The next wave

So apparently, a group of Media 3rd years shot their final film using a Canon 500D (or something similar) — a still camera (that can record video, obviously).

I’ve been hearing a lot about these new hybrid cameras recently. Lots of high praise from cinematographers, photography teachers, various websites.. but I remained dubious, thinking that the full HD footage would be compressed to hell with some awfully lossy codec. Or that it would look fine, until you tried to edit it, and found it loaded with sneaky artefacts, or immensely slow to work with because of all the interframe compression… etc.
But then last week, Paul mentioned this 3rd year group that actually decided to use a still camera for their final film. And it worked.. they’re editing it, it looks great.. etc. Perhaps my compression-phobia was misplaced. It’s h.264 compression, which is a complex codec.. i’m quite sure it’s got inter-frame GOPs (the exception is AVC-Intra, Panasonic’s new h.264 codec which only records I-frames) and I don’t know how easy it is to work with in post. But, as with HDV, you can convert the footage to Apple ProRes and the lag will be gone (along with all your hard drive space.. still. ProRes is awesome)

Anyway, my point is.. what does this trend towards still cameras shooting video mean? They shoot full HD, (progressive, I’d guess) and you get to use lenses designed for 35mm sensors. That’s brilliant. The depth of field’s going to be much shallower than it is on a Z1 or something with a tiny sensor. In the case of the Canon 500D, you’ve got an APS-C sized sensor.. not quite the full 35mm, but pretty damn big by camcorder standards. And you could use a more expensive still camera with a 35mm sensor for even better results in this respect.

I’m thinking that the downside of all this is physically operating a still camera. It’s so comparatively small, susceptible to being knocked and shaken. That’s a big problem if you’re wanting to pull focus during a take, or zoom or whatever. You’ve got to do it smoothly, without shifting the frame. I’m not sure how viable it is, but in my head it seems quite difficult. Then you’ve got problems with the viewfinder. Shooting in broad daylight, using the glossy LCD screen on a still camera would be difficult. And if you’re doing an extreme low angle shot, there’s no way to tilt the viewfinder.. you’ve got to be lying under the tripod to see what’s going on (obviously not possible most of the time). Of course, you could bring a field monitor and hook that in, but then you’re operating by proxy.. trying to pan the camera while looking somewhere else, etc.

The upside is, of course, the 35mm lenses and the full HD capture. Apart from RED, I don’t know of any digital video cameras with full frame sensors. Even high end HD models tend to have a 2/3″ sensor..
And so rather than hiring a RED for $850 per day from Lemac, plus $650 per day for a good set of 35mm PL mount cine lenses, you can buy a Canon 500D outright for $1500 or something (And then you make friends with photographer and they let you use their awesome L-series Canon lenses). In some ways, that’s quite compelling.

Of course, the other option is to get a 35mm lens adaptor, and plug it into a Z1 or something similar. Then your camera handles like a proper video camera, and gets the shallow depth of field of full 35mm cameras, and captures in HD, and has a better viewfinder. Lens adaptors also need more light for correct exposure and can cost thousands of dollars, depending on the make. hmm. I really should be talking about my TV2 shoot coming up this monday. Tomorrow. half-promise.

The moving image.. but frozen

I bought a Canon Eos 450D last week.

“Why are you doing this Josh? You’re not a photographer, you don’t take photos, you don’t need an expensive DSLR camera when ultimately you want to work with the moving image. Seriously what are you doing? Only American dads with baseball caps buy DSLRs — for shooting their sons playing baseball. Sound like you? Didn’t think so.”

Let me explain myself.

I was at docklands a few weeks ago, on the VCA shoot (The picture show at the end of the world). The sun was dying fast, the crew was disoriented, no one knew what was going on, stress was everywhere. There were so many shots to get through in this very limited time.. in this environment, you’ve got to be decisive. Graeme, the cinematographer, has this crowd of people setting up for him, and they ask him what to do after every scene. What lens do we want? Grad filters? Polarising? Both? Graeme figures all this out in a split second; he has to, given the time constraints, the vanishing light. He goes for the 50mm lens, and wants the previous filters removed to let in more light.
This seems a mundane example, but it got me thinking.. if I want to be near the top of the production hierarchy, a DoP or director or whatever, these decisions have to come naturally. There’s no time to test each possibility, you’ve got to have a sense of what will work. So… how do you get this sense? Familiarity.

Still photography and video production are extremely different, I realise. But there are some shared elements — focal length, filters, depth of field, aperture, shutter speed, etc. And to some extent, I’d argue that still photography allows you to think about these elements in isolation, to gain a better sense of what each does individually. When you’re working on a film, you’re conveying a story. You’re worried about where the actors will move, how they’re lit, whether they’ll be in focus when they move forwards, whether you’re crossing the line or not. There’s a lot of focus on spatial continuity, and that’s fine. But photography bypasses all this. In photography you’re concentrating on the composition of a single image, the dynamic range, highlight detail, overall exposure, depth of field, grain, focal length, etc.

Ultimately, I want to know more about lenses. I want interchangeable lenses so that I can see differences between 50mm and 85mm. On all but extremely expensive video cameras, you cannot change the lens. You’ve got a superzoom lens physically sealed inside your camera body. And so… you don’t pay too much attention to focal lengths, or maximum aperture, because there’s nothing you can do about changing them. If it’s too dark, it’s too dark.. better bring in a stronger light. But if you had interchangeable lenses, perhaps you’d just put on a fast prime lens that went down to F/1.4 and you’d be fine. That sort of thing… that’s what I want to become more familiar with. And it’s impossible on a video camera. I’d need hundreds of thousands of dollars to make it possible. Hence why I’ve bought a DSLR still camera, and a 50mm F/1.8 lens. Already, I feel much more comfortable talking about lenses. I feel that otherwise, lens-knowledge would be a barrier. You could be a cinematographer on small-scale productions and documentaries without a huge knowledge of lenses. But once you’re working on 35mm or RED, you’re using massive cameras, lots of lenses made for specific purposes and you have to know what they’ll do. And no one’s going to let you “try it out” without already knowing what to do. It’s a vicious cycle.

F/1.8, F/4, F/11… these are just numbers until you use them. After borrowing my dad’s 28-80mm kit zoom lens that only stops down to F/3.5 (or F/5.6 at 80mm), I’ve learned the value of fast lenses. For indoor shooting with natural light, F/5.6 at 80mm doesn’t cut it. Too much ISO grain, or too much blur from slow shutter speeds.. it’s not going to turn out well. The other thing I’ve learned through researching/buying/using a still camera is that image quality varies across the focal range of a zoom lens, often quite dramatically. Previously, I’d assumed that a good lens would be good at all focal lengths and at all aperture settings.. but no. Lenses generally become sharper as you stop down, and then worsen as the iris becomes too small. So.. on my 50mm, F/1.8 is soft compared to F/3.5, the lens is at maximum sharpness at about F/5.6, and starts to worsen progressively after F/7.

My eyes glaze over, looking at the gibberish I have been writing. It’s dangerous to talk like this, because you can turn cinematography into a clinical science in which the aim is to maximise detail. I don’t want to do that. Ultimately, story is everything, and the average person will concentrate on a story despite horrible image quality.. people just don’t notice. It’s not about detail, or how shallow your depth of field is. But familiarity is a good thing. Being able to “talk the talk” is a good thing. Knowledge is power, but perspective is everything.