I am exceptionally disappointed in Canon.

Quoting their own official copy:

Since the introduction of EOS HD, the professional cinematographer has had a love/hate relationship with HD-SLRs for movie production. Because there were limitations and restrictions that prevented seasoned DPs from shooting in the ways they were used to, HD-SLRS were tools that occasionally frustrated high-end video users.

Canon is uniquely positioned to capitalize on the strengths of EOS HD-SLRs while creating a true professional video camera system that can fulfill the needs of working cinematographers. After much research and thoughtful planning, Canon is proud to introduce the EOS C300 and EOS C300 PL digital cinema cameras as our first entry into the world of professional cinema cameras.

Then they introduce a camera that shoots 1080p at a maximum bitrate of 50Mb/sec… come on guys, get real.

The EOS C300′s large Super 35-sized CMOS image sensor was specifically engineered from the ground up to meet the needs of the cinema industry.

Recording options in the EOS C300 and EOS C300 PL, when set for NTSC recording:

50Mb/sec. 1920 x 1080 59.94i
29.97P,  23.98P,  24.00P 1280 x 720 59.94P,  29.97P,  23.98P,  24.00P 35Mb/sec 1920 x 1080 59.94i
29.97P,  23.98P 1280 x 720 59.94P,  29.97P, 23.98P 25Mb/sec 1440 x 1080 59.94i,  29.97P,  23.98P

Both the EOS C300 and EOS C300 PL are expected to be available at dealers in early 2012, at an estimated selling price of less than $20,000 – an extremely competitive price range versus established high-end, professional HD video cameras. Actual start of sales and pricing is TBA.

Canon, seriously?

Largely thanks to Philip Bloom sharing with his crowd, last week’s post Sharp Shooting for Guerilla Warfare – Part 1 – Bare Bones DCinema with Red MX, Alexa and EPIC received 1144 views and some nice comments on the RedUser forum.

Today I want to look at ergonomics and operation in a bare bones, location based situation where setup and tear-down, physically moving the camera from position A to position B, and getting into tight spots quickly can mean the difference between staying on schedule, or falling behind.

I’m going to start with the Red One MX, move on to Alexa and save the best for last!

The Revolutionary Red One

The Red One will go down in history as the camera that led a revolution. In that spirit of reverence, I am not knocking it here at all. It is however, a camera that is better suited to a larger, slower shoot with a full camera team. If I remember correctly, this is the only camera that we chose not to move while it was mounted on the head and legs.

Ergonomically the Red One is a heavy, bulky camera to handle, especially handheld or on the shoulder.

While head mounted, it’s great, no problems but as soon as a situation involves trying to manoeuvre into a tight corner, or into a car for instance, things get more interesting and options are restrictive.

There were a few shots on INSIDE where we struggled, wanting to move walls out of the way, but obviously demolition wasn’t an option.

ALEXA

As Philip Bloom so eloquently put it in his write-up for Arri Philip Bloom goes solo with Alexa -

The ALEXA is the Aston Martin of digital cameras – Philip Bloom

I couldn’t agree more. The camera is a work of art, it just looks like a Arri, and I love that. It instils confidence and speaks of a wealth of history in cinema technology.

It also has a nice shoulder pad! or at least our camera came with one, and that make for far more comfortable shoulder shooting!

The camera is still a long rectangular box with the lens mount at one end, the battery at the other, it’s heavy, but with fewer bits “perched” onto rods on top, on bottom, on side as with the battery and drive cradle on the Red One, it’s a bit easier to “throw” around. Often we did just grab the whole camera, head and legs and move the whole lot when necessary (two or three of us assisting).

In praise of ALEXA’s ease of operation!

I said I would get into camera menus but I’m going to stay quite general on the topic. I had a whole series of menu snapshots to share, but I fear it may be all a bit boring. I’m not trying to write a operations manual here.

What I wanted to share is basically what a pleasure the Arri’s menu system is. It’s so intuitive, I find my friend’s Sony Z5 more confusing and difficult to set up. I knew the menu back to front in less than 10mins without reading anything. You all know how men (especially) typically don’t bother with user manuals… or any kind of documentation, unless perhaps there are pictures of scantily clad women in them (even then reading anything is unlikely).

The Alexa is the most wonderful camera to set up and use. It’s an absolute pleasure!

Okay… I will share one snapshot.

You can play with the menu interactively online here, I encourage you to check it out: http://arridigital.com/technical/simulator

EPIC

If the ALEXA is a Aston Martin, the EPIC is a Ferrari Enzo, it’s smaller, tighter, lighter and more manoeuvreable. It’s the indie filmmakers’ dream in every sense.

 

I don’t think there was any instance where we couldn’t get the EPIC right where we wanted it. Handheld takes on a whole new meaning when you can grab it like a 5D MkII, and while it’s certainly heavier than a typical DSLR, especially with a Ultra Prime mounted, it’s not un-manageable. It’s actually a nice solid feel.

The EPIC made shooting inside a car an absolute pleasure, with the 10mm Zeiss, we framed everything we needed in the shot and could get it high, low, in, out, wherever. There is no way we could have captured these shots with a bigger camera.

Smaller, lighter, more flexible.

One significant advantage to the EPIC, is the need for a heavy film fluid head is gone. We had the same O’Connor 2575 we used for both the Red One and the Alexa, and it’s a beautiful, silky smooth head, but we probably could have put the camera on a Manfrotto 501 video fluid head and been perfectly fine.

This advantage carries on to jibs, car mounts, sliders, and almost anything you might want to put the camera on. While heavier than a DSLR, I would argue the EPIC with a cinema prime and a clip on matte box can be handled with anything that will take the weight of a EX3. It’s cinema in a video weight class.

That’s it for this post.

In the next post Part 3, we go into post production with these cameras! Stay tuned!

Please also subscribe to my blog!

Quite simply, I have one thing on my mind. I HAVE to get my hands on this camera.

Finally Sony have unveiled something which has not totally disappointed me. I don’t care about the F3, it passed me by largely unnoticed, I’m not interested in anything HD to be honest.

Out of the plethora of tech specs (yawn), here’s what matters to me.

• Super 35mm CMOS imager, 8K (20 million photosites) delivering true 4K after debayer.
• Mechanical rotating shutter option.
• 16-bit linear RAW recording.
• F65 for $65,000 incl viewfinder.

That’s all I’m going to say. EPIC has a fight on it’s hands. There are now two heavyweight contenders in the ring. What the RED does have going for it, that would likely swing the balance for me is it’s size and weight. Sony have built a larger camera than the EPIC, and for some that will be an issue.

I can still see EPIC winning over the indie revolution for owner/operators and small crews, it’s stolen my heart but I see F65′s populating the rental houses for “traditional” fully crewed productions. That won’t stop me putting it through it’s paces in a run and gun one or two man shoot as soon as I can get my hands on it! You know where to come to hear about it and see the images when I do!

http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/show-highend/resource.solutions.bbsccms-assets-show-highend-F65.shtml

By Jacques Mulder

Its been 2 months with my EpicM and have been meaning to write something about it, I can say in all fairness this camera quite easily found a way to humble my role as a Director and an individual. The camera has opened up so many more opportunities then I could have ever expected, my Bomb Squad (Brian Sheckelhoff) handler has been privvy to my tours across this planet, starting with Dubai, I ventured to Singapore, Barcelona, bit in Munich and Frankfurt, to Johannesburg and Cape Town. I now sit in Dubai with 4TB of footage that I just so desperately want to share. I met over 300 people in my travels, (I kind of know how TED feels) and in that time I met them all, the skeptics, the enthusiasts, the bewildered the flabbergasted and the random unknown. All the while people received the handling of the camera with fascination – all of them!

There was a stretch of 10 days that kept the camera really busy, some days the camera was rolling at 5am and being turned off at 2am, these particular days were in freezing cold conditions, the camera was so solid we only had one problem in a four day stretch, on a pinch zoom the Ouput monitor through the HDSDi split the screen (not physically obviously), we unplugged the cable and continued. We never lost a single R3D file, even if the battery died or someone accidentally pulled off the brick, we had 0 corrupt files, we recycled the 128gb drives at least twice per day (we had four) and then one of the best things about this camera was its battery life, we just rolled and rolled and rolled and it stayed on and got the shots.

In the short time that I have owned this camera I have produced and directed many projects, a few stood out, one a short film written and produced by Richard Lackey (a RED user) directed by Leon Laubscher. He asked if I’d be available to help him on a project. I was not really sure what I was getting myself into but found myself smack bang in a beautifully crafted and stylishly designed period piece. I mean, shoot an epic story on an EPIC, it really did justice for the production. We were limited by lights, 1k a 2.5k, a couple of Kino’s, one reflector and a white bounce. I mean, really! We never shot anything over 400 ISO with this light setup, I can assure you we did beg for more lights and landed with a box of Dedolights that did help. The light sensitivity of the camera was truly astounding and we eventually started using less light watching our blacks and highlights carefully. In some shots we were proud that we only used one light. Warrick Mcleod was a genius with the lights and in the end we ended up getting way more then we expected.

In this shot we had no lights, HDRx turned on.

From there, as luck would have it I was offered a unique opportunity to shoot a ballerina, Alice, what an amazing artist. I will be sharing the final film once we have completed the edit and the grade. But this is a testament to her fabulous art and a thank you to the number of takes I made this girl go through.

In Summary, I have had the privilege of working with all formats, a week before my Epic arrived I was still shooting film, I still have a couple of jobs in October that require that format, but in all honesty I am going to attach my EpicM to the side of the 435 and shoot with both cameras. There is one thing for those I would advise anyone out there to do and that is to get a truck load of hard drive storage. Don’t shoot HDRx if you don’t have to, but for those technical boys out there this additional channel is perfect for 3D tracking and amazing at bringing out the blown out backgrounds! It has been a long 7 weeks, but we did a documentary, at least 3 TVC’s, a more “corporate” film and a trailer for a movie by one of the big Post houses in Cape Town, the short film shown above and a passion project named Alice. Lastly, I have had the privilege of using a variety of lenses that most reputable equipment houses have to offer and I have my favorites… This topic I will not discuss now…

To the guys at RED – you have seriously humbled me…

Jac Mulder
Director/TD
Represented by www.spokefilms.tv | Dubai
Muddville www.mvdubai.com 
Epic-M and Epic-X (on the way), clutch, canon mount and some cool toys…
jac(at)mvdubai.com

Just read this fantastic article on LA Times Magazine… a must read!

The RED Revolution – LA Times Magazine.

I’m totally indebted to a whole bunch of fantastic people at the moment, some of whom I actually am monetarily indebted to as well after these past two films, and believe me… the Kickstarter campaign is about to launch! I need your help!

I want to express a huge Thank You! to Waterfront Studios and Condor Visual Effects, my previous employers for giving me the opportunity to have our fantastic 5K images graded and finished in their Quantel Pablo suite.

We conform on Wednesday 7th Sept, and if all goes well we will grade on the weekend, Sat 10th & 11th with colorist Kyle Stroebel.

It’s likely that we will have some challenges, a 5K conform doesn’t happen every day (yet… I hope that changes) but its all part of the fun and if I know anything about the technical crew at Waterfront Studios, it’s that they are creative problem solvers!

So, I’m going to give you a window into the world of high-end finishing at Cape Town’s premier post facility with a blog post or two dedicated to the kind folks at Waterfront Studios! Stay tuned for that.

Remember that coming up later this week is Part 2 of my “Sharp Shooting for Guerilla Warfare” series with Red MX, Arri Alexa and EPIC where I will take a look at form factor, ergonomics and menus/setup on these three top end cameras.

So if you’re a digital cinema acquisition and post production technology enthusiast, a technician, a producer, or involved in this crazy world in your day to day grind, please come back regularly. Better yet, subscribe to my blog!

After an interesting flurry of tweets this morning with my friend Yves Simard (http://www.crews.tv, @crewstv on twitter) I discovered that I am not the only tech head losing interest in… well… the tech of digital cinema acquisition.

Far from being a negative sentiment, I think this indicates we have finally reached the plateau, where the curve of “improvement” in “digital film” over time has reached it’s crescendo and levelled off.

After shooting with Red MX, Alexa, EPIC, and seeing the performance of the current crop of DSLR’s, to me it’s much like F1 racing cars… they are all damn fast, all look the same (the move is towards a small handheld form), just with different paint jobs and sponsors, different fan bases, but are actually now within a reasonable percentage performance of each other. The difference between first place and last is down to the driver and the team, not so much down to the car.

My experiences with the EPIC-M so far have floored me. I am left with no question that celluloid, in it’s 35mm format is dead and actually needs never return. I am 100% converted now that I have seen EPIC at work, I may as well be working with high res scans from 35mm neg, only better.

I would however argue that aesthetically I have been nearly as pleased with well lit, well shot images out of the Canon 5D MkII.

This brings me to one conclusion… that it’s time to quit putting so much value on pixel count, even latitude, as there are a number of cameras now available ranging from prosumer DSLR to high end professional cinema rigs that all perform within the top 10% region of looking for all intents and purposes, as good as the 35mm benchmark that has always been the holy grail of digital cinema.

Could it finally be time now to start worrying more about what we are shooting and how it is shot than the camera technology?

I certainly hope so.

Yesterday Jim had the Red fan club globally hanging on expectantly for a major announcement.

What came was probably slightly disappointing for many… the beta release of Redcine-X, which is awesome in it’s own right, and I’ve already begun to play with it.

Downloads are here: http://reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?62838-REDCINE-X-Professional…

What was expected was probably something Scarlet related, or perhaps playback to be enabled on the EPIC.

However, better late than never, I found Jim made another important announcement a couple days ago that I came across only minutes ago. That news is the first EPIC-X bodies are expected to start shipping this week.

http://reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?62730-EPIC-X-production…

So what’s the difference between the EPIC-M and EPIC-X?

Not much, nothing to be too concerned about. Components on the M are machined, and hand assembled, while the X components are cast, and come off a production line. Still, if you want a EPIC right now, the more expensive EPIC-M is your best bet to avoid a wait.

Finally I am ready to publish my first article in a series comparing my recent battlefield experiences with three of the worlds best digital cinema cameras. My gratitude and thanks goes out to all at Media Film Service (www.mediafilmservice.com) for their support and for fantastic gear.

Also my thanks to Jacques Mulder of Mudville Production and Post, Dubai (www.mvdubai.com) for the Red EPIC.

At this stage in the game I am purposely avoiding talk of image “quality”, resolution, even latitude. All of these cameras are capable of capturing breathtaking imagery. What I want to focus on is how these cameras performed in a cut down, bare bones, guerilla warfare style of shooting with few accessories, and few hands on set.

I believe I broke some rules, stretched some boundaries and pushed some comfort zones in my recent shoots. Far from “traditional” at all on films that would normally be shot with this level of equipment, I purposely ditched focus pullers, camera assistants and DIT’s for a streamlined multi-hyphenated skeleton crew instead.

Click to view slideshow.

By skeleton crew, on “INSIDE” I mean my D.P. Warrick McLeod, who operated, built up, tore down and pulled focus, my director Christo Crafford, myself, and my cast (of two; Leon Laubscher and Pascale Neuschaffer).

We shot three locations, day and night, mostly exteriors with no grip and lighting gear. Our camera kit consisted of the Red One MX for two days, Alexa for one day, a set of Arri Master Primes, a Angenieux HR 25-250mm, a Zeiss 10mm, O’Connor 2575 head, short legs, Arri FF-3 follow focus, MB-14 matte box, and filters; ND’s (IRND’s on the Red), ND grads and a pola.

It was actually a lot of cases to shove into a single vehicle (a Mahindra 4×4) with all four grown men as well, but we managed.

Actually we did better than manage, we made a great movie with some outstanding pictures.

On Murder at the Manor we shot with the Red EPIC with Ultra Primes, a Zeiss 10mm, the same FF-3 follow focus but a 4×4 clip on matte box and many, many less camera related flight cases. We did have grips and lighting gear though, and a smoke machine, which filled the Mahindra and an additional long wheelbase Land Rover.

Murder at the Manor had a cast of nine and a crew of seven, but two of the crew were also cast members. Warrick Mcleod again was D.P. but was allowed this time to concentrate totally on lighting as Jacques Mulder operated and pulled focus, with someone else occasionally manning the follow focus and carefully pulling to marks when necessary.

The rest of the crew were pretty multi-hyphenated, it was really just a case of having as many hands on deck as possible. There really was no pecking order or specialists outside of Jacques and Warrick, Leon Laubscher the director and myself, producing. There were no units, there were no departments, but roles were carefully defined where necessary.

The resulting chaos worked brilliantly well for us, we all had fun and we shot 31 pages in four days. Keep in mind this was a period piece, and very drama/dialogue intensive.

I think there is little argument that these two productions, as test cases, can be considered “bare bones”.

You can check out some ungraded frame grabs from the EPIC on Murder at the Manor here – http://www.flickr.com//photos/richlackey/sets/72157627408410955/show/

So how did the cameras compare?

CRITICAL MASS

1. First place without a doubt goes to EPIC… the camera is very compact, and with all the accessories including the addition of a 17″ HD field monitor that we didn’t bring on “INSIDE” we had the fewest and smallest flight cases with the EPIC. It made a big difference to the shoot, in terms of space in vehicles, time spent lugging equipment around, and in terms of keeping track of where everything was at all times. Absolutely fantastic… closest thing to being as compact as shooting with a DSLR and still shooting “real” digital cinema. The total camera weight built up was also a fraction of either the Alexa or Red One. I think we’d have gotten away with perching the EPIC on a Manfrotto 501 fluid head. The O’Connor 2575 was a bit overkill but silky smooth so no complaints really.

2. Second place goes to the Alexa, but only because for some reason we had one less case to carry around. If I remember correctly we had four batteries in the Alexa’s camera case, instead of in their own separate case, and of course we were shooting to SxS cards, not hard drives. This aside, it’s a heavy camera, and a lot for a tiny crew to carry around. Still, we made it work.

3. Third place goes to the Red One MX… let’s face it, it’s a big camera and those batteries and hard drives and all the cables and bits and pieces can get a bit much for a one or two man show. It’s heavy when built up, and Warrick did have it on his shoulder a lot of the time.

ENERGY

1. EPIC again takes first place. Jacques had not received his EPIC batteries yet, so we had a separate V-lock system and used standard Red Bricks. They lasted substantially longer powering the EPIC than they did powering the Red One, or the Anton Bauer batteries that powered the Alexa. On a real guerilla style shoot, battery life is very important because down-time is minimal. We did keep the batteries on a constant charging rotation, but when few people are charged with multiple responsibilities, it’s easy for charging to take a back seat.

2. Red One MX lasted slightly longer on a charged battery than the Alexa. In both cases the on board monitor was powered by the same battery.

3. Alexa didn’t last too long on a single battery, I was a bit dissapointed about that really, especially since it wasn’t spinning hard drives but writing to solid state cards.

MEDIA [UPDATED 04/09/2011]

1. Red One MX takes first place here, the hard drives are great, we shot for a whole day on one drive shooting Redcode36. Brilliant.

2. ALEXA is second place, the Sony 32GB SxSPro cards were filled quick, but not as quick as the 128GB SSD RedMags!

3. EPIC in HDRx fills up those SSD’s damn quick! We went through four / five SSD drives in a day not even shooting HDR and could have shot more without too much effort. We used just over 2TB in four days of shooting! Note however, this is not necessarily a bad thing! High bitrates mean lower compression, and that generally means a more versatile image in post (resolution and color bit depth being equal… sorry… not getting into image quality just yet), but be aware that you need a good system of keeping track of what SSD’s are full and need to be transferred, which can be formatted, and which are formatted.

*A note on bitrates and compression ratios on the EPIC – you’ve got 3:1, 5:1 and 7:1, and your choice affects how quickly you will fill up your SSD’s, and space on whatever system you are aggregating all your media to (and of course backups).

We shot 3:1 which is why we consumed so many terrabytes of storage, we could have shot 7:1 and been closer to what you would be used to shooting Redcode42 on the Red One. I’ll get more into what this means in terms of image quality in a later post.

OVERALL INDIE GUERILLA FRIENDLINESS

1. EPIC for the win! It wins hands down when all things are taken into account.

2. Alexa is number two, this will become even more apparent in the next article when I tackle the camera’s ridiculously easy and slick menus and setup procedures. You can’t go wrong, the camera is idiot proof.

3. Red One MX comes last, but certainly not least! It’s a fantastic camera and I’m not knocking it. It is however heavy, lots of cables of all different sorts that can get confusing under pressure, and it’s just not that easy with a really small crew, or for a single camera operator/D.P. that doesn’t have support crew. Plus it takes a while to boot up

That’s it for now. I’m keeping this particular comparison at that, but none of these cameras are what I would call hard to use, or particularly complex, and they can all be used on a cut-down shoot, just be aware of what you can expect in terms of physical space in transport, setup and tear down, battery life, media cycling, and plan accordingly beforehand!

Next up I’m going to look at the physical camera bodies themselves, dive into ergonomics and menus/setup procedures.

Awesome stuff… if you’ve found any of this useful, please consider subscribing to my blog via RSS. The link should be at the top of the page.

As my regular readers know, I’m busy writing up a tech series on the Red One MX, Arri Alexa, and now I’m adding the Red EPIC into the mix.

I’ve had the privilege of shooting with all three cameras over the past month and a half and I’ve certainly got my favourite now.

I also want to take the opportunity to thank Media Film Service (www.mediafilmservice.com) for the Master Primes on INSIDE, and the Ultra Primes on Murder at the Manor, as well as accessories, grips and lighting, and EPIC owner and friend Jacques Mulder of Muddville Production and Post, Dubai (www.mvdubai.com).

Alexa impressed me with it’s ridiculously easy menus and setup, and it’s latitude was a noticeable few stops greater than the Red One MX, but nothing could have prepared me for the EPIC. It certainly lives up to it’s name, and has latitude to spare even without shooting HDR.

The EPIC’s small form factor also places it in a league of it’s own compared to the other two top end digital cinema cameras. Built up, it is substantially more compact and lighter than any of it’s competitors.

I love the high data rate of the 5K Redcode, I’ve never been a fan of compression, no matter how clever it is, and although compressed, the new heavier flavours of Redcode RAW are fantastic for image detail, latitude and leave nothing else to be desired as far as I am concerned.

Post is easy, just as easy as shooting Prores 4444 straight to edit with Alexa, and a million times better as you have a 5K image and tons more image data than Prores could ever hope to provide. I can import the Redcode straight into Premiere CS5.5, drop it on the timeline, adjust the “playback resolution” dropdown to a figure acceptable to the performance of the hardware and play, what could be simpler? It’s flawless.

I’ll get into HDR a bit later, but for me, a celluloid lover, the EPIC has knocked the last nail in the coffin for 35mm acquisition.

More detailed reviews are coming, please subscribe to my blog to make sure you get them, but for now below are some frame grabs from my latest project “Murder at the Manor”, shot on the Red EPIC.

Click to view slideshow.

This post is being written in a whirlwind… the digital cinema revolution continues!

My short film INSIDE wraps production tomorrow night (Wed 3rd August) and has been a fantastic experience. We shot two days with the Red One MX and the final day with Arri Alexa, Master Primes on both cameras.

I’ve started the tech write-ups that I promised for the Red-MX side, but will only publish them once I can add the Alexa content alongside.

To add to the mix, my upcoming web series / short period murder mystery “Murder at the Manor” will be shot on the Red EPIC, so you’ll be hearing my thoughts on Red Digital Cinema’s new flagship camera platform as well.

I’m no Philip Bloom or Vincent LaForet, but if you want some real-life down to earth opinions and experiences from a grass roots indie production on the high-end digital cine cameras, this is a good place to keep an eye on!

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