If Nikon fails...

damonb said:
TWithout a professional crew and a sizable budget, you could shoot with a Panavision film camera and it'd look like s**t
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i disagree. i made my first films on 16 and 35mm and they look amazing even though we were amateurs and film students. i agree with the other side of your argument though, pros can make great stuff with anything.
 
Angels and Demons was shot with the Red One and its budget was $150 million. More will use it I think because the cost of shooting film is probably getting pretty high this days.




damonb said:
The pain many of the people here have suffered with the D90 has meant better D90 results for everyone who follows this forum.

What does it really matter whether Canon has a new firmware update? What does it matter whether Nikon or Canon or anyone else releases an improved movie mode? How many cameras do you want to buy, and how many technological generations do you want to wait? The fact is, many of us were thinking that the dslr movie mode the D90 introduced would offer fully professional motion picture imaging (ie Hollywood), and that's the real problem. Because, even though it's a leap ahead of most every camcorder, it doesn't (nb "Gigli" was "fully professional", and that sucked b***s. And another point, Hollywood doesn't shoot $120 million films on a Red One). Without a professional crew and a sizable budget, and no clue as to what you want to achieve, you could shoot with a Panavision film camera and it'd look like s**t. Actually, it'd look like s**t anyway without a crew. But you give the D90 and a technical cheat-sheet to a Mike Leigh or David Lynch or Michael Mann - on their own, with no crew - and the LAST thing you'll be wondering is "what was that shot on?"

Go check out junkstorecameras.com to see what one person does with (admittedly still) cameras she picks up at junk sales, remainder bins in toy stores, and garages sales. Some of these cameras are 100 years old, some are made from cardboard, some are pink with Barbies on them (which she likes), and some shouldn't work at all. There's not a whole lot of "manual" manipulation you can do with a pin-hole camera - but on the other hand, there's nothing BUT manual manipulation, if you think about it. and that's the point. Wow.

We've got DOF, a big, brilliant sensor, and fifty years of lenses of every variety. We don't have Barbies, but in this class of cameras, Nikon optics are tops, and that's where the light comes in.
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damonb said:
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The fact is, many of us were thinking that the dslr movie mode the D90 introduced would offer fully professional motion picture imaging (ie Hollywood), and that's the real problem.
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The fact is that it´s always impresive how someone can miss the point ;-)

Without a professional crew and a sizable budget, and no clue as to what you want to achieve, you could shoot with a Panavision film camera and it'd look like s**t. Actually, it'd look like s**t anyway without a crew. But you give the D90 and a technical cheat-sheet to a Mike Leigh or David Lynch or Michael Mann - on their own, with no crew - and the LAST thing you'll be wondering is "what was that shot on?"
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What you´re talking about? Did anyone mentioned here that he will make better clips, videos, films with an improved video mode made by nikon? We just want an improved tool with manual control to work faster + easier. And, of course, with better picture quality (less compression artefacts, rolling shutter, noise, stair stepping, 5 minute limit...etc.)

Go check out junkstorecameras.com to see what one person does with (admittedly still) cameras she picks up at junk sales, remainder bins in toy stores, and garages sales. Some of these cameras are 100 years old, some are made from cardboard, some are pink with Barbies on them (which she likes), and some shouldn't work at all. There's not a whole lot of "manual" manipulation you can do with a pin-hole camera - but on the other hand, there's nothing BUT manual manipulation, if you think about it. and that's the point
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Wow, what a statement. But nobody doubt it - go figure. Even with a mobile phone in the right + talented hands you can produce something amazing:

Music Video Shot on iPhone
http://www.vimeo.com/5393865
Behind the Scenes of "Play":
http://www.vimeo.com/5430133
 
I really doubt that the cost of film /processing was the reason they shot that with a RED. Not at that budget level anyway. It's usually the low budget indies that shoot with the RED for cost reasons.

Zim said:
Angels and Demons was shot with the Red One and its budget was $150 million. More will use it I think because the cost of shooting film is probably getting pretty high this days.
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Zim said:
Angels and Demons was shot with the Red One and its budget was $150 million. More will use it I think because the cost of shooting film is probably getting pretty high this days.
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i think it's more ease of use and the simpler workflow since you'd go digital from the neg anyway. film isn't that expensive really. you can get a 35mm feature in the can, processed and scanned for less than $100,000 even if you shoot "new school" with high ratios and a lot of waste. we still shoot film for most of our music videos, and my wife just produced two medium budget ($2m) features that were both shot on 35.
 
You can't stop evolution until we turn the planet to Mars and all become extinct.....which will probably happen before we get a DSLR we're all happy with.
 
I didn't know about Angels & Demons. Apologies for that.

All right you haters, I thought I was on to something and got a bit carried away.


Next...
 
I'm wondering why no one has developed hacks for any of these movie dslrs. Even the effect of the bayer filter could potentially be altered. Is it because those who would be interested are too small a group? Is it because, unlike say the iPhone, the interactions between software and hardware on a dslr are too tricky?
I can understand that the camera companies would hate it, since it might be possible to turn a first generation movie dslr into what they want to sell as a second generation one.

I'm not working on such a thing myself, by the way.
 
damonb said:
I didn't know about Angels & Demons. Apologies for that.
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your mistake was not that you didn't know, but that you made a claim without knowing what you were talking about. if you simply only say things you know to be true, or distinguish any speculation with "my guess is that" or something people will forgive mostly anything.
 
lol 10 posts and already encountered the wrath of Matt......wait wrath makes him sound cool so lets change that to "wank of Matt".....much better :nads:
 
better to unleash my wank (!?) sooner than later. this is, after all, the internet. what i just said should be in the list of rules for any board. it is on cinematography.com and the cml lists and it works. i think the occasional four letter word and even personal attack is much nicer to encounter than wild speculation presented as facts.
 
"lol 10 posts and already encountered the wrath of Matt"
Does this mean I'm officially welcomed in record time?

An apology not good enough because it doesn't pin-point the grievance?! Yes mattsand, I clearly didn't know what I was talking about. I see that, and I accept that. I was not aware of my own ignorance on the matter. But since we're giving lectures on reasoning, if all we did was talk about what we know is "true" we would never open our mouths since we can never ascertain that level of certainty (if that's what is meant by truth) about anything. A solid fundamental example of this is the revolution from classical physics to quantum mechanics. Science itself is not about truth, it's about falsifiability and repeatability - it's empirical. But maybe you know a body of knowledge more reliable than science. Otherwise, talking "truth" is wrong. But "my guess is that" is reasonable and applicable.

I may have only made a few posts, but I've been reading with interest for months. The whole purpose of the post was to jog what I saw as the doom-and-gloom attitude I saw in some posts about the limitations of - particularly - the D90 for motion capture, and the idea that something else in the future was going to be the panacea (image-wise or otherwise). The post is called "If Nikon fails" no less! While some of my claims were in error, the spirit of the post was meant to be encouraging to those of us with a D90 (or any movie dslr) who have struggled with it. I, too, want a firmware fix. I would like a Red One. I would like my own studio. It is deadening to wait for technology to solve creative problems.

ps - don't tell me that this was the post I should have made in the first place! :)
 
damonb said:
if all we did was talk about what we know is "true" we would never open our mouths since we can never ascertain that level of certainty
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it's all about passing on that uncertainty to your audience. i speculate all the time, but i really try to say so. sorry if i sounded harsh but this board is a real pain when it comes to people claiming the most outrageous things. if you had said "as far as i know no big budget productions are shot on the red one" that would have been a true statement, while the phrasing you used now resulted in a false one. a lot of people here actually know a lot of things, but their credibility is also destroyed when most of the things you read have to be taken with a grain of salt.
 
After the wagging finger and some moralizing remarks of matt, now the "slight fare" => rumors about the upcoming canons... :-)

2009 August
12th We've had several comments (thanks) since the other day all saying that video performance was a key part the 60D specs.
Most interesting was a comment as to how Canon's 'video people' have been given more input after the surprise success of the 5D Mk2 in the video area.
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