AF-100 Wishlist/Suggestion Discussion Thread
- Thread starter Luis Caffesse
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Yeah, but if something doesn't work right, how long till they fix it?
Robert Ruffo
Well-known member
there is no ghosting unless you turn on frame blending
Robert Ruffo
Well-known member
In my experience, option "2" leads to a happier and more profitable career. Option '1" keeps you drowning at the bottom indefinitely. Clients don't know what you did to get a shot, and are not interested in hearing about it, they just say "hey your reel looks good" or "Hey, your reel looks a little cheap and rough."
People on these forums talk endlessly about the handful of films that succeeded despite using crap gear, but these are the very, very rare exception. The film that looks great and can turn at least a modest profit is not much of an exception, it's just normal. Why stack the odds against yourself?
There's two other options not mentioned which a lot of people do.
3. Rent: You just get what you need based on the job and you put that in your quote. This way you don't deal with having to always have the best stuff or worry about depreciation. And since there's an abundance of cameras floating around you can get pretty good deals.
4. Hire someone: Find a professional with equipment or a monkey with a camera. Again, you don't have to worry about equipment.
3. Rent: You just get what you need based on the job and you put that in your quote. This way you don't deal with having to always have the best stuff or worry about depreciation. And since there's an abundance of cameras floating around you can get pretty good deals.
4. Hire someone: Find a professional with equipment or a monkey with a camera. Again, you don't have to worry about equipment.
Otis Grapsas
Carbonite Member
Rentals are an option but it's the worse thing for the industry IMHO. It's not sustainable if more people decide to do it, the market will be crushed.
It shifts the profit from the manufacturer to someone who just makes a very large profit on renting a piece of gear. On a market based on rentals, instead of selling 10,000 cameras at $5,000 that get 5% usage, the manufacturer would sell 2,000 cameras at about $20,000 to the rental market. It kills the manufacturer as a business at multiple levels, the camera profit, accessories profit and everything else, because the use of every single item is maximised in a well managed rental house. That $20,000 would increase the cost or renting, especially with the reduced general ownership. The more expensive rentals would massively increase the cost of low end production. But the most important thing is that they would make owning equipment very expensive.
Rentals increase the cost of production even when they are a small part of the market. Yes, the production is paying for it, but where does the money come from? High cost of equipment (rental margin) in limited budget situatons only means one thing, lower rates for working professionals, or less people on set, to do more work, in less time, in an inferior environment.
The middleman costs to both sides, the manufacturer and the user. People shouldn't even consider paying such a large part of the ownership cost of an item for a day of use.
An EX1 at 250 euro/day. 20 days of use buy the damn thing, it will be fresh from the factory, it will help the company sustain profit (jobs), and they might even consider improving the new model instead of reducing the production cost by using even cheaper technology. On a rental only market, the EX1 would cost 1000 or 1500 euro a day. 20% to 30% of the ownership cost in a owners' market.
But the prosumer camera market is nothing compared to the professional equipment market. The entire development and running cost of a camera project in an item that is destined to be a rental item is distributed in a few dozen or hundred units. The item could easily be 10 times less expensive in an owner's market.
Rentals cannot provide the availability a no budget filmmaker, a video artist, or a video enthusiast needs to experiment with the tools. Working around limitations takes time, especially when the problem is limited availability of crew/actors. Owning the equipment gives you that time, it helps one get experience and it frees artistic expression. Renting is not an option for this category of users.
One day, the licensing agreements of cameras will forbid rental. This will make cameras a lot cheaper and a lot better.
It shifts the profit from the manufacturer to someone who just makes a very large profit on renting a piece of gear. On a market based on rentals, instead of selling 10,000 cameras at $5,000 that get 5% usage, the manufacturer would sell 2,000 cameras at about $20,000 to the rental market. It kills the manufacturer as a business at multiple levels, the camera profit, accessories profit and everything else, because the use of every single item is maximised in a well managed rental house. That $20,000 would increase the cost or renting, especially with the reduced general ownership. The more expensive rentals would massively increase the cost of low end production. But the most important thing is that they would make owning equipment very expensive.
Rentals increase the cost of production even when they are a small part of the market. Yes, the production is paying for it, but where does the money come from? High cost of equipment (rental margin) in limited budget situatons only means one thing, lower rates for working professionals, or less people on set, to do more work, in less time, in an inferior environment.
The middleman costs to both sides, the manufacturer and the user. People shouldn't even consider paying such a large part of the ownership cost of an item for a day of use.
An EX1 at 250 euro/day. 20 days of use buy the damn thing, it will be fresh from the factory, it will help the company sustain profit (jobs), and they might even consider improving the new model instead of reducing the production cost by using even cheaper technology. On a rental only market, the EX1 would cost 1000 or 1500 euro a day. 20% to 30% of the ownership cost in a owners' market.
But the prosumer camera market is nothing compared to the professional equipment market. The entire development and running cost of a camera project in an item that is destined to be a rental item is distributed in a few dozen or hundred units. The item could easily be 10 times less expensive in an owner's market.
Rentals cannot provide the availability a no budget filmmaker, a video artist, or a video enthusiast needs to experiment with the tools. Working around limitations takes time, especially when the problem is limited availability of crew/actors. Owning the equipment gives you that time, it helps one get experience and it frees artistic expression. Renting is not an option for this category of users.
One day, the licensing agreements of cameras will forbid rental. This will make cameras a lot cheaper and a lot better.
Chris Light
Veteran
^ hear hear! i am in that category. i'll always own, and what i don't like, i sell. no biggie.
Postmaster
Dark Side of the Camera
Yeah, I also prefer owning. I only rent what I can´t afford.
But my basic light, camera, audio kit is mine.
Frank
But my basic light, camera, audio kit is mine.
Frank
Ben_B
Veteran
I think is point is that the reason you can't afford is because of the rental market.
Rental market at least in New York and for this level of camera doesn't really affect price of cameras. My point is that there's an overabundance of EX1/HVX/7D/5D cameras floating around that you can rent one very cheap per job. So instead of buying a whole kit and then paying it off over several jobs, you factor in the cheap cost of rental per gig and you aren't worrying about depreciation, equipment wear and tear, etc.
You can even rent Reds here in New York pretty affordably because the market is just too saturated. If anything the rental market has cannibalized itself because of the affordability of these cameras and the fact that individuals don't settle on a fixed price for rental. When it was just a couple rental companies with cameras the prices were higher and you had no choice but to pay, but with users buying Red cameras and prosumer equipment those steady and higher price brackets have really disappeared.
Owning can be beneficial when you're shooting a short on your own schedule over weekends, but it's also pretty good to just rent and keep to a normal shooting schedule and hire good crew. Neither way is better or right, it's just your choice.
You can even rent Reds here in New York pretty affordably because the market is just too saturated. If anything the rental market has cannibalized itself because of the affordability of these cameras and the fact that individuals don't settle on a fixed price for rental. When it was just a couple rental companies with cameras the prices were higher and you had no choice but to pay, but with users buying Red cameras and prosumer equipment those steady and higher price brackets have really disappeared.
Owning can be beneficial when you're shooting a short on your own schedule over weekends, but it's also pretty good to just rent and keep to a normal shooting schedule and hire good crew. Neither way is better or right, it's just your choice.
Otis Grapsas
Carbonite Member
Yes, the <$10,000 camcorders are not affected, too many of those around, because people like to own.
Europe is full of high end cameras also. But an SI-2K in Germany rents for slightly more than an EX1 even though there aren't many SI-2Ks around. It's cheaper than Sony 2/3" CCD digibeta SD. The sony could be a better match to some projects due to CCD and workflow, but that's not the point here. In the small digital cinema market, even a few rental cameras in each country are enough to cover demand. This drops rental pricing but it also reduces camera sales. It will eventually lead small manufacturers out of the market. Those who want or need that little extra in image quality and have to own the camera, will have less options and they will have to pay more. Many of us would prefer a retail price of 15,000 euro and a rental price of 2000 a week (more cameras, busy rentals), over a 30,000 euro retail and a rental price of 1000 a week (less cameras, idle rentals). We can't afford to rent for this type of project, so it's good if the camera is not overly expensive and if it does not die an early death due to the rental business. The Arri Alexa is heading right into that situation.
i actually think that a lot of people will start with #1, learn a lot from the limitations (ala Rodriguez's Rebel w/o a crew), create a portfolio, make connections and relationships with crew and begin to grow a network of clients, then graduate to #2 when they have the money and the wisdom to purchase the right gear.
i agree that #1 is only a temporary phase, but also very essential. and when you finally move out of it your work will greatly improve from having good solid professional gear. the only reason i even bring this up is that it seems to me that there are a lot of people skipping over this step, investing big money right off the bat in gear they don't even know will be right for the work they want to do, because they haven't yet figured out what that might be. and i think it only hurts our industry to have people over-invest prematurely, getting into debt they'll probably never pay back. it takes time to develop yourself, your skills, your network and your business. there are no quick-fix solutions. you can't just slap $10000 of gear on a credit card and expect it will bring you work or fix everything. noobs get caught up in the glamor of shiny new gear and forget all about the hard work of growing a business/portfolio.
Robert Ruffo
Well-known member
Of course, yes, but we instead rented, as our "1". Until we had enough prperly paying clients we begged borrowed and stole equipment rentals and put our salaries into the prods, but the prods were shot on film and looked top-flight. We shot a commercial for a local men's store chain (VERY low budget) on film this way, with trained real actors. The client thought we were nuts - but it's how you can move forward.
Robert Ruffo
Well-known member
yes, that's true - but hard on an indy film. If you buy at the end of the film you can re-sell.
Ben_B
Veteran
Yeah but, again, the point of the poster talking about renting, whether correct or incorrect, was the idea that companies must charge more to account for fewer cameras sold when people rent...now I don't know if this is true or not or if there is any evidence to support it, but if it is I doubt that surplus of rental cameras in one area, even in as large a market as New York, will have much of an affect on the overall trend, if such a trend exists.
That really only happens when you're selling a camera like the Varicam or a film camera. This is a 6000 dollar camera, much different market. The whole point of not including P2 is so that it would hit that sweet spot HVX market. It's the market of filmmaker and professional who can afford it and then there are those who will max out credit cards to buy it because it's within reach.. They are going to sell a ton of these cameras. I don't know why this is being compared to the higher end market because it's obviously not geared for that.
Again, speaking for New York but you can get great rental rates on gear and you can put that money where it should be going: into art department and paying crew. I think I'm just from a different school when it comes to where to put the value in a film. If you have 6000 dollars to buy a camera and no money to put into feeding and paying crew members it's going to show up there onscreen in that you'll be hiring amateurs to fill crucial positions.
And this is just production costs. What about post? What about festivals? I'm just putting a dose of reality into things because post and festivals can easily outweigh the cost of production if you make the mistake of not putting the money where it counts.
Blaine
Mr. Hollywood
As much as I agree with you, Isaac, you can talk about these things until you are blue in the face. With the "democratization of film" from these comparatively low priced cameras, people forget how important an adept crew is. "We'll get the tall guy to boom when he's not acting. That way we don't have to pay him for that either."
Barry_Green
Moderator
Yes, but -- how did we all learn those lessons? Come on, we've all been trying the same thing since VHS first hit the market. Or, for some of us, since before then.
What everyone is going through now is NO DIFFERENT than what we all went through. We all had to learn, somehow or other, those hard lessons, because we thought, just like all the new users think, that there's some shortcut here or there that'll catapult them to success, and that the only thing holding them down is the cost of equipment.
The "democratization of film" has happened many, many times before. This is a tune that's been playing since 1923, when the first 16mm camera was introduced. And it's been played over and over and over, when Super8 was introduced, when video was introduced, when VHS home video was introduced, when DV digital video was introduced, when 24p video was introduced, when 35mm adapters were introduced, when variable-frame-rate 24p HD video was introduced, and now that DSLRs are here too. Every single time, it's been heralded as "the revolution" that will allow low-cost folks to "break down the doors of hollywood."
I can tell you this -- all that the new crop are saying, is EXACTLY how I felt when I had gear lust for this state-of-the-art genuine film motion picture production machine, back in 1980:
What everyone is going through now is NO DIFFERENT than what we all went through. We all had to learn, somehow or other, those hard lessons, because we thought, just like all the new users think, that there's some shortcut here or there that'll catapult them to success, and that the only thing holding them down is the cost of equipment.
The "democratization of film" has happened many, many times before. This is a tune that's been playing since 1923, when the first 16mm camera was introduced. And it's been played over and over and over, when Super8 was introduced, when video was introduced, when VHS home video was introduced, when DV digital video was introduced, when 24p video was introduced, when 35mm adapters were introduced, when variable-frame-rate 24p HD video was introduced, and now that DSLRs are here too. Every single time, it's been heralded as "the revolution" that will allow low-cost folks to "break down the doors of hollywood."
I can tell you this -- all that the new crop are saying, is EXACTLY how I felt when I had gear lust for this state-of-the-art genuine film motion picture production machine, back in 1980:
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