Canon T2i with L Glass vs RED Camera

[Barry_Green]

You want to know where the disconnect is? I've been thinking about this for years and years, and I think it goes like this...

Remember when we used to have a lot of posts clamoring for film to die? People were acting so excited that digital was finally going to triumph over film, and film would be "gone" in a year or two, etc... (never mind that something like 95% of hollywood features are still shot on film). My question was: why was this a good thing? Why would people WANT film to go away? And I think... I think the reason is that some people have this mental block about the idea that "if film is what people want, and I don't have it, then if film goes away, they'll want what I have." Right? Instead of just learning to shoot on film, and picking up a used CP16 for less than the cost of a t2i, they'd rather cling to their video cameras and chant for the death of film. Because, if film goes away, it somehow legitimizes their choice.

Which doesn't make sense. Because if you look at the guys who are successful in this business, who are doing what most of us would want (guys like David Mullen, ASC -- I've been watching him for years, since he first started contributing on forums)... that guy doesn't own ANYTHING. He owns a light meter. He doesn't need equipment to validate him. He shoots, and he shoots on whatever the client wants. He makes suggestions for the project, but if they want to shoot 35mm film, he shoots 35mm film. If they want to shoot F23, or Red, or F900, or 7D, he does. Every bigtime cinematographer I know, none of them own their own camera package, nor do they care to.

So film dying, hurts them. Because it removes one major brush from the artist's palette.

So I don't think that it's the notion that people don't believe that there's one overall "better" product; I think it's that they somehow believe that if there IS a better product out there, that means that people won't want to hire them with their lesser product. And if that's the case, all I can say is: put more effort into your skills, than you do into your equipment. Because equipment will ALWAYS be supplanted, replaced, or updated. It will always go out of style. Which is why rental houses exist.

 

[Barry_Green]

Exactly! There seems to be this myth that professionals are somehow being duped into using expensive and higher end equipments when there are cheaper alternative out there that are "just as good." Trust me, if the pros are shelling out the big bucks it's not because they're old fogeys who like to do things the hard way; it's because you get what you pay for with high end gears. I've tried quite a few budget solutions in term of film equipments and I can tell you that in 90% of cases, it's worth paying that premium over "good enough" alternative if you can afford it.

+1.

No, forget that. Make it +10.

Why is it that the people who know little to nothing about the business, assume that those who are at the very top, are stupid and don't know what they're doing? It boggles the mind...

 

[Blaine]

And I think... I think the reason is that some people have this mental block about the idea that "if film is what people want, and I don't have it, then if film goes away, they'll want what I have." Right? Instead of just learning to shoot on film, and picking up a used CP16 for less than the cost of a t2i, they'd rather cling to their video cameras and chant for the death of film. Because, if film goes away, it somehow legitimizes their choice.
...
So I don't think that it's the notion that people don't believe that there's one overall "better" product; I think it's that they somehow believe that if there IS a better product out there, that means that people won't want to hire them with their lesser product. And if that's the case, all I can say is: put more effort into your skills, than you do into your equipment. Because equipment will ALWAYS be supplanted, replaced, or updated. It will always go out of style. Which is why rental houses exist.

Why is it that the people who know little to nothing about the business, assume that those who are at the very top, are stupid and don't know what they're doing? It boggles the mind...

It also seems like a lot of people are trying to validate their purchase.

 

[f64manray]

This is kinda funny. We're listening to music at it's very best in 44.1k, 16bit and most will be listening to it on the far worse MP3 compression scheme and we're talking about if the project is worth the very best. Shoot what your most comfortable on and gives you what you know to be good results. There is always going to be a budget busting higher aquisition format you can use but keep in mind the destination format that it will heard/viewed on.

I'll take a backseat to no one when it comes to still photography, and I'll just say once you've gone to digital, you've already compromised your quest for perfection. The industry has always compromised since the beginning of the cinematography medium. it's a compromise between the financial return of the product and the cost of the production, publicity etc. that is the producer's bottom line.

As a photographer over the last 25 years I compromised the moment I stepped down from 4x5 to 120 and then 120 to 35mm. Why did I do that? I did it because the end product was being purchased by end users that didn't want to pay for "no compromise". They want "good enough". Then as far as I'm concerned, I became a total skank of a crack whore when I went to digital because well "It's good enough" and I need a certain profit margin because I like to enjoy the finer things in life like having sex etc.

This is the same for the image in motion. There is no quest for some kind of artistic integrity and purist image. If there were we would be filming in massive 4x5 rolls of film and projecting it through massive projectors with huge flood lamps, but we don't do that do we? Why? because there is no money to be made filming in that kind of quality so we compromise for "good enough". we compromise when we use Red and we compromise when we use the T2i because the only thing that matters is the power of the material that is passing through the lens. The Red is no paradigm of quality anymore than stepping down from 4x5 to 120 is a step up.

I enjoy good material equally whether viewed on SD Dish Sat or Bluray on my HD LCD 52" samsung.

 

[Kholi]

Well I lol'ed as well. I see RED in your sig and see that you seem like you support them. So while this thread might have gone slightly off topic I still feel that it is relevant. So if you tell me don't take comments to the heart then you should do the same.

Going in with kid gloves here... Cieloent, if you didn't know, Philip Bloom wasn't the only person leading the DSLR revolution when it began. Of the first people in the US to put their hands on a Nikon D90 and report back to others, pretty much a day or two before it was released, was myself.

You can go back and find quotes of me saying "It's like a mini RED".

Then, the GH-1. I actually had friends over in Japan and had them pick a GH-1 up for me the day it was released, I think almost a month before it hit the states. I don't know japanese, I spent a lot of time posting on the boards, relaying information and trying to figure it out.

In the end of it all, I owned three 7Ds and one 5D MKii and shot with them for a long, long time. Didn't even pick the RED up I think until the MX upgrade hit.

I think I'm one of the largest DSLR proponents since this started. I've got hundreds of hours of footage from real working jobs, have spent time consulting on larger commercials (McDonalds? Huggies? Snuggle?) on equipment and working with DSLRs.

And, I think I've invested more cash in it than most people on these boards.

I've got the working experience and right to deliberate.

In the end all I wanted was visually examples of RED vs Canon HDSLR to decide what would be best for my next project. A lot of hear say and not actual examples of "Music Videos".

Seems almost like this thread was pointless.

It was pointless. Once people begin to understand that there is no contest between RED and a DSLR, one, and two that it doesn't really matter what you shoot on, so long as it fits the project, then these threads will stop popping up.

So you are saying that all of the work Motion Family , Parris, etc. have done with these DSLRs means they are cheap producers and lack quality? I'm done speaking to an ignorant mind such as yourself

To be honest, every video that you posted lacked severely. It's the same old crap: expensive cars, half-naiked females, flaunting money and clubs. So yeah, it does severely lack in quality.

Whether or not those specific entities are cheap producers, I have no idea. But being a WORKING CLASS SHOOTER, you'd be hard-pressed to tell me otherwise. This isn't a pipedream for me: this is my life.

I feel that there is nothing better than someone with a fresh mind , the underdog is someone people always need to look out for. What this means is something any man has done can be replicated. If "RainFall Films" is the stick to be measured by then I know what I need to do.

ps. RainFall Films watch your back!

I'm flattered that you think I'm actually something to aspire to. The truth is, you're no more an underdog than I am. I still eat Volcano Tacos from Taco Bell for dinner, sometimes I switch it up for ninety-nine cent 5 piece Spicy Chicken Nuggets from Wendy's.

I have the worst roommate situation imaginable, I was about ten minutes from being roasted to death in my own home just last year.

At the end of the day, just shoot and let your work speak for itself.

 

[Kholi]

You want to know where the disconnect is? I've been thinking about this for years and years, and I think it goes like this...

Remember when we used to have a lot of posts clamoring for film to die? People were acting so excited that digital was finally going to triumph over film, and film would be "gone" in a year or two, etc... (never mind that something like 95% of hollywood features are still shot on film). My question was: why was this a good thing? Why would people WANT film to go away? And I think... I think the reason is that some people have this mental block about the idea that "if film is what people want, and I don't have it, then if film goes away, they'll want what I have." Right? Instead of just learning to shoot on film, and picking up a used CP16 for less than the cost of a t2i, they'd rather cling to their video cameras and chant for the death of film. Because, if film goes away, it somehow legitimizes their choice.

Which doesn't make sense. Because if you look at the guys who are successful in this business, who are doing what most of us would want (guys like David Mullen, ASC -- I've been watching him for years, since he first started contributing on forums)... that guy doesn't own ANYTHING. He owns a light meter. He doesn't need equipment to validate him. He shoots, and he shoots on whatever the client wants. He makes suggestions for the project, but if they want to shoot 35mm film, he shoots 35mm film. If they want to shoot F23, or Red, or F900, or 7D, he does. Every bigtime cinematographer I know, none of them own their own camera package, nor do they care to.

So film dying, hurts them. Because it removes one major brush from the artist's palette.

So I don't think that it's the notion that people don't believe that there's one overall "better" product; I think it's that they somehow believe that if there IS a better product out there, that means that people won't want to hire them with their lesser product. And if that's the case, all I can say is: put more effort into your skills, than you do into your equipment. Because equipment will ALWAYS be supplanted, replaced, or updated. It will always go out of style. Which is why rental houses exist.

I think this is where that "I'm comin' after your job!" mentality stems from, as well.

It's actually a bit maddening...

 

[Barry_Green]

It also seems like a lot of people are trying to validate their purchase.

Well, there's definitely that. Did you see Jerry Seinfeld recently, he was on some talk show, and he went into this thing about cell phones, and what is it with people pushing their cell phone choice on you? "Hey, what phone do you have? Really? You should get MY phone." Like, why does it matter to you, what phone I use? Apparently, if everyone all chooses the same phone I chose, then that means I made the right choice, right?

Is it just insecurity? I don't know. Build up your skillset, and it doesn't matter. Hey Kholi, what did Sam and you shoot that Zelda thing on? And, bigger question -- do I care? It looked great. If I looked at that Zelda thing, I wouldn't say "man, I gotta get me one of those cameras", instead I'd say "man, I gotta hire Sam and Kholi."

Look at Vincent Pascoe's reel. Some of it is Red One, some of it is HVX200, some of it is GH1. But do I (as a producer who has hired him) care? No. I looked at "Tomorrow's Yesterday" and said "man, I gotta hire Vincent Pascoe." Tomorrow's Yesterday was shot on an HVX200 with a Redrock M2 adapter, but I hired Vincent and had him shoot on a GH1. And the results are awesome. And one of those films was even accepted into SxSW.

Same with Macgregor. When he showed Similo, did everyone say "man, I gotta get me a DVX" or "I gotta get me a G35 adapter"? Well, actually, I know a lot of folks did. But I sai d"man, I gotta hire Macgregor." So we put him on an HVX200 and a Letus35. He hated the Letus35 during that production, but I wanted to try it out so I made him. Should I have? Probably not, should have let him use what he wanted -- but in the end, that film made it to become the opening night gala short at Slamdance. And I also had him shoot on an HPX500. So even though Macgregor had wowed everyone with a DVX/G35, I had him shoot on entirely different equipment and the results were mind-bogglingly awesome.

Or on "O2" -- it was shot on a Red. So? It was shot BY Levie Isaacks, ASC. If we'd shot that on an HVX200 it would have looked awesome, because it was shot by Levie Isaacks. Levie had never used a Red. How did he get such great results from it? By having Kholi Hicks and Matty_G there to administer the Red. Did it look better because it was shot on a Red, vs. on an HVX200? Of course it did. But 90% of it was that it was shot by Levie Isaacks. The camera differential probably accounted for only that last 10%.

People, put more stock and faith in yourselves, instead of your DSLR or camcorder.

 

[Barry_Green]

Then as far as I'm concerned, I became a total skank of a crack whore when I went to digital because well "It's good enough" and I need a certain profit margin because I like to enjoy the finer things in life like having sex etc.

So, with that taken in context, the question is: do you believe that shooting digital pictures is just as good as shooting 4x5 film?

Because that's the question that this thread was originally addressing.

 

[Kholi]

Hey Kholi, what did Sam and you shoot that Zelda thing on? And, bigger question -- do I care? It looked great. If I looked at that Zelda thing, I wouldn't say "man, I gotta get me one of those cameras", instead I'd say "man, I gotta hire Sam and Kholi."

Look at Vincent Pascoe's reel. Some of it is Red One, some of it is HVX200, some of it is GH1. But do I (as a producer who has hired him) care? No. I looked at "Tomorrow's Yesterday" and said "man, I gotta hire Vincent Pascoe."

Same with Macgregor. When he showed Similo, did everyone say "man, I gotta get me a DVX" or "I gotta get me a G35 adapter"? Well, actually, I know a lot of folks did. But I sai d"man, I gotta hire Macgregor."

Or on O2 -- it was shot on a Red. So? It was shot BY Levie Isaacks, ASC. If we'd shot that on an HVX200 it would have looked awesome, because it was shot by Levie Isaacks. Levie had never used a Red.

People, put more stock and faith in yourselves, instead of your DSLR or camcorder.

It took me forever to learn this. Granted, through practice with gear when I was a full-blown owner (not part-time), but it's the only real truth for anyone who wants to sustain a lifestyle off of this.

As the gear gets cheaper, the pool gets much more crowded. At the end of the day the only thing that matters is good ideas and real talent, or at least earned and practiced skill.

You can shoot with anything. I suppose if you're want to make sure that you have the best base image, you should consider that the DSLR is not it.

 

[Everts]

I actually read this thread twice .


Peace and Love .

 

[Cieloent]

So, with that taken in context, the question is: do you believe that shooting digital pictures is just as good as shooting 4x5 film?

Because that's the question that this thread was originally addressing.

So at the end of the day, shoot on what I know and master it. To Kholi I tink you failed to understand the music and the videos. It's just like someone saying this all sounds the same when it doesn't. IF to your eyes these DSLR images are not good and they are to me then I guess we have nothing more to talk about.


My final point was is the T2i good enough ( quality wise ) to be projected on the silver screen, if so then I will continue to do what I am doing. I did not want to focus so much time and energy into something that did not work, but if people can agree that while the T2i might not be the best choice it does offer a great image quality that many professionals are using.


Thanks everyone for the input and I'm serious when I say watch your back

peace

 

[Ian-T]

No, it's not. Anyone who does this for a living knows that it's exactly that: cheap producers. You have to realize that there isn't enough money in music videos to sustain a lifestyle. Most of the people doing them also do something else on the side.

These people literally short change every aspect of production to put money in their own pockets.

There are exceptions, those exceptions are in the larger production houses with top tier music video directors, names, etc. Here in Los Angeles, I can name a few that actually pay me my Day Rate to AC or DIT. And, although my day rate is absolutely fair, if you heard the number you might do like the other producers do: frown.

The shoots that I get my dayrate on definitely are not utilizing DSLRs. Although at a time, for a few jobs, it was happening. People wised up and it's no longer an option

But then I look at work like the Bob Schneider video shot by Robert Rodriguez recently and ask myself…why the 7D (two of them as a matter of fact)? Or the “Arrested Development videos shot on the 7D (this list can go on and on). I don’t necessarily think that these artists are “short changing every aspect of production to put money in their pockets”…. I just think it’s all about return on investments. It’s a smart move on their part especially in this overly saturated industry where it’s even more difficult today (than a few years back) for them to make any money. I would think the big record companies see it the same way.

 

[Kholi]

But then I look at work like the Bob Schneider video shot by Robert Rodriguez recently and ask myself…why the 7D (two of them as a matter of fact)? Or the “Arrested Development videos shot on the 7D (this list can go on and on). I don’t necessarily think that these artists are “short changing every aspect of production to put money in their pockets”…. I just think it’s all about return on investments. It’s a smart move on their part especially in this overly saturated industry where it’s even more difficult today (than a few years back) for them to make any money. I would think the big record companies see it the same way.

But... you just said what I basically said... man... that it's the best way to save or make money... did I not just say that?

Not a single thing on any of those lists validate anything for me in any new way that the DVX100 wasn't validated YEARS AGO with November. You can shoot with anything. Haha, but okay! Let's play you guys' game!

Hey, Ian, if you had a project to shoot, would you shoot with an HF100 or a 7D?

 

[Centro]

If you can afford it, shoot it on Red.

 

[Rick Burnett]

I will same from my perspective, the people complaining are on the bottom fringe of production work. People who are using a RED camera for smaller jobs that the client actually doesn't care as much about the quality to be so perfect. Like, wedding shooters. You shoot a few shots with the 7D and the family falls down from the beauty. The HVX shots, while absolutely necessary since the camera is solid are needed, just never evoke as much feeling with so little effort in shooting, since you can pick the perfect lens and not have to always have the most amazing light.

My problem with RED at the moment is not that the MX sensor isn't AWESOME. It is, hands down. EVERY test I have seen has shown me that is will DEFINITELY outperform my 7D on EVERY aspect but one, SIZE. I love the form factor of my 7D.

My 7D is my stop gap as I wait for both the 2/3 Fixed and S35 scarlet. I will be using both of these brains. Until then, I really don't see any other economical choices as a lot of stuff I do is just music videos of local bands or some parody work. I do have a film I wrote that is in preproduction, but since I am financing it and it is more of artistic sci-fi shot on the weekends, renting a RED for this just makes no sense. I've actually post-poned a good portion of the film that will be shot in deep focus, and will be shot on the 2/3 Fixed.

I think the best point here made is, no matter what, it matters what YOU want to live with in what you make and WHAT the budget will hold. On many things I can live with the 7D quality. But if I am doing something to be projected in a Cinema, you can GUARANTEE I'd be shooting on something that is a bit higher quality.

The big issue with the 7D is moire and aliasing. I can live with skew, as I know how to work around it, and sound, because I have other options, but moire and aliasing is the #1 downfall of the DSLR cameras. If they fix that ONE issue, which means full sensor output, they WILL be a force to be reckoned with.

I bought a smallHD monitor to now see the Moire before I offload material. This helps a HUGE amount. No secret rainbows coming in.

Good luck with your project, and GREAT music video!!!

 

[Kholi]

I think the best point here made is, no matter what, it matters what YOU want to live with in what you make and WHAT the budget will hold. On many things I can live with the 7D quality. But if I am doing something to be projected in a Cinema, you can GUARANTEE I'd be shooting on something that is a bit higher quality.

That's exactly what I said. I no post, nowhere, no how did I say a DSLR Video image will not be good, great, etc. In comparison to a RED image, shot the same way, it will always fail to measure up.

Whether it's enough to others, though, is a PERSONAL decision. Again, are you going to buy your girlfriend a diamond ring or a cubic zirconia? I dunno, that's not my choice! I'm not buying it (and I'm not suffering the consequences hehe) in the end.

The big issue with the 7D is moire and aliasing. I can live with skew, as I know how to work around it, and sound, because I have other options, but moire and aliasing is the #1 downfall of the DSLR cameras. If they fix that ONE issue, which means full sensor output, they WILL be a force to be reckoned with.

That's my only discrepancy. If moire and aliasing gets fixed, I'll re-invest. Well, maybe.

 

[Cieloent]

Time to close this thread

CITY OF LAKES

Was shot entirely on DSLRS





No one can tell me anything now , BARRY, KHOLI , or even Steve Speilberg himself

 

[jimpatro]

Look into the Varicam 3700. Just as beautiful an image as the Red without the headaches. P2 acqusition. Find a good DP, rent the 3700.

 

[Blaine]

I feel that there is nothing better than someone with a fresh mind

No one can tell me anything now , BARRY, KHOLI , or even Steve Speilberg himself

And it seems that no one could EVER tell you anything..."fresh mind"? I think not.

 

[Kholi]

=[ -- And this wasn't shot on a DSLR.

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I AGREE

I think Reem was right: Troll.