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Aaton HD mag


Stephen Williams

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Well, actually, I asked him but his answer was pretty vague and off the record... Too soon to talk about it. So, it's not in the video.

What I can tell you is that he has a little plan for that part, a good one I guess.

Anyway, he won't be able to avoid the question at the NAB! ;)

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Well, actually, I asked him but his answer was pretty vague and off the record... Too soon to talk about it. So, it's not in the video.

What I can tell you is that he has a little plan for that part, a good one I guess.

Anyway, he won't be able to avoid the question at the NAB! ;)

Ah, well no problem then. Looking forward to the details!

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I will assume that nothing gets Jannard going worse than an old film camera manufacturing company's claims to true 4K video images from their equipment:

 

"4K? Uncompressed? Bah! That is nothing, RED will soon come out with 16K sensors that will produce images with 30 stops of dynamic range and hard drives the size of matchbooks."

 

"DPX? Are you kidding?? Why use an industry standard format when you can start from scratch and use a proprietary (heavily compressed) RAW format --an oxymoron if I ever saw one-- that people will have to decode at painfully slow speeds to use!!!"

 

And on and on . . . :P

Edited by Saul Rodgar
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Hey Laurent, long-time-no-talk-to.

 

Looks like Aaton may have "hit one out of the ballpark" with that Penelope camera. 35mm 4-perf, 3-perf, 2-perf, Super 35 and now 4K HD digital. Don't think you could possibly have more options than that.

 

Best,

-Tim

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Looks like Aaton may have "hit one out of the ballpark" with that Penelope camera. 35mm 4-perf, 3-perf, 2-perf, Super 35 and now 4K HD digital. Don't think you could possibly have more options than that.

Hey Tim,

 

There's no 4-perf option on the Penelope, as far as I know.

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Ultimately, is having a "jack-of-all-trades" camera that can shoot many formats, better than several cameras that can only shoot one or two for the rental houses?

 

 

If you have a Penelope body, that can take 35mm or digital magazines, with a 3-perf., 2-perf., S35 gate (I wonder what size the digital sensor is, I assume 3-perf.) and you have four different people making movies in each of the different formats, this camera doesn't help at all.

 

You still need four bodies. I guess it would be very useful for productions that own their own cameras, but those are obviously few and far between, especially when we are talking about people owning their own 35mm bodies. Half the people on this site now seem to own REDs :unsure:

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But Brian, except in states of severely depressed production volume, wouldn't having a camera that can shoot four formats, but only be rented out to ONE PRODUCTION at a time, ultimately put a bottleneck on the amount of rentals a house can have?

 

If I were in the rental business, I'd much rather have a bang-up set of 2-perf., 3-perf. and HD camera bodies to rent out instead of one that can do all three.

 

If a Penelope body gets damaged, similarly, you are out of commission for all three possibilities, whereas if your 3-perf. camera gets run over by a train with malfunctioning brakes, you can still rent out your 2-perf. and HD systems while your 3-perf. body is getting repaired/replaced.

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Karl, buddy, did you ever take economics?

 

Rental company A owns three cameras. A 2-Perf, a 3-Perf and an HD.

 

Rental company B owns three cameras. Three Penelopes.

 

Three customers come into each rental house. No matter which format the three renters wants to shoot, Rental company B can cover all three. Rental company A has to hope the three renters all want to rent different formats.

 

Rental company A loses one camera, due to "malfunctioning brakes", so now it can only cover two different types of renters.

 

Rental company B loses one camera, due to "malfunctioning brakes", and it can still cover all three different types of renters.

 

I think the Penelope would make a great camera for a rental company to own. Even if their budget can only afford one or two cameras, they can still cover renters who want to shoot any of the three formats.

 

Best,

-Tim

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Tim, yes I did take economics. I got an "A."

 

 

Granted, hardly anyone on a serious shoot would come in for 2-perf., but 3-perf. and HD are both perfectly viable shooting options, still in demand.

 

 

 

Let me put it another way: Would you want one more-expensive camera that can shoot 3 formats (2 of them with high income potential and relatively certain future business) or be able to afford a few older 3-perf. cameras and an HD camera that you can rent out to multiple parties simultaneously?

 

I don't know the cost of a Penelope body, but I am sure you could purchase older HD and 3 perf cameras, a pair, for the cost of one Penelope.

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Ultimately, is having a "jack-of-all-trades" camera that can shoot many formats, better than several cameras that can only shoot one or two for the rental houses?

 

 

If you have a Penelope body, that can take 35mm or digital magazines, with a 3-perf., 2-perf., S35 gate (I wonder what size the digital sensor is, I assume 3-perf.) and you have four different people making movies in each of the different formats, this camera doesn't help at all.

 

You still need four bodies. I guess it would be very useful for productions that own their own cameras, but those are obviously few and far between, especially when we are talking about people owning their own 35mm bodies. Half the people on this site now seem to own REDs :unsure:

 

 

Swopping between 2 & 3 perf takes under 30 minutes, many rental houses will find that useful IMO,

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In the end, you still need the same number of camera bodies regardless. The cost part would be having digital magazines sitting around when the camera body is out on a 35mm shoot. If this mag is say the cost of say an Epic or the bottom end Arri Alexa camera, this could be a factor, given how fast you need to pay off any electronic camera. Perhaps this is less of a factor with the film mags, which get upgraded by Kodak and Fuji, although a set of those wouldn't be cheap.

 

It really depends on large the demand is for optical viewfinder cameras compared the electronic viewfinder and how much the Penelope with 4k mag rig costs to rent compared to the high end Alexa with it's optical viewfinder.

 

Also, it may depend on what the images like from the camera. If they're the most beautiful, least electronic looking digital images, there are people who will be attracted to that.

 

The market for these cameras tends to want newer gear rather older cameras.

 

Perhaps this could a half way house for a totally digital camera from Aaton, when the camera movement is removed from the camera.

Edited by Brian Drysdale
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  • 1 month later...

A data HD film camera with an optical viewfinder, sweet! No RAW recording that I can tell. But Aaton is clearly onto something getting ready to release a dual format 35mm / HD professional cinematography camera system, the first and only one of its kind. Most excellent!

Edited by Saul Rodgar
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