any lighting news?

This very thing happened in the music recording industry 15 years ago. It will not stop until things are completely flattened out so be ready for it. The home studio has for the most part decimated the recording studio business model (at least 90 percent of them). The only true investment that will not leave you bankrupt is investing in talent. Talented people that push the buttons, look though the lens, place the lights, write the treatments. BMCC is just pushing the flattening process ahead a few years. Im sorry ruffalo, BMCC is not a walmart camera. The image it produces and flexibility it has in post is as robust and as beautiful any Red products image. Lets not forget who started the flattening process in 2007 with the introduction of the Red one :)
 
Robert Ruffo said:
No. Its' not. Not everybody here is a hobbyist. Some people here realize that plumetting equipment costs means plumetting revenue for rental shops. At some point it will no longer be viable to own a rental shop at all. If that happens, only those who can afford to buy will be shooting, and only with what they own.

Many people here also do not realize that if the equipement you just bought drops in value, you just lost money. they don;t realize it because they do not have sufficient understanding of how depreciation and other economic things actually work.

many people here also confuse their artistic career with what equipment they own, forgetting that people like David Mullen own nothing more than a light meter, maybe oen lens or two, if that. They just rent. Equipment purchase should be an economic decision, vs. rental, nothing more.

Red just made a new sensor, for example, and I'm sure some people will look at BM's new cams and say "I don;t want to invest in cameras anymore, because next month they will cost $1000, and I won;t have time to amortize my investment." So Red maybe will not get enough return on their investment. That does not encourage innovation, if people cannot make money.

also consider this: before BM came along, colorists made over $100 an hour in salary (not counting the suite). Now that is down to maybe $20 net, once you factor in how much it really costs to make a grading suite that works. You think that's good? That people have to keep a second job for their whole lives? They also sold $150 000 DaVinci suites one week, and then the same thing for $1000 the week after. WHat do you think happened to those people who paid $100 000K? Yes. They went bankrupt, fired all their staff.

So I for one will cheer if BM goes bankrupt. They put many people I know out of business - its' just karma.

There is more to this business than amateurs making their little indy film with no money as a hobby.
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I am not a professional videographer but a professional photographer. The same thing happened in the photography world. Today you can get a d800 that beats every medium format back except in resolution for 3k. In the end what matters is the quality of your work, your vision etc. If you think your gear is going to make you get work then you will have to change career. What BM is doing is leveling the playing field, for some it will be really bad, but for others it will be a new set of opportunities. I have a set of 4 flash that cost me about 4k and I can overpower the sun with it. For continuous light it will be different but for gear to cost 5 to ten time more just because it is written cinema is an aberration. So do you think a handle must cost $ 500, is it made of titanium. How solid can it be, more solid that the tools of a construction company, that is abused 10 times more. You want it or not, in 5 years you will have 4k camera with 14 stop of DR and global shutter for less than $ 5000. Either you adapt or you will disappear. But your skill and craft will still have the same value because even in 5 years the person who does know how to light, compose etc, no camera in the world will change that.
 
dustwaterwindfire said:
This very thing happened in the music recording industry 15 years ago. It will not stop until things are completely flattened out so be ready for it. The home studio has for the most part decimated the recording studio business model (at least 90 percent of them). The only true investment that will not leave you bankrupt is investing in talent. Talented people that push the buttons, look though the lens, place the lights, write the treatments. BMCC is just pushing the flattening process ahead a few years. Im sorry ruffalo, BMCC is not a walmart camera. The image it produces and flexibility it has in post is as robust and as beautiful any Red products image. Lets not forget who started the flattening process in 2007 with the introduction of the Red one :)
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+1, some people feel threaten because the business model is changing, what they call quality, was the investment in gear that they have made, that gave them an advantage. When this disappear, it is the human factor that will come through or not.
 
Postmaster said:
It's called technical evolution and progress.

Happened to many industries in the last 200 years - and yeah, there will always be blood.
You have to adjust or fall down.

Don't want to get too philosophical, but:

Colorists used to made a 100 bucks an hour, Avid was selling mediocre computers for insane prices, broadcast cameras used to cost more than most folks make in 2 years, the list goes on.

But was that right? I mean right like in righteous?
Or was it more like taking advantage, just because they can and everybody else had no choice?
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It used to be that a few companies controlled a few choices, and none raced to the bottom with price and "good enough but not quite" solutions to confuse producers and agency creatives, and decimate rental houses and owner-operators. Price drops were gradual, and there was real care to help people who invested in their products have time to recoup. Arris and Sony still do this, which is why anyone who invested in an Alexa likely amortized it.

BM does not have to sell their cams for peanuts. That does not encourage tech innovation. Putting you competitors out of business does not encourage anything. Besides, apart from the pocket cam and its small size, their cameras are not really technologically more advanced in any way than many other products available, just cheaper, and less well made with poor QC. There is nothing groundbreaking at all about the BM cam other than price. They can't really claim to be moving tech forward.

I agree with Charles about Red, to some degree, although I feel they are not nearly as egregious as BM.

Very few of you actually make a living at this, so you cheer when things happen that hurt those who do, but seem to benefit you the hobbyest in the short term. Well, think about the fact that every time salaries go down in the pro world, or people are put out of business, your chance of reaching your dream of one day paying the rent with this goes down in probability too.
 
Danielvilliers said:
I am not a professional videographer but a professional photographer. The same thing happened in the photography world. Today you can get a d800 that beats every medium format back except in resolution for 3k. In the end what matters is the quality of your work, your vision etc. If you think your gear is going to make you get work then you will have to change career. What BM is doing is leveling the playing field, for some it will be really bad, but for others it will be a new set of opportunities. I have a set of 4 flash that cost me about 4k and I can overpower the sun with it. For continuous light it will be different but for gear to cost 5 to ten time more just because it is written cinema is an aberration. So do you think a handle must cost $ 500, is it made of titanium. How solid can it be, more solid that the tools of a construction company, that is abused 10 times more. You want it or not, in 5 years you will have 4k camera with 14 stop of DR and global shutter for less than $ 5000. Either you adapt or you will disappear. But your skill and craft will still have the same value because even in 5 years the person who does know how to light, compose etc, no camera in the world will change that.
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Blah blah blah it's all about the art. I know that. I don't need to own gear for any of what you say. I'm talking about people who buy gear, because without us there would be no NAB or anyone to build a booth at NAB. I can just rent anything I want to make the same art. (Or maybe I can't because the rental house was put out of business.)

I actually mentioned David Mullen who owns $0 of gear and you nonetheless give me your hackneyed art speech.

And if you really think that salaries and the cost of tools used have no correlation, you are very naive.

Also, cinema tools cost more because they are not mass-produced. The mass market is happy to shoot on iPhones. There's another basic lesson in economic reality for you.
 
Danielvilliers said:
+1, some people feel threaten because the business model is changing, what they call quality, was the investment in gear that they have made, that gave them an advantage. When this disappear, it is the human factor that will come through or not.
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Except I'll bet you have no business plan at all - that you are not making your full-time living out of this.

And owning gear has never been a career advantage for me - just a business investment. For the last time try to understand the difference. In the real world people look at your reel, and don't care what you own vs rent. Owning any gear will never make a serious producer hire you as a DP.
 
dustwaterwindfire said:
This very thing happened in the music recording industry 15 years ago. It will not stop until things are completely flattened out so be ready for it. The home studio has for the most part decimated the recording studio business model (at least 90 percent of them). The only true investment that will not leave you bankrupt is investing in talent. Talented people that push the buttons, look though the lens, place the lights, write the treatments. BMCC is just pushing the flattening process ahead a few years. Im sorry ruffalo, BMCC is not a walmart camera. The image it produces and flexibility it has in post is as robust and as beautiful any Red products image. Lets not forget who started the flattening process in 2007 with the introduction of the Red one :)
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Anyone who claims that the BMCC image is not different from an Epic or a Red is not someone I would ever hire as a DP. Just the crop factor makes a huge difference, let alone the lack of OLPF. Your statement only proves you are not very attentive to the kinds of finer details that make a top DP earn what she or he does.

It's a Walmart camera. Deal with it. I leaned on mini DV - the BM camera is way better than that.
 
Postmaster said:
So what's your problem than?

Your clients don't like skin textures andwhatnot on "Walmart" cameras,
so you can continue to rent them your amortized REDs or shoot for them on RED and all is good.

Oh, FYI BMC sharpens noting in camera - that's just what any sensor looks without a OPLF in front.
If you don't like that, you always can make it as soft as RED material. Ether with a filter, vintage glass or in post.
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No you can't. It will never look the same. People said that about the 5D. You simply cannot replicate a proper OLPF in post.

My clients are not the problem. I am very lucky - other people have clients who are less appreciative of fine details, so they can't do truly good work even if they would want to and would be able to - they are instead told there is only enough money for a BM camera or a 5D "because it's good enough". The problem is a general race toward "good enough" or in other words to the bottom
 
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OldCorpse said:
I don't understand. If the BM cams result in poor quality work, how is it competition for those who demand/do good quality work? If the BM cams are poor, then how does that impact rental houses that rent out Alexas? If only indy amateurs and hobbyists are satisfied with BM and DSLR quality work and gear, that does not impact big studios or professional freelancers who work with "pro" gear - David Mullen will still rent your stuff, so what's the problem? The DSLR market is not replacement, but addition to the market. All that's happened is that folks who would previously be sitting on their hands, now can afford to buy a DSLR/BMCC and start shooting - they took nothing away from you, they would not have rented your Alexa anyway. The DSLR crowd enlarged the market and stratified it, that's all - and that's a good thing for you as well, because eventually some small percentage of those DSLR guys will acquire the skills which will make them clients for your higher end rental business - and that would not have happened had they been shut out completely. So they ADDED to the business, not subtracted.

You may have a small point about the colorists and crap software, but overall, you're wrong.
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If what you said was true, that would be wonderful.

But more shooters did not magically create more projects and more paying work. What happened is that many projects got cut budgets, so the total amount of money now floating around for all freelancers to split between us - you me and David Mullen, everybody, is now smaller, and the number of people competing for those jobs larger.

The profit margins of people like advertisers and film studios is higher, while many production companies and indy owner-operators are going bankrupt, despite being busy and popular, because the budgets just don't add up anymore.

So in the end this "empowerment of the people" has led to huge corporations having more money, and us less.
 
Oh please - just because pencils are pretty cheap, that has not put anyone out of business, who makes a living with artsy pencil drawings.

Everyones budgets got cut since years, - not only in our business.
And that's not because the gear is getting affordable for talented folks , but because we are living in a major financial crisis.
If you want to blame anybody, blame Goldman-Sachs and the rest of the Wallstreet mob.

And yeah, do you really think a big agency suddenly picks some college kid, instead of a true and tried DP, just because the kid has a BMC?
(The agency would hate the skin texture anyway) - camera cost is way below the line on any budget I know.
Most of the time catering and craft service is more expensive, than renting a camera.
Staff, lights, transportation , grip andwhatnot - you still need all that, and it's not getting any cheaper, just because cameras are getting cheaper.
 
Postmaster said:
Oh please - just because pencils are pretty cheap, that has not put anyone out of business, who makes a living with artsy pencil drawings.

Everyones budgets got cut since years, - not only in our business.
And that's not because the gear is getting affordable for talented folks , but because we are living in a major financial crisis.
If you want to blame anybody, blame Goldman-Sachs and the rest of the Wallstreet mob.

And yeah, do you really think a big agency suddenly picks some college kid, instead of a true and tried DP, just because the kid has a BMC?
(The agency would hate the skin texture anyway) - camera cost is way below the line on any budget I know.
Most of the time catering and craft service is more expensive, than renting a camera.
Staff, lights, transportation , grip andwhatnot - you still need all that, and it's not getting any cheaper, just because cameras are getting cheaper.
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Yep, exactly. Ruffo is wrong about BM or cheap gear driving down budgets. If you need quality, you'll pay for it - period. I can just picture the BMW commercial people going "just hire a kid with a DSLR!" - that's BS. Again, if the quality is needed, they'll pay for it, period. Rental houses are not going to be affected. The "danger" of course is that some gear gets to be high quality and the price plunges - and that really does affect the rental houses - I ask anyone on these boards... how much camera/sound equipment film/gear can you buy today for $10K vs even as recently as 5 years ago? I can't believe my eyes. Gear of AMAZING quality is available for a fraction of the price. But so what? If you can give me exactly the same quality - or better - for a lower price, why refuse it? I mean, you can't stop progress. Are some things lost? Yes. When shooting on 35mm film is down massively, they stop producing 35mm film and we all lose... if digital is unable to match that quality (though that's arguable - digital will be able to match, and better, 35mm - or 70mm film one day). But that's what's always been the case. When mass-produced products came along, sometimes high-quality handmade stuff got priced out and disappeared - and the quality was never matched... but this way everybody can afford reasonable cost of products versus only the very rich. A handmade fitted shirt or shoes are going to be higher quality and very expensive, and many crafts and artisans lost jobs and quality was never matched... but that's life and progress - losers and winners. Maybe we'll all lose sometimes with cheap gear, but we'll win more than we'll lose overall.

In the end, yes, it will be all about talent, not gear.
 
Wow, way to hijack a thread fellas. I like to argue as much as the next guy, but what does any of this have to do with the OP's question?

There was something at NAB to talk about regarding lights. I have a feeling next year it will be all the rage, but this year it slipped under the radar. Its called remote phosphor LED lighting. It eliminates all the flaws in LED lighting like multiple source shadows, inconsistent color temperatures, and low CRI ratings. Rather than try to explain how it does this, I'll let these the two companies I found at NAB explain it:

http://brothers-sons.dk/area-48-soft/
http://www.cineolighting.com

I was very impressed by both companies and apparently they are friendly with each other. I've got no horse in this race :)
 
I saw them last year on the Cinetec here in Germany - quite impressive, like a softbox an no way LEDish.

Hope the price comes down, so I can afford them.

..oh here we go again :lipsrseal
 
OldCorpse said:
Yep, exactly. Ruffo is wrong about BM or cheap gear driving down budgets. If you need quality, you'll pay for it - period. I can just picture the BMW commercial people going "just hire a kid with a DSLR!" - that's BS. Again, if the quality is needed, they'll pay for it, period. Rental houses are not going to be affected. The "danger" of course is that some gear gets to be high quality and the price plunges - and that really does affect the rental houses - I ask anyone on these boards... how much camera/sound equipment film/gear can you buy today for $10K vs even as recently as 5 years ago? I can't believe my eyes. Gear of AMAZING quality is available for a fraction of the price. But so what? If you can give me exactly the same quality - or better - for a lower price, why refuse it? I mean, you can't stop progress. Are some things lost? Yes. When shooting on 35mm film is down massively, they stop producing 35mm film and we all lose... if digital is unable to match that quality (though that's arguable - digital will be able to match, and better, 35mm - or 70mm film one day). But that's what's always been the case. When mass-produced products came along, sometimes high-quality handmade stuff got priced out and disappeared - and the quality was never matched... but this way everybody can afford reasonable cost of products versus only the very rich. A handmade fitted shirt or shoes are going to be higher quality and very expensive, and many crafts and artisans lost jobs and quality was never matched... but that's life and progress - losers and winners. Maybe we'll all lose sometimes with cheap gear, but we'll win more than we'll lose overall.

In the end, yes, it will be all about talent, not gear.
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Not the BMW commercial, but the entire middle-end of the business has indeed been decimated. There aren't many BMW commercials, and even people who make commercials like that, most of their income is from smaller jobs.

BTW - I was not rich at all when I started RENTING $550 000 35mm cameras on the first gigs I got. I was a starving student living on ramen noodles and super excited to do my first gig. I didn't buy anything, I rented it. When everybody rented, things were actually MORE democratic than they are now. We all rented the same stuff, from the same rental houses. Back then, what you owned had no effect at all on what you got to shoot with, because nobody owned anything.

And if the business turns into something where it's almost impossible to make a living, only rich kids will be able to afford to do it. How is that democratic?

If this new crash and burn model encouraged by BM comes to play, then on the contrary, only very rich people who can afford to throw away money on an investment which will loose its value way before they can recoup will be able to work in the business. Some of you guys don't see the big picture. You just see the little projects you post for free on Vimeo.

And as a final note - in the old days something like a Red would have cost say $300 000 (again, we all would have rented it, everybody the same camera, and budgets compensated for this as their was no choice). There was maybe 10 cameras like that, in each major city. Think of how much more environmentally friendly that is - 10 cameras, shared by all the filmmakers in town, instead of everybody owning their own, and it sits on a shelf when they don't use it.
 
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Danielvilliers said:
And yeah, do you really think a big agency suddenly picks some college kid, instead of a true and tried DP, just because the kid has a BMC?
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I was on a commercial just recently and some kid showed up on set with a BMC and suddenly the clients and other 'creative' people wanted to reshoot parts or all of the spot with the 'cool' camera, instead of the Alexa. I am dead serious. They actually shot alternate footage with the BMC and a consumer lens and wanted to intercut it with the rest of the Alexa spot. Never underestimate the ignorance or stupidity of a significant percentage of people who call the shots in this business.
 
Postmaster said:
Oh please - just because pencils are pretty cheap, that has not put anyone out of business, who makes a living with artsy pencil drawings.

Everyones budgets got cut since years, - not only in our business.
And that's not because the gear is getting affordable for talented folks , but because we are living in a major financial crisis.
If you want to blame anybody, blame Goldman-Sachs and the rest of the Wallstreet mob.

And yeah, do you really think a big agency suddenly picks some college kid, instead of a true and tried DP, just because the kid has a BMC?
(The agency would hate the skin texture anyway) - camera cost is way below the line on any budget I know.
Most of the time catering and craft service is more expensive, than renting a camera.
Staff, lights, transportation , grip andwhatnot - you still need all that, and it's not getting any cheaper, just because cameras are getting cheaper.
Click to expand...

Yes the economic crisis would have an effect, but that is not the whole story. Again, when DPs were using only $500 000 cameras, it was a better paid job, whether that is silly or not, that is how people think, and no one with deep experience dealing in this business will argue with that. Colorists used to make a lot more money before BM decided to release Lite for free. (it's a fact period).

It's true you need a lot more than a camera. Anyway, all I am saying here is that everything being dirt cheap will not help you make a living, it will hurt your ability to do that, in the end.

BM putting other camera makers out of business will not help anybody innovate.

And BM are a lot like Walmart. Are we really better off with dead small town centers, which used to be filled by independent merchants who earned a middle-class living, now replaced by a Walmart and people making minimum wage with no benefits? If BM puts Sony and Panny and everybody else out of business with their everyday low prices, we will lose a lot more than we will gain.
 
Boy has this drifted off topic - and I apologize for participating in the derail. No more OT from me.

Regarding the phosphor lights - very exciting, but still too expensive for the little guy. As it is, I've bought quite a bit of LED lights, and thankfully used them, but frankly I should have held off, because things are changing so quickly even with LED lights - every six months seemingly prices fall, and quality goes up... now LED may be altogether obsolete. We'll see. For now, I'm fine with my LEDs and I'm holding off on buying any more until things shake out - basically until they do what I want: affordable, good CRI, BRIGHT, power-efficient (battery-powered)... that's the holy grail - when will it happen I don't know, but we're a heck of a lot closer to that point than even two years ago.
 
Yeah, the remote phosphor lights are still on the expensive side. However, they are just super bright LED lights behind the phosphor substrate, so I imagine the price will come down quite fast. Also, it should be noted that these are far brighter than anything I've seen from traditional LED panels. These lights can replace 800w Jokers in certain scenarios. You won't ever get a nice sharp hard light from them, but if you need a really bright, soft source, battery powered light... these are it! I bet next year we will see them for less than $1000 :)
 
Robert Ruffo said:
Anyone who claims that the BMCC image is not different from an Epic or a Red is not someone I would ever hire as a DP. Just the crop factor makes a huge difference, let alone the lack of OLPF. Your statement only proves you are not very attentive to the kinds of finer details that make a top DP earn what she or he does.

It's a Walmart camera. Deal with it. I leaned on mini DV - the BM camera is way better than that.
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Just keep saying that its a walmart camera and maybe that will come true in your own fantasy. But for the real world with unbiased eyes BMC is a serious tool. A very disruptive product for your particular part of the industry yes, but that doesnt change the truth in the images, sorry.
 
....just saying

Skin1.jpg

This is from a little series of tests I'm doing in the moment.
This particular part was only about skin tones (not sharpness of lens/camera)
We took the worst possible light ( cheapish LED) here on propose , to see what we get in a worst case scenario.

Scarlet @4k with Zeiss 35mm SuperSpeed @ f4 - RED Gamma2, Debayer: Premium full
BMC @ 2.5k (DNG) with Samyang 35mm @ f4 - BMD to 709 LUT

Both graded in Resolve and rendered out at 1920x1080

Daylight from Window in the back and 3 Ikan LED lights.

I found the SuperSpeeds are a bit sharper and contrastier - but to be honest, I expected much more difference.
But as I said, this session was just about skin tones and here the Scarlet is a tad out of focus.

To make this less OT: I wonder what they would have looked with the remote phosphor lights :laugh:

.. no, really - I alleyways disliked LED lights and really hoped for a solution, with better CRI.
Those plasma lights from Hive ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLH_1oMqN9o ) seem to be the best bet so far, but never saw them here in Germany.

If you are in the market fpr new lights, I really recommend to watch this Interview about skin tones, CRI and the latest light developments, with Dedo Weigert of DedoLight - the old boy is a unbelievable source of wisdom, when it comes to lighting. http://www.fxguide.com/fxguidetv/fxguidetv-170-dedo-on-dedolight/
 
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