Hi, I was thinking about this after seeing Sin City. Do you think this camera would be able to pull off some great Sin City-esque footage due to the high resolution and sharpness? I know it depends mostly on the camera crew, lightng, and the director, but in any case I was just wondering.

Well, the compression scheme, while not as good as HDCAM SR (which is what Sin City was shot on, right?) is certainly better than anything else expected in this price range. You're biggest limiting factors in the camera will be CCD block and the lens. However, that said, I'm sure this camera, in the right hands, will give us b-e-a-utiful footage. What specifically from Sin City are you thinking about recreating?

There are no HDCAM SR cameras, just decks - HDCAM SR is 4:4:4 with bitrate of 440/880 Mbps.

Sin City was shot with "ordinary" HDCAM, I guess legendary Sony HDW-F900, since Rodriguez owns two models of these cameras and shoots everything with them.

I was under the impression that he had an SR setup. In fact, I think I read or saw an interview with him where he mentioned it. I just assumed he'd shot Sin City that way.

EDIT: Found the following. Second Paragraph up from the bottom...

http://www.fromthebalcony.com/sincity.htm

Sorry about the confusion between camera and deck, but either way, HDCam is superior on paper to DVCPRO HD, but, DVCPRO HD is still a good step up from HDV.

Well, I don't know about any specific look. When I think about it, I mostly think of the scenes from Bruce Willis' story arch with the Yellow Bastard guy. They were pretty special and artsy IMO.


BTW, when I get into the film bizz bigtime, I'm going to do the same and get my own Varicam/Sony/whatever big time HD camera setup, even if I mostly get into the actor part, just so I can save money on future projects I'll be involved with. ;)

"Sin City was shot with "ordinary" HDCAM, I guess legendary Sony HDW-F900, since Rodriguez owns two models of these cameras and shoots everything with them."

Actually, I believe it was shot with the Sony F950.
As far as I know, since moving up to HD SR his F900s are collecting dust.

Sorry Luis, didnt know that F950 are out, still living in times where HDCAM SR was used only for decks. On Sony Pro Europe website, the latest CineAlta is F900H, while on Sony Pro Asia website, also higher models including F950 are showcased.

No problem,
Actually, as far as I know, he got hold of the F950 before it was available.... lucky guy.

Sin City was shot about a year ago if I'm not mistaken, and he was doing tests wiht the camera before that.

:)

But you are still correct, as I understand it, you have to feed the signal out of the F950 to the SR deck in order to record the full signal.

So technically he was recording onto a deck.

Sorry to hop in to this discussion a bit late, but according to http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS8217660071.html Sin City was shot using two Sony Cinealta F950s, but the signal was recorded straigth to harddisk raid array as 4:4:4. The harddrive system is called RaveHD. So, they just bypassed tape, if I'm reading the article correctly.


----> EDIT:

Well, the article isn't that clear, but for some reason it seems they put the material back to those HDCAM-SR tapes, after they had done something to it with the RaveHD. I'm not sure anymore, if they used the harddisks as the final medium, or just for some temporary storage?

I'm wondering if the tapes were used to record the footage after it had been color corrected on set (I.E. those cameras typically record color, I wonder if the original tapes (or hard drive setup) recorded in color and then it went to the other for the black and white look. ofcourse that could have all been done in post.

They shot to tape:

"Troublemaker shot Sin City using two Sony Cinealta F950s. The F950s use HDCAM-SR tape stock. The tapes were "ingested" using a Sony SRW-5000 tape deck connected to the RaveHD box through a dual link SDI"

He's also probably using $30,000 lenses, which truly gives the look and feel of the movie.

The F950's have been out for a bit longer than that (for people who have the contacts and the means).

George Lucas (naturally) was the first person to get his hands on one - he filmed the new Star Wars film back in 2003 with a pair of F950s and a freakin' room full of SR decks.

check this thing out

http://bssc.sel.sony.com/NAB/pdfs/srw1.pdf