wow, tough crowd. hot mic..hot mic...

Point being, there are so many subjective factors to "quality," that it's impossible to really satisfy ANY market, if you refine the market enough. Quality could be pixelvision with a great script and actors. Or, maybe its terrible actors and script, shot on 5201 film and scanned at 4k... it's all up to the client - and that's not limiting it to paying clients. If you shoot for yourself (you being the client), and you're happy, then that's all that matters.

As pointed out, there are items on the market now which allow prosumer products to produce s35 or shallower D.O.F. Some deliver excellent performance and cost very little. If that look is required by one's work, it is a simple matter of buying an adapter and lenses. However, complaining that no manufacturer is "willing" to make one's dream camera for their dream price is essentially going to a Honda dealer and screaming at the clerk for not building Ferraris. "You have the technology! Stop protecting the upper market!" Cars are cars, right? They all have the same technology right? Engines, transmissions, wheels and bodies. So why can't civics perform like Ferraris...at civic prices??? Even if they decided to do it, do you think it would lure people otherwise looking for SUV's?

Note that while many users on this board have an affinity for the shallow D.O.F look, the subscribers to this site only make up a small percentage of the total market of consumer/prosumer video gear. And believe it or not, a lot of people simply don't want to hire an AC to pull focus...or shoot music videos all the time where going in-and-out of focus is encouraged.

The indie spirit is looking at all your options and gaff-taping your way to a solution. Or if you're an indie with a budget, renting and borrowing your way to a solution. Obviously, this board has a fantasy element to it, but so does the production world. And in the production world, an artistic spirit is probably better served by finding real solutions than waiting for a magic bullet.

(For some people, that real solution means putting millions on the line to start a new company....which is always an option!)

On the bright side, there's a bit of talk now about "the industry" going towards 2/3" chips with deep DOF and selecting focus in post. This can be done now with after effects or any number of tools in post.

Also, there is a holographic technology that is being developed in still cameras which allows you to set your focus point in post. This is certainly a LONG way from still, not to mention motion cameras.

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/digital-c...res-253441.php


But.... to get the shallow D.O.F. in the first place, you STILL can't cheat the laws of optics (yet)..so lenses will likely be a the limiting factor in size and price for a while to come.

Right... I hope it is clear to all that DOF is a function of the imaging area. The larger your chip, the shallower the DOF. Big chips are expensive, so this is what we get. It is the same in the still photography world. People ask why their point and shoots don't look like 35mm. They think it is some Japanese conspiracy, when it is the simple laws of physics.

Since shooting my intial short films on 16mm, I was skeptical about switching to video. I used to be fairly obsessed with getting my video to look like film. So much so that before doing my first real video short I shot a few scenes with both my 16mm camera and a borrowed video camera, in order to have a real world side by side comparison. Well what I found was they are different, very different...duh. But It did teach me an important thing and that was, of course they are different, one is FILM and the other is VIDEO. I know it seems simple and I am not trying to be obnoxious or condecsending, but the two things are really really different. From lens quality, filmstock, physical film movement through shutter, even something like the wieght of the camera and how you shoot with it, all these things make for a very different image.
Not worse, just different. The end result was, I liked the limited grain of the video and the kinda over-saturated colors I was getting so I went with video for that short. But for another short, shooting on actual film might be more acceptable.

RED will look more like film than say a consumer hd camera, but RED still doesnt look like film. From what I have seen RED looks great, but it doesnt look like film. "Superman returns" was shot digitally and it looked great, but it looked different than film. What we are dealing with now is stuff that doesnt look like film and doesnt look like "video". It looks like something new, an odd, grainless, saturated, very sharp image. I think alot of the time people confuse the "film look" with good lighting, photographic skill, compositional skill, the Kodak color pallete, and in general a concern for the image.

The bottom line is if you want something to look like film shoot it on film, 16mm is not that expensive. I mean you can't do 20 takes of everything or just get tons of extranious footage, but if you're careful and plan you can at least make a short for a few thousand bucks (similiar to the cost of a video camera)

Lastly, you will drive yourself crazy trying to make video look like film. Its like trying to trick yourself, you will never be able to do it (without a self inflicted brain injury). The key is to just try and make it look like you want it to. I have seen fantastic looking video and terrible looking film. Its all in how you do it.

Depends on how you viewed it. A lot of films these days use CGI backgrounds and elements, so half the stuff shot these days isn't film originated anyway.

But once these aspects are transferred to film for cinema release they take on the characteristics of that medium, including the way that the film passes through the projector (obviously). Viewing on a digital projector from a movie that was shot with no involvement in the film medium would of course look much different.

Only 3 years ago and people saying that we would NEVER see a digital camera with 35MM capability.

And now there's the RED One for a reasonable price and the Scarlet with 16MM DOF.

I wonder what will we have 10 years from now.

One can only guess at the future, but at least we can accurately quantify the past and present.

The Dalsa Origin, a digital camera with a 35mm sensor, was shown at NAB in 2003.

The Scarlet has been announced but not yet shown as a working prototype.

And check out Nikon's new developments-- the future may be closer.

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/digital-v...over-hdmi.html

I hate to inform you, but the Military has and has been using all these goodies for about 10 years now (I know the original post was dated 2005). It irks me that it takes about a dozen years for cutting edge toys to trickle down to us earthlings from Nasa and Military. 3G has been available to the Military for 10 years and it's only just now (2008) reached the mainstream in the US.
The usual excuse is "National Security" which is legit but surely a health commercial stream protects our NS as well ;)