C100: How much is enough?

[cpreston]

My personal opinion is that it makes sense to rent electronic equipment and buy all of the non-electronic support equipment that you can find used. Electronic equipment like cameras, monitors, and recorders all lose value quickly over time. Support equipment like good quality stands, tripods, lights, etc. seem to maintain a fairly steady value on the used market. In many cases, you can buy used equipment that would pay itself back in saved time and rental costs in a week of work. Then, when it is time to sell you can usually get all of your money back or even make a profit if you originally found a good deal on the used market. Lenses also seem to hold their value. Certain items that are in low demand like filters and lighting accessories can sell for the cost of a couple days of rentals. Cameras, however, don't.

 

[DLD]

See I don't get this. How do you 'miss a hot trend?' It's not like if you don't do 4k productions now, (because your current clients won't pay for it or whatever) that you somehow 'miss out' on going to 4k
later if you do get client demand. Like I said, a lot of (now out of business) competitors told me I was 'missing a hot trend' with HD. Yet I didn't miss out....I moved to HD when there was actual demand for it in my market. And now that I have client demand I do HD productions all the time.....I didn't miss out somehow..

I think you're saying 90% of what I said but in different words.

As to what I'd do if I were your competitor with an FS7, as an example, while you're resorting to a three year old C100, it'd depend on a client but there are technical, personal and emotional appeals. If one has a gift of gab, then my pitch could make yours appear rather unflattering. Unless someone is very budget conscious, old, obsolete technology isn't that fashionable.

... I work in LA where we still shoot a lot of content on expensive cameras like the Alexa, Amira, Red and F55 but I shoot even more on my C100 MKI which can now be bought for $3,500.00. I bought it last October knowing that the C100 MKII was coming out just a few weeks later but I had booked a project in South Africa that paid for the C100 MKI so I pulled the trigger. I don't regret it even though my camera "lost" 45% of it's value a month after I bought it because it "made" me money, fourteen days of rental charges. I don't buy expensive cameras anymore and I shoot in the middle of the industry mostly, not on high end TV shows and films but on the more bread and butter series, behind the scenes, documentaries and corporate work. The C100 is perfect for me and for my clients. I did shoot a big project for LA Metro last month and the editor was telling me that she wished I had shot some of it in 60p so as to reduce the strobing on fast moving train and bus shots but the editor knew that we would have had to have rented the C100 MKII to gain that capability. The C100 MKI fit her budget for this project so we edited around the lack of slow motion. .

That's fine and dandy but folks with Alexa/Amira, F55 and Dragon do charge higher fees for their services, don't they? I mean, every busness fits its chosen niche and usually it has less to do with the equipment and more with the professional using that equipment ... but top professionals use top equipment much in the same way top actors work for top directors working with top writers. It's not elitism or snobbery but rather the desire to work with the best.

 

[alaskacameradude]

I think you're saying 90% of what I said but in different words.

As to what I'd do if I were your competitor with an FS7, as an example, while you're resorting to a three year old C100, it'd depend on a client but there are technical, personal and emotional appeals. If one has a gift of gab, then my pitch could make yours appear rather unflattering. Unless someone is very budget conscious, old, obsolete technology isn't that fashionable.

Of course you want to 'sell' your unique value and if that is 4k then by all
means try to sell it. Problem is, in more rural areas like mine (far away
from LA, NY and the other big hotbeds) none of the clients care about
fashionable technology. They want something that makes them more money
than they spend. I would literally almost pay money to watch you try to
sell 4k to clients in my area.....your fashionable pitch vs. my unflattering
one. If you could do it, it would be worth the cost as an education for
me in the best salesmanship ever. Because what is the unique value of 4k?
Higher resolution. How can their customers see this?
Well......they can't yet. The cable company here just recently has allowed for
HD spots in their server. The local TV stations still broadcast SD spots.
And get this. The local theatre lets businesses purchase time to play their spots
during previews...which can be a nice amount of viewers if it's a popular movie.
They have a 2k digital projector for the movie.....but the business spots are
only accepted in SD. I've got 3 clients that I shoot FS700 for the big screen
for...and the videos are down converted to SD. Talk about a mess. Rumor is
that before the summer is over the theatre will accept HD spots.....gosh I
hope so! Once there is broadcast adoption of 4k and increased bandwidth
(which is a whole nother issue here) for streaming 4k, then I predict
client adoption cause it DOES look nice. But for now, it does them little
good here. I still have around 85% of clients who want.......wait for
it......a DVD as the deliverable. I push for a web link in HD and they
just view that as a 'throw in bonus' and the physical DVD as the real
asset. This is what the crazy world is like in some of the rural areas.
Its a big mess, hard enough for us video geeks to sort through all the different
options, cameras, codecs, 720HD, 1080HD, 2k, 4k, Raw, Slog,
and so on. Most clients have no hope of understanding it all...they
throw their hands up and ask for a DVD because that, they understand.

 

[DLD]

Of course you want to 'sell' your unique value and if that is 4k then by all
means try to sell it...

Like I wrote in my previous post, we really don't disagree on much.

But, for purely informational purposes, you should be aware that 4K TV's are already rather inexpensive, the 4K Blu-Ray is expected by the fall, 4K cable boxes by September (Comcast) and YouTube can already stream 5K. In other words, the entire infrastructure necessary to acquire and subsequently deliver a 4K image to a client is on the verge of being complete. It'll reach some parts of the world later than others but, as long as there's a Best Buy in your vicinity, its arrival is imminent.

PS. I joked about it on another thread (Yes, where I mentioned that I dropped a 5D MK III to the floor and quickly sauntered off to another counter) but, aside of the photo department, I checked out the video and the computers at Best Buy a few weeks ago. The video area had a bunch of 4K screens running the specifically shot promo material and they just looked amazing.

 

[jthabel]

4k is coming, no doubt. If I were going to go out and buy a TV tomorrow, I'd certainly look at 4K TVs, and why not? They're almost as cheap as really good 1080p TVs. That said, I sit and watch cable TV a few nights a week on my 7 year old plasma 50 inch HDTV (in 720p, the cable broadcast standard) and it still looks pretty astounding to me. To that point, even if you're watching a 1080p-shot production on a 4k TV, I think you're going to be reasonably impressed. There's only so much difference the human eye can perceive. Line a high quality HDTV up with a 4k TV (something you'll see they often purposefully try to avoid at Best Buy), and the difference is really pretty minimal. It's not like SD vs HD, where there was a clear, overwhelming improvement.

As for buying vs renting a camera... a C100 Mk1 rents for 330 a weekend here in Austin. You can buy a new C100 Mk1 for about 3 grand now. In other words, if you're gonna be shooting more than 9 weekends within a fairly reasonable time period (which I most certainly do), then of course buy. Totally agree with some of the above posts about how buying supplemental gear is far more important, though. Show up with good glass, good sticks, good lights, good mics -- all things that can last you for many, many years with proper care, through the life spans of several cameras -- and if you know how to use them properly, your client probably won't know care whether your end product was shot on 4k or HD.

The C100 is such a great camera for this kind of work, too. I've been a loyal Canon buyer for years, but I think they really got it right with the C100. Great form factor, great image, great workflow.

 

[jm.gardiner]

My work in LA ranges from TV doc/commercial to music videos and indie narratives shorts/features. TV stuff they expect a C300 or higher (Sony F5/55). They expect timecode sync and 50mb/s minimum. Narrative clients want Alexa or Red so they can take control of the image in post, I've gotten by with the C300 mk1, but even if some clients can't see where it struggles, I do and I can see where the camera holds back the image. It will continue to work for TV for a while. I've put a deposit on a mk2 for my narrative/music video clients who want that 12bit 4444 for creative projects.

A note on 4k, it's not a fad, but it's just not nearly as present as most would have you believe. I just had a film shot on Epic & Dragon at 5k. We colored at a great post house in Santa Monica and finished in 2k. I asked the guys there how often they deliver in 4k. They only deliver netflix and amazon shows in 4k and it's a huge resource drain, in terms of computing/rendering time.

They also showed us our film on their highest end consumer Sony 4k TV. I can't tell you how big of a POS that tv was. You had to sit straight on, a foot to the right or left and the color shifted unacceptably. I suddenly understood why Samsung started making those curved screens, to control the veiwing angles by limiting them. Don't waste money on a 4k tv yet, give a few more years.

 

[nedcam]

Thanks guys for the kudos. I am a survivor in that many of the guys who started on this career marathon with me, who were much better than I, couldn't make it in the long run because they could not figure out how to develop a sustainable business model, so they got flushed out. I had the benefit that in my age group coming out of film school, upon graduation you couldn't just start doing your own thing with cheap gear. The film cameras were so expensive and complex then that you had to be an apprentice or beg to get into the restricted union. I became the gopher, *****, Man Friday, floor sweeper for a very successful DP who took over his dad's (also a famous DP) studio. By doing this I learned the business end, which 90% of the young guys don't have the benefit of. Our industry is so arcane that business courses are irrelevant accept for perhaps accounting. Someone older than you who is successful has to teach you the biz, it's hard to learn by your own mistakes and survive.

I learned how to do meetings, do pitches, land clients, manage client expectations, get paid, the creative use of debt, marketing, constantly look for new opportunities, develop strategic alliances with semi-friendly competitors, all sorts of biz tricks that have served me well. I was a long hair, pot hazed, hippy from a working class family and he taught me all about the business side of creative services, something us "artists" looked down upon. Most importantly he taught me where to put one's money in terms of our tools and how to analyze when it started to make a profit and then Milk It! Think of your camera as just a tool, like a cabinet maker thinks of his table saw. You want a really good one but do you need the best , most expensive one? Will your customers notice the dif in their finished cabinets?

As to this thread talking about which model to buy, remember: First, CASH IS KING. Meaning if you do have money to spare burning a hole in your pocket, perhaps from a very profitable project, you shouldn't start browsing for new gear which is natural to us gear geeks. After paying your usual expenses you must have a decent size emergency savings and what is impossible to impress upon young crew: PAY INTO YOUR RETIREMENT FUNDS.

If you absolutely have to have, for concrete business (not emotional) reasons, a specific new camera, then whatever you do, don't pay for the whole thing in one lump sum. All the manufacturers have financing arms and that's how I bought my cameras the last 20 or more years even if I had enough to pay cash. You can write off the interest if there's any. I have lived through 3 recessions since college, this last one came on so fast. If you don't have a substantial cash reserve you can get flushed out.

But here's my main point and it is relevant to all manufacturers, models, bit rates, doo-dads: Ask yourself if this new model camera is a Want or a Need. I have shot a zillion sales training videos for many sales gurus and consultants, even Tony Robins, and I learned a lot about consumer psychology, where we trick ourselves into thinking things will be better if we only acquire X. That can be a house, car, hotter girlfriend or perhaps the new camera on the block. That's what NAB is about, right? This is what advertising and marketing is all about: Convince the message recipient that this is not a want but a need. We tend to justify what we plan to do anyway, even if it's not sound biz logic.

Bringing this back to 4K...It's very simple. Look at where the majority of your best paying, loyal, repetitive clients are at. Is your present, hopefully fully paid for, camera making them happy? If so, do nothing. Or are your competitors pitching your clients saying that their speakers go to 11? Do you have a true need to go 4K right now or do you hope that by getting 4K you'll get better clients (which may not happen)? Unless a new 4K camera is appreciated by your client base it is a waste of capital, money that should go towards your retirement funds, emergency savings or perhaps a more pressing need like a better monitor. Keep your powder dry, Cash Is King. Learn to tamp down your urge to spend, acquire, unless it's an absolute biz necessity. Perhaps a $500 Production Hub banner for your city will bring in more biz than dropping $6K for a 4K camera? Think of yourself as more than a cameraman but rather as the micro business you are, although we all love cameras.

This is a weird, crappy biz and it's hard to make a profit, it's so damn competitive. You never know in advance if you bought what will be the most popular, which is important when freelancing. Yes we all know 4K is coming, I've lost several gigs to it but I am positioned that if I really wanted that gig I could rent, usually from private owners at 25% off what a rental company would charge. That's why I said in my post that if you do feel the need to upgrade do your support, lighting, glass, audio and van, the bodies are changing too rapidly. My steady clients are coming to me because they like my eye, my speed, the way I work as a foreman for the crew, the way I interface with the clients/actors etc., lighting, etc. and they usually don't care what the camera is as long as I've communicated with the editor and everything is cool. That is the position you want to get to, otherwise it's just a hamster wheel that keeps getting faster. You want them to want YOU, you are the brand, and they trust you know what gear to use. If they didn't mention 4K there's no reason to bring it up, is there? It's not like they're going to pay more for it, will they? There are exceptions such as future proofing, projection, certain types of broadcast, applications like surgical training, punch ins during post as in sports, etc. Certain, narrow reasons to go 4K presently, but not my client base, fortunately. I can see the wedding shooters pushing 4K so their prospective bridal clients can view it in 30 years so this is a competitive tool (although they'll be on their third husband by then).

So in sum, the cranks on my paid for cameras to print money are turning nicely as long as I'm busy, and if I need to rent I make a little less money but at least I'm not out a lot of cash. I have to shoot on several different camera models every month so how could I own them all? I do have a lust for certain new cameras, I have the money, but now that I'm old, wise and experienced I can realize these are wants and not needs. And that's what you have to learn, when does my itch turn into a "necessity" in my mind? Did I talk myself into something? Same as with everything, just happens this thread is about cameras. Oh yeah, one last thing, a book changed my life in '96 and I attribute it to my financial success and as an indie micro biz owner you should read it:

The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley.

Later,

Ned

 

[alaskacameradude]

Like I wrote in my previous post, we really don't disagree on much.

But, for purely informational purposes, you should be aware that 4K TV's are already rather inexpensive, the 4K Blu-Ray is expected by the fall, 4K cable boxes by September (Comcast) and YouTube can already stream 5K. In other words, the entire infrastructure necessary to acquire and subsequently deliver a 4K image to a client is on the verge of being complete. It'll reach some parts of the world later than others but, as long as there's a Best Buy in your vicinity, its arrival is imminent.

PS. I joked about it on another thread (Yes, where I mentioned that I dropped a 5D MK III to the floor and quickly sauntered off to another counter) but, aside of the photo department, I checked out the video and the computers at Best Buy a few weeks ago. The video area had a bunch of 4K screens running the specifically shot promo material and they just looked amazing.

Yeah, we may mostly agree. But 4k tv's do me no good until I can deliver a
product that plays on them. I will be excited to see the 4k Blu Ray players,
but more than that 4k Blu Ray burners so I can deliver something in 4k.
The Blu Rays I make from my FS700 look really good. But with NLE
companies abandoning physical media (I'm looking at you Apple and
Adobe) I just hope there will be some sort of a authoring program
included with any 4k Blu Ray burner.

As for 4k's imminent arrival in my area......the closest Best Buy is about
900 miles away by air so that's not gonna help things.

Like Scott says, we may all do video work but we are 'all over the map'
both literally and figuratively. What you need to know is YOUR market.
Who cares what we think, is a 4k camera going to make YOU money?
My biggest point is although this is a creative industry, you have to
remember it's a business. Many of us stink at the business end of this.
I have been lucky enough to have had a lot of exposure to small
businesses (I commercial fished to pay for college....two of my brothers
still own commercial fishing boats and my wife owns a pizza place.)
I have also done a lot of study into the business end of this and because
of this, I have outlasted others with more ability than me, primarily because
they made bad business decisions. Spend a little money on business training.
Den Lennie has a great book for filmmakers.....it costs like $35.
There are so many resources out there no there is no excuse to not be
educated in the business end.

 

[combatentropy]

nedcam, stop making sense!

There was a time when a still photographer could buy a 30-year-old camera, like a used Hasselblad. I have always thought videocameras would get back to that, which to many of you sounds insane, given the technological upheavels for the past 10 years. I think it's just adolescence, a period of fast and awkward change, that will mature again, in something like the C100. It may already be there. Even if 4K becomes the norm, you could shoot 2K content for it indefinitely, given that it's right on the cusp of human eyesight at normal average viewing distances. There could still be 2K cameras in the year 2100, I think. They may be looked at like Super 16 was looked at recently, but biologically speaking, 2K should totally work, like forever.

That's not to say cameras won't improve. I myself am waiting for global shutter (to come back, actually) and slightly better ergonomics (to come back, actually) but other than that I think the digital motion picture camera is pretty much figured out, the way tripods and microphones are.

 

[reem12]

To answer your question, for me I have the nx1 and love the 4k quality of this cam, but still prefer the softer look of 1080p coming off the bmpcc for narrative work. Thats just my opinion. Unless your reframing the average consumer could care less and may see a mushy well lit canon 5d 1080p, equivalent in quality to my down res nx1 4k. It just happened for a wedding I shot where I used the canon 5d and nx1. The bride loved the blurred out full frame shots on the 5d over some of the super sharp nx1 shots. Although cams are getting 4k on them in droves, we still have a ways to go before we are all the way there.

 

[Bassman2003]

Great sage advice in this thread with a special mention to Ned and Puredrifting. I think the answer is clear, the C100 is enough in lot of situations.

 

[puredrifting]

That's fine and dandy but folks with Alexa/Amira, F55 and Dragon do charge higher fees for their services, don't they? I mean, every busness fits its chosen niche and usually it has less to do with the equipment and more with the professional using that equipment ... but top professionals use top equipment much in the same way top actors work for top directors working with top writers. It's not elitism or snobbery but rather the desire to work with the best.

True enough, but few are in the area of the business where they can consistently rent out their gear to productions, at least enough to make the payments. I know of half a dozen LA DPs who bought fully loaded RED packages, went bankrupt and or sold them off at a huge loss when RED was flavor of the month. Most of the top people in the business don't own their own camera either, it is the people who are a level down, the owner operators mostly. Not that the owner operators aren't talented, many are, but I hang out on the sets of a lot of TV series and features and the best DPs I work with, none of them own their own packages, the productions rent the best from the high end rental houses.

 

[puredrifting]

For those who are obsessing about 4K, just know that it is completely, totally unnecessary to almost anyone, it is merely the latest exercise by the industry to sell more gear. Nothing wrong with it, it can look pretty good but does anyone "need" it? Read the viewing distance specs and chart and you tell me. http://carltonbale.com/does-4k-resolution-matter/ That's why I regard 4k as an eventuality. We will all be shooting 8k eventually and eventually even higher spec. But nobody will need it, people will just want it as we are all victims of hype and marketing.

 

[DLD]

True enough, but few are in the area of the business where they can consistently rent out their gear to productions, at least enough to make the payments. I know of half a dozen LA DPs who bought fully loaded RED packages, went bankrupt and or sold them off at a huge loss when RED was flavor of the month...

But they were - or trying to be - way, way way ahead of the curve, weren't they? And probably sold on the idea that they could rent out the package and, at worst, break even. And then the number of rentable units far exceeded the demand for them and prices had to drop. A cautionary tale indeed.

But there's a big difference between a $60,000 shooting Red package and $10,000-$12,000 for FS7 or even less for FS700 and Q7+.

 

[puredrifting]

But there's a big difference between a $60,000 shooting Red package and $10,000-$12,000 for FS7 or even less for FS700 and Q7+.

Agreed. I have arbitrarily set a ceiling of $7k-$8k for me but I don't think it's crazy to spend $10k to own. But when you begin getting into the tens of thousands of dollars, that's when I think cameras are a terrible risk for most of us. Video people have a way of talking ourselves up the scale so easily because we want "the best". If you are starting out or switching platforms, so many forget that you don't just need a camera body. Glass, batteries, charging systems, new media like C-Fast or piles of SSD a drives for Q7+ or Shogun, a Spyder, cases, easy way to double what the camera cost when all is said and done. People are going to spend on what they are going to spend. I think Ned and I and few of the others who have been in the business for a while are just cautioning about falling down the slippery slope of gear lust and bad business decisions. For some people, a $100k Varicam 35 package and another $100k on glass and a Codex recorder are a great investment, but for the majority of users, video gear is an awful investment and should be approached very conservatively.

I did buy a $30k Beta SP video deck one year, back in the day, when the previous year we spent $28k in rentals and courier charges on Beta SP decks for outputting programs. It made total financial sense at the time. Bexel and Wexler had me on a first name basis. But today, I will never buy video gear that costs tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands again. I also get a kick out of pushing a low end camera like a C100 as far as it is capable of, the gear is so good these days, in a way, spending $30k to $40k for a lot of shooters is a fools errand. There are a good chunk of people out there who buy or rent "the best" but their end product is lousy because they never developed the skills, they just kept upgrading gear.

 

[jthabel]

Great responses and good advice on this thread. I'm all about making the most of the gear you have as long as you can. When I invested in an XH-A1s back in 2009, I started getting business off it right away. A couple years later, I bought a couple more, because they'd gotten dirt cheap after the advent of tapeless workflows and newer cameras. Continued to make money off these cams until I finally sold them earlier this year and upgraded to the C100. My expectation is I'll follow this same pattern going forward. C100s Mk1s are already getting much cheaper because of the introduction of the Mk2, as well as 4k cams. This biz is too risky to be an early adopter, IMO. Get a good, established cam that has a history of making money and a strong user/support base, and rent the big guns if you need more.

 

[Josh Bass]

i think theres something to be said for someone who DOESNT have a cam at all having to choose between cam x which may be adequate RIGHT NOW or spending a few thousand more for something that will be future proof for a while longer.

 

[DLD]

The other part of the equation is that FS700+Q7 and FS7 can be rented for about $500/week, so if a job demands it, the rental costs aren't as prohibitive as they were when the Betacam ran $75,000. Additionally, the ratio of the rental vs. the operator fees is stupendously lower now than in the analog era and it's only getting lower going forward.