emotepix
Well-known member
Super 8!
Cool thread you have here.
Me, I've been shooting since 1975. I have a Scoopic too! And two 35mm cameras, and an Aaton, and have owned and operated several video cameras including Andromeda DVXs, HVXs, RED Ones, and EX1s. Stills camera wise, I've pretty much been through them all, at one stage or another, from Minox 16mm to 8x10.
Okay, so here's my story, and the big deal, about the EX1, to me:
It's about the visual palette.
What am I talking about?
Well, let's talk 35mm stills lenses.
On one end of the image response spectrum we have, say, Minolta, or Olympus. Fairly sharp, but highly blended colors, warmer overall. On the other, Mamiya. Tack sharp but the color blend went south as the edge definition was enhanced. Both imagers are useful under certain situations, depending on what's being shot.
On the film front, let's go with a Beaulieu Super 8 on the one end, and an Imax 70mm on the other.
And on the video front, a Fisher Price toycam to a Viper.
If I put imagers and their resulting images in this light, you can pretty much tell which machinery will do what job better under the circumstances of a particular subject.
So most professionals don't own one particular brand or kind of camera unless they're only shooting one kind of image. (Kinda like if you buy a dump truck then you'd better be in the garbage collection business. If you're a truck driver, just get the hauler itself, tack on the payloads as you need them - or, better, just rent or use the client's truck. After all, are you in the hauler business? Or the driving business?)
Location matters. If you live in the middle of LA, for instance, rentals are just a drive away. In the middle of the Mojave, not. Better to own one, then.
Okay, so now it comes time to buy a camera, to own one. Well, its kinda sorta like buying one car, as I see it. Which end of the spectrum will one be mostly shooting in? Rough and tumble, quick setups in weather? Or fine tooth combing images in a studio?
Are you going to use this for business? Or pleasure? Both? How many different people are going to drive (operate) it? Just you? Others? How good a driver are you? Or them? Prefer a stick shift, or auto? Driving on the roads (studio) or off (location)? How far off road? In the rain? Snow? Underwater? How versatile? What gas mileage? GPS? on board DVDs?...
What signifies success? Satisfaction? What puts a smile on your face? The ownership? The images? The machine itself, or what it produces? Or both?
Like that.
Now, the EX1.
For me, I can make this camera give me anything between a pseudo 8mm look and the "crystal clear as through a window" look.
Now of course, I use post-production to achieve a lot of those looks, and in that sense the EX1 is a lot more like a RED: what I'm actually doing is trying to maximize the usable digital information in the image I'm capturing.
Of course, to the naked and uneducated eye, that raw image looks dull and flat - totally underwhelming, in fact. (Kinda like looking at a photographic negative for the first time, without knowing what it is: "there has to be something wrong. I just spent thousands of dollars -- for THIS??")
But for digital post, that dull, flat image is exactly what you do want.
Which can be a problem for the uninitiated. Such as the client.
So then you have to go through the hassles of LUTs, stage ("producer's") monitors and the like, to convince the people who are footing the bill that eventually the images will look just beautiful, gorgeous, add your superlative here. We used to have to do that on set using Polaroids, remember. Same same.
Come to think of it, the world's first 35mm stills camera was invented for that very purpose - to give the people on a film set a quick preview of how their expensive movie camera shots would eventually look like.
And this idle chitchat has a point - most beginners and weekend shooters seem to want just the Polaroid camera pictures, off the bat, out of the box, right now. And most camera manufacturers understand that.
So, like the car manufacturers, they make cameras that give a certain look, that feel a certain way, to divide the market and get their share of it.
If you want that, then Panasonics are definitely better for that (they look more like Polaroids do than Sonys, out of the box... LOL! jk.)
But once you start looking under the hood, then most cars are more similar than they are different.
Let's move up the imaging ladder a bit.
Take a Leica camera, just shoot it. The lens and camera combo will do the rest, and if you do your part (hold the camera steady, get the focus sharp and the exposure right, and don't forget to load the film into the camera, or put the memory card in, every mistake of which I've made, at one time or another), then the image will be technically gorgeous.
The more advanced the camera, the more control over the imagery, and theoretically the better images from that camera, at least technically.
Aesthetically? That depends on your eye, and for interests of brevity let's leave it at that.
But if you now know a little more about cameras, about lighting, about images, you can start to produce pictures that look pretty good no matter what camera you're using. Most beginning drivers start with just one car. They take a little more time getting used to each new car they get into, until that becomes more normal, and then, after awhile, most okay drivers can get from A to B no matter what steering wheel they're behind, if the car's an automatic and an American (left hand drive). But most pros can drive right or left, auto, stick or Hewland, on or off road -- you get my drift.
Used to be that video was the auto drive car. Especially in terms of the consumer cameras, you could, and still can, set everything on full auto, and just point and shoot. Much, much better than that old school relic of a movie camera, right? Plus, big, big selling point over all those rusty old movie cameras, there is this little screen on the camera, see? and you can see, immediately, what you've just shot. Excellent! Modern!
But lately we've kinda sorta moved beyond all the "video is immediate results" thing.
We're pushing the limits of what can be reproduced on a computer screen or even an HD monitor in terms of the dynamic range and color space.
The field monitors we have today, at least the ones not costing tens of thousands of dollars, don't show things as sharply, colorfully or deeply as the latest cameras can now capture.
In fact, as a HD editor, I'm using 30" and bigger monitors every day, and see more and more images captured on very expensive cameras - out of focus.
So I complain to the camera people, and they insist that their peaking, focus assists, and viewfinders all say the images are sharp.
Sure they were - on a 20" monitor of the old school persuasion.
But times have changed. And digital technology changes much, much faster than film camera technology.
I tell them that most network execs will be watching their brand new HD images on monitors that are at least 30", usually more. And if they want to continue to be employed, then they'd better take more care with their focus.
So they now know that their on-camera monitors aren't quite good enough, and so they put a 30" monitor on set and pull focus from that instead. And have a new part of the set, called a video village, full of monitors and image-savvy techs called DITs - Ditigal Imaging Technicians. who mainly apply filters on the raw images coming off the cameras so the producers see pretty Polaroid pictures and are happy about spending the increased money they did to get all of this new technology.
So, nowadays, professionally speaking, unless we have a video village and plenty of DITs on stage, we can't actually see the final image we're capturing any more. We have to abstract our acquired images for future reproduction and intended venue of viewing.
Get that?
We have to shoot something we can't see the end result of immediately, but instead abstract for it, allow for it mentally and creatively, to be corrected for, in post, to suit the regular TV, home theater, broadcast, digital theater or DI to theatrical print.
Hmm... sound familiar? Like, as in dailies and neg dev?
I think so, especially with the quality of the video taps on movie cameras these days...
Have you been on an HD set? There are more video monitors and DITS on set than on any film camera set I've seen. And the builds and strikes of these new video villages are much, much slower than any 35mm movie set I've ever been on as well.
But I digress...
Okay, so now we have the EX1, this little camera that takes this basic, high quality image that is great to post process and is versatile and looks good... and for some versatility, maybe a film/HVX/Leica look maybe we add (like I have) the 35mm DOF adaptors and Zeiss lenses. Maybe change the mount of my DOF out and shoot, say Canon, or Leica, or any of the others out there.
Not to say that other cameras can't go that route - almost every video camera that I've owned thus far can.
The HVX, for instance, can do this, most of it, without the DOF units, etc. And it has a Leica (yeah!) lens to boot.
But the HVX can't go the other way. I can get a reasonable Panasonic facsimile out of my Sony - but not the other way around.
But then again hey, I'm no Barry Green. I can't make an HVX sit up and beg like he can.
My point is not to incite a riot about how easy it is or was to do thus-and-such on this-or-that camera platform, but to describe to you my process at arriving at the EX1 and thus answer your original question. As I said, I started off on DVXs. I own Leicas up the yinyang. I can afford to buy almost any camera I want to. I've put a lot of time and energy into doing what you are now doing, which may be idle (pure) research, maybe not. Fact gathering, in any event.
So - back to the camera itself.
There's 1900x1200. Color depth. Frame rate - 60fps to 60spf, intervalometer built in. Frame blending. Full auto and full manual. The HVX has equivalent too. For hand-holding a naked camera, the HVX is loads better than my EX1 ever will be.
Then there's only HD camera I've used whose LCD screen I trust for focusing on....
Aha.
And that was the decider for me.
For me.
Because I'm an editor by trade and a producer/director by vocation, I can get the pro class images I'm used to getting when I was being paid (good money) for directing/DP'ing, for a price I can afford, without incurring lab costs (which are falling daily, BTW, as well as raw stock costs, so yes, I do shoot film often - but without talent monitors, client monitors, even focus monitors - yes, old, school, me...) and be able to get that image to tell my story my way.
I can shoot an EX1 like I shoot my Aaton. Build it up with a full camera crew with ACs, video village and DITs, or strip it down and go out walking with it myself. Get pro class images either way.
Not many people have as many cameras as I do. And I used to have many cars as well, from an RV down to a motorbike.
But nowadays I tend to use only a few cars, a few cameras. I have an old Sony HDR-HC1. It's my third. I had one, sold it to move up, missed it, bought another, used it, sold it too, missed it again.
Not going to sell the one I have now. It's the camera that my non-technical peeps reach for first, it's the camera that fits in my pocket. It's the camera that has gotten a lot of shots *because I had it with me*, instead of sitting at home in my camera vault, along with all the other expensive equipment I own.
I used to take my DVX everywhere. But switched to an FX7 when I had to go HDV. Tested many, many cameras, hung out at the camera stores, spent hours, just holding the cameras, testing the feel. But when the EX1 came out, that was it.
I take the EX1 out a lot too, it's just small enough, just light enough to put in this old stills camera bag I have, sling it over my shoulder, just in case.
I don't own anything bigger than that, not even an EX3, because, like my big 35mm movie cameras, they'll just sit around needing attention, repairs or maintenance until someone pays for them to come out and play, and for the moment my income's from post.
Now, when the time comes for me to shoot 35mm, my cameras will work well and cost less, still, than renting new. And they'll still be current enough to do the job. They've been fully paid for years ago, and they're still making money for me.
Can't say as that will be the case for any video camera, though. Saw an Ikegama on ebay for less than a hundred bucks lately. Ouch. But maybe not, it looks as if it served its purpose in its day, treated its owner well and returned its value plus some.
My EX1's already returned its value, just three shoots later. And I'm not full time in production any more, remember.
So, if it's one camera to own, which camera to buy?
When it comes down to forums and threads like this, this post of mine is one in thousands.
So I have more experience. So what? How much of my experience applies to you?
Everything gets all mixed up, people are saying many different things at the same time, yadda yadda...
Like a car show, but all the cars are on the same podium, or at least very, very close together. And you're reading chitchat from all the people looking at all these cars, all on the same message board.
You have to be super clear what kind of car you're after, so you can find the same type of people to talk to who want the same things out of their car.
Easy to get led astray.
After all, how many people do you know who buy the latest car, because it's there, or because their pals so-and-so have one, even though it's an SUV and a gas guzzler and they never go off-roading with it?
So yes, I'm sure that forums like these are really going to have quite a few tire kickers around - and kudos to them, because where else can you kick tires on a camera you're thinking about?
As a pilot, I'm aware that the best weather report of the place I'm flying in and to doesn't come from the weather reporters, or traffic control, or any of those. It's the direct radio-to- radio contact with a pilot who's in a similar plane in front of me, who took off before I did, and is going along the same route as me.
That's what I see this as being.
Kudos to all.
Cool thread you have here.
Me, I've been shooting since 1975. I have a Scoopic too! And two 35mm cameras, and an Aaton, and have owned and operated several video cameras including Andromeda DVXs, HVXs, RED Ones, and EX1s. Stills camera wise, I've pretty much been through them all, at one stage or another, from Minox 16mm to 8x10.
Okay, so here's my story, and the big deal, about the EX1, to me:
It's about the visual palette.
What am I talking about?
Well, let's talk 35mm stills lenses.
On one end of the image response spectrum we have, say, Minolta, or Olympus. Fairly sharp, but highly blended colors, warmer overall. On the other, Mamiya. Tack sharp but the color blend went south as the edge definition was enhanced. Both imagers are useful under certain situations, depending on what's being shot.
On the film front, let's go with a Beaulieu Super 8 on the one end, and an Imax 70mm on the other.
And on the video front, a Fisher Price toycam to a Viper.
If I put imagers and their resulting images in this light, you can pretty much tell which machinery will do what job better under the circumstances of a particular subject.
So most professionals don't own one particular brand or kind of camera unless they're only shooting one kind of image. (Kinda like if you buy a dump truck then you'd better be in the garbage collection business. If you're a truck driver, just get the hauler itself, tack on the payloads as you need them - or, better, just rent or use the client's truck. After all, are you in the hauler business? Or the driving business?)
Location matters. If you live in the middle of LA, for instance, rentals are just a drive away. In the middle of the Mojave, not. Better to own one, then.
Okay, so now it comes time to buy a camera, to own one. Well, its kinda sorta like buying one car, as I see it. Which end of the spectrum will one be mostly shooting in? Rough and tumble, quick setups in weather? Or fine tooth combing images in a studio?
Are you going to use this for business? Or pleasure? Both? How many different people are going to drive (operate) it? Just you? Others? How good a driver are you? Or them? Prefer a stick shift, or auto? Driving on the roads (studio) or off (location)? How far off road? In the rain? Snow? Underwater? How versatile? What gas mileage? GPS? on board DVDs?...
What signifies success? Satisfaction? What puts a smile on your face? The ownership? The images? The machine itself, or what it produces? Or both?
Like that.
Now, the EX1.
For me, I can make this camera give me anything between a pseudo 8mm look and the "crystal clear as through a window" look.
Now of course, I use post-production to achieve a lot of those looks, and in that sense the EX1 is a lot more like a RED: what I'm actually doing is trying to maximize the usable digital information in the image I'm capturing.
Of course, to the naked and uneducated eye, that raw image looks dull and flat - totally underwhelming, in fact. (Kinda like looking at a photographic negative for the first time, without knowing what it is: "there has to be something wrong. I just spent thousands of dollars -- for THIS??")
But for digital post, that dull, flat image is exactly what you do want.
Which can be a problem for the uninitiated. Such as the client.
So then you have to go through the hassles of LUTs, stage ("producer's") monitors and the like, to convince the people who are footing the bill that eventually the images will look just beautiful, gorgeous, add your superlative here. We used to have to do that on set using Polaroids, remember. Same same.
Come to think of it, the world's first 35mm stills camera was invented for that very purpose - to give the people on a film set a quick preview of how their expensive movie camera shots would eventually look like.
And this idle chitchat has a point - most beginners and weekend shooters seem to want just the Polaroid camera pictures, off the bat, out of the box, right now. And most camera manufacturers understand that.
So, like the car manufacturers, they make cameras that give a certain look, that feel a certain way, to divide the market and get their share of it.
If you want that, then Panasonics are definitely better for that (they look more like Polaroids do than Sonys, out of the box... LOL! jk.)
But once you start looking under the hood, then most cars are more similar than they are different.
Let's move up the imaging ladder a bit.
Take a Leica camera, just shoot it. The lens and camera combo will do the rest, and if you do your part (hold the camera steady, get the focus sharp and the exposure right, and don't forget to load the film into the camera, or put the memory card in, every mistake of which I've made, at one time or another), then the image will be technically gorgeous.
The more advanced the camera, the more control over the imagery, and theoretically the better images from that camera, at least technically.
Aesthetically? That depends on your eye, and for interests of brevity let's leave it at that.
But if you now know a little more about cameras, about lighting, about images, you can start to produce pictures that look pretty good no matter what camera you're using. Most beginning drivers start with just one car. They take a little more time getting used to each new car they get into, until that becomes more normal, and then, after awhile, most okay drivers can get from A to B no matter what steering wheel they're behind, if the car's an automatic and an American (left hand drive). But most pros can drive right or left, auto, stick or Hewland, on or off road -- you get my drift.
Used to be that video was the auto drive car. Especially in terms of the consumer cameras, you could, and still can, set everything on full auto, and just point and shoot. Much, much better than that old school relic of a movie camera, right? Plus, big, big selling point over all those rusty old movie cameras, there is this little screen on the camera, see? and you can see, immediately, what you've just shot. Excellent! Modern!
But lately we've kinda sorta moved beyond all the "video is immediate results" thing.
We're pushing the limits of what can be reproduced on a computer screen or even an HD monitor in terms of the dynamic range and color space.
The field monitors we have today, at least the ones not costing tens of thousands of dollars, don't show things as sharply, colorfully or deeply as the latest cameras can now capture.
In fact, as a HD editor, I'm using 30" and bigger monitors every day, and see more and more images captured on very expensive cameras - out of focus.
So I complain to the camera people, and they insist that their peaking, focus assists, and viewfinders all say the images are sharp.
Sure they were - on a 20" monitor of the old school persuasion.
But times have changed. And digital technology changes much, much faster than film camera technology.
I tell them that most network execs will be watching their brand new HD images on monitors that are at least 30", usually more. And if they want to continue to be employed, then they'd better take more care with their focus.
So they now know that their on-camera monitors aren't quite good enough, and so they put a 30" monitor on set and pull focus from that instead. And have a new part of the set, called a video village, full of monitors and image-savvy techs called DITs - Ditigal Imaging Technicians. who mainly apply filters on the raw images coming off the cameras so the producers see pretty Polaroid pictures and are happy about spending the increased money they did to get all of this new technology.
So, nowadays, professionally speaking, unless we have a video village and plenty of DITs on stage, we can't actually see the final image we're capturing any more. We have to abstract our acquired images for future reproduction and intended venue of viewing.
Get that?
We have to shoot something we can't see the end result of immediately, but instead abstract for it, allow for it mentally and creatively, to be corrected for, in post, to suit the regular TV, home theater, broadcast, digital theater or DI to theatrical print.
Hmm... sound familiar? Like, as in dailies and neg dev?
I think so, especially with the quality of the video taps on movie cameras these days...
Have you been on an HD set? There are more video monitors and DITS on set than on any film camera set I've seen. And the builds and strikes of these new video villages are much, much slower than any 35mm movie set I've ever been on as well.
But I digress...
Okay, so now we have the EX1, this little camera that takes this basic, high quality image that is great to post process and is versatile and looks good... and for some versatility, maybe a film/HVX/Leica look maybe we add (like I have) the 35mm DOF adaptors and Zeiss lenses. Maybe change the mount of my DOF out and shoot, say Canon, or Leica, or any of the others out there.
Not to say that other cameras can't go that route - almost every video camera that I've owned thus far can.
The HVX, for instance, can do this, most of it, without the DOF units, etc. And it has a Leica (yeah!) lens to boot.
But the HVX can't go the other way. I can get a reasonable Panasonic facsimile out of my Sony - but not the other way around.
But then again hey, I'm no Barry Green. I can't make an HVX sit up and beg like he can.
My point is not to incite a riot about how easy it is or was to do thus-and-such on this-or-that camera platform, but to describe to you my process at arriving at the EX1 and thus answer your original question. As I said, I started off on DVXs. I own Leicas up the yinyang. I can afford to buy almost any camera I want to. I've put a lot of time and energy into doing what you are now doing, which may be idle (pure) research, maybe not. Fact gathering, in any event.
So - back to the camera itself.
There's 1900x1200. Color depth. Frame rate - 60fps to 60spf, intervalometer built in. Frame blending. Full auto and full manual. The HVX has equivalent too. For hand-holding a naked camera, the HVX is loads better than my EX1 ever will be.
Then there's only HD camera I've used whose LCD screen I trust for focusing on....
Aha.
And that was the decider for me.
For me.
Because I'm an editor by trade and a producer/director by vocation, I can get the pro class images I'm used to getting when I was being paid (good money) for directing/DP'ing, for a price I can afford, without incurring lab costs (which are falling daily, BTW, as well as raw stock costs, so yes, I do shoot film often - but without talent monitors, client monitors, even focus monitors - yes, old, school, me...) and be able to get that image to tell my story my way.
I can shoot an EX1 like I shoot my Aaton. Build it up with a full camera crew with ACs, video village and DITs, or strip it down and go out walking with it myself. Get pro class images either way.
Not many people have as many cameras as I do. And I used to have many cars as well, from an RV down to a motorbike.
But nowadays I tend to use only a few cars, a few cameras. I have an old Sony HDR-HC1. It's my third. I had one, sold it to move up, missed it, bought another, used it, sold it too, missed it again.
Not going to sell the one I have now. It's the camera that my non-technical peeps reach for first, it's the camera that fits in my pocket. It's the camera that has gotten a lot of shots *because I had it with me*, instead of sitting at home in my camera vault, along with all the other expensive equipment I own.
I used to take my DVX everywhere. But switched to an FX7 when I had to go HDV. Tested many, many cameras, hung out at the camera stores, spent hours, just holding the cameras, testing the feel. But when the EX1 came out, that was it.
I take the EX1 out a lot too, it's just small enough, just light enough to put in this old stills camera bag I have, sling it over my shoulder, just in case.
I don't own anything bigger than that, not even an EX3, because, like my big 35mm movie cameras, they'll just sit around needing attention, repairs or maintenance until someone pays for them to come out and play, and for the moment my income's from post.
Now, when the time comes for me to shoot 35mm, my cameras will work well and cost less, still, than renting new. And they'll still be current enough to do the job. They've been fully paid for years ago, and they're still making money for me.
Can't say as that will be the case for any video camera, though. Saw an Ikegama on ebay for less than a hundred bucks lately. Ouch. But maybe not, it looks as if it served its purpose in its day, treated its owner well and returned its value plus some.
My EX1's already returned its value, just three shoots later. And I'm not full time in production any more, remember.
So, if it's one camera to own, which camera to buy?
When it comes down to forums and threads like this, this post of mine is one in thousands.
So I have more experience. So what? How much of my experience applies to you?
Everything gets all mixed up, people are saying many different things at the same time, yadda yadda...
Like a car show, but all the cars are on the same podium, or at least very, very close together. And you're reading chitchat from all the people looking at all these cars, all on the same message board.
You have to be super clear what kind of car you're after, so you can find the same type of people to talk to who want the same things out of their car.
Easy to get led astray.
After all, how many people do you know who buy the latest car, because it's there, or because their pals so-and-so have one, even though it's an SUV and a gas guzzler and they never go off-roading with it?
So yes, I'm sure that forums like these are really going to have quite a few tire kickers around - and kudos to them, because where else can you kick tires on a camera you're thinking about?
As a pilot, I'm aware that the best weather report of the place I'm flying in and to doesn't come from the weather reporters, or traffic control, or any of those. It's the direct radio-to- radio contact with a pilot who's in a similar plane in front of me, who took off before I did, and is going along the same route as me.
That's what I see this as being.
Kudos to all.
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