Hollywood Celebrity Canon DSLR Users

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Then why do most big budget reality, sports, etc. productions still use the big over the shoulder bodies when they could simply use something like the EX1/3? It's because they're still the best tools for the job.

It's a very interesting time we're living in and it's great that we're able to achieve certain results at increasingly lower price points. But film isn't going anywhere soon. Neither is HDCAM or any other such format. DSLR video is now a player in the video acquisition game, but that doesn't mean it will be the demise of anything else.
 
jess3a3 said:
Not to mention the makers of South Park, Family Guy, American Dad, and all the animation on TV. Speaking of TV do you think Reality Shows, News Programs , Sports, or Documentaries ( all huge segments of modern day television) would ever use a 25 pound RED Camera with limited battery and recording time, or even care about camera resolution? Yet a 2 pound Canon DSLR would excel in Reality Shows, News Programs , Sports, and Documentaries , and they'll only continue to get better and cheaper.
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I'm afraid that isn't quite correct. I currently shoot in the docu-reality genre and everything you say sounds a bit backwards.

-your argument about limited battery and recording time doesn't make sense. The 7D is battery-operated and can only record 12 minute clips. There are times I will fill up a whole DVC Pro HD tape on one take. All cameras have battery limitations (except for something like my spring powered Kodak Brownie 8mm movie cam).

-resolution is very important for broadcast standards. It can also determine how much your content is worth. Discovery has the Gold, Silver, and Bronze tier system to categorize the quality of your footage and is a factor in your budget. Last I checked, the 7D didn't even register on that scale. I used my 7D for a few b-roll shots on a program that premiered on Discovery Health tonight. I wasn't even watching it in HD and there were obvious quality differences in the DVC Pro HD footage and the 7D footage. I fear for its TLC debut next week when it IS broadcasted in HD.

-Please, don't get me started on the ergonomics of shooting with an ENG camera versus a photography camera. No rig will ever make up for the run-n-gun capability a proper ENG camera has.

-if you are doing it right and have a sound guy, it is impossible to sync time code with the 7D. If you are doing it cheap and operating camera and sound, the 7D's lack of manual audio control is a bust. Using a 7D + external audio device isn't even an option for the way we shoot.

The 7D is great in a controlled environment. Reality/sports/news is hardly controlled :)
 
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Actually many reality shows on MTV & Bravo & sports shows like HBO's 24/7 use HVX's / DVX's for broadcast, so DSLRS would fit right in.

Sports photographer run & gun using monopods all the time.

As far as battery recording time, I was comparing a DSLR to a RED ONE- DSLR's take about 20GB of space per hour of record time. RED ONE eats up over 10X that at 250GB per hour. & the batteries last much longer on a DSLR & are easier to charge as well vs RED ONE.

What types of shows do you watch with takes over 12 minutes? Most TV shows I watch use quick takes & edits of no more than a minute.

People have already synced external audio to the 7D by syncing the internal clocks on the DSLR & the H4N.

Several documentaries have already been shot on DSLR , so just because you dont use a DSLR for documentaries doesnt mean other cant- its already happened.
 
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Taylor Rudd said:
-resolution is very important for broadcast standards. It can also determine how much your content is worth.
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True. But the broadcast window is also shorter than a feature should be, for example. Including those straight to DVD.

Taylor Rudd said:
there were obvious quality differences in the DVC Pro HD footage and the 7D footage.
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It depends on a lot of variables beginning on the subject and going on your shooting options and so on.

Taylor Rudd said:
Discovery has the Gold, Silver, and Bronze tier system to categorize the quality of your footage and is a factor in your budget. Last I checked, the 7D didn't even register on that scale.
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Yes, tell them you'll use a 7D and if you are not a hollywood or similar or (yet) promising name, you won't have second chance to advise them in a second round ;-)
 
jess3a3 said:
Actually many reality shows on MTV & Bravo & sports shows like HBO's 24/7 use HVX's / DVX's for broadcast, so DSLRS would fit right in.

Sports photographer run & gun using monopods all the time.
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Why would a DSLR be chosen as a primary video acquisition device for sports and reality TV when prosumer camcorder like the EX3 would do the job much better in every single way? There's no advantage, and really just all disadvantages, of using a DSLR for this purpose.

As far as battery recording time, I was comparing a DSLR to a RED ONE- DSLR's take about 20GB of space per hour of record time. RED ONE eats up over 10X that at 250GB per hour. & the batteries last much longer on a DSLR & are easier to charge as well vs RED ONE.
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The problem is that nobody uses a RED for the purposes that you named. RED is a digital cinema camera, designed to be used in the controlled environment of a movie shoot.

What types of shows do you watch with takes over 12 minutes? Most TV shows I watch use quick takes & edits of no more than a minute.
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Quite obviously, you're unfamiliar with much of TV production. You're trying to argue against someone (Taylor) who does it for a living?

Several documentaries have already been shot on DSLR , so just because you dont use a DSLR for documentaries doesnt mean other cant- its already happened.
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Well, you can use literally any camera to make a documentary, even a cheap Flip camcorder. That doesn't mean that it's a suitable general replacement for professional camcorders designed specifically for the purpose of ENG, digital cinema, etc.
 
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jess3a3 said:
Actually many reality shows on MTV & Bravo & sports shows like HBO's 24/7 use HVX's / DVX's for broadcast, so DSLRS would fit right in.
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HVX is at least silver-tier camera (if not gold, can't remember). HBO also has lower standards than Discovery. They'll take content over quality.

Sports photographer run & gun using monopods all the time.
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I used to photograph NCAA sports and I absolutely used a monopod...for photographs :) The news guys had ENG cameras on their shoulders.

What types of shows do you watch with takes over 12 minutes? Most TV shows I watch use quick takes & edits of no more than a minute.
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Obviously I'm not very good at my job.

People have already synced external audio to the 7D by syncing the internal clocks on the DSLR & the H4N.
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This is true. The H4N is a great solution for a hopefully short-term problem. The editors would kill me if I did that to them, though.


Several documentaries have already been shot on DSLR , so just because you dont use a DSLR for documentaries doesnt mean other cant- its already happened.
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Again, true. But you were talking about dSLR use for mainstream reality/documentary/news/broadcast. I don't see camera jockey's putting down their rigs for a toy camera quite yet.

I love my 7D and the image it creates. It has a time and a place and I can't wait to put down the big rig to spend more time with it. Unfortunately that time and place won't be cable network television, for now
 
Taylor Rudd said:
Again, true. But you were talking about dSLR use for mainstream reality/documentary/news/broadcast. I don't see camera jockey's putting down their rigs for a toy camera quite yet.
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If a 7D is a toy camera, are HVX's & DVX's toys too? Seems to work fine for MTV , Bravo & HBO. Just because Discovery doesnt use it, doesnt mean other TV Networks cant. Besides, if by some freak accident all your cameras broke except for your 7D - are you really telling me you would be unable to do 90% of what you'd need to do for a typical gig using a DSLR? A true professional makes the job happen no matter what tools he has.
 
jess3a3 said:
If a 7D is a toy camera, are HVX's & DVX's toys too? Seems to work fine for MTV , Bravo & HBO. Just because Discovery doesnt use it, doesnt mean other TV Networks cant. Besides, if by some freak accident all your cameras broke except for your 7D - are you really telling me you would be unable to do 90% of what you'd need to do for a typical gig using a DSLR? A true professional makes the job happen no matter what tools he has.
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What you're not seeming to grasp is that the HVX, DVX, EX1, etc. are much better tools for the types of production you are describing. Also, a lot of the time, these are being used as B cameras. The big ENG bodies still rule the scene.

And you're right when you say "A true professional makes the job happen no matter what tools he has." In this case though, it would be like a carpenter trading in his framing gun for a hammer. Both will get good results, but obviously one will make the job easier and faster.
 
Jay Rodriguez said:
Uh, I owned a DVX100a, HVX200, Canon A1 and an HPX170 and now own and shoot on a 7D.... I don't consider it a started kit camera at all. Sure, it's no RED but let's not act like we can't shoot great movies on these DSLRs because they're not full loaded machines.
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You've read too much into my statement. I'm guessing were we to flesh out our discussion, we'd arrive at the same place. However...I do amuse myself...
 
handsome pete said:
What you're not seeming to grasp is that the HVX, DVX, EX1, etc. are much better tools for the types of production you are describing. Also, a lot of the time, these are being used as B cameras. The big ENG bodies still rule the scene.

And you're right when you say "A true professional makes the job happen no matter what tools he has." In this case though, it would be like a carpenter trading in his framing gun for a hammer. Both will get good results, but obviously one will make the job easier and faster.
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How is the HVX much better than the 7d ? The 7D has cheap & easy to use CF cards instead of P2 cards, the 7D has changeable lenses than can be tailored to the specific job. The 7D is considerably cheaper than the HVX. etc. They're essentially similar tools, but the 7D is more customizeable and cheaper than the HVX.
 
jess3a3, is it a fair assumption to say that you've never shot ENG, news, or sports? Because the 7D is perhaps the single most UNSUITABLE camera for that type of job, hands down, no questions asked.
 
jess3a3 said:
How is the HVX much better than the 7d ? The 7D has cheap & easy to use CF cards instead of P2 cards, the 7D has changeable lenses than can be tailored to the specific job. The 7D is considerably cheaper than the HVX. etc. They're essentially similar tools, but the 7D is more customizeable and cheaper than the HVX.
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They're similar tools in regards to my original analogy. They can both get the job done. But there are reasons why they are just not used for this type of work. 12 minute capture time, they make terrible handheld cameras without some kind of support rig, more video compression, and so on, and so on.

It's obvious that you've never done any ENG work. These DLSRs can take great video in capable hands and the right environment. But regarding the type of production you are talking about, camera ops will choose the dedicated video cameras every time.
 
Maybe the jess3a3 words are not the best at times to express what he theoretically wants to mean.

The true has always different angles. And as the great danish physicist Niels Bohr [ LINK ] once said or wrote: «The opposite of a trivial truth is false; the opposite of a great truth is also true.»
 
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Well, a "great truth" that is true no matter how you slice it is: the existing DSLRs are terrible as ENG/sports cameras. That's not what they're made for, and they're lousy at it. They can be used as a "digital Bolex" but anything beyond that is getting out of the realm of what they're good for.
 
ENG operators will always choose an ENG camera for sure, but there are a lot of photojournalists around the world using the DSLR cameras for ENG work, count on it.
 
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