What has the HDSLR revolution done for us?

[Nicholas de Kock]

Try finding a decent piece of video shot with on the Nikon D90! Everyone is shooting hand held video now and they all look terrible. It's frustrating to watch! Does anyone know of some half-decent videos shot on the D90 other than the music video showcased on FreshDV?

[Ger Griffin]

I remeber seeing this and thinkin ya, not as bad as most of the stuff out there.

Nikon D90 - Hamburg Speicherstadt on Vimeo

also search dan cheung on vimeo.

[Steve Mullen]

Originally Posted by Ger Griffin

also search dan cheung on vimeo.

Yes!

IMHO these new cameras are for those of us who are primarily photographers. As in Dan's work, each shot is composed with the action WITHIN the frame. And, perhaps more importantly, the STORY is within the frame. We don't want fancy camera moves or MTV camera tricks to sustain interest. The camera is static.

Editing is the transitioning of each clip composition to create a bigger story. Again, no FX to try to inject "excitement" to cover over the lack of interest within the clip.

The other role is in news (think Gasza) and weddings. Try Bonnie and Matt on Vimeo

I do not think these replace "camcorders." Nor are they for shooting narrative movies. They are a return to when video didn't exist and art was done as photographs.

[Martin Labelle]

to Nicholas

Try finding a decent piece of video shot with on the Nikon D90! Everyone is shooting hand held video now and they all look terrible. It's frustrating to watch! Does anyone know of some half-decent videos shot on the D90 other than the music video showcased on FreshDV?

try these one
YouTube - ???D90?D???????????

YouTube - Nikon D90 Video - Macro

I think that in the next few months we gonna see very interessting video of D90.
And you are going to see my video of D90 as soon as my sony A1u is sold.

[Mathieu Kassovitz]

Originally Posted by Steve Mullen

Yes!

IMHO these new cameras are for those of us who are primarily photographers. As in Dan's work, each shot is composed with the action WITHIN the frame. And, perhaps more importantly, the STORY is within the frame. We don't want fancy camera moves or MTV camera tricks to sustain interest. The camera is static.

Editing is the transitioning of each clip composition to create a bigger story. Again, no FX to try to inject "excitement" to cover over the lack of interest within the clip.

The other role is in news (think Gasza) and weddings. Try Bonnie and Matt on Vimeo

I do not think these replace "camcorders." Nor are they for shooting narrative movies. They are a return to when video didn't exist and art was done as photographs.

A few posts can or could confuse anyone. What's a narrative movie? A video on MTV?

[Steve Mullen]

Originally Posted by Mathieu Kassovitz

A few posts can or could confuse anyone. What's a narrative movie? A video on MTV?

I mean a Hollywood movie. Given the tricks on must go through to TRY an get control of the image I find it hard to see how one could shoot enough video to have enough source material for 90 minutes of finished video. Even an MTV production would requires tons of work.

[John Vincent]

My take - what its done is show that the larger sensors don't need to cost $50,000 plus dollars. It's shown - without a doubt - that the large camera makers are vastly over-charging for the higher end cameras.

Why can't Sony put the Mark II chip into something like the EX-1? If they can cram it into a still camera, they should be able to stick it into a small video camera.

What it does is - with the influence of RED - put a clock on the days of million dollar cameras. Simply no reason for those prices. I understand R & D costs, etc - but they've made their money at this point. The tech is here, now.

In terms of making a narrative film, it would be tough. But when you're 19 and have no money I can see someone making a full length film with one. Of course, they'd prolly be put in a looney bin afterwards, but I suppose it could be done.

john

[Chris Hurd]

Originally Posted by John Vincent

Why can't Sony put the Mark II chip into something like the EX-1?

Sony doesn't own that chip; Canon does... but who is to say that they're not working on such a camera design as we speak?

[John Vincent]

Are you letting the cat out of the bag Chris? :)

And Lord yes, let it happen.

john

[Jose A. Garcia]

You're talking about the socal HDSLR revolution as something that has already shown its best cards. Just as if hybrid large sensor photo/video cams shouldn't be considered as an option to shoot cinemalike videos just because the first two cameras don't do it perfect. And that's exactly my point: we only have TWO DSLR cameras shooting HD movies so far. The revolution you're talking about has just started. In a few years we'll have large sensor photo/video cameras that will let us shoot movies with a look so close to analog cinema you won't be able to tell the difference, but that time's yet to come.

You're right, the D90 and 5DMKII are difficult to use for fimmmaking purposes due to many reasons but as I said they're the first ones. In a few months we'll have the Lumix GH1 with 1080p24 mode, a sensor almost the size of the RED One's, full manual controls and a decent rolling shutter. In a year or two I'm sure we'll be reading about photo/video hybrid cameras with video resolutions above FullHD, selectable framerate and virtually no rolling shutter.

Do you really think it's the right time to make such a big question as "what has HDSLR revolution done for us"? Do you really think we can answer that question just months after the release of the first HDSLR camera?

[Jon Fairhurst]

What has it done for me?

We've produced a 14 minute film that we submitted to the Seattle International Film Festival. None of the things that I'd most want to improve with the end product are related to the camera (5D MkII). We thought RED ONE was amazing - shoot a feature with an $18k camera. Well, we shot somewhat near that quality (camera-wise) for less than 1/6th of the cost. A 1/3-inch cam could never have matched our night shots.

This weekend I shot some footage for the music store where my daughter works - and didn't need to bring a single light. All of a sudden, it's the camera moves that are hard. (I need more/better support equipment) Shallow DOF and focus effects are now a piece of cake.

Add to this the fact that I can shoot stealth video, and it's a total game changer.

It will only get better as we get manual control, video AF and other pro features.

[Jay Morrissette]

For sample footage of the D90 there is a D90 channel on Vimeo, Nikon D90 footage on Vimeo

There are hundreds of crappy videos to wade through, but there is also some stunning work there.

What has DSLR done?
For me it has given me an affordable tool that when treated like a real 24 frames per second film camera can give results that resemble film.

A good video camera is more practical in most situations, but the result will almost always resemble video.

The D90 is lacking in many ways, but in the right situation the 24p frame rate makes for a beautiful film-like creative work. Not bad for a <$900 camera + $50 lens.

~Jay

[Nicholas de Kock]

Reading through this thread, been a while, I have since personally produced work with the 5DMII. My initial frustration was with the D90 however HDSLR is coming on beautifully, looking forward to more developments.

[Benjamin Kantor]

Originally Posted by Jose A. Garcia

In a few years we'll have large sensor photo/video cameras that will let us shoot movies with a look so close to analog cinema you won't be able to tell the difference

Absolutely not... DSLRs are in a position in terms of both the technology and the way they are marketed to perpetually be consumer/prosumer products. Filmmakers who want these cameras to be a serious filmmaking tool seem to be a very small minority. Just go google 'D90 review'... nearly every single review you find (and certainly all of the ones on mainstream sites) typically only use a very small piece of the article to even mention that the camera does HD video. On top of that, their primary criticism is that the D90 can't hold autofocus while shooting video. These reviewers don't even have a concept of a focus puller or even the idea that the cameras could be used as a filmmaking tool... and these are the reviewers that Nikon (or any other DSLR manufacturer) actually cares about, not us.

For these same reasons, DSLRs won't shoot uncompressed or even use a beefy codec any time in the foreseeable future. The main developments will probably be to eliminate rolling shutter (which is a problem with everyone, across the board), and to incorporate auto-focus that holds while shooting (which doesn't help narrative filmmakers at all). The advances that serious filmmakers actually want... respectable data rates, high-speed ability without major loss of resolution, signal monitoring (either vectorscope/waveform or some of the false color monitoring that was developed for the Red)... are not going to happen within the foreseeable future on DSLRs, and therefore they will not be professional tools "indistinguishable from analog cinema" anytime soon. I haven't even mentioned the other obvious problems with the impossible focus marks and breathing issues with still photography lenses or the lack of dynamic range.

The bottom line is that we aren't going to see any films in the theater shot with DSLRs anytime soon, or possibly ever, unless it's done for deliberate low fidelity / low quality effect. Red promised a professional product with a revolutionary price and delivered, but DSLRs aren't promising anything and probably won't deliver anything that we actually want. I can appreciate their potential of a DSLR as a learning tool, or as a low cost tool to do your own small projects, or even as a low cost way to pickup some shots for your reel to put in a postage sized box on your website, but this isn't a low cost/professional tool revolution the way the Red camera was in any way, shape, or form.

Even Red still can't hold up to 35mm in terms of color rendition, dynamic range, and high-speed ability. That's why we have one Red movie in the theaters so far this year ("Knowing"), and hundreds of movies shot on 35mm. And, typically when big-budget movies are made digitally, it's not done because the filmmakers actually think it's indistinguishable or somehow better than 35mm, it's done either because of cost advantage or because it allows them to have some kind of workflow advantage that they wouldn't otherwise, i.e. David Fincher deleting takes on set, or stolen street shots / low impact crew on Slumdog Millionaire.

[Simon Wyndham]

I think that the main thing the HDSLR development has done for us is to demonstrated that many manufacturers have shot themselves in the foot by demonstrating that Red quality 35mm style footage can be recorded on equipment that costs less than a DVX100 when it was first released!

In reality the likes of Sony could release a fixed lens dedicated video camera that does this sort of quality. But there would be a huge problem in that an interchangeable lens variation would seriously impact not only on their own line of cameras, but also on the video lens manufacturers too.

After all, if you have a 35mm sized chip camera you aren't going to be purchasing 1/2" ENG lenses or even 2/3" ones. You'll be wanting top Nikon and Canon primes and zooms, or PL lenses.

So if they did release such a camera they would have to seriously cripple it by for example using low datarate video compression etc.

I am looking forward to see what the Scarlett can do, but it seems even there many of the features on the low end version are crippled (using a 2/3" sensor for one), and to upgrade it will cost major $.

What we perhaps need is another breakaway company similar to Ikonoscop to do it. I loved the concept of their camera. But really we need these things to be using three CMOS chips rather than single ones, but that of course pushes the price up.