The Future of Cinematography Is Almost Here...

TheDingo said:
So you're talkin' IMAX !!!
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Hells yeah. To make it even better, I was the junior high yearbook photographer and they gave me my own darkroom so I would develop the film and make prints, it was heaven for a junior high kid.
I didn't take the Yearbook shots with the pinhole of course, that was just an assignment from my teacher. Ah, those were the days. We even had a video class in the mid 1970s, doing our little school newscast.
I guess my fate was sealed at a young age. Who the hell would want to go to law school or become an engineer when you could make television and little S8 student films?
 
puredrifting said:
Hells yeah. To make it even better, I was the junior high yearbook photographer and they gave me my own darkroom so I would develop the film and make prints, it was heaven for a junior high kid.
I didn't take the Yearbook shots with the pinhole of course, that was just an assignment from my teacher. Ah, those were the days. We even had a video class in the mid 1970s, doing our little school newscast.
I guess my fate was sealed at a young age. Who the hell would want to go to law school or become an engineer when you could make television and little S8 student films?
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Oddly enough for me, I never did or wanted to have anything to do with any yearbook, newspaper or “student tv” programs when I was in Jr. High or High School. Two years later and I had bought my first Betacam. Barely three years removed from HS and not even fully done with college I was already shooting/traveling for network TV. And I bet almost anything that no student that was involved in any of those programs at that time is doing anything in “TV” or journalism, today.
 
How much was that Betacam, including accessories like tripod, lens, and batteries? And where did you get the money two years out of high school?
 
combatentropy said:
How much was that Betacam, including accessories like tripod, lens, and batteries? And where did you get the money two years out of high school?
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It was a Sony UVW-100B, part of their 'Universal' series*, so not as expensive as something like a BVW-400A or D600. I believe it was $11,600, when I bought it. With my tripod and a set of Anton Bauer batteries and a Lectro wireless and a top-light, it was somewhere between $20K-$25K. It was absolute bare-bones, just to get me up and running. Back in those days, the local stations used freelancers/stringers all the time and I just needed enough to be able to do news and sports at that level. And luckily, we had(have) professional NBA and NFL teams, along with minor league baseball and soccer and lots of HS and several college teams. Lot's of sports to get me lots of experience quickly.

My Grandmother gave me $2,000 for my birthday(nice present, huh?) that I used as a down-payment and she co-signed the bank loan for the package. Within a few months I added a light kit. About six months or so after starting, I ran into a guy in town that, at the time, did all the "big" stuff and got hooked-up with him. The rest, as they say, is history.



*Sony eventually had three series/lines of Betacam cameras and decks:
BVW: the top-of-the-line Broadcast series
PVW: middle of the pack Professional series that was more affordable, but not quite as robust
UVW: entry-level/industrial-level Universal series
 
puredrifting said:
Hells yeah. To make it even better, I was the junior high yearbook photographer and they gave me my own darkroom so I would develop the film and make prints, it was heaven for a junior high kid.
I didn't take the Yearbook shots with the pinhole of course, that was just an assignment from my teacher. Ah, those were the days. We even had a video class in the mid 1970s, doing our little school newscast...
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I did sports. The problem was that I was in a "gifted student" program and most of the kids there were far more interested in the Markov Probability Chains and PL1 rather than a number of points scored by Nicolai Deryugin (for the record, it was 57). I recall reading the headlines in front of the group and receiving a Bart Simpson attention span in return. But it beat doing the domestic politics, which was mostly reports about the prodigious corn harvests in the Kalmyk Steppes.

And you thought you had fun.
 
DLD said:
I did sports. The problem was that I was in a "gifted student" program and most of the kids there were far more interested in the Markov Probability Chains and PL1 rather than a number of points scored by Nicolai Deryugin (for the record, it was 57). I recall reading the headlines in front of the group and receiving a Bart Simpson attention span in return. But it beat doing the domestic politics, which was mostly reports about the prodigious corn harvests in the Kalmyk Steppes.

And you thought you had fun.
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I too was in an acclerated learning program that in elementary school that was called, "MGM - Mentally Gifted Minds". It was cool, got to get out of regular class and sit and debate the politics of the day, history, art with a little group of fellow student/nerds. The instructor was a very cool, hip woman who would point us in interesting directions for our projects and assignments. The best part was her end of school year party she would throw for us. She had a beach house in Malibu so we would go to her beach house and hang out, swim, have a little party (This was the mid-1970s when a teacher could somehow afford a beach house in Malibu, I don't know how, maybe she inherited money? She drove a Mercedes? I can barely remember the details of this stuff as I am freaking old now)

I don't know what most of the things you wrote about are (PL1, Nicolai Deryugin, Kalmyk Steppes?) Never followed or had any interest in sports, I grew up on a horse ranch, my parents were horse people, we spent weekends at horse shows all over the state.

You got off easy Run&Gun, my first Betacam was the BVP70 head with the BVV5 back, with the lens, I think we spent about $110K? it was a monster and I'm amazed I don't have back problems today from lugging it all day at the Miller Lite MVP Volleyball Tournament
and other events like that that I shot in the early days of my career. I recall the UVW series, we were snobs and considered that camera and the 1800 decks to be wannabe Betacam ;-) I eventually sold the BVP70 and BVV5 back for the BVWD600, shot that for a few years,
great camera. From there, traded down for the DSR-500WS as I wanted a 16:9 capable camera and there was no way I was buying a Digital Betacam camera. I was lucky in the beginning of my career, I landed a few big clients who paid us nicely so we could afford to invest the funds into the company.

The DVCAM format actually worked really well for our corporate clients and I wanted something smaller and lighter than the still too heavy/large BVWD-600. I used the difference in funds and also bought an Arri SR2 package as I liked shooting film for certain projects. I still miss both of those cameras
my perfect modern camera would have the guts of my C200 in the form factor of the DSR-500WS, that camera was ergonomic perfection, a 2/3 sized Betacam form factor, smaller batteries, everything was smooth and it weighed the perfect amount to give it enough heft for smooth operating shoulder mounted but it was light enough to easily shoot all day.
Modern cameras are an ergonomic mess in comparison and I totally get why you still shoot your old Varicam, those cameras were great too. Do you have the 2700 or the 3700? I used to rent both of those quite often.

Since then, my quest has led me to smaller, lighter, cheaper, over and over again. Probably why I am so in love with my XT-3, such amazing technology in a ridiculously small and light package, I'm starting to like shooting HH with it in the SmallRig cage with the battery grip, Shinobi on top, wooden SmallRig handle on the right top and the Røde
Video Mic Pro on top of the handle on the left. The whole thing weighs about 4-5 lbs, I can hold it all day and with the three batteries (two from the grip), I can actually shoot with it for hours. It's the perfect HH documentary camera. I've pretty much retired the C200 to only shooting tripod and interviews as I am too lazy to even shoot HH with it,
the XT-3 is better for HH, although the RAW from the C200 still looks great, but my projects lately have needed a lot of gimbal and HH. F-Log is pretty decent too, that extra stop or stop and half of DR it gives over Eterna is helpful. I'm so glad that I am basically done buying any more new cameras for the foreseeable future, both of these are paid off
and work great. Still rent the occassional RED or Arri a few times a year for one client who does some higher end stuff, but I think I am beyond buying more new gear, I have everything I need for once. Better to put the money into paying off some mortgages and 401K.
 
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Dan, I shot on dockables enough in my intern days. The rank and file photogs had (I believe) BVP5/BVV5 set-ups, non-IF lenses and used NP batts. The chief had either a BVW-300 or 400 with IF lens and A/B mount bricks. If I could have afforded a higher end camera then, I would have, but at least it was still Betacam and I had an IF 18x lens on it. Plus the ‘B’ was an upgraded version with (much) better VF and better chips over the original. Funny enough, I could get that camera to WB in situations that a lot of the higher end models wouldn’t. It actually performed pretty admirably under the God-awful sodium vapor street lights during spot news at night. You could actually balance out and get the light white or much closer than most other cams. Yes, the decks were toys compared to even the PVW’s. They looked almost like consumer VCR’s, just MUCH larger.

I was actually in talks with Sony for a BVW-D600WS for my second camera, back when you still had to purchase directly from Sony and couldn’t go out of your territory. Thankfully I held off for like a year and bought a D50WS after it came out, instead. Yes, it was a dockable, but it had an incredible picture that was better than the D600(the D50 was a digital head, too) and at $25K or so, was at least half as expensive. Both my 100B and D50WS are sitting in my gear closet in the office. I think I still used the D50WS for LS’s as late as 2012.

My first VariCam was the 27H that I bought in ‘06. I bought my first P2 VariCam, the 2700, in 2011 and a second one in 2012, I think. The 3700 never took off, at least not in my circles. I have a client with one and I’ve shot on it a few times. Essentially the same thing, just native 1080 instead of 720 and not as versatile, especially since it lacked the ability to over crank higher than 30fps and it couldn’t even do 720, which is what I needed for 99% of my work, then. The 2700 could do an internal upconvert to 1080 and that was good enough for the handful of times I’d have a request for 1080(back then).

I miss a lot about those days. I mean, we have equipment now that produces incredible images that we never thought we’d be able to a decade or decade and a half ago, but so much of the gear now is just no fun to use. If you’re used to real professional gear, the toys are just that, toys. There’s too much compromise and too much having to work around the short comings and deficient designs to make them useable for general shooting situations.

Just for fun, I ran my original gear package through an inflation calculator. It would have been almost $40K today. Which would get you close to a similarly equipped VariCam LT package with native VF, Fuji 20-120, tripod and batts.
 
puredrifting said:
I too was in an acclerated learning program that in elementary school that was called, "MGM - Mentally Gifted Minds". It was cool, got to get out of regular class and sit and debate the politics of the day, history, art with a little group of fellow student/nerds...
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I didn't deserve to be in the "Gifted Students" study group but my dad had some connections in the school's hierarchy (a neighbor of ours, who was a highly rated physics teacher) and I was let in. It took me a while to get used to the requirements, as I was pretty lax on the homework too.

PL/1 was an IBM designed universal computer language (Programming Language 1) and, since the Soviets used the Hungarian made IBM and UNIVAC knock-offs, PL/1, COBOL and Fortran were the languages to learn.

Nic Deryugin was a Soviet/Georgian basketball player, who once scored 57 points in a game. He was at center and power forward but played the second fiddle on the national team to a 7'3" Vlad Tkachenko and a young Arvidas Sabonis, also 7'3".

The Kalmyk Steppes is ~ 100,000 km2 territory on the lower Volga that became part of the Nikita Khrushchev's agricultural expansion in the 1950's-60's similar to the US farming settlements in Oklahoma-Nebraska-Kansas some 100 years earlier. Many a Soviet news program dedicated a story or two of the Soviet "successes" in farming. The stories were, by and large, fake news, as the Soviet government bought a lot of grain in the US, Canada and Australia from their POL proceeds.
 
DLD said:
I didn't deserve to be in the "Gifted Students" study group but my dad had some connections in the school's hierarchy (a neighbor of ours, who was a highly rated physics teacher) and I was let in. It took me a while to get used to the requirements, as I was pretty lax on the homework too.

PL/1 was an IBM designed universal computer language (Programming Language 1) and, since the Soviets used the Hungarian made IBM and UNIVAC knock-offs, PL/1, COBOL and Fortran were the languages to learn.

Nic Deryugin was a Soviet/Georgian basketball player, who once scored 57 points in a game. He was at center and power forward but played the second fiddle on the national team to a 7'3" Vlad Tkachenko and a young Arvidas Sabonis, also 7'3".

The Kalmyk Steppes is ~ 100,000 km2 territory on the lower Volga that became part of the Nikita Khrushchev's agricultural expansion in the 1950's-60's similar to the US farming settlements in Oklahoma-Nebraska-Kansas some 100 years earlier. Many a Soviet news program dedicated a story or two of the Soviet "successes" in farming. The stories were, by and large, fake news, as the Soviet government bought a lot of grain in the US, Canada and Australia from their POL proceeds.
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Thanks for the clarifications, very interesting. FWIW, I think the only reason students were put into the program is that they were observed being bored in the regular class, but still got good grades. And then the testing, you know, aptitude testing. I don't think the actual class did much for us other than let us not get bored with regular class. We only did MGM a couple of days a week, the rest of the time we were back in our regular classes. This was the 1970s so I am sure that a good portion of the teachers and administration were high all of the time since everyone was stoned out of their minds during the 70s in Southern California ;-) At least it gave me an intense passion about history that I still hold today as I believe that there is nothing new under the sun when it comes to societal behavior.
 
Run&Gun said:
Dan, I shot on dockables enough in my intern days. The rank and file photogs had (I believe) BVP5/BVV5 set-ups, non-IF lenses and used NP batts. The chief had either a BVW-300 or 400 with IF lens and A/B mount bricks. If I could have afforded a higher end camera then, I would have, but at least it was still Betacam and I had an IF 18x lens on it. Plus the ‘B’ was an upgraded version with (much) better VF and better chips over the original. Funny enough, I could get that camera to WB in situations that a lot of the higher end models wouldn’t. It actually performed pretty admirably under the God-awful sodium vapor street lights during spot news at night. You could actually balance out and get the light white or much closer than most other cams. Yes, the decks were toys compared to even the PVW’s. They looked almost like consumer VCR’s, just MUCH larger.

I was actually in talks with Sony for a BVW-D600WS for my second camera, back when you still had to purchase directly from Sony and couldn’t go out of your territory. Thankfully I held off for like a year and bought a D50WS after it came out, instead. Yes, it was a dockable, but it had an incredible picture that was better than the D600(the D50 was a digital head, too) and at $25K or so, was at least half as expensive. Both my 100B and D50WS are sitting in my gear closet in the office. I think I still used the D50WS for LS’s as late as 2012.

My first VariCam was the 27H that I bought in ‘06. I bought my first P2 VariCam, the 2700, in 2011 and a second one in 2012, I think. The 3700 never took off, at least not in my circles. I have a client with one and I’ve shot on it a few times. Essentially the same thing, just native 1080 instead of 720 and not as versatile, especially since it lacked the ability to over crank higher than 30fps and it couldn’t even do 720, which is what I needed for 99% of my work, then. The 2700 could do an internal upconvert to 1080 and that was good enough for the handful of times I’d have a request for 1080(back then).

I miss a lot about those days. I mean, we have equipment now that produces incredible images that we never thought we’d be able to a decade or decade and a half ago, but so much of the gear now is just no fun to use. If you’re used to real professional gear, the toys are just that, toys. There’s too much compromise and too much having to work around the short comings and deficient designs to make them useable for general shooting situations.

Just for fun, I ran my original gear package through an inflation calculator. It would have been almost $40K today. Which would get you close to a similarly equipped VariCam LT package with native VF, Fuji 20-120, tripod and batts.
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I think people who owned the broadcast stuff back then made fun of the low end gear for the same reason that many pros today make fun of mirrorless and prosumer stuff, because it can do 90% of the same result at 1/4 or less of the cost of the top end stuff ;-) Even back then, gear didn't really matter but back then, clients seemed to chedk out your gear more to see if you were "in the club" of professionals. I recall clients only wanting to edit at our place if we had AVIDs, none of that Final Cut Pro or Premiere rabble.
 
puredrifting said:
I think people who owned the broadcast stuff back then made fun of the low end gear for the same reason that many pros today make fun of mirrorless and prosumer stuff, because it can do 90% of the same result at 1/4 or less of the cost of the top end stuff ;-) Even back then, gear didn't really matter but back then, clients seemed to chedk out your gear more to see if you were "in the club" of professionals. I recall clients only wanting to edit at our place if we had AVIDs, none of that Final Cut Pro or Premiere rabble.
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There was an ass of a photog in town who used to refer to it as “My First Sony” (remember that from the 90’s?).

In a way, yes, but there is a big difference between the lower-end cameras back then and the lower-end, now. The lower-end then was still designed to be used by professionals in professional situations. They were still full-sized 3-chip ENG cameras, with XLR’s, BNC’s, TC in & out, real VF’s, real manual lenses, etc. Design and ergonomic wise, there was very little difference between an $11K 100B and a $40K-$50K 400A. If you had shot on one, you could pick the other up and be shooting in seconds. And it was that way for almost all cameras back then. Because they all had the same layout and basic In’s & Out’s, regardless of manufacturer. There are some differences, but my Panasonic P2 VariCam that I bought in 2011 has 95% of the same layout as a Sony Betacam from the 90’s. Power switch is in the same place, WB, BB, audio dials, TC, ND dial, XLR’s, etc.

But at least we have 6K, now. That’s what’s really important...
 
puredrifting said:
Thanks for the clarifications, very interesting. FWIW, I think the only reason students were put into the program is that they were observed being bored in the regular class, but still got good grades. And then the testing, you know, aptitude testing. I don't think the actual class did much for us other than let us not get bored with regular class...
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We came to the US in April, 1979. It took me a while to pick up the language, so I went to a Junior College that fall, then to a 4-year university in 1980. There I was given a math placement test - Algebra? Calc? Basic 2+2=?. I recall the admissions counselor handing me the qestionnaire and then saying nonchalantly, "30 questions. You have half hour ... but, like, you don't have to get all of them right". The test took me about seven minutes, then I handed over the papers. The guy looked at me in amazement, then at the test, then at me. "This is the highest score I have ever seen".

PS. My high school math teacher is a local legend. A couple of weeks ago, I met a lady on Facebook, who also went to the same school, graduating exactly a decade later than I. We began to talk about him. She says, "My girlfriends went back there on a vacation, took some photos with him. Will upload one in a moment". Forty three years after my introduction to AMF, he is still teaching. 82 years young. And he does it in the same classroom as in 1976-78.
 
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