4 camera comparison on set of "24"

That's an excellent article.

As a proponent of Genesis, it is interesting to hear about the perceived limitations of their single-chip system: Rodney Charters indicates that the 12.4 megapixel imager exhibits less latitude than a stock F900 chipset.

Having hundreds of hours on Z1U for HD broadcast, I'm not at all surprised that Mr. Charters found the system to be a robust solution when fitted with DOF converters on interiors. As could be expected, the HDV system has trouble outdoors except under very tightly controlled circumstances.

I'll be interested to know how the HVX stacks up. Funny thing about that article... it seems to echo the ramblings, observations and conclusions we've bandied about for over a year.

Here is a DVXUser email that found its way to the DP on Joan of Arcadia one year ago... apparently, he'd never heard of any of this stuff, even though he was shooting the first all HD acquisition narrative network show.

This is further proof of just how relevant DVXUser is to the filmmaking community!

- - -

Erik, thanks for the information. I gave it to the DP, he was surprised. He
> thanked me and is now reserching the article. My love to the family.
>
>>From: "Erik Olson" <eaolson@carolina.rr.com>
>>To: <price_818@msn.com>
>>Subject: Links to DOF converters...
>>Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2005 11:00:19 -0500
>>
>>Marty,
>>
>>Here is that information I was telling you about. First image is a DVX camera
>>with the DOF converter and a Lomo prime lens with follow focus fitted. The
>>rectangular box halfway down the lens train contains a #20 ground glass, so
>>the image from the lens doesn't actually hit the camera's imager directly.
>>F-stops actually correlate to DOF as they do in conventional cinematography
>>- giving the DP vastly increased contol over even the brightest images.
>>
>>
>>DVX100a 24fps 720x480p w/ Micro35 DOF onverter and Lomo Lens on
>>15mm (standard 60mm on-center) rods.
>>
>>Link to Micro35 website: http://www.micro35.com
>>Link to P+STechnik 2/3 camera 35 website: http://www.pstechnik.de/
>>Link to P+STechnik Mini35 demo movie: http://www.mini35.de/sampleshots.mov
>>Mini35 User Manual:
>>http://www.pstechnik.de/sheets/downloads/Mini35-manual-0714-print.pdf

e
 
When's the next article coming?

Pft. I should just read this one instead of testing. =P

These should be unbiased opinions about all four cameras.
 
It was really interesting getting Rodney's take on these cameras. Taylor Wigton put the shoot together and was asked by Rodney that we come down to try the G35 on the small format HD cameras. Unfortunately the HVX and H1 were not available at that time. I was there to assist with any G35 related questions they might have, so I was not too active in the testing. But from what I saw, I was really surprised with the Z1's performance, especially when the gain was bumped up a bit. It does an amazing job at retaining color info even with 6 or 12db. We were obviously very pleased to be working with Rodney on testing and are excited to do further testing with him.
 
This article deserves its own thread - not two posts buried 245 deep within the DVX 4-Cam comparison.

Perhaps this could be moved to Cinematography as it isn't so much model specific.

The article compares and contrasts 1/3 chip HD versus professional formats like HDCam, 35mm and so forth. It's interesting to see how 35mm single-camera film DPs reacted to the HDV in particular.

e
 
kidgoldenarm said:
http://www.showreel.org/memberarea/article.php?141
Click to expand...
[Rodney Charters?]:"However, the Genesis did not feel ready for our show this season for the following reasons: • It was not as sensitive to low light as the F900 chipset. No ‘collateral’, which was often shot at a gain boost of +18 DB."

I think Rodney isn't fully aware about how Collateral was shot.
AC article about Collateral (quoted here: http://dvxuser.com/V3/showpost.php?p=413306&postcount=21 )
"In testing the F900, we found that some things looked great on the monitor at +3dB or +6dB, but when we made the film-out, those scenes picked up even more noise when projected on film on the big screen."..."We discovered we had to increase the signal - meaning amount of light - on the actor's face to an acceptable IRE level, knowing that we'd later bring it down digitally with Power Windows in color correction before the film-out."

So they really didn't boost that gain so much. They boosted the lights.

I don't think Rodney compared the latitude of Genesis and F900, but latitude of Genesis compared to film.
About sensitivity, F900 has pixel size of 25 µm^2 and Genesis has 35 µm^2, so it seems a bit odd that Genesis isn't as sensitive. Or does Genesis really have 37.2 Mpx (12.4Mpx per color)?
 
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