HPX250: Multicam using HPX250, Red One MX and Canon 70D?

R

Robertofish

Active member
So heres the situation, right now I am trying to build up to getting more red one cameras, I like them because they cost less though used, can shoot higher frame rates, have better batteries etc the the closely priced scarlet, but thats a decision I stick by so lets not discuss that, as I said I am trying to build up to getting more reds but I have a lot of films I would like to shoot in the meantime, right now I have an HPX250, I want to get 1 red with enough equipment to run it, but I need a 3rd camera so I was thinking of getting the 70d, I think overall this provides a lot of versatility in the look of the footage, BUT can I get them to look similar enough to use them in a multicam set up? We would be editing it after the fact so it wouldnt be live, so any post production can work!

The other thing is right now I use the HPX250 with a Ninja 2 video recorder, to record straight to pro res 422hq, maybe an option for the 70d is to use my Ninja 2 with it, and get a Samurai Blade for the HPX250? That way they can both be shot straight to pro res, and edited that way, the reason I use the Ninja 2 is I do a lot of films, and things of that nature which require a lot of record time, and have set up time so I figure instead of getting a bunch of p2s and uploading that way I can just get a single hard drive(since the ninja 2 takes hdds) and use that for up to 10 hours of high quality footage on a single drive,

Thoughts on this, I will likely be shooting with the Red One MX to 2k most of the time, sometimes in high fps most of the time not, our audio will also come from the mx cause of the mini xlrs, and what about using something like a Ninja 2 with the red? I hear it has "clean" output on its 1080p 4:2:2 HDMI video, not ideal cause of the fps and whatanot but it can be done.

Thanks!
 
If you go for a live event coverage like ESPN, NBC Sports, this setup will not going to work. Each camera will have its own unique look. Not only that, you don't have a dedicated shader to match all camera's iris and color balance remotely (via SMPTE 314 fiber triax cables). I don't see much hope w/ SMPTE TC on the 70D. It's a pain in the $!#! to sync up. Audio waveform is not always reliable and you'll be off quite a bit. However, if you are doing extensive post in After Effects or other motion graphic apps, it shouldn't be a problem as you're likely to do drastic color grading on each camera to make it similar or completely different look.

I'm not a big fan of tethering anything to the HPX-250. This limits the mobility of the coverage. There's a greater chance that a traditional non-SSD hdd will fail in the field vs. P2.
 
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Well there is always the option of Red and HPX250, is this a combination that will likely work, like I said I am NOT doing any of that live coverage, and I have time to color correct I just wouldn't like it to be hell in post, as for audio, what would be the difference we can shoot the audio with the Red One and use that and not use it with HPX250 and 70d, but shoot it to sync it up obviously.

Well again, we shoot all kinds of stuff, so we may shoot 10 hours in a day depending on what we are doing, and to me its much much easier to have a single hard drive with all of it on it then 10 p2 cards not to mention the price on the p2 cards plus lets not forget that that shoots to Pro res so I am ready to edit, making turn around time much easier, which is what we really need for what I am doing, regardless,

Is there any filters or something to use with it, cause as I understand the DSLRs just have insane DOF which I like where as others don't, is that the main difference that will make them look different or is it the color balance, cause could I not just do a while balance sheet and use that in post, I do it for every other shot, so would it be that much more drastic of a change?
 
I attempted something like this in the past: HPX3100s, HPX250s, Canon 5Dm2s, Canon 7Ds, Go Pros. It can work if you have very good eyes for balancing overall color in post. I mostly use FCP X w/ mixed formats. W/ P2, you can edit it natively in Premiere CS 6 or CC. No need to Log & Transfer. What I've learned is that you'll have to compromise extra grain & noise due to extensive color correction. Also the overall color has to be graded. In other words, you can't use the cams' unprocessed output. All of the cams basically will be graded to a common color theme.

I can't stress enough on the importance of SMPTE TC on all camcorders during shooting. This means making sure all cams are receiving the most accurate TC data ideally on a continuous basis or at least every hr or so. I've witnessed first hand quite a few shoots where the producers simply gave up the daunting task of syncing up various cameras w/ out TC. Basically the guy simply wasted all of the extra cams and only used the main one. It's a huge time saver in post, especially if you're limited to 15-30 min/take on the hdSLRs. I saved about 2 days of trying to manually sync up numerous cam sources w/ out SMPTE TC. I used a Denecke Smart Slate as a workaround for lack of TC on the Go Pros & hdSLRs. It always dead-on frame accurate every time w/ this method. Even though you can sync by audio, it's still never dead on accurate due to the physics of sound and all other limitations. Precious editing time is wasted by trying to nudge frames here and there when doing the audio sync method.

I'm using less hdSLRs now. My shoot these days are either all hdSLRs or regular 1/3 to 2/3" cams. No mixing. It's very annoying as one is quite clean and the other has too much softness & DOF to the footage. It was great for couple years. Eventually the shallow DOF look gets really distracting. It's just not suitable for live events, spontaneous action. It was cool back in 2009-2010 where the shallow DOF look was the thing to have. hdSLRS generally have that soft look that you can't get rid of. It's great for certain dramatic recreation or artistic music video. But it's unsuitable if you need it to be sharp and clinical looking.
 
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My main camera is an HPX250, and I have a PIX240 and recently acquired a Samurai Blade. Once I compared P2 media to DNxHD recorded on the PIX240 ... and could not really tell a difference. Now that I have switched to the new SD P2 format cards, ingesting P2 media and trans-coding it is very easy.

Bottom line, I just run the HPX250 on P2 media and use the recorders for AVCHD cameras, where there is a perceptible quality improvement.

I'm having good results paring the Samurai Blade with a Nikon D800, but I agree with lonewolf2koc because I never got usable footage from DSLR's at event work.
 
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