors, not for our feature work, not for anything. Just no reason. Why? Because telling me you can't grade or do VFX on a calibrated 2K monitor is simply ludicrous.
  7. How can something free "come with" something?
  8. Epic pictures when shot knowledgeably and graded properly have beautiful roll-off - they don;t hard clip at all, even when fully blasted elements are in-frame I don't like their over-hyped, Maxim magazine style marketing, and I like their high-school cafeteria-style cool-kid preferentialism even less - in other words, I'm no fanboy, not by a mile, but credit where credit is due - the Epic is a great camera, and if you saw crap images from it, you were really looking at a cinematographer's or a post person's incompetence, not a limitation of the gear. Proof is the many features shot on Red that indeed look great, Gone (the recent thriller) being a prime example (shot on Epic). I could show you some horrible clippy-looking footage shot on Alexa and F65 too - even shot on 35mm film - all it takes is incompetence somewhere along the line.
  9. And there is the issue - does it really resolve 4K? Or far less than that (likely)
  10. After seeing the moire and other issues on the first BMC, I have zero interest.
  11. We love our Epic - its' been a non-existent rental market - all Alexa here pretty much, but for our own jobs its' been a wonder in a box. That's why I have no interest in upgrading - just how bad a cinematographer do you need to be to requite more than 13.5 stops of dynamic range, at a native, almost noise-free 800 ISO? That's what an Epic-X is. Its' fine. It works perfectly well, even for stills work. It never lets us down. If you can't get great images with an Epic, it's because you just can't get great images, period. If I did documentaries in the desert at high noon, I would get it. This I don't. 5K is more than enough resolution - it resolves slightly more than any of my (great) prime lenses - and it's already choking post - I don't want the data headaches of 6K. Skyfall was shot at 2K - and looked great even on an Imax screen. The mega-pixel race was silly past a certain point in stills cams, and now it is even more silly in cine-cams, which, after all, we use to shoot moving subjects with at 1/48th second, and often with ever so slightly imperfect focus pulls, even with the best ACs. Does any Epic owner say "gee, I hate my footage, because 5K is just too low res?" Slomo is more than slow enough on our Epic - it wasn't too great on Red one (is even worse on Scarlet) but although we often do a little in our fashion and music video work, we don't need to make scientific studies of water behavior, just make dresses look more flowy, and 96fps is ample for that. 13.5 stops is more than enough - in fact much more often than not we only choose a partial slice of that in the grade, because otherwise you are looking at something very flat and log-like. Color is superb (if you know how to shoot and grade Red.) MX upgrade was a no-brainer, as the original M was just too light hungry and the fixed-pattern noise was awful Epic upgrade was nice for the wider field of view on lenses, the better slo-mo, and most of all because it was just light enough to not be too light. But now? Now I often use ND, even on night scenes, because standard lighting is too much at high ISOs and shallow f-stops. Now I'm just happy. Now I have other things to put 9.5K plus 7.5K for a new rocket on (plus even more $$ on upgraded editing drives, bigger SSD mags, etc etc.) and then there is the issue that our MX One will no longer match as a b-Cam (even more expense, need to buy a new B-Cam..) especially for a system that still won't rent much, because most producers just want easy prores on an easy camera (Alexa). So whether or not Dragon delivers on tech spec (I don;t doubt that it will), I don't feel it delivers on being a good business investment in the real world, where the resolution specs of Epic are already a turn-off to most buyers of our services.
×
×
  • Create New...