Add dust spots on the sensor.

For a person not made out of money, the DSLRs are the perfect option to buy to do video, comparing anything even close by in the same price class. Of course there are limitations, loads of them. At the same time… There are enormous advantages (of which I’ve already mentioned one).

But I totally agree on the last line: “Don’t get hung up on your gear and instead go out and shoot” which I think you did with this post. (You also mention you’ll probably give a different angle too on this; looking forward to read it.)

you mention in your Compression point a (potentially) expensive piece of software to take the native h.264 files from a DSLR into an editable format.

i’m still a relative noob with the whole video thing, but before Canon released their nifty plugin for FCP, i was using something called MPEG Streamclip. its absolutely free, is super fast, and oh… FREE! http://www.squared5.com

again, maybe i am missing something, but it always works very well for me when i need to convert something on the fly to hand off to someone else.

Idiot.

And I will explain what I mean by that with breaking down your points. First of all, yes, the DSLRs are not made for video. But they are amazingly damn good at it.

I do not think you are an idiot, I think you want to write something that is a bit provocative. You try this with bold types. You fail. Why? You compare grapes with Merlot. You compare brilliant affordable magnificent cameras that produce beautiful imagery with professional high end cameras. No good mister. No good.

You talk about video. What is video? For the about 100 people, or whatever, that actually NEEDS anything more than what a DSLR can give, obviously, go with 35mm or whatever you can get your hands on, whatever the budget is. For the rest of us, shooting not to be on BBC (funny link there by the way) – go ahead and get yourself a DSLR – you’ll absolutely love it.

If you ever actually thunk about shooting “film” on a DSLR, maybe you shouldn’t really be making “film”.

Now to your points: 1. Yes it is a smaller camera than what “film” is. Comes in handy for all other use unless you need a rig to shoot. Like the new intro to SNL (7D). It is for different uses. 2. As you say, problem with ALL digital cameras, not a valid point at all, you yourself show a still from an $80.000 camera. Btw, how can you compare cameras 80 times more expensive? It’s like comparing the new Nissan Versa (http://bit.ly/c0AjB2) to the Audi A8 L 4.2 8cyl (http://bit.ly/9EQGZd). No really, it is, and it is completely ridicurous. (those cars cost about 10.000 and 80.000 respectively).

3. Valid, good point, really. Great job.

4. Again with comparing a $2500 body to a $17,500 body. OF COURSE the RED is better.

5. Where others salute the format, you try to thrash it. I guess for people reading this who does not know better, you make some sort of weird sense. You are really not saying anything more than that it uses compression. I will be the first to admit I don’t know too much about anything more expensive than my camera, simply cause I cannot afford to play with them.

6. I’m gonna skip this since you say it is 100% useless, that is just bullshit, nothing less. I have shot stuff with the built in audio which is fully useable, and would not be possible to use an external mic (or a large non DSLR camera for that matter). A mic at $299 a hidden cost, well it still racks nowhere nowhere nowhere close to the cameras you are comparing it to.

7. How is this even a point AGAINST? You have so many awesome lenses you can play with, at not really a high cost at all. There are plenty of people who have these lenses, and it makes it fun to change lenses with friends and others, getting unique film you would have to be really good in post to do with your aforementioned “film” cameras. Variety in lenses is good. Not bad. You also try to make a point of that it costs more to buy a lens than the body, still, most people can actually AFFORD these cameras and lenses, not really the same with the ones you are trying to compare it to.

8. Seamless weddings? Really? As you say, the 12 min limit shouldn’t be a problem, much less a point.

You are trying to bash on a point with arguments that are not anywhere even close to good. Yes, doubtfully will James Cameron shoot Avatar II or whatever on a DSLR – but the rest of us should not think that a DSLR holds you back for the good shot, video or still.

So if you think about it, do it. Buy the DSLR. I can guarantee you you will most likely to never even think about these points (unless you want to), and you will shoot awesome stuff.

For the record, I got the Canon 5d Mark II, and I sold a piece of my flesh to get it. http://bit.ly/aJ4oXp

Really interesting! I am a DOP and am used to shooting film, RED, HD and so on. Recently, with this crazy wave of DSLR’s I have just shot a couple of things on the 5D. I totally agree with the compression and ergonomics, just yesterday I had it on a Pee Wee dolly with full crew on a giant drinks brand commercial – CRAZY!
You got to love the sensor though and the shallow depth of field it give you!
Harvey

one of my friends is an academy award nominated DP who is now uses the canon 5D mark II to shoot documentaries and music videos. I’ve seen the results and they’re stunning, so you’re right, it’s about the artist behind the camera ultimately but very interesting article.

I for one am sick of clients wondering why they have to pay for a Red rental when DSLRs are ‘just as good”.

They have real, serious problems, and most people don’t realize that when you go to broadcast, it makes these problems far worse, as aliased, highly compressed video does not play nice with mpeg digital cable re-compression, nor with Blu-ray compression.

A pro set is running at 10K a day, minimum (BARE minimum) Not springing for a RED to better record that 10k of other costs seems a tad ludicrous, especially since the new MX sensor is far more sensitive that the 5D. I simply don’t get it unless your only final output is the web.

Think of it this way: if these cams were really that good, there would be far more stuff shot on them. Producers are cheap and would jump on the bargain. A few tiny examples of two show intros, from ALL OF TELEVISION, doesn’t seem like much to me. And those SNL clips look blurry indeed (I mean the parts that are supposed to be in focus). They just don’t look good.

To me they are great learning cams – but not pro tools. I could care less about price or ergonomics, it’s just that the output is simply not there at this time.

That shootout is suspect. Many other comments were far less positive, and did not make it into the edit (I know someone who was there). Remember Zacuto sells dreams to indy filmmakers. They make no money on their 3K plastic rigs by making you doubt those dreams.

Their shootout proves what? That film is better unless you use no lighting in the dark? We knew that.

The DP of House shooting on 5D is, in my opinion, an idiot. There are talented people in Hollywood, sure, but some are idiots. That episode will look terrible on an HD monitor re-comprressed on digital TV.

Again – that’s ONE show. How many TV shows are there?

I guess it all depends where you want your final product to play. For me, it’s not about the cost, rather the best image I can get, the best sound I can get. You never know where your product will end up, I have had friends loose potential sales because of their images not meeting broadcasting requirements, to say, they were mad at themselves for cutting costs instead of having the best possible image. If you are serious about your work, then the DSLR’s are not for the professional. You will see it used on broadcasts more for propaganda than actual dedicated use.

there are a lot of great HD cameras that cost around 12 to 40k that will more than meet your needs instead of this attempt to cut costs and think your images are going to be good enough.. they will not be….

@PoetZero
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@Harvey Glen:

That doesn’t look like a real commercial. Looks like a spec to me.

It does look yummy-nice in SD, mainly due, I suspect, to your talent, and despite the poor camera choice.

BUT it’s SD, is supposed to look soft – is a special effect piece. Like I’ve said, I shot 8mm film as a special effect. I would not shoot a full 1 hour broadcast show in 8mm.

An old film look will not need sharpness in the same way as most other footage does in 2010.

IN HD, on TV, it would look like ASS.

All is about creativeness

i made a lot of beatifull videos with d90
look my last – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BioA7ig6JfA

Over and over I hear accusations of my being a snob and looking down on this person or that person who uses DSLRs That’s nuts, I don’t.

I ONLY said I thought DSLRs were an extremely unwise choice for network TV, and that I was tired of all the lack of solid information my clients have access to, objective, thruthful information not laced with wishful thinking, the natural resolution filter of web demos, or the profiteering greed of accessory salesmen. (I have also pointed out that some accessory salesmen are great people, a non-exhaustive list would be Cinevate and Redrock)

I have tremendous respect for some wedding guys, including Stillmotion.
They do something that really means a lot to the couples they work for and their families, and some of their videos are just beautiful regardless of their purpose.

But, and this is a technical fact, not a slight against them, weddings are NOT a 1080p medium, yet. I’ve never heard of wedding videos delivering on Blu-Ray or being broadcast in HD, so the standards of that profession, rightly so, in terms of resolution, not art, are lower than those of 1080p or 2K delivery mediums.

Similarly, people only distributing their work on Vimeo, however good bad or indifferent that work may be, are also only dealing with a 600p or so medium, that uses a different kind of compression than HD cable.

As such, 5Ds are fine for them, not so fine for me and my current work. No reasonable person would find this a slight against anyone.

I also have tremendous respect, as I have often repeated, for anyone with the courage to shoot an indy feature regardless of their camera choice. Have you ever thought to think that part of this, on my part, is motivated by trying to give good advice to these filmmakers? That I’ve seen how a 5D is a dangerous choice that can hurt your career? how I know there are other ways, and that maybe its’ better to take more time and perfect a script that’s good enough to woo real investors than to run out and just shoot whatever as fast as you can?

I have studied mass hysteria and the inner-workings of brainwashing and propaganda at length, out of personal interest in world history.

What I see here is a technique that propagandists often use, which I’ll call illegitimate “concept bundling”. It goes like this: “Since young people and indys use the 5D if you dare say anything against it you are speaking against these young people and indies. How dare you, you elitist piece of shit! don’t you want to encourage young filmmakers?”

I hope I don’t have to point out the logic flaw here. I’m talking about a brand of camera, not people. The person I spoke ill of was the DP of house. He is doing, in my opinion, an idiotic thing in a very public way that spreads misinformation. In his place I would find some other way of only to not feed the hype machine. I’m sure he is in many ways a fine man who does fine work, but this one thing, although, OK, it does not render his whole person idiotic, is, in my opinion, idiotic.

I don’t feel the need to bow to him because of his status, and neither should you. He’s neither Jesus nor Moses. He’s just a guy, like you, like me, and sometimes he’ll be bound to do something really stupid, and we are free to call him on it, especially when he choses to do it so publicly.

As per those who say I should wait to see the episode, unless they are using a camera that is different from the one available to you and me, I don;t have to see to know what limitations it will exhibit, including 500-600p resolution, aliasing, compression noise, occasional codec breakdown on pans and doe snot recompress well for Hd broadcast, etc.

Maybe the shots will be well lit, and well framed, in fact I’m sure they will be, but those flaws will still be there, because those flaws are inherent to the camera and its technology, and those flaws will appear in any footage shot by anyone using any current Canon DSLR , regradless of whether they are hacks or geniuses. There is simply no way around them, any more than you could shoot HD with an SD cam. This is the thing, the 5D only resolves slightly more than SD resolution – I fail to see how talent can fix this huge problem, I fail to see how it “doesn’t matter” when primetime network TV has basically decided to shoot in SD, to go backwards.

Those flaws always bother me and do not meet my standards. I love clean, crisp resolution and I am very finicky about skin looking right.

Therefore, I can 100% predict that if I like how it looks it means they used a camera that is different from yours or mine, one that we cannot buy.

Now it is possible that you don’t care about any of that stuff, and only care about the story. If that is true, you should not be a DP, because it is the DPs job to care about that stuff, and the place of boards like this to talk about that stuff. So go be a writer (a fine profession) and go post on writing forums.

Now, maybe this House DP is under pressure from Fox to conduct a potential cost-cutting (and standard lowering) experiment, and it’s not the poor man’s fault, and I apologize to him. Still, this would piss me off, as it would mean they have decided that too few in the Fox audience know how to correctly connect the HDMI cable to their TVs and are watching in SD anyway, so why bother. (A real possibility) Next step is to guess that too few members of the Fox audience are sober enough while watching, at least not after 9PM, to follow a plot so why bother, we’ll get the caterer to write it – and you see where this is going.

As to those who say this is good for the business, beyond the whole lowered standards thing, we might add that is alarming how restricting all shooting to narrow depth of field, no quick camera motion, and all the other limitations these cameras impose will limit shot choices, limit creative possibilities. Long shots do have a creative purpose, you know, a s does deep depth of field. There’s a reason why your lens goes down to f16 – and its’ not just to make old dinosaurs who “don’t get it” happy. A camera that puts so many limitations on how you can shoot is not “freeing” you.

Well OK, just ONE last response, and a positive one, mostly.

The energy and hard work it takes to make a film are sacred things, I think, which is why they should be honored by the best tools possible, one should never settle for a limiting second best unless absolutely necessary.

It is often less necessary than people realize. With a good script and persistence you can get financing, you can get help, you can get everything you need to shoot the best way possible.

I also know a DP who loves the 5D – he has a CV longer than the list of my enemies on these forums. He also has a CRT SDTV at home, a low res computer monitor from 1999 (the only two places he's actually seen 5D footage), he has trouble using e-mail and, not to say that he is not very talented and capable of great work and also a great man who knows I am posting this, but I wouldn't exactly call him a reference on high-definition technology.

As to "stop being negative" this is only valid when there is nothing to be negative about.

Negativity has it's place. Problems do need to be addressed. For example, the East Germans were very negative about Communism, they didn't just "embrace" it as the new thing, just because Marx and other "cool kids" were into it My negativity, for the last time, is not directed at low budget filmmaking/filmmakers, it is directed at misinformation. Misinformation does not empower anybody, on the contrary.

When Red came out, there were lots of "negative" posts around the net about dropped frames and slow start up times and instability. You know what? I'm GLAD. People should know the risks, and Red, in its early days, had a lot of work to do. This kicked them in the ass, and they got it together. It stopped peopel who coudl not deal with these risks from using Red. It is also "negativity" about the original Mysterium sensor's low lattitude that helped push MX to 13 stops, and helped motivate cool new grading tools.

There are all kinds of specialty act cameras for specialty act situations, like that new helmet cam the name of which escapes me. But this is not what the house DP is doing. He is coming out and saying, in an interview with a partner in a company that makes expensive DSLR accesories, that he likely plans on using what is basically an SD cam to shoot an entire season of a high-budget HD show. I dread to think how many people will, as a result, no longer think they have the right to be critical of this frankly terrible camera technology because, now, really, "everybody is doing it"

Like I said, I'm sure he's a smart guy in myriad other ways, a great father, and a true patriot, but this would be a profoundly idiotic thing to do.

Much as I do respect weddings (here in Montreal, no one delivers on blu-ray yet) they do not have the same budget as a prime-time show, and a live event is nothing like a studio set-up, and audience expectations are different. they also uniquely can benefit from selling stills+video, so doing it out of the same body makes a whole lot of sense, whereas on House or a TV commercial, stills are rarely a major point.

I will leave ya all with two thoughts:

1 – A friend of mine wanted to quit school and start up a T-shirt business. I told him this was idiotic, go to University, finish school. I suppose Phil would say I was really a negative downer, shitting on his dreams of making T-shirts like I'm now shitting on the dreams of 5D owners who desperately want to believe they were able to buy the world's best camera for $2500 , and, understandably, get upset when somebody says, no, you in fact did not,

But, not a month goes by when that guy doesn't thank me. (Even though at the time he told me to go F— myself)

2 – The DSLR is the ultimate high profit margin accessory sales platform. Think about it. If you buy a camcorder, you don't need nearly as many accessories, potentially none, so no money for them.

If you buy a more expensive cam, or a more expensive cam+adapter rig, you can't afford as many accessories, because your budget will be maxed out.

I spend roughly $X a year on new gear – it's my budget for that, based on a good business practices of reinvestment . Let's say I drank the Kool-Aid and joined the DSLR fray. First off, I'd need tons of gadgets to make the ergonomics work so $$$ to the accessory companies. Second, I'd figure wow, my cine camera was FREE – I mean I'm using the camera I bought to do stills, and the video is right there, no charge – so I have the whole $X to spend, JUST ON ACCESSORIES!!!!

Yo, you may think I'm a bastard, but the real motivation, and why I was prepared to devote a wee bit of time to this issue is that I love film, I love beautiful images, and I want it to be possible for many people, not just me, to continue to create beautiful images for a long time to come, in an environment with preconceived notions that actually support that endeavor rather than get in the way of it, and standards that remain sky high, in all ways, not just cameras, but of course writing, acting, all of it, for the top end.

If the top looks the same as the bottom, then young dreamers actually have nothing to hope for except more of the same.

I also have a massive pet peeve with misinformation, in any form.

Whatever the next hype wave will be – I have a feeling this one will dissipate when House airs, maybe in small part thanks to my diligent efforts – it is my sincere hope that more people will think twice before believing everything they hear. You should never be uncritical of anything anyone tells you, not even famous DOPs, not even "all you coolest friends", not even me.

AND THERE IS THE JELLO EFFECT. CHEK THIS LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-RFpHb0GrA&fe...

Rob may be a Red fan boy, but what he says is legit. That being said, there are a lot of new experiments with the possibilities of using DSLR as video and Rob is most likely unaware of half of them.

I'm just really interested in seeing where all of this will lead to…newer, better, more compact and more affordable technology!

Guys, can you drop the flaming? I always find these discussion go overboard, I bet if you were all face to face you would not be so aggressive.

I am buying a 5D kit, it's got it's positives and negatives and I think this article was a great learning tool for all of us new to DSLR. Thanks David

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