DVX200 Wish List

Re: DVX200 Wish List

Ouch!!! That didn't format very well did it? ;D

DVX100: 24p/30p/60i - LCD Display
DVC200: 1/2" CCD - 1/2" InterChangeable Lenses (Canon/Fujinon ...)
DVCPRO
New: HD - DVCPRO50 - 16:9 - P2?

Price Point: $6000.00 ( Body Only )

Note: I would *pay* ~$10,000 For Unit/Lens/etc ... and be *VERY* happy with this camera ...
 
Re: DVX200 Wish List

if were going all out here, how about more lens diaphragm blades, to smooth out of focus lights and to increase the number of star points that apear around light sources...i read online as well that if you have an odd number of diaphragm blades, as opposed to an even number...you will get twice as many start points as there are diaphragm blades...so 6 blades=6points...9blades=18points...
 
Re: DVX200 Wish List

My dream DVX wiill be a DVX...

- 2/3 " 16:9 CCD
- changeables lens or 20X zoom
- lanc control
- iris ring in the lens
 
Re: DVX200 Wish List

Here's my wish:

Full reflex, Arri T mount, Full acadamy-frame 35mm foevon sensor, Firewire800 interface (or direct SATA support). Frame independent, full jam/replicate sync support, 12volt XLR battery port, retail cost? $500

it's a wishlist right?
 
Re: DVX200 Wish List

[quote author=avr link=board=Links;num=1100898183;start=60#64 date=12/31/04 at 09:03:34]My dream DVX wiill be a DVX...

-- iris ring in the lens [/quote]

This just struck me...

Why? You mean you don't accidentally change the zoom when focusing, or change the focus when changing the zoom, so having something else up there won't bother you?

Me, I always pick the wrong ring on the first try. ::)

Dan
 
Re: DVX200 Wish List

Well, basically, my idea of the ideal DVX200/HDVX/whatever would be:

- All of the DVX100A's features left in
- DVCPRO HD with higher bandwidth for better HDV capabilty
- Better zoom lense (I hear the DVX has issues with zoom stuff)
- Native 16:9
- Actual HD capable LCD screen (unlike the FX1 and Z1's)
- NTSC/PAL switching ability
- Very wide lense

Here are some features that I wouldn't like:

- Interchangeable lenses (too expensive in the long run)
- Shoulder mount or XL2-like body change
- Interlace video only a'la Sony FX1 and Z1
- No 24p a'la Sony FX1 and Z1
- Messed up audio problems (hiss/pops/ect.) on first shipment of units
 
Re: DVX200 Wish List

Great ideas but please we need to also consider:

What they( Pana, Sony, JVC, Cannon) will do (your hoping) is read this board with all the good ideas and make it.........but instead they'll do the corporate thing....which is ...not much!....."yes....that'll make us richer," they'll nod & smile to each other while sipping sake. All the workers underneath will nod in agreement too because they need their job. The new hailed camera will be a consumer piece of junk because we are desperate and have little spare money and they are game players.

I think only a new company will be able to provide us with what we want because these current guys ( Sony, Pana, JVC, Canon) are mapping out a money strategy that avoids giving customers what they truly want ( sounds like 1970s big 3 auto makers) c'mon folks, this isn't rocket science and the tools, etc... have been around for a long time...this is just a game. As Scott Billups states in his book, they string us along because they could dump excellent tools on us tomorrow that would upset the Balance of Power. I use to think Scott was full of it until i investigated further.

I hate to be cynical, but a basic understanding of this market will immediately ascertain that we are making artistic/ narrative films and need 35mm size CCD chips for shallow DOF, not 1/3" chips for newsgathering and birthday parties. Until i see basic seriousness on the design/marketing side of these companies I'll continue to think they are stringing us along because we are easy suckers. i thought the japanese companies were excellent marketers, meaning, they truly understood the needs of customers. I guess I don't anymore.

It's far more difficult to build small objects than larger ones, this includes chips. That is the first place to start.

I love my little DVX but some company (a start up) needs to make the leap and give us what we want at a low price with matte box, rods, etc... all together. My gosh, they can make em outta plastic...they'll work just fine. We can use 35mm SLR lenses, and laptop hard drives, uncompressed. Mini DV was developed when a 10 gig hard drive was huge!  The time has come for real innovation.
 
Re: DVX200 Wish List

10s I'm not sure I agree.

Panasonic has proven that they are dedicated to providing us with what we want if it is possible in a certain price range. The DVX is a great example of that.

The problem is cost. It's just not viable to create the sort of camera we would all like for a mere 3K. Heck that's about the price of a lens for some cameras! While it is generally true that larger things are easier to make than smaller we have to look at the market. The market is much more full of smaller chips than larger ones. It's therefore much easier and cost effective for a company to use these rather than go out and custom make 35mm sized chips.

Also keep in mind research and development. It's not cheap at all and you can only afford to spend so much before you need to get a product created that works- and works well.
 
Re: DVX200 Wish List

Shaw, while i agree panasonic with the DVX has taken a major step forward I still find it interesting that it's taken so long. Most everything all of us are asking for is nothing new. Ten years ago it was pretty much the same thing video/film makers were asking & waiting on.

Chip size is significant because it's an indication of the quality of market research a company is conducting. The "LaGrange Invariant" is a principle from optics that simply states the sensor "Format" size directly affects DOF. Now it's interesting that over the last 20 plus years most all the work has been on reduction of chip size, which is excellent for news reporting large DOF application. Only recently has there been effort put into 35mm size chips for Artistic application. Why, because until now camera mfgs have not been doing their job. They have been asleep and couldn't see that there are millions of potential customers (film makers). Unfortunately new large format chip makers are ARRI, DALSA, etc... makers of very expensive cameras. So when is someone going to do the obvious and serve the market?

It's time for a little compant to step up and take the whole market with a camera that blows away everything out because they actually read these postings and use it as a design basis.

hopefully someone out there will prove me wrong and show me the real goods are on the way so we don't have to up rez, use a mini 35, etc.... rubber bands & duct tape, etc... to get what we want. ;)
 
Re: DVX200 Wish List

It's a basic misunderstanding to assume that small CCDs are easier to manufacturer then large ones.  CCD's are not produced in a one-off method, they're crammed in numbers onto a single piece of silicone and the larger the actual chip becomes, the fewer CCD's are produced per batch.  Thus larger=$$$$$$$$$.

The CCD is one of the most expensive components of any video camera, and it’s wrong to think that consumer camera manufacturers are holding back a piece of technology that in fact does not exist in the market currently in any form.

There was a great article on Wired a few months back about commoditization.  It gives you a much better idea of how consumer electronics are priced and the actual function that makes an item become cheaper over time.  The reason you’re not seeing viable full frame CCDs in consumer cameras is because you’re not seeing viable full frame CCD’s in professional cameras.

It can’t filter down if it isn’t currently in large production…it can’t be commoditized.
 
Re: DVX200 Wish List

J Barnes good point about the commoditization, and the reason it has yet to happen is because of poor marketing.
 
Re: DVX200 Wish List

It's not a marketing issue, there is simply limited application for an "artistic" CCD.

The largest market for something like that is photography, and that is exactly where you see a full 35mm frame CCD (specifically larger then 35mm motion film frame even). The Canon 1ds and 1ds2 are the only cameras out there with a full-frame sized chip. A number of the APS-sized DSLR cameras are close to an "acadamy" frame sized ccd, but none of those are really good enough for full motion capture right now. The best anyone has is around 12 frames a second (with a huge bottleneck at the "write" end of the equation).

But back to the crux of the issue, the market for a full frame camera is incredibly small and very few of the features of a high-end 35mm sized prosumer cameras could be applicable to cheaper consumer designs...so the R&D expenses are a complete loss. You can't apply that R&D towards compeditive advantages when the technology is commoditized. Sure you could probably figure out how to design an acadamy sized chip, but who in the consumer world wants one?

Who in the consumer world would even be remotely interested in an open-lens camera design? Don't forget that there were a number of SLR 35mm film cameras on the market at the same time, yet point and shoot film cameras outsold them consistently.
 
Re: DVX200 Wish List

Marketing, how I am using the term is finding out what the latent need of a potential market is and then suppling it, such as when CDs took over vinyl back 15 years ago. That is what marketing is suppose to be, not pushing stuff off on people that don't want it, though I admit, that's far more common.

DVXs prove there is a substantial market...I bet it's always been there! but was hidden because people just like you & I said, oh I'll go with a GL 2, etc... there pretty good! and they are,... but they don't cut it for what we really want to do, make films. We were happy playing around but underneath frustrated. Finally it took Geoge Lucas to ask for 24 fps and also throw in the Progressive scan...now is that really a big revolution? this could have been done back in the early 60s, it was already R&Ded.

So I'll get back to my original premise, these companies are just now starting to wake up and see what we really want. A camera with interchangeable lenses, a mattbox with rods and a focus puller can be easly mfg. for cheap...with a 35mm size CCD (Astro photographers have been making their own CCDs for years now at home) This isn't rocket science and arguments about "scales of economy" arguments don't hold water. No innovations would come about if those arguements were valid.

Anywise, I hope these companies don't do the incremental timid approach...otherwise we'll all be old men in wheel chairs once they finally realize what we are all asking for here. I spent too many years in fortune 500 upper management to know these things can be accomplished swiftly if there is the will to simply do it.

The bottom line for me is, who ever reads this board and designs according to it will win a huge pile of money and make the others out to be the foolish people they are! and we can give the big boys a real run for the money!!!!
 
Re: DVX200 Wish List

The DVX's (or any other prosumer camera) price point is only possible because of the mass commoditization of commercial video equipment.

A large frame, low noise, 100 ASA baseline, high speed CCD cannot be manufacturered for cheap. There isn't one being made in the high end market in large scale production, and thus there isn't an ability to bring one to consumers in the way you imagine. I don't argue that it would certainly be nice, and I'd be in line...it's just not going to happen until you see it take off in the high end market first.

That's just a fact you're going to have to deal with. You're not going to see the camera you imagine until you see it in a $30,000+ version.

This doesn't mean that the capacity to cheaply manufacturer a 35mm frame CCD or CMOS camera will exist in 5 years time, it's just not a logical step right now.

The market is a lot smaller then you imagine, so a company has to maintain a healthy profit margin per unit to bring any product to market.
 
Re: DVX200 Wish List

Barry's tiered wish list cover's almost everything I can think of. But after racking my brain and reading the thread I did manage to come up with something that hasn't been suggested yet.

How about integrated rod channels like the ARRI SR series? That way we can just slip in some 15mm rods for our follow focus and matte box to attach to. The lightweight support systems offered by Chrosziel and Image-2000 are pretty expensive, and if they're gonna put geared teeth on the focus ring, then it'd be nice to have the option to slip in a couple 15mm rods at a minimal cost.

SR1.jpg

camera_arri_sr2.jpg


I know I'd love to see this feature on the next incarnation of the DVX, and if you don't need rods, you can just ignore the holes. I can't imagine it'd take a big chunk of the R&D budget to integrate this into the design of the body. I mean not much compared to all this DVCPRO-HD and P2 solid state stuff--which I'm still all for.

Oh, just thought of something else! Please, put a film plane mark on the camera (I guess it would be a CCD plane mark). If you're going to give us feet markers on the focus barrel (assuming it's an integrated lens) then we're gonna need a film plane mark to use a tape. A hook for the tape would be nice too.

And personally, I'm all for an interchangeable lens system, as long as it's a B4 mount (an all metal B4 mount). It wouldn't be very useful if it was some proprietary mount for obvious reasons. But if you can give us 1/2" CCD's (or 2/3" CCD's even though that's probably cost prohibitive) and a B4 mount, we can use Zeiss Digiprimes! That would be HUGE in terms of picture quality and shooting style (with real barrel markings, minimal lens-breathing, etc.) not to mention all the other ENG and EFP zoom lenses available to us. On future DVX shoots, you can rent a lens package that will best serve your show, just like you would for a film shoot.

Anyway, just my thoughts. Obviously, I'm hoping for a DVX successor that is more modular and designed more like a 16mm film camera. Then again, what do you expect from a DP. Jan's probably gonna tell me that I should be looking at the SDX900. (Which I did get a chance to demo and talk over with Jan at DVExpo last year. Thanks Jan, you were very helpful.)

Kris
 
Re: DVX200 Wish List

Kris , good idea...yes this should be included by a competent mfg.

J Barnes, I think you got it wrong. There is a latent need that is obviously sizable....millions of camcorder owners everywhere just like 35mm SLR owners. Sometimes mfg. cant read a potential market, as is often the case. Your giving them far to much credit. Last year I had a conversation with one of Panasonic's Pro line reps and brought up this issue, he wasn't even aware it was an issue though he had been shooting video for years. Given his news/video background...I can see why. News = clarity, Art = selectivity. These are very different backgrounds.
 
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