CAMERA AND LENS RENTAL TIP

P

pkontogiannis

Everything begins and ends with a high-quality camera and a good lens package. Often it's best
to get a just a few very good lenses, rather than relying upon a large number of mediocre or
gimmicky ones. This is very often provided when renting a camera with a basic lens package.
The look of your film will determine the tone, and if you're looking to make a serious film, your
footage should look top notch, and that starts at the lens.

When using a film camera, the quality of the camera itself is not nearly as important as the film
itself, but when using digital, the camera is also your film. While a Digital Video (DV) camera
is perfectly good for indoor shoots, you may need to use film or one of the state-of-the-art, very
high-resolution digital cameras, such as the Red Digital Camera, when shooting outdoors.
Older DV cameras often don't have the dynamic range capable of reproducing high light
conditions along with muted lows, as they actually appear in nature, or the ability to compress
the visual spectrum as your eye does.

Paul,
Making Your First Feature Film...
 
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pkontogiannis said:
Everything begins and ends with a high-quality camera and a good lens package.
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I don't think I could possibly disagree more. I'd actually rate this as one of the least important parts of a production.

pkontogiannis said:
Often it's best to get a just a few very good lenses, rather than relying upon a large number of mediocre or gimmicky ones. This is very often provided when renting a camera with a basic lens package. The look of your film will determine the tone, and if you're looking to make a serious film, your footage should look top notch, and that starts at the lens.

When using a film camera, the quality of the camera itself is not nearly as important as the film
itself, but when using digital, the camera is also your film. While a Digital Video (DV) camera
is perfectly good for indoor shoots, you may need to use film or one of the state-of-the-art, very
high-resolution digital cameras, such as the Red Digital Camera, when shooting outdoors.
Older DV cameras often don't have the dynamic range capable of reproducing high light
conditions along with muted lows, as they actually appear in nature, or the ability to compress
the visual spectrum as your eye does.
Click to expand...

All this is absolutely auxiliary to having a great story, and knowing how to tell is well. Sure, a solid camera and lens selection can be a great tool for telling a wonderful story, but the implication that it's the most important thing to focus on is patently ridiculous! I've seen numerous steaming lumps from productions filming RED 4K. I've seen absolute gems filmed on T3i.

The camera on a movie set is another weapon in a military's arsenal. Sure a javelin missile might be significantly more effective than a set of clunky rifles from WWII, but if only one side is under the command of a general who really knows how to run his forces, I'd bet on him any day of the week.
 
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Lens choice and lighting after a great Production Design team have dressed the frame is 100x more important than the camera body in regards to how the frame looks.

And to suggest that a consumer-grade DV camera shooting indoors could compete with a Red shooting outdoors as a general rule of thumb is just ridiculous.

On top of that, it's all relative: there's no point having a Red Epic with Master Primes if you don't have a Production Designer, and don't have any lights, just like there's no point getting in a top Production Designer and top Gaffer with his van, and then shooting on a $200 DV camera.
 
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