Blood Angel
07-06-2008, 09:03 AM
Okay,
during the last week I've been camera assistant for a production by the "Filmakademie Ludwigsburg", one of the top notch film schools in Germany. I was braught in because of my experience in the field of data asset management and with the HVX 200 and was terribly happy about this production, becaus the movie we've shot is a dead cool Half Life 2 like short movie with a pretty good budget for a short movie.
BUT there was a change in mind by the producer, he had heard about the Sony EX-1 and changed the rental 6 hours before principal shooting. Allright, the DOP and I took a little time to check the camera and I did some research. (dang, it is helpful to be able to check DVXuser with my iPhone on set) Soon we were aware about some of the problems and went to the rental house to get the cameras. (We were shooting with two cameras.)
At the rental house we were talking about the EX-1 compared to the HVX-200 and I mentioned some of the problems I read about in the internet and all of my arguments were smashed down, because "all of the internet junkies are talking about the beta version of the camera, there is no more rolling shutter in the EX-1!". That was what the rental guy told me and I bought it. Hey, he uses the cameras every day, he must know what he is talking about. Little did I know...
Basicly - we had them everything. Every bug, every glitch of the camera, we had it all in our footage. I'll just name few:
Rolling shutter and strobe lights
We were shooting with strobe lights - you might imagine the results. We had terrible part frame exposure from 2 flickering kinoflows... but hey, the producer described the look as "something new"... so it was no longer a bug, it's a feature!
Shooting with HMI's
While lighting with HMI's to create a good lighting the DOP wanted to have a high shutter speed to create a certain look. But hey, look a the image distorsion... we had to shoot at 1/100 or 1/50 in order NOT to have these horizontal lines.
Infrared and Black
At the highpoint of the movie we were shooting in a generator room and there was a red wall inside. Guess what happened: All our blacks turned mangenta in basicly every shot! But due to the producer that was not a problem, we'll fix that in post. Man, does he know that we're recording to a 35 Mbit/s 4:2:0 Long-GOP codec? I think not...
Distorted geometry in fast movement
...
Ugly motion blur
etc...
pp...
I could continue for hours, but I think you get the point. But there are always two sides of the coin. Under certain circumstances the 1/2" cmos imager delivers great images thet the HVX200 can't compete with. But that is not to the fact, that the camera is better, IMHO that is to the fact that the chip is just 2/6" bigger and the camera 1000 bucks more expencive.
I was often tempted to drop my plans to by the HPX170 and just buy the EX1, but the camera and the technolegy has just so many flaws that are limiting our work. The HVX200 isn't perfect too, it also has some flaws I could scream about, but for my needs it is the far better camera.
during the last week I've been camera assistant for a production by the "Filmakademie Ludwigsburg", one of the top notch film schools in Germany. I was braught in because of my experience in the field of data asset management and with the HVX 200 and was terribly happy about this production, becaus the movie we've shot is a dead cool Half Life 2 like short movie with a pretty good budget for a short movie.
BUT there was a change in mind by the producer, he had heard about the Sony EX-1 and changed the rental 6 hours before principal shooting. Allright, the DOP and I took a little time to check the camera and I did some research. (dang, it is helpful to be able to check DVXuser with my iPhone on set) Soon we were aware about some of the problems and went to the rental house to get the cameras. (We were shooting with two cameras.)
At the rental house we were talking about the EX-1 compared to the HVX-200 and I mentioned some of the problems I read about in the internet and all of my arguments were smashed down, because "all of the internet junkies are talking about the beta version of the camera, there is no more rolling shutter in the EX-1!". That was what the rental guy told me and I bought it. Hey, he uses the cameras every day, he must know what he is talking about. Little did I know...
Basicly - we had them everything. Every bug, every glitch of the camera, we had it all in our footage. I'll just name few:
Rolling shutter and strobe lights
We were shooting with strobe lights - you might imagine the results. We had terrible part frame exposure from 2 flickering kinoflows... but hey, the producer described the look as "something new"... so it was no longer a bug, it's a feature!
Shooting with HMI's
While lighting with HMI's to create a good lighting the DOP wanted to have a high shutter speed to create a certain look. But hey, look a the image distorsion... we had to shoot at 1/100 or 1/50 in order NOT to have these horizontal lines.
Infrared and Black
At the highpoint of the movie we were shooting in a generator room and there was a red wall inside. Guess what happened: All our blacks turned mangenta in basicly every shot! But due to the producer that was not a problem, we'll fix that in post. Man, does he know that we're recording to a 35 Mbit/s 4:2:0 Long-GOP codec? I think not...
Distorted geometry in fast movement
...
Ugly motion blur
etc...
pp...
I could continue for hours, but I think you get the point. But there are always two sides of the coin. Under certain circumstances the 1/2" cmos imager delivers great images thet the HVX200 can't compete with. But that is not to the fact, that the camera is better, IMHO that is to the fact that the chip is just 2/6" bigger and the camera 1000 bucks more expencive.
I was often tempted to drop my plans to by the HPX170 and just buy the EX1, but the camera and the technolegy has just so many flaws that are limiting our work. The HVX200 isn't perfect too, it also has some flaws I could scream about, but for my needs it is the far better camera.