Michael Collier

If you can handle the HD-100 I would go for that. Not because it has a higher quality than the DVX (it does) or less compression than the ZU1 (being 720p and 24fps it has aprox 1/2 the compression, the ZU1 is overcompressed) I would recomend that camera to a beginner just out of respect to the lens. I fujinon lens (believe it or not) will help your photography in actual application. Sure its nice to have a compact lens whos inner workings are a mystery, but a solid manual lens has a meaning I cant quite describe. critical focus is easier to accompish (and maintain) you get a better sense for the optics properties when everything responds to your hand movement (with no electronics to dampen the input) Also fujinons are very tough (I have a lens that has worked more than 10 years of news ENG use in Alaska (this includes shooting Iditarod at -10 flying down the track in a snowmobile) and the thing still holds up today.) In the end the lens is the key. Since the rest of the camera function is very similar to other models, that is the feature that pushes it over the top. another question that has never been answered for me (and it could be because the lenses in the handycams are not retrofocus, or maybe they are, i cant remember) how the heck do you adjust backfocus on those things! if they go out does the digital focal plane measurments mean nothing? Now if you get that or another HDV cam let me give you some tips (I think im the only one on the board who has used HDV) First if its going to be heavily color corrected or is for SD release I would recomend shooting mini-DV. HDV can be color corrected but in my experience that is limited. The limit exists not in its color space, but compression. there is something very unnatural about MPEG block noise. This noise is not apparent in the raw footage, but pushed too much and it looks really bad. If you want the HD (And trust me it looks beautiful) get the following: (when money is availible) 1. polorizing filter (linear, and a circular if you want) 2. Real MAgics DVrack with the HDV extension.....very key to get into a professional cinema workflow. You need to know how to read a vect/waveform monitor. 3. A good tripod. nothing less than a bogen 501head with solid sticks. 4. A good monitor. Doesnt need to be pro, since you probably dont want to spend 10k on an HD monitor, but spend the 400 bucks to get a good HD CRT (not plasma or LCD) of a decent size (27" or so) 5. Get a good mic. the one they provide will not be adequate for moviemaking. look on ebay for a senhizer ME-66 or ME-88. 6. A good computer with adobe premiere 1.5 Editing with HDV is not really a problem. I can scrub timeline and make edits and renders

Please do, I mean nothing by it. You do come from a different world though, with things moving as quick as they do. I have had a computer throughout my film-making career. This 'new digital workflow' is really just an extention of what I have been doing for years, with more sophistocated equipment. And yes film has more information. Now. yes. There are a lot of desions to be made on set. Least of those would be coloring in my mind. Yes you should with colors on the mind. You know you will de-sat greatly in post, but you wait until post to do it. Just as a DP now will push or pull their stock to get a desired effect, I would also shoot as I know a color correction session would modify certain aspects of the picture. Its all a mental thing on set. Use your mind. Take a picture in your head. Imagine what happens when you desat. or crush blacks, or change tonal width. With extensive color correcting experience a DIT is a time waster and competition for what I believe to be MY FRAME (not that im arrogent, I just take great pride in my work. If I am responsible for the look of the film, I want that to include coloring) Also a DIT means that you have some form of compression, which for a film-out release is unacceptable. If the best CCDs are only barley kissing the line of what film can do, why do we want to throw half the info out? A DIT means your accepting limitations in a very flexible medium. I dont know how much experience yall have with color correcting, but it is my experience that once color corrected, it must be done again. Usually several times to find a look everyone can agree on. Nothing major, just finding that proper balance. I enjoy that possibility to change the film, even if slightly, to find the better movie that dwells within. In Response to this about DITs No, I willingly would accept an engeneer on board to keep the camera running within spec. But when it comes to making desicions about colors in my frame I am a little uneasy with. I have enough experience in those sort of settings that I can get what I want (I set color matrix and set-up almost everyday both in SD and HD) so its not that nobody could possibly know more than me, its this: nobody knows exactly whats in my head until you see the footage. The big things I can pass off to others. Im comfortable telling a camera op to shoot a med. shot. But when it comes to fine tuning the image I am a stickler, because it means everything to me. In the end a DIT on my set would be unhappy, I would dictate the settings and he would basicly be there for nothing more than to push buttons.

If you were out on a sunny day and irised down to 11 or 16 would it photograph? Thats what I would be worried about. Any dust at all will decrease light transmission and change the speed of the lens. It might also impart a desaturation effect/color shift. But maybe I assume there is more dust in there than really is?

I agree with your concept of a workflow in theory. Some things I would change. I would not have a LUT applied to my screen (the directors, maybe) that puts it the 'way i want it' I have been color correcting my footage for years on computer so I sort of know how it should look if I see something just ballanced for 3200k (basic LUT to show what the baseline is) I like to see the image to know how far in post I have to take it and in my head I can visualize what is possible. But working the LUT on set is a time waster when I would rather spend that on lighting (remember, digital should speed things up, always faster) The uncompressed cams are the ones that interest me. Its true a camera (ENG, non-RAW) has almost the same color corrections as you would in post (not all the way there, but part) but once you throw away 1/2 of the info (or more) to compression, you can't get the same effects in post. Plus if you overdo the desat. and want a little more pop in your colors, then basicly what you have done is applied an algorythm to take info out (desat) and another algy to boost levels (saturate.) both add more noise to the image. I hate the idea of a DIT. I loathe the idea. Im sure many in this group do too. I am very technically savvy with imaging and video and in general. Anyone who spends 2 seconds to learn will be able to understand a vectroscope and a waveform. We all know what we want our image to look like and its not to hard to figure out how to get there. With uncompressed we dont need a DIT, because as long as the cam is in good working order, all that can be done later. (even you film dinosars know how to shape the image you get on screen. The technical part is generally the easy part of cinema. Its figuring out what the film needs that is the real catch) I do agree with the idea that uncompressed CCD or CMOS photography is like cinema, and as such our unions will work to keep our job similar to the film workflow. I would imaging that a DP's role may extend into post production. After the shoot is over, while the editors assemble the rough cuts, you go scene to scene and correct what needs to be corrected. Get each shot looking good then a colorist can go in after the fact to match little things, like blue shift as the scene gets later and later (for outdoor shoots, indoors would require little work). Add a LUT provided by kodak or the release print manufactuer to make sure that once lazered onto film it looks the same as computer. I would imagine all the various color corrections (DP color plus colorist matching the shots, etc) would all be combined into one LUT and applied to the RAW so that in the end the RAW only goes through one coloring algorythm (save quality) Better. Stronger. Faster. (plus it has an undo button)

This may be out of your style, but... what if during the flick you see that light can get in through the doors. set that up first. Then to add drama as the elevator scenes get more heated, take a light, just a small one flagged so it lets just a thin square of light fall through the doors and have that scan feet to head (if the elevator is going down, opposite if its going up.) This way you add another light element that seams to make sense in the beggining, but almost transitions to impresionalistic towards the end. and if you add in a flicker it may be the only light on the scene for a few frames, giving an interesting effect.

At that price point, for a weekend shoot I would recomend just getting HD. Yes you can shoot s16. yes you can hope she has some more money for development and editing, yes you can do this or that, but in the end a good camera will cost you around 1k. Factor in maybe 100-200 bucks for tape stock (tape is pretty expensive for HD) and maybe 200 bucks to get it transfered to mini-DV for the offline edit (make sure the timecode corresponds so the offline EDL will match up with the raw footage) Forget the shoot ratios, you now have the abillity to shoot 15:1 or 30:1. Shoot until you get that feeling of having it (best feeling ever. seriously. ever.) Then you can offline with Avid or Premiere or any other NLE cappable of EDLs (now you see why my company name is Random Acronym) and spend all the time in the world. when your done, spend the rest of the money on conforming the final cut. Film is great, but if you have to take shortcuts you have to start asking yourself....does this budget level honestly warrant film being used? If its too tight then your best bet may be to go to a good HD camera. Just an opinion from a film/digi agnostic shooter.

If you can afford film, go with film. I'm a huge digital advocate, but when your talking about a cheap DV cam, its not worth it. You will get good results from the camera, but if the images need tweeking you will be way to limited. I just finnished shooting a feature in HDV and I was all about it until I went to color correct. Its a nightmare, when you push things even a little too far the MPEG artifacts become painfully obvious. If you shoot straight to DV you will be fine in CC, but then you loose the resolution and you get the ultra-soft image from the blowup. With the JVC you wont get the sharp images, even JVC admits that their lens is less than adequate (I assume this to mean the lens' resolution is less than that of the taking sensor.) You could opt for their wide angle lens (lists for $13,000 so for hire it may be within your budget) but it wont match the quality of the zeiss. I agree you do not need a video assist. pay careful attention to what your shooting and it will work out. If your still thinking you need one, get a clamshell DV recorder or even an old VHS deck will work. give it to the director and if he needs video, he will run it himself. Everyone makes sacrifices for student projects. But its a matter of economics. Go with film if you can reasonably afford to pay everyone needing pay, Get good filmstock (time to take the kodak guy to dinner?) and make sure your development/telecine chains are reputable. In the end if you go with HDV, assume you get no color correction (you will get some, but dont relly on any) Make sure you check the frame, as the JVC has been known to produce a split screen effect, where half the screen is 2% darker than the other side. I have been told under most circumstances changing things in scene or re-whiteballancing will correct this. (just what JVC rep told me, who knows it may mean changing an entire shot to avoid SSE) Also understand that it still looks like a prosumer camera, though a high res prosumer. Its possible to get pro-looking images, but that requires a close eye on the lights. Lighting for video is much harder than film (less exposure latitude means scenes can span no more than 4-5 stops, less for a prosumer to look good) so take your time and watch the monitor closely

Meh. When I was 14 I put on a show about being the best there is. Its a balancing act. In public you must earn the trust of everyone around you. Both to get jobs and keep them. You have to be knowledgable (hopefully not a good speller) but not arrogent. In private you must never be satisfied. Assume that for everything you do know, theres 10 things left to discover. Cinemas a growth. I would call myself a DP at age 15. Thats when I really started making movies and paying close attention to the frame. Was I good? Hell no, but I had drive. Im 22 now and still working for a big break, but I still DP a ton of things. This business is a gradient of work. If he is 'DP' his own cheapo features, he will still get a good background. And I think the creativity and drive it takes to make a movie on no budget speaks volumes. I support him and look forward to hopefully working with him and anyone who has GENUIN drive and passion. Now, as for the jaded old farts who worked hard to get where they are and now want to keep others from driving them out, tough cookies. If your good and you play well with others what do you have to fear? I never put too much stock in the naysayers. And one day you'll be sitting around in a theater, wondering why your phone hasnt rung all week and suddenly see 'a Landon Parks picture'

Without a meter you have to trust your eyes. A while back i found a trick to use the CCDs as a light meter. You set the iris to get a reading on one point(using zebra lines). then iris up or down to get the reading for the second part (again getting the zebras to appear where the second reading is to be taken) then note how many stops it took to get there. Unfortunatley without proper markings this will be impossible on your camera. I have done ratios by measuring. It works well with matched light. put a light x distance away and put the fill 2x away and you get predictable results. In the end video lighting tends to be a lot by eye. get the ratio correct by eye and keep a copy of that ready to playback when you are setting up the next shot, so you can compare. you can even bring a laptop to the set and see how one shot intercuts with the other if you need too. Also check out DVrack by Serious magic. It costs almost as much as a light meter, but for video has a million useful features. If at all possible I always have one rigged up.

What kind of sense does any of this make? do any of you want to be swimming near 2Kw of juice? I sure dont. I can understand if a light is made for underwater shooting, that means they designed it for such and it has been tested. This is a matter saftey. Can it be done? sure! is it a good idea is the question. Another good question is can it be done another way? And yes invariably it can be done another way. I would avoid just sandbagging lights as well. If I had to shoot in a situation like that, I would look into rigging the lights up to the main structure in the roof (most have exposed metal trusses) and have a little assurance that nobody will die that day. GFIs are nice, but if you trust them so much, why dont you plug your toaster into one and throw it in a bathtub (with you in it) if your not comfortable with that idea, why would you throw someone else in with the assumption that theres a "minimum safe distance" to be maintained? Do you know how to calculate that based on the electrolyte level of the pool? Did you test the electrolyte level before shooting? Those GFIs come from a rental place. Has anyone here (be honest) gotten gear that wasnt properly working? Is there a standard method to test the GFIs, or do we assume they work? I remember when I was learning to instruct rock climbing and my teacher holds up a climbing rope for us to see. He asks us would we trust our lives to it. Well it was 11mm climbing rope. It wasnt fraying so at first glance we said, yes this rope is safe. Then we inspected it with the feel test and found several spots where the rope was damaged. The lesson is that there are acceptable saftey precautions to be taken when electricity is around water, and if you wont trust your life to it, why should others? If your still thinking it can be done safely, run the idea by the production insurers, see if they like the idea.

As far as I know the minis only have kits to connect to 3 chip cameras. The problem is they are designed to put their image through a long peice of glass, while film its assumed the light will be transmitted via air. The difference is with the prism, light must enter reletivley parralell to avoid chromatic abberations as a result of the image distorting differently from CCD to CCD. With the 8mm you may find the distance you have to mount the mini35 from the 8 combersome to rig up. plus there is no real mounting method. hope that you set your camera within the relay lens' focal plane and hope that nothing moves it out (because the relay cant be connected directly to your 8's mount.) you also have to build a shroud to cover the gap between the relay and the camera, and hope no stray light gets in, or dust. In the end I suppose it would be possible, even though it could get a bit tricky, far trickier than I would deal with just to shoot 8mm. Call the people at P+S. they are always willing to help out, and if you have a chunk of change, they may design a custom relay for you.

Try to attach a monitor to the output and see if the camera has any video signal. If not your block could be messed up. Also try and record something and see if it puts anything other than black video to tape. It could just be the LCD, but it sounds like it could be worse than that.

Its not worth it. They are single chip cameras, which is ok for HD because there are so many pixels, but with the low res SD cameras the aberations produced would be way too much to call it quality. Also those cameras dont possess the color correction features a normal camera has. This can be a double edge sword, yes you can correct when you get back and it may be better correct when you have time to spend find tuning the look, but only if it was uncompressed 4:4:4 12bit video. any less and the quality loss would be far too much just to white balance the footage. the only real advantage is the C-mount lenses, which if you get a mini-35 you would be able to use them (though mini-35s are a bit expensive) maybe if the camera is a 2/3" chip you may get some improvement in DOF, but DOF is not a reason to throw quality out the window. Stick with the mini-DV cam. Now something I want to do is buy a 2k (HD res x 4) CCD, buy or make the developement board and wire that into a high speed data capture card and some RAID disks and get a home made high quality kinnetta/viper style HD camera. complicated but I have seen footage from people who have done just that and they are amazing.

I would put Minority Report in there, just because its sort of a progressive noir. It has elements of the style but puts its own twist on the style.

Yeah, definatley get a fast lens, you have to keep in mind that the gg looses about a stop to a stop and a half (this doesnt affect dof, but does affect how much light you need) so at T4, you would need a lot of light. Also from talking with P+S (Im considering shooting a doc with it as well) they said not to shoot above f4 (on the relay lens/camera lens) because the gg grain will be in focus and not look right at all. I think someone mentioned rings on the 300 series. the 400 ozies will definatly eliminate the rings and centerspot of the 300 series, but if that grain is in focus it will look bad.

how many circuts does the house have? I have run 2k off one circut, then brought a long 10g extension cord up the stairs from another room and put another 2k. I have actually been using 3 circuts at once. I just check the master breaker and see what the house is rated at, and make sure I dont overload that or overload each individual circut (120v[measured] 20A circut usually) I have never had a need for larger than 2k inside, but theoretically--and you electricians can tell me for sure--couldnt you take power from two circuts, run that into a distro box that puts the electricity to the lights in parralell, essentially giving the electricity two paths to go from the breaker box. My assumption is that half would go one way the other half the other (assuming line resistance is equal) and when reconected each circut would bear half the load of the light, allowing for a 4k light to be used. This is assuming the electricity is in phase from one circut to another, but I cant imagine one house having different phases between two circuts. [my grandpa, an engeneer, told me a story once about when he was in school learning how to do basicly this, but with two industrial generators, and some kid messed up a setting putting the phases off 180degrees, with big gennys he said it was quite a light show after they flipped the switch]

The only reason large chips cost more is the production costs. Material costs for chips arent too high. A $5000 drum of proccessed silicon will produce up to a hundred dies, and those can make lots of chips depending on the size. The problem is the cost of design, the cost of production, and the cost of all those fancy robotic machines which actually etch the circuts on the chip. If you go from 1/3" to 2/3" you have actually reduced the number of chips comming out by a factor of 4. since those are more costly the camera they are put into will be more costly than a prosumer. Since they cost more you must put better features into that camera to seperate it from the prosumers. Since those cost money the price goes up (and up and up) since they sell less and only to pros, advertising costs go down, but total sales also go down, so profit margins are driven up. In the end its a give and take that results in a GV costing 20,000 (not a bad price for a 2/3" HD camera with 100mb/sec compression (aprox 5times HDV) 1/3" chips are cheap because once they design them, they know they will sell possibly a hundred thousand units in any given market. Search the web for DIY cameras. They can be made, I have seen some that look DAMN good. Find a good chip, mount it in an old bolex (so it will accept standard lenses) and get a demo board (most CCD manufacturers have these availible, and output to uncompressed 'CAMERA LINK' format. hook that up to a computer and capture away. Then you just need a computer program to turn the bayer pattern into color, and to do white ballance etc. Its tough but it can be done for under 8k, a DIY uncompressed HD camera that accepts standard lenses. (3 chips is much harder. try and super sample 4to1 to reduce bayer effects.)

500 bucks wont buy you anything of value. sorry, its just not enough to do anymore than shoot home videos of your kids soccer game. the only advice I can give is buy a mini-DV that has an external mic input. and if you can find one that will give even modest control over exposure, most give you little or no control at all. other than that theres not much a recomendation can do for you, they all look equally bad at that price point, its just not a market they try and aim at prosumers. BTW this is not the website to request advice like this. Most on here are versed in cameras upwards of $5000-$100,000. I doubt many of them know the camera models availible in that $500 price range, I couldn't name one. Try a consumer video forum. not a pro cinematography site

The problem is that equipment is included in budgeting for most pay films. They know they have to spend a few hundred or a thousand a day for a good camera, so its budgeted. It doesnt matter if they pay you or they pay a rental house for it. So instantly they look past the camera package and go to your reel. You are an artistic commodity as a DP. Every DP has a different way of working, a different way of looking at things which yeild his or her style. Thats what they are hiring for. If they like what you have done in the past they are 'buying' that look for the film. Its like, I like the dust brothers, I like what they did with fightclub, I want them to score a movie for me. Not, I like the sound of the bass lesClaypool uses. Lets hire him to get that bass. That bass is availible anywere. A strong demo reel is way more powerful than a good equipment list. (My philosophy is build the portfolio first, then use that money to buy gear you know you will always want to use. then rent that to your next job, since you will probably use it anyway. that way you can make more money without buying every nut and bolt you need) Also keep in mind that no, no, no its not still photography with frame advance. If you take 40 stills in a day, you may exibit 3. with motion picture if you shoot 10 setups in a day, one may be cut. maybe some cutaways could be cut. Whats worse, bad shooting may make a scene IMPOSSIBLE to cut. even though it looks good on set. Good example I worked with a 'DP' who thought he knew it all (he had done a few months as a sports photographer for a local news organization) in one scene he shot every shot more or less eye level (everyone was sitting down) but on the close up for just one charecter, he did a horrible POV shot from way to high (literally couldnt see his lower lip if he wasnt talking) On set im sure it looked good to him, but not knowing how the shots intercut killed him. DP is not a job to be taken lightly, consider it almost like acting. Your camera has a charecter. Your skill and experience base will help you shape the charecter to be played. Its not an easy job and its not redily obvious which desicions need to be made, or even how to attack those desicions. Experience will be your guide. The more experience you have the more you will be able to predict the outcome of any given choice. If you know what colors will read like given a certain film stock, a certain filter and a given light temp, your halfway there. if you know you want to save all saturated red colors for the first frame the love interest enters the movie, then your getting closer. Its an art. people will pay you for the art not the gear. The advantage is you have all the tools to get REAL experience. Buy some film stock, get some friends together and shoot several short (short, like 3-5minute) shorts. Even if the topic is bland you will develope a sense. Short movies in my opinion by nature have to be more visual and are much easier to wrap your head around the experience your audience should have. After you make 20-30 of these shorts (you can pump out 2 a month) then you will be ready to DP for someone, and you will avoid the mistakes many young DPs make, and maybe there wont be anyone out there cursing your name for ruining their film and wasting thousands of dollars. PS-dont give up. getting a firm base in the basics makes DP a wonderful job. Its an art that takes time to develop and master and once you start to get good at it, work will come. just focus on your art first.

Is it that you are watching on a SD tv? or the LCD, or the veiwfinder? I think if your not watching on a HD screen you are getting more grain than you are seeing. if its for SD production then the 4 (or so) pixels that super sample down to 1 pixel may balance eachother out, giving the impression that noise is not present, or not very bad. When you get to HD though it will be very apparent. Just a thought. (3db isnt very much and it depends on your method of distrabution. I regularly use +6db on my UVW-100 (sony betacam) and what noise is there is made less after the signal gets transmitted.)

If your going for the contrasty noirish look you should also load up on cheap 100w pars. I think lowel has some for 70bucks in the US.

If you dont have a Genny or access to more than one circut I would recomend getting an assortment of bulb wattages. 2000w is basicly your max so you cant have every light on one circut. If you put a 200w bulb in the redheads, you save power, so all lights can go at the same time, you cut light without using either ND or scrim and you reduce heat in the working environment (something everyone will thank you for) I hate using ND or scrims unless nessicary. I can look at a light and tell what bulb needs to go in it to bring it into value. then I use a half scrim or move the light back to fine tune it.

Be careful to frame out/move anything thats white. you only want the halation around the angel. dont overexpose too much for video (I assume you have a prosumer version camera, please correct me if thats wrong)so watch the backlighting.

I've never read a breaker, so I cant tell you exactly where it would be, but somewhere it should say max amps before it will trip. look for a number like 20A, 25A, 10A etc. I believe it will be on the face of each breaker, so that doesnt give it a lot of room to hide. To find the watts multiply your supply voltage by the max amps. So if its 20 amps, then times that by 120Vac (US standard) and you get 2400watts max power. voltage is a constant factor, it will not fluctuate (much) Standard household cuircuts are usually 20Amps. In an industrial environment it sometimes reaches 50A You have to account for everything on the circut though. If there are 3 computer monitors that have to be on in the scene you have to figure 150w a screen (aprox, each monitor will list its power requirements, as will any electronic device in the US) and factor that into your max power requirements. Also make sure you dont reach the limit. Give about 10% headroom (if the breaker is 20amps, only use 18 amps) when you switch a light on it takes more power than the rating because of induction. A good rule of thumb is to put no more than 2000 watts on any given circut.

I am a big fan of the JVC HD-100U. Its HD. It has native HDV resolution CCDs (not the 720x1920 that it playsback, but the 720x1440 (??) that all HDV is limited too(including sony and canons). It also does true progressive and true 24p (i am think, not sure, that the 24p actually records only 24 frames, not padding it to 29.97 with duplicate frames that are flagged) That alone is enough for me. What sells me on it though, and the reason I have stayed away from JVC in the past is the lens. Time was JVC was one of the only manufacturers who would not put a zeiss lens or a lecia (sp?) on their low end to prosumer range. They always had the cheapest lens of anycamera (most JVCs in that range usually say 'video lens' on the markings around the front optic.) Now that they have Fujinon stock servo lens I couldnt be happier. Its a standard bayonet mount, with the iris being an ENG style manual ring (not the menu selected iris the XL series had, which also had a proprietary mount and communications system, limiting lens choice) now basicly any 1/2" bayonet lens will work (though HD lenses are preferable) Also this means a direct path for the mini-35 to mate with the CCD block (im a huge fan of the mini, but DOF plays a huge roll in my style of photography, for others it may not be worth the pricetag) Also a physical lens has a psycological value to it. your controls arent dampend and muddied by the computer curcuits that control the lenses zoom and focus optics (which I suspect cheap electronic lenses have few optics and less linearity in focus, zoom etc, but has a computer program that sorts out how to maintain a 4ft. focus over the length of the zoom and coninually compensates, ie adjusting backfocus as the lens zooms. just a theory.) But actually turning the focus and being able to roll it as little as 1 degree over a 180 or 270 degree envelope gives a feeling of total control. If like on the pany DVX-100 you have a level of 1-100, thats almost 2-3 degrees per step. (and if you zoom in to far that you only get 50 levels of focus) if your backfocus is in check I get a much better feeling on a fujinon by zooming in and setting focus and pulling out. even doing that on the ZU1 (sony) I am shooting a feature on, I dont trust it. I use all their focus assist tools but in the end I need a monitor to be sure. and I have noticed backfocus drift in weird ways (I think it depends on your iris setting, how fast you pull out and how far the subject is) In the end the CCD blocks all come from silmalar designs and processes. The color corrections in camera are all similar and need help in post to get to the final look. Most cameras in that price range has XLR inputs. Most shoot either 24p or a setting that mimics the 24p look (sonys 24F is pretty close) and with the HD its amazing clear (SD is for chumps since the HD cameras now are in close price points) And if your still doing SD or internet work you get a sharper image from the downres and you have much more latitude in color correction but i talk too much