Jason Rodriguez

So how much footage are you shooting per day, and how many hard-drives is it going to take to stash that stuff? A 250GB hard-drive will hold around 14-minutes of footage from an HDC-F950. Also 250GB HD's are around $180. You might want to drop the director's friend and go with the much "friendlier" (IMHO) S-Two with the D-Mag's. Having four D-Mag's on set with the S-two unit is around $1800 per day for 2 hours of 10-bit DPX@24p footage.

Hmm, I was reading the article in question and Marvin is saying that there's some big "new" improvements in the MarkIII cameras-and that they rival film?? I mean there are some improvments, but again apart from customizable gamma curves, I can't think of anything else.

Is this still the F900 we're talking about? Just curious what's changed for the better, is it a more through understanding of what an HD camera can/can't do, have the post-production processes gotten better, or is it the camera itself that has gotten better? Are they using the new custom gamma curves that you can program with the CvpFileEditor for better highlight control? Just curious since it is STILL and F900 we're talking about here (I assume), and I don't think it's changed that much since it first came out. There have been some improvements, but nothing that I'd regard as revolutionary. BTW, are they recording HDCAM or HDCAM-SR (via a tethered deck)? I would guess that'd make a big difference.

I'm hoping it's a better signal path. Hopefully I'll be getting some footage soon. If it works out, then yah, I'm pretty jazzed over this approach since it means no more compressed tapes and expensive tape decks (although I'll have to spend more on hard-drives).

Hey all, great points, but I'm wondering about that DAV Cineglyph. Has anybody heard of those telecines before? How do they compare to a Spirit? BTW, they're using the Blackmagic Uncompressed 10-bit 4:2:2 codec. Basically they have the telecine hooked up via HD-SDI to a Mac/Blackmagic HD card, and they're recording from there. Best-light transfers only, which again isn't bad since I'll have 10-bit uncompressed Quicktimes for the final color-correct/home-brewed-DI. But I'm a little nervous about that telecine, and am wondering if anybody's worked with them before. Jason

Hello, I'm not sure if anybody's seen this tapeless workflow that Bono Labs (a new division of Bono Film and Video) in Arlington has been advertising, but it looks quite interesting to me. Has anybody done any work through Bono before on their DAV Cineglyph. I've never heard of this telecine before, and I'm wondering if the quality will be up to par. It seems like a nice concept since I can do a flat transfer to an uncompressed 10-bit Quicktime format and color-correct my final piece on the Mac using a good color-correction program like Color Finesse. I can then make a nice digital file out of my piece for a relatively cheap cost. So, what to do? Should I take my chances with this "new" workflow, or look for a more traditional Spirit transfer to say, D5?

Hey Everybody, Thanks again for the replies. I will definitely then be staying away from the Ang 12-120, although it's up in the air right now if I'll be using an LTR after all . . . Either way I know much better now what to watch out for. Thanks.

BTW, does anybody know what the bayer algorithms will look like out of the Kinetta? I've been doing some research into that lately, and from the algorithms I've seen that are available via research paper, etc. things look pretty dicey. I know that what I get out of my Canon D60 looks really good, but besides Canon or Nikon, the other camera manufacturer's stuff can look pretty bad, and those industrial cameras can look even worse. Basically I'm hoping there's no problems with "zippering", "gridding" (where you can see the bayer pattern in an out-of-focus or gradient area), or color moiré. Also no wierd twittering or fridging along moving edges that will require some sort of blurring filter to remove the offending artifacts, thereby reducing the resolution of the image.

The DVX mod (dvinfo.net) uprezzed in a program like S-Spline looks very good IMHO. You might want to wait for that, as it'll give you 12-bit information to do all you CC'ing on, etc. Much more information and latitude that HDV.

Yeah, I've seen the "smeary" look and hate it, although I've been gulty of that myself when I didn't realize that the Shutter button was "OFF" even though I turned it "ON" in the menu. BTW, if you have the shutter at 1/48th, you shouldn't get any abnormally smeary "video look" motion blur, would you?

What's the difference between color-correcting a purple dress and adding power-windows all the time? From a demo I saw at NAB of Lustre and the work they did on Master and Commander, they tweaked every scene with a lot of different windows, etc., so CC'ing a dress wouldn't have been much of an additional workflow cost. Also if the genesis has a matrix like the other Sony cameras, then I'm sure you can set Purple to whatever you want.

Yah, I was worried the Angenieux was old, so if that's the case, are we talking about geting a 70's look on everything, even if we're shooting Vision2?

I'm not too sure about this, it seems as though these "cheap" workflows are only good for personal projects, because frankly as a paying client I would never put my production at risk with such a "piled-together" product. Just recently I had to cancel a shoot after our F-900 came up with a broken servo in the VTR, so if something as simple as that can go and destroy hours of a shoot, I'd hate to see what could happen wrong with this system. Which also brings up the fact of how much shooting do you actually plan on doing versus tinkering with the camera/computer? I find that even current HD cameras like the F-900 can be tinker-mania, and they are much better set-up than these industrial cameras and the poor frame grabber software that's out there. So again, you're spending at least $6,000 for the complete system, enough to get you a tricked-out F-900 for a week-and-a-half, sometimes two weeks depending on who you talk to and what deals you can make. Downconversions for editing can be done for around $100 per tape, and then online for HD (if you find someone with an HD FCP system) can be done for $400/hr. There's a lot you can do with the money you're about to spend on a camera system that may not make you very productive on set, and cause you to loose the focus of the actors, crew, etc., which is nothing to sneeze at. In other words, if you're trying to direct and tinker with your toy becaue you're the only one who knows how to use it, you're going to have problems-at least more so than with a more tried-and-true approach that other people can help you with. JMHO.

Hi, I've got an LTR 54 that I might be using, and am wondering what the difference is between threading an LTR and an XTR. The XTR looks pretty straight forward, but in the XTR manual they mentioned that there's no "twisiting" or whatever in the DX magazines that is in the LTR magazine. I looked inside the LTR mag today and it looked the same as the XTR, but I just want to make sure before I go threading the LTR the same as the XTR that I don't screw something up. Also is an Angenieux 12-120 a good lens? Never used that lens before, I'm only familiar with Ziess lenses and those are all PL mount, this LTR has Aaton mount.

Theoretically the resolution should be the same, although only when moving, and when viewed on an interlaced monitor. When viewed on a computer screen, if there's movement, then you've reduced the verticle resolution by half, because you must see a whole frame on the computer at any given time, and so in order to see no interlacing artifacts, you're going to have to throw away, or interpolate a full-frame out of an interlaced one. But again, on a still shot, the resolution of both will be the same.

I believe according to a test from *Kodak* (in other words, not Sony; this is sort like Apple running a speed comparison test against a Dell) that the Cinealta had a verticle resolution around 860 lines-per-picture-height (using the ISO 12233 chart). The film (scanned at 4K) was around 1700 lines-per-picture-height. Of course I must commend Kodak because this is the only time I've ever seen the two mediums compared using the same ISO chart and not company specs, so FWIW.

Well, I know the Kinetta is using the Altasens. Ikegami is using them, as well as the new JVC HDV eng-style camera (yuck!). And like I said, there are many, many issues with the industrial cameras, with everything from non-consistent, non-locked record rates (that vary by up to half a frame per second), to rolling shutter artifacts, bad bayer filters, etc., etc. All I know is you can sink a ton of money into those cameras, and get nothing in return that's good for on-site, hard-core professional use (i.e., where you need to get something actually done, and not be tinkering wth your experiment all day). The ouput of these small cameras has a lot of potential, it's just that they're not designed for production.

I heard that there'll be more news on the website mid-summer, so maybe around the middle of July/August. Last I heard they're shooting for a shipping date sometime in the fall, so probably October, November. The Altasens chip they're planning to use isn't even shipping yet commercially. I did hear something about beta units in late summer though. Sounded interesting to me.

Oh, also you need to realize that any camera using the new Altasens chips aren't due to market till the fall anyways, whether that be from Kinetta or anybody else. And if you want a good camera, you'll want a camera that has these chips in them, they're really good and do a full 12-bit direct from the chip's A/D.

Forget all those industrial cameras for production use. If you go over to DVInfo.net where a couple guys in the alternative imaging forum are working on such devices, you'll notice what a mess they're having. If you want a small camera that shoots like this, then wait for the Kinetta, or use the Viper. BTW, best card right now for 4:4:4 is the Blackmagic Decklink HD Pro. Aja hasn't written the drivers for their 4:4:4 version right now in the Kona 2, so who knows how long you'll have to wait for that feature to be activated. And lastly I'll echo David's sentiments-why 30p? That screws everything up, "universal" masters are done at 1080/24p, not 30p.

The Genesis only has a stop over the F900? That's not much then, and wouldn't coincide with the comments about it looking like 35mm, or even what somebody in the Genesis thread described when he aimed the camera at a crowd of people and it captured both the shadows and the hot-lit sunshine falling on the crowd. One stop over the F900 is only around 9-10 stops of lattitude. Not much of an improvement IMHO. The Dalsa has 12-stops of dynamic range according to their engineers.

That $1,000 is ballpark for a supervised HD transfer (at least these are the types of figures I'm getting quoted).

Yes, S16 does win out in the lattitude and color-depth categories, but I find the grain distracting. BTW, I'll have to admit that most of my experience is with TV, and there I've definitely found HDCAM to trump S16, both transfered to digibeta. Of course once you start clipping highlights in HDCAM, things start looking bad. I'm not saying that S16 can't look good, just that I find HDCAM to look cleaner and sharper, but I guess for me, sharper goes hand-in-hand with cleaner. For example, I have DPX files that were scanned from film, and I have HDCAM frames. The HDCAM frames look much sharper/crisper than the film. You can say that the crispness is edge enhancement, but I don't think that's the case (especially when the stuff I shoot has detail turned off). It's just that things look cleaner, that I'm seeing low-contrast detail (not necessarily edge detail) that the film grain softened and masked over. Whether that "window-like" cleaness is desirable or not is a matter of aesthetic opinion. Films in HDCAM that I like? Well, you're probably going to shoot me for this one, but I didn't think SW EPII looked bad. Yes, there were some parts that I noticed noise in the shadows, etc. but overall I was impressed. Once Upon a Time in Mexico looked pretty good to me as well as scenes I've seen from Jackpot. The dreams projects that I saw this past NAB at the Sony screening (which was in HD) looked very nice. Then of course there's stuff that I've shot, which I find look better than many other projects that my friends/co-workers have done on film. Now ultimately the best stuff I've seen was shot on film. Not going to argue with that, but then most of that was 35mm origination, not S16. And I've found with using the CvpFileEditor gamma curves you can get a very nice highlight roll-off in the Cinealta that cushions the clipping that can occur, giving highlights a very nice film-like appearance. The cool thing now is that the Genesis is here, and from what we've heard so far, it's bascially indistinguishable from 35mm film, and uses a menu system close to the F900. Hopefully it won't be too expensive, at least reasonable for mortals like me :)

If you are saying that the "top of the ladder" (for most practical production) is 35mm, then I'd agree with you. If you are saying that "top of the ladder" includes any film, including S16, then I'd have to respectfully disagree. While well-shot S16 on a 35mm blow-up can look good, I don't think it looks better than well shot and color-corrected (this is an important step in any shooting chain) HDCAM blown up to 35mm.

So, changing the topic here a bit, what do you guys think the availability of this thing will be when it comes out? Will it be reserved for the highest-budget, high-profile 35mm projects, or do you think it'll mainly be an indie tool for a while (I hope indies/commerical productions can get it, cause that's where I'm at)? Also price point: so exhorbantly high that you might as well shoot 35, or relatively less expensive, i.e., about the same cost as an F950/Viper for daily rental?