I'm really stuck here...

M

MelonDome

Hey guys.

I have a couple questions for you experienced members.

1. I can't decide between a Canon XL2 or an XH-A1? I intend to shoot independent short films and submit it to film festivals. I want the camera to have the 24p film look, and still be able to shoot well, not only in the daylight, but also in the NIGHT. However, I hear that HD is not good at night.

2. Why is HD the new camera to get? Not only do you need a really good computer to edit, but im assuming atleast 50% of consumers don't even have HD television sets.... So whats the point?

3. Is the XL2 Canon really outdated? And would I have any chance picture wise if I got accepted into film festivals? Is an XL3 coming ? hehe

4. Would you say the XL2 has a more of a "film/theatre" picture look than a HD camera?

5. now i hear the DVX100 is the best for the film look?

Thanks guys.
 
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1. XH-A1 is more future proof than the XL2, but both make happy good pictures true 16x9 and 24p, the A1 has better lattitude (number of steps between black and white) and more pixels...takes a bigger computer to edit it, but not that much bigger.

2. See # 1 + don't shoot at night without light, so low light for narrative is something that shouldn't happen anyway, for events, you'll want low-light capabilities and yes, HD takes more light due to smaller pixel sizes.

3. XL2 is just fine, sure it's outdated from a technology stnadpoint, but it still produces a picture that will project well and will work on 100% of the TV's out there.

4. HD will have better resolution and better latitude, so will look more like film than SD.

5. I don't like the picture from the DVX as much as the canons, but others will disagree. It's an aesthetic, personal taste thing. The film looks happens much more outside the camera than inside it. lighting, acting, script, set design, costume, makeup, camera movement...this is where the film look comes from. The camera can be a sony handycam (exaggeration, but not by much) and still get usable footage in the hands of a good team.
 
However HDV IS more expensive to master and edit, as you need better kit and processors. It's also more expensive to grade and do visual FX work.

But is it worth the cost? HELL YEAH! You can produce films on a visual par (in terms of qulaity) with studio films (low end obviously) and it finally negates the DV isn't commercial argument!
 
While HD televisions have only captured a small percentage of the market I anticipate it will explode towards the end of 2008 and early 2009, especially here in the States. The FCC has mandated that in Jan. 2009 all broadcast transmissions must be done digitally. Sure you can get a converter box to convert the digital signal to SD but why when picture quality will be lost? I think because of this mandate HD sets will drop even lower than they already have this year.

So why is HD the new camera to get? Because it is the future. If you get an HD camera you're ahead of the game. And you don't need a top of the line system to edit. Most computers, be it Mac or PC, can edit HDV fairly easily.
 
I just wanted to first appreciate and thank you guys for your responses.

So it looks like XH-A1 is the way to go.

Im assuming you guys would take an XH-A1 over a XL2. Correct?

And if im shooting some night shots for a film, will it look grainy and bad quality? Any advice? Because I keep reading that HD cameras are terrible in light challenged situations...this is really scaring me :P

Mr. Knightly, I was wondering if you can direct me to a site that gives you a basic guide on iris, gain, and other settings for indy film makers? Appreciate it.
 
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Thunderclap said:
While HD televisions have only captured a small percentage of the market I anticipate it will explode towards the end of 2008 and early 2009, especially here in the States. The FCC has mandated that in Jan. 2009 all broadcast transmissions must be done digitally. Sure you can get a converter box to convert the digital signal to SD but why when picture quality will be lost? I think because of this mandate HD sets will drop even lower than they already have this year.
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I think it's important to note that just because it will be a digital broadcast does not mean it will be high definition. The converter will change the digital signal so that it can work on an analogue TV. They're going to digital transmission to make better use of radio frequencies as more digital information can fit into a smaller frequency band. That frees up lots of bandwidth for additional emergency services radio traffic.

While it is likely to affect the overall cost of HD, it does not by any means mean that there will no longer be standard definition broadcasts. I think this is something that has a lot of people confused. ;)
 
I'm currently in production on a short film, we're shooting in HD, but intend to finish in SD.. though should we ever need/want to release an HD edit of it, we're covered. The bonus for the SD version is that you end up with a lot more detail by originating in HD.
 
For settings, the iris should almost always stay (for narrative work) open wide, but not all the way, so lower f numbers. This will get you shorter depth of field and allow you to focus your viewers attention better. f5.6 is the sweet spot for the lens, but not as good for the depth of field, I'd try to have it around 3-4 ish.

At 24p, 1/48th is standard for the shutter no matter what camera. This equates to a 180 degree shutter in the film world. Because you're doing motion photography, you won't be abble to change this setting without affecting the perception of motion as you would do in a still camera, so you'll need to add ND (Neutral Density) filters to reduce the amount of light coming in as you'll be opening the iris (the other way is to close the iris down to eliminate light coming in...which lengthens the DoF making it look more digital).

Gain we want as low as possible -3db on the canons if possible, increasing it will add grain, but allow you to see in very low lighting...but it adds grain which looks bad.

The image settings you will have to play with a bit, I like to run with the saturation lowered slightly and digital edge enhancement (sharpening) turned down all the way, if you need this you can add it later in post, whereas you can't take it away once it's there.

Shoot tons of test footage, compare them to what you saw on location and compare that to what you wanted it too look like in your head, make changes accordingly. Google searches for the camera name and some of the terms in the menus will get you to sites that have dug into the settings...or you can just ask here when you get whatever camera you get and we can help you out. Reference images (i.e. I shot this, how do I change the settings in my camera to get it to look more like this sample from a movie I like or a photoshopped image of the same frame).
 
Mr. Vincent - Thank you for your response. I'm assuming there is an option on adobe premiere that allows me to downgrade my postduction footage to SD, correct? And when I get the camera, am I able to change shutter speeds while in 24p?

Mr. Knightly - Thank you for your response. Once I get the camera, I will definently think about getting a neutral density filter. So I use a neutral density filter at the day time, so it gives me a much more film look. However do I remove it at night? because I was under the impression, the more light that came in, the better, especially if I shoot at night and im using HD?

I apologize for my ignorance on proconsumer cameras. I have always used little sony handycams between my house and my video production class in highschool. Once I get the camera, I will read thru the manual inside and out, to develop a better understanding on these settings.

I hope you guys will remain patient with me on my questions; I love to learn as much as possible.

By the way guys. I highly recommend seeing "No Country for Old Men", I thought it was amazing.
 
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You may want to look at a polarizer as well. This will allow you to control light in a magical physics kind of way, making colors pop more and helping dial out reflections or "glings" - highlights.

I've shot with the A1, it makes very happy pictures.
 
MelonDome said:
I'm assuming there is an option on adobe premiere that allows me to downgrade my postduction footage to SD, correct?
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There are a few ways to go about it. Most HDV cameras can be set to export as standard definition, which is generally the easiest way. Otherwise anywhere along the postproduction pipeline you can do it with software. You could resize before editing, which will make your edit a little quicker usually, or you could do it after the edit which means that if you wanted to release an HD version you wouldn't have to re-edit.

MelonDome said:
And when I get the camera, am I able to change shutter speeds while in 24p?
Click to expand...
It really depends on the camera, but usually there is a certain amount of control. Something like the XH-A1 is going to offer you manual control over most if not all of the settings. I'm using an HV20, so I don't have as much manual control, but I have a workflow that allows me to lock the exposure, frame rate, and aperture settings.

You don't really need to use a faster shutter speed than 1/48th of a second.. You certainly can, but it will give you the slight strobing effect that is evident in film footage shot with a narrow shutter angle (like the storming of Normandy Beach scenes in Saving Private Ryan). You definitely want to make sure you don't use any speeds slower though if you're going for a film look, because it will defeat the purpose of shooting at 24p to acheive the look. A shutter speed lower than 1/48th -- especially 1/24th of slower is only going to ever look like video because it would mean that the shutter is open 100% (or more) of the time, something not possible with a film camera. :)
 
Awesome guys thanks.

Mr. Knightly, you shot with the A1, would you say the HD delivers a good "film look" like its predecessors AG-DVX100b and XL2?

Do I realllllly need a 35mm lens to get shallow depth of field, or is this camera capable of doing it? And does a 35mm lens make it more "film look", or all it does is shallow depth?
 
The film look happens outside the camera.

I've seen 60i video shot on a sony handy cam that looks like film due to the acting, lighting, set design, camera moves, etc (high production value in every shot!)...and I've seen film that, through mistakes in the filmmaking process and lack of care in the afore mentioned areas, pulled me completely out of the film and looked like video to me, specifically, the panning speed was too fast, or right on the upper limit of the lower range of acceptable panning speed...and this was 35mm film at 24p!

The film look isn't the camera, it's what you do with the camera.

As for the 35mm adaptor, you can get a shallow DoF on the A1 with lots of work, but you'll also have to user a telephoto setting (zoomed in) which will change the relationship between the subject and the background (the leaves in the trees behind them the size of their head due to the magnification). The 35mm DoF that everyone tries to get looks very different than 8mm Dof (which is about the same as a 1/3" chip, 16mm for 2/3", 35mm would be 1.3"). It keeps the relative distance between the subject and the background familiar while having a shorter acceptable focus range.

http://digitalslrphotography.50webs.com/closeup.html#413
Can't find any pictorial comparisons of the same scene with the 3 different sizes, sorry. What you would see is that with the background and subject in relatively the same locations in the screen, and the subject within 6-10 feet of the lens, the background would be blurrier in the larger format films.

If you push the 8mm (1/3") zoom way in, open iris, add ND to combat the ton of light you just let in, you can get the blurriness of the backgrounds, but it does so by zooming into the already blurry background to emphasize its bluriness. due to the relationship between the iris and the capture plane size (larger Field of view), the 35mm has naturally shorter DoF...In citizen cane, Orson wells and the DP had to work hard to get the long DoF that we hate from DV cameras...they stopped the iris down and poured light onto the scene to lengthen the DoF and stayed zoomed out etc...

The difference is that there's much less resolution in DV, so anything that is really small (like covering only a few pixels) starts to look like the atari 2600 Pacman rather than the coin-op Pacman from the arcade, which looks like video.
 
I like mine floating between 3-6 (they use decimal pointed goofy numbers) Most will go from f16 (closed) to f2ish (open). Then you would use either a light meter or a zebras (or combination) to gauge how bright the scene is and adjust the lighting or change filtration accordingly.

There's no solid answers here, if you want longer DoF to get more stuff in focus for the particular shot, use a higher f-number (more closed = longer DoF), if you want to get just the eyes in focus, but the ears out on an extreme closeup, move the camera right up to the person you're shooting and keep the iris almost all the way open (all the way open does funny things to the image, mild, but funny).

Focus is a matter of distance, no matter your zoom setting (focal length) on a given lens, it will always be in focus over the same distances from the camera at a given iris setting (f-stop). When you zoom in, you bring the blurry background up, not making it blurrier, but emphasizing its existing level of blurriness.

The closer you focus to the camera, the shorter the DoF...period.

Farther away from the camera the DoF starts to widen until the magical point called the hyper focal distance at which everything from that point to the horizon will be in focus (if not, you need your camera/lens back focus adjusted to fix it.

So any super tight shots that need really short DoF should be close to the camera. This will push the background out of focus even when the lens is wide, generally.
 
This subject is actually way more complicated. Some of the stuff I'm about to lay out sounds contradictory... and, I'll admit it is... that's how complex this stuff is right now.

Firstly, HDV and HD are not the same... and the Discovery Channel has already rejected HDV as a viable format on technical grounds. HDV is also almost universally hated by professional editors... most of whom would rather leap off a cliff onto a pointy stick rather than work on a HDV timeline.

In terms of future proofing your productions HDV isn't looking even remotely secure and what I'm hearing at the moment is HDV will be a dead format in the next three years.

On top of this full HD as we know it is also looking a bit shaky... 4:2:2 will almost inevitably be replaced by 4:4:4, meaning the Red Camera is pretty much the safest bet for future proofing any production company.

What's scary about these trends, is they are going to take production prices out of the reach of small scale indies again. Not because the cameras are so very expensive, but because if you shoot a 90 minute 4:4:4 feature film with a 6:1 shooting ratio you will generate a staggering 3 TB's of data, that can only be handled by a RAID storage system connecting to you NLE by an 4GB optical link... or in other words $16,000 worth of storage.

HOWEVER... what makes all of this nonsense is an understanding that sales are not related to format... and, worst than that, image quality is not directly related to format.

It's always been possible to shoot and sell a feature film on SD because actually story, lighting and optics are more important than format.

In fact, the stronger your story the more liberties you can take with picture quality. But the truth is, with any format, providing you light the scene so the image falls within in the chip's latitude range... and providing your scene is interesting enough, format rapidly becomes a red-herring.

In real terms lighting and optics are more important than format. Given the choice between a camera like the DVX200, which is fully HD but with a shoddy prosumer lens, and JVC's 101 with a decent, rented Fujion lens... then I'd take the JVC, even though it's a nasty HDV codec and a pain to get into FCP.

I'm rambled on a bit... so I'll try to bullet point this:

1) HDV probably isn't going to last the coming trends because 4:2:2 camcorders are getting cheaper
2) 4:2:2 is going to be superseded by 4:4:4, which is going to hike post production costs
3) Story, Optics and Lighting and more important than format.

The bottom line is there is more to making a film than strapping a 35mm adaptor to a HDV camcorder.

I currently hold two seemingly contradictory positions: firstly that if you're going down the HD route then it's not worth working with anything less than fully professional camera and lenses; at the same time I also believe it's possible to shoot a saleable movie on almost anything that will put light on tape providing your story and production skills are strong enough.

So, I think my conclusion is that if you can't afford to go fully pro with your kit, it makes sense to shoot with what ever you already have and invest any money you might have spent on camcorders on a good set of Kino-Flo lights and a professional script editor.
 
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