Canon 7D major differences with HPX170+DOF adapter

[johnhafner]

Cost of lights, AND not having to light night scenes. Yes this has been a big factor. Running an overall lower light level allows for more natural light levels, which to me I can always tell if a dark scene is shot @ f 5.6 or f 2.0 and much prefer 2.0

Check out the link in my sig for the short I shot with the 7d and minimal lighting.

 

[Avenger007]

Distribution plays a big part in how these tools are used (and which ones are chosen).

The DSLR's can work in many scenarios. Take these stills for example. Can you tell me which I shot on RED and which are the Canon? These are Jpg compression. I chose a few head shots and some low light. This would be vimeo quality/online distribution quality with the compression. Next I can upload the 4K stills.

 

[cowpunk52]

Distribution plays a big part in how these tools are used (and which ones are chosen).

The DSLR's can work in many scenarios. Take these stills for example. Can you tell me which I shot on RED and which are the Canon? These are Jpg compression. I chose a few head shots and some low light. This would be vimeo quality/online distribution quality with the compression. Next I can upload the 4K stills.

they all seem pretty soft and mushy, so i'm gonna guess that all of them are 7d stills. maybe number 6 is red.... maybe...

 

[maarek]

If you are watching it on 46" screen and are fine with the compression, bless you, good luck and have fun! However i find it acceptable only if my delivery would be internet or SD DVD. If i had any hope of seeing the footage project theatrically the compression at this moment is not acceptable to my eyes.

First you say something silly like this but later retract your comments by saying "oh you meant a film print". Like come on.

A 46" screen too? That's soo biiig. The artifacts are significantly smaller than in HDV-cameras anyway so what's the problem here?

 

[Richard J. Johnson]

I still have not seen much footage on the 7D that the HVX200/HPX170 can't achieve. That's why I won't pull the trigger. The 5D looks so much better to me. But that's just me. I don't think I will be an early adopter on the DSLR thing. The 5D made me a believer but the cost pushed me away and the 7D image just does not do it for me. The lowlight aspect is astonishing though.

 

[Jester2138]

Distribution plays a big part in how these tools are used (and which ones are chosen).

The DSLR's can work in many scenarios. Take these stills for example. Can you tell me which I shot on RED and which are the Canon? These are Jpg compression. I chose a few head shots and some low light. This would be vimeo quality/online distribution quality with the compression. Next I can upload the 4K stills.

Oooh this sounds like fun! I'm gonna take a leap and go with:

1) 7d
2) 7d
3) red
4) 7d
5) red
6) red
7) red

 

[Ryan Farnes]

distribution plays a big part in how these tools are used (and which ones are chosen).

The dslr's can work in many scenarios. Take these stills for example. Can you tell me which i shot on red and which are the canon? These are jpg compression. I chose a few head shots and some low light. This would be vimeo quality/online distribution quality with the compression. Next i can upload the 4k stills.

1) 7d
2) 7d
3) red
4) 7d
5) red
6) red
7) 7d

 

[Mj882]

I think if one was to shoot a music video, primarily using a HPX170+Adapter for the prominent shots would be ideal whilst including the 7D for harder shots, such as in confined moving spaces i.e a ride at a theme park.

 

[Matthew P]

Distribution plays a big part in how these tools are used (and which ones are chosen).

The DSLR's can work in many scenarios. Take these stills for example. Can you tell me which I shot on RED and which are the Canon? These are Jpg compression. I chose a few head shots and some low light. This would be vimeo quality/online distribution quality with the compression. Next I can upload the 4K stills.

7D
7D
Red
Red
Red
7D
7D

That's my guess. :cheesy:

 

[Jester2138]

Come on Avenger, I'm dying to know the answers!

 

[Chris_TC]

7d
7d
red
red
7d
7d
7d

 

[digitalfilmmaker]

If you are watching it on 46" screen and are fine with the compression, bless you, good luck and have fun! However i find it acceptable only if my delivery would be internet or SD DVD. If i had any hope of seeing the footage project theatrically the compression at this moment is not acceptable to my eyes.

Well, maybe? City of God was nominated for Best Cinematography, and that was some of the most beautiful ugly footage around. I mean for the vast majority of filmmakers Internet and SD-DVD are the places we will be living for the next 5-10 years.

If you've got guaranteed theatrical, then yes plan accordingly. If you got the ability to lock down locations and have a bigger crew, use a more ambitious camera, but for most of us that are shooting guerilla style and distributing on the Web and or to TV something like the 7D is perfect. More than perfect.

I'm still learning the thing, but when I have it dialed in, it looks like sex. And when I'm off -- which is more often than I'd like -- it looks as good as DV (which is still pretty good). And this is without a crew and additional lighting.

Tools like the 7D are liberating in the sense that now I'm thinking about scenes to shoot with triple coverage because they are so cheap. Much like Crank 2, where they just invested in a ton of cameras for unique coverage than a single expensive package.

And I've had these exhaustive talks with my DP friends, only the trained eye picks up much of what's going on with compression and noise and whatnot. At some level it does invade the audiences subconscious but mostly it just gets whisked away in favor of character and plot.

 

[Ryan Farnes]

I mean for the vast majority of filmmakers Internet and SD-DVD are the places we will be living for the next 5-10 years.

I think you made some good points later on in your post, but 5-10 years? 5 would be pushing it I think. I hope to be authoring Blu-ray discs within the next couple of years at the most. Just my take on it though. I think the 7D (and 5D, GH1, etc..) is a mere shadow of things to come.

 

[Jester2138]

I personally believe that Blu-Ray is an already obselete technology that won't be lasting very long. It still hasn't really caught on and its been out for years. A few more years and we'll have moved on from optical media altogether.

 

[Chris_TC]

Why would it not be lasting very long? It delivers almost flawless 1080p, so it's the perfect format for current display technology and almost all movies that have been shot until now.

Most older 35mm masters probably don't contain much detail above 2K. And most modern movies use 2K digital intermediates. 1080p and Blu-ray won't be obsolete for a long time to come.

 

[Jester2138]

I'm not saying that 1080p is obsolete, I think 1080p is a great delivery format. I'm just saying that I think BluRay is obsolete.

My opinion is that, while BluRay may be useful for festivals and the like for several years to come, soon enough we will stream everything over the internet. As internet speeds increase exponentially it will simply not make sense to own a collection of physical media anymore - it will be far simpler and more efficient to just stream whatever you want whenever you want. Even if internet speeds don't get there anytime soon, there is always flash media, which can hold more data than BluRay in a smaller, faster, and more rugged format.

 

[TimTheFoolMan]

Why would it not be lasting very long? It delivers almost flawless 1080p, so it's the perfect format for current display technology and almost all movies that have been shot until now.

Most older 35mm masters probably don't contain much detail above 2K. And most modern movies use 2K digital intermediates. 1080p and Blu-ray won't be obsolete for a long time to come.

Blu-Ray looks nasty (to me) in its use of compression on some stuff, particularly anything with grass or leaves. Sci-Fi that looked fine on film looks cartoonish on Blu-Ray, and gets worse as the screen size increases and the blocks become more visible. Distribution mediums that are comparable to Blu-Ray discs (Cable & online delivery) are already competing with that format, and will be more and more price competitive as time goes by and bandwidth goes up.

For me, Blu-Ray is dead... it just doesn't know it yet.

 

[Barry_Green]

I've been saying for years that blu-ray is a DBA format (dead before arrival). It offers increased quality at higher prices, at the penalty of more DRM. It's a great thing for studios, but little benefit for consumers.

Which has been the hotter, more-adopted technology: blu-ray? Or youtube?

Quality doesn't really matter to the consumer, as long as they can make out what's going on. And blu-ray has ONLY quality to recommend it. Consumers don't care; years after its introduction blu-ray still only sells about 1 disc for every 10 that DVD does. My prediction has always been that people are going to skip blu-ray and instead go for hulu, netflix instant, etc. Consumers have already shown, in the music realm, that they don't need to buy a physical object anymore, they're content to download the song; I think we'll see the same thing happen here, and blu-ray will go the way of the LP.

 

[Chris_TC]

Blu-Ray looks nasty (to me) in its use of compression on some stuff, particularly anything with grass or leaves. Sci-Fi that looked fine on film looks cartoonish on Blu-Ray, and gets worse as the screen size increases and the blocks become more visible.

There are duds on any format, but you speaking of compression problems is utterly ridiculous because on most discs there simply aren't any. The bigger problems are excessive noise reduction and edge enhancement. That's what kills the detail, not 32 MBit VBR AVC.

Consumers have already shown, in the music realm, that they don't need to buy a physical object anymore, they're content to download the song; I think we'll see the same thing happen here, and blu-ray will go the way of the LP.

This is a bad comparison for a number of reasons:
1) Everyone's computer has a pair of headphones or speakers while not many computers are connected to a TV or projector. I see how people end up watching a random episode of a TV show on a computer screen. But The Lord of The Rings?
2) Like many other people, I like to shuffle my music instead of listening to a single CD (or a handful in case of a changer). So it's much more convenient to keep all my music on the computer. When watching a movie, you just pick ONE and lean back.
3) You still get physical copies of all your downloaded music while nobody's going to store 50GB a piece on hard disk for a movie collection.

 

[Barry_Green]

I don't think it's a bad comparison at all, I think it's quite apropos. Sony's already announced that *everything* they make is going to be networkable, and laptops already are starting to have HDMI outputs. It's entirely conceivable that the next gen will offer remote playback from the laptop (aka media storage device) to the screen.

How do you get physical copies of your downloaded music? You buy a song off itunes, you have a file on your hard disk. You don't have a CD, you don't have a CD case, you don't have album cover artwork...

And I doubt movies streamed are going to be 50GB apiece. A Blu-Ray disc might be, if it's double-sided, but a streamed movie doesn't have to be HD (because consumers don't really care about HD anyway) and it certainly doesn't have to be as high-bandwidth as a blu-ray disc (because consumers can't really tell the difference between an upscaling DVD and a blu-ray disc anyway). DVDs are MPEG-2 at 7 megabits, on average. You could make a DVD-res AVC disc at 2 or 3 megabits, meaning 1GB, maybe 2GB, for a standard-def streamed/downloaded movie, at DVD quality. For HD, 9 megabits would be plenty (and would surely look a heck of a lot better than broadcast HD network television!) Meaning 4-5 GB for a full movie. With terabyte hard disks going for a hundred bucks today and storing 200 movies, I really don't see it as impractical at all.

You could have a vPod, a movie-playing equivalent of an iPod. It could be a little device smaller than a PS3, that connects to the Internet, legally buys & downloads $9.99 movies, stores them on its internal hard drive, and connects to your living room TV via HDMI, for... what, $199? $299? Does that really seem impractical to you? I think that sounds like exactly what the future is going to be.

And when that arrives, how many people are really going to be shelling out $30 so they can have a blu-ray disc?