DSLR or 35mm adapter for 72hr Film Festival

C

connectivitygroup

Well-known member
I have a technical/artistic question that I am hopping that someone can help me out with or at least help me think through the situation.

We are doing a 72hr film festival at the end of the month and are trying to decide what to shoot it on. This is our 6th film fest and 3rd 72hr one (we won best of fest for the first 2) so we are not new to the challenges. In the past we have always shot on DSLRs but the problems are getting old and the work arounds take time (transcoding and syncing sound).

We recently got a EX3 for work that we do that does not lend itself to shallow DOF or short record times. My questions is should I look into shooting this film festival with a 35mm adapter. I can rent one locally (or they are pretty cheap on ebay) and working with the EX3 has been a breath of fresh air from all of the DSLR issues that we have grown accustomed to. I have all of the gear (lenses, sound, support and post workflow) for shooting it either way (except for a 35mm adapter) but will I notice a big difference between the quality of an adapter and a DSLR?

My thoughts are that if the quality doesn't suffer (I know about the light loss) I maybe better off shooting with the EX3 since I wouldn't have to transcode, sync sound, and deal with artifacts. But I would like to hear others opinions.

Any input is appreciated.

In case anyone is interested here are the links to previous entries:

72hr
http://vimeo.com/15516922
http://vimeo.com/6916525

48hr
http://vimeo.com/11408221
http://vimeo.com/4497805
 
well. i got rid of both a brevis and an sgblade in favor of a gh2 simply because there were fewer points of failure and contamination with a dslr relative to having an adapter in the mix.
and the ability to get the camera into smaller spaces was a big plus as well

for you though. id say it depends on what youre shooting. would you rather carry more lights or sync sound in post.

i dont know that absolute top notch quality is a deal breaker in these fests. might you record sound into the camera rather than externally?
 
The sound doesn't bother me like the hours of transcoding does. Sound and video quality IS important to us and the more time we have in post working on polishing the film than dealing with that stuff the better.

But if the image quality is going to be drastically degraded I will stick to what we have been doing.

We typically use lighting anyway so that is not that much of an issue.
 
i dont think the image would be "degraded" it will just take more light to get what youre used to sneaking by with with a DSLR

why do you HAVE TO transcode? can you not edit natively?
 
I can edit natively but it has always led to problems. And we like to at least do a quick color pass (hopefully more) in Davinici. I haven't tried H264 in Davinci yet but Color at least didn't like H264.
 
If it's one thing lately that I'd really like even more than the narrow DOF (which I think can be achieved with a 2/3rd sensor) is the movement. The shakiness of a DSLR is so distinguishable now, it (for me) is the 'amateur' giveaway. It's the one reason I'm thinking of investing in a videocamera more than buying a DSLR (sold my cameras last year sadly went broke). It would be way more cinematic to have rock solid movement as opposed to those micro jitters we've become so accustomed to. If I'm lighting a set, then my concern for low light ability diminishes. Even these days I'm using the term 'low light capability' to mean how clean shadows are at a low iso, or a native iso. not how much illumination i can get just by cranking the thing up. If I'm getting paid or lighting a set, I never go past ISO 400. I would go with an adapter. Spatial resolution is making less of a difference to me. I wish there was an SD camera out there that recorded a thick codec. I'd shoot with an adapter, 1080, just to shrink down in size at the end (I do that all the time) it increases my perceived sharpness and 'kinda' cheats in cleaning up darks. I add my grain before I scale down. Dunno if this makes sense. I think the weakest thing about a dslr is what happens when the camera moves. So friggin wobbly. I can catch it on the fly since a couple of years. Also I've attained somewhat narrow DOF with an EX1, I just make sure I have anough space on my set to back up the few extra feet to zoom in. Well maybe several extra feet. But it's a film. You're planning it. And if (as in the example of the op) it's a fast fast fast festival (48hr or 72hr) go with the video camera.
 
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