What's next for digital video cameras?

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pulpwoody

Well-known member
Looking ahead to this year and the next, what changes do you predict or really want? Myself, the next camera will start with 10bit 422 internal recording. I still need xlr's and ND filters, so that's a given. Right now, the C300 fits the bill, but our of our price range. I'll also be looking for the most stops of dynamic range possible. The BMCC fits that bill.

The next big thing will be lenses. Companies like Rokinon will introduce cinema zooms that the rest of us can afford.

Thoughts?
 
Rainer said:
Still waiting for a HD DVX100 replacement.
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William_Robinette said:
You mean the HMC 150?
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Yeah, what's up with this? There is both an HD DVX100 (a variety actually, from the HVX200/200A to the HPX170 to the HMC150), and a "large sensor format" DVX in the form of the AF100. Just because people continuously come up with b.s. reasons why they don't want the cameras doesn't mean that both are the equivalent of the DVX100 in form and functionality.
 
pulpwoody said:
The next big thing will be lenses. Companies like Rokinon will introduce cinema zooms that the rest of us can afford.

Thoughts?
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There isn't a secret OPEC-like community that keeps cine prices high. Most of the pricing is a reflection of high precision craftmanship/quality and smaller production numbers, both of which are a game Rokinon does not play. If Rokinon does (which they won't) make cine zooms, you would likely see a relabled 'cine' name on a photography zoom as you see now with their primes. They aren't looking to get into the cine-game, from what I can tell, in terms of actual cine lenses. Seems they will be happy to just rebrand and make some adjustments to satisfy their current users. If they did go down that round, it would be a very big company re-direction and I don't see it happening.
 
Why not get yourself an Argus-IS system. You get 1.8 Billion pixels and from an altitude of 17.5 miles it resolves down to 6 inches. That means you can cover and entire city the size of Dallas and help them complete the crossword puzzle their doing and while they're moving.
 
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I predict the GH4 will have 4K! Of course not this year. By the time the GH3 is ready for a replacement, I don't think 4K will be out of the question. The GH series have always been ahead of their DSLR rivals.
 
BETTER, FASTER WORKFLOWS!

Imaging quality has hit a point of diminishing returns, which is fantastic - because it means anyone can make great pictures. What I'm hoping we'll start to see, is some faster and more standardised workflows for post (perhaps some sort of building-in of the ACES process into acquisition?).

I've migrated to a purely ProRes acquisition and post pipeline at the moment - and I've never been happier doing post work (and I'm never happy doing post work). The workflow is so simple and streamlined that it just makes everything faster and easier than it used to be (when everything was being transcoded or re-rendered or otherwise stuffed around with), and the quality is superb too.

What we need, as things push further towards raw acquisition and the like, is similarly simple and speedy workflows - one's that allow you to put in the time that today's strained budgets allow, but not a second longer.

The other thing I REALLY want to see, is people making proper use of the fact that we now have FILE-based recording (and have had for some years now) - why is it still so hard to quickly customise the names of the files you're recording to state "Scene", "Shot", "Take" etc. and organise them into specific folders on-camera - So that when the files are brought into editing, the pain-in-the-arse that is ordering and organising files (both sound and video) is already taken out of the equation?

When we can speedily and simply label all of our dual-system audio files and all of our video files with the specific scene/shot/take numbers - matching them up in post becomes a breeze, the entire post-process becomes streamlined and hugely more efficient.
 
Cinema lenses are on their way out IMO. Electronic, light weight, inexpensive lenses with features like image stabilization, metadata feedback, full frame coverage, aberration profiling, (exif?) are taking over. and they will continue their conquest...
Before you start screaming bloody murder here, this opinion is coming from a guy that made career out of working with cine lenses starting at Panavision in the 1980's .... Cheers:laugh:
 
optitek said:
Cinema lenses are on their way out IMO. Electronic, light weight, inexpensive lenses with features like image stabilization, metadata feedback, full frame coverage, aberration profiling, (exif?) are taking over. and they will continue their conquest...
Before you start screaming bloody murder here, this opinion is coming from a guy that made career out of working with cine lenses starting at Panavision in the 1980's .... Cheers:laugh:
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I'm very interested to see what happens on the lens front Jacek. I thought it was rather telling when Canon said that they'd approached something like 100 cinematographers to ask what they wanted in a cine lens (for their new Cine primes and zooms), and not a single one of them wanted anything but manual features.

But with the pace technology is changing at the moment, it all seems up in the air.
 
I've been working with cinematographers for 25 years-close and personal. They are not engineers neither they should be. They are not aware of the tech potential. They need advice on that front-they need direction. If you just ask them what they want they'll talk about things they know. If you start asking them if they would like image stabilization- show them how it works they will embrace it- believe me. They are a very clever bunch. If you show them how they can get perfect green screen/VFX shots using the lens distortion/perspective, color profiles-they will embrace it. I've been consulting for years- - in many instances the suggestions I make hadn't even occured to them. And I don't thing there is anything wrong with that. They are the visionaries that can crate images that tell stories- my job is to provide technical solutions that make their visions possible/practical. BTW I think that canon completely missed the boat on their cine primes-copying the Zeiss CP and hoping for similar commercial "success" won't cut it anymore...
 
I don't know about cinema lenses as we know them being on their way out, at least not too soon, but maybe an evolution of what is considered a 'cinema lens'. I can't think of a time, especially in the near future where cinematographers are going to want their aperture settings to be controlled by a menu dial, rather than on the lens itself for example. There might be more tech built into lenses, which paired with the file based metadata will provide easier and more streamlined reporting, but I don't know that we'll see a departure from manual focus and aperture rings.
I do agree that Canon missed the boat on their new cine primes series.

In terms of metadata on files, I can see this happening, but I imagine with some kind of device (or app?) that syncs wirelessly with the camera itself. I wonder how time consuming labelling every single take would be, and the possibilities of mistakes between the metadata and the slate (if someone enters info wrong, or forgets to re-enter - we'll still be looking for info from the slate anyway, especially for syncing, so is the extra time needed for metadata labelling even necessary for those shoots that are also slating?).

I want an app for my iPhone and iPad that replaces physical camera reports. If you could sync wirelessly to enable syncing of card file name and user-inputted information, that'd be ace.
 
Lenses are cool and all that... but I for one welcome the great dynamic range race of our time. With all the new developments in sensor technology and camera processing this shouldn't be all unrealistic..
 
Stranden said:
Lenses are cool and all that... but I for one welcome the great dynamic range race of our time. With all the new developments in sensor technology and camera processing this shouldn't be all unrealistic..
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It's happening.

Look at where we are today with sensitivity, DR, resolution, etc.

Electronics are fast moving. Just less than five years ago, I was still using HVX200's/Red1's on productions, which were both 'native' 320iso. This was before the MX chip, and going over 400iso in tungsten was a noise death sentance. Now I am shooting 1000/1200 iso for music videos, and getting about the same results as 400 on non-MX chip. The DR of the camera has improved as well, as has resolution of many camera systems.

The future however is an interesting thing.

I for one think that for the entirety of digital cinema the goal has been to simply catch up to film, which has also been advancing (VisionIII) filmstock is really quite something else. But I do believe the point of time has come where digital has just about caught up and I think the future is no longer going to be 'catching' up to the milestone of film. I think like televisions, computers, and other electronics, the path now paved will be one of manufacturers.

What I mean by that, is I think we will start to see cameras having features that we may or may not want nor need, but we'll crave their features since they will be marketed as being 'new' or 'better'. I guess what I am trying to say is that soon when we are still increasing DR, resolution, and Frame rates, the camera manufacturers will continue to need to be able to offer something new or better in order to market their camreas, so I do see many features added or advertised that will be change for the sake of change.
 
Grug said:
BETTER, FASTER WORKFLOWS!
Imaging quality has hit a point of diminishing returns, which is fantastic - because it means anyone can make great pictures.
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Psssssst! Don't tell that to the producers who hire me, they might start believing that all it takes is a camera (which come cheap nowdays) to shoot their productions. In reality it's not the case. The cameras are fantastic, they provide sharp, high resolution, high latitude, truthful colors, little noise images but all those are technicalities. NOT anyone can make great pictures, as a matter of fact very few people can. Most people make acceptable images but those images fall-apart under scrutiny. Did yo ever try to hire a DP (i have) - out of 100s of reels how many were good, out of those how many were fantastic? (in my cases 1-3 depending on the project).

I believe there will be two paths from this point on. One the mainstream: bigger, better, noonsens. The other independent: whatever it takes, filed with meaning - often not necessarily in the work itself but in what the audience takes from the work.
 
jax_rox said:
I don't know about cinema lenses as we know them being on their way out, at least not too soon, but maybe an evolution of what is considered a 'cinema lens'. I can't think of a time, especially in the near future where cinematographers are going to want their aperture settings to be controlled by a menu dial, rather than on the lens itself for example. There might be more tech built into lenses, which paired with the file based metadata will provide easier and more streamlined reporting, but I don't know that we'll see a departure from manual focus and aperture rings.
I do agree that Canon missed the boat on their new cine primes series.

In terms of metadata on files, I can see this happening, but I imagine with some kind of device (or app?) that syncs wirelessly with the camera itself. I wonder how time consuming labelling every single take would be, and the possibilities of mistakes between the metadata and the slate (if someone enters info wrong, or forgets to re-enter - we'll still be looking for info from the slate anyway, especially for syncing, so is the extra time needed for metadata labelling even necessary for those shoots that are also slating?).

I want an app for my iPhone and iPad that replaces physical camera reports. If you could sync wirelessly to enable syncing of card file name and user-inputted information, that'd be ace.
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Cinema lenses are not on their way out. People need to realize and understand the changes that have taken place in the market, and you'll see that change is not the removal of cinema lenses but the addition of hybrid options, what I call the affordable cinema lenses (Cp.2's, Canon Cine's, Cine Modded). This expansion of what I call the middle class of video-friendly lenses, is a direct result from class of shooter that has never existed in such numbers before and their needs have to be addressed.

Think of this class of people as being Nascar and the cinema crowd as formula 1. Think of the everyday consumer as a regular automobile driver. Less than 8 years ago, or so, there were two types of cameras for digital cinema or videography, for the most part. The cheaper cameras were all built in lenses or very select interchangables like DVX100, HVX200, Canon XL1, XL2, and etc. JVC was in the game at that time, as was Sony, Panasonic. I can't remember all the model numbers but many of you can fall down this memory lane. These were smaller chip cameras. The professional cameras had larger chips and more expensive lenses and were the likes of Sony F23, Pana Genesis, F35, F900, etc. The cameras they shot the new Star Wars with, and etc. Other than that, we were still shooting 16mm film, 35mm film and etc.

Times have changed, yet those two classes still exist.... but there is a third class of growing size. These are people who have affordable large sensor/ interchangable lens cameras, and who work similar to cinema productions but are not of that scale nor need the extra precision, control or quality for the extreme price difference. This group of people are in a void; not needing or being able to afford the big cinema lenses, nor wanting the issues with photography lenses.

Cinema lenses are for bigger cinema productions and for good reasons I've explained here and RedUser.com many times why that is. However that does not address the vast majority of people who are on RedUser or DVXuser. Most here, including myself, are not yet shooting features with over 1m budgets, nor 'regular' features at 12m, or bigger ones at 30m or 100m. Only a handful are. The rest are typically smaller owner operators. They have smaller clients, shoot videography or small narrative work, mvideos and etc. Sometimes the extra quality, accuracy and other attributes of a true modern cinema lens may be helpful, but for the most part they can be overkill for what is really needed.... however, photography lenses, designed for a completely different user, is also underkill... too many issues to work around for some people's way of working.

So what to do? Well this is where the new affordable cine lenses come in handy. They fill a void that has really never existed in such scale until now. CP.2's, Canon Cine Primes, Cine-moded photography lenses and etc. These have the optical quality of the better photography lenses, with some added changes to make them behave more like cinema lenses. It's not making them 100% there, in my opinion, but they really are some great lenses for the money! And that's great for 90% of the productions in the world.

That by no means says that Cooke S4's, Master Primes and other lenses are on the way out. That is simply a misconception and a falsehood. I think we are seeing things finally balance out, as the needs of this new and larger 'middle class' was not being addressed. They were stuck between photography lenses and expensive cinema lenses, and not really needing either. Most chose not to waste money and fall back on photography lenses, with the inherited flaws and workarounds. These new affordable cine lenses address a very certain need, and if not taking the pulse of the industry correctly could look as if their popularity was a signal of cinema lens demise. It's not. If anything it's to the lens world what the C300 was to the videography world. When the c300 came out, I witnessed these decent budget productions who were using 5dmII's upgrade to the C300 and as an assistant and shooter, it was a releif to see the markets go in the right direction.

I think this new class of affordable cinema lenses or cine-moded photography lenses is answering a market need. More people will abandon their photography lens sets and go affordable cine-lens route than top-shelf cine lens users will abandon their lenses for anything else.
 
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