Single Chip Camera Evaluation by Robert Primes, ASC

[Fat Duke]

OK, I didn't realize you shot that many features on the Sony. I apologize for that omission.

How would the Sony F900 be an option for that many projects? As this camera was clearly very far from achieving a 35mm resolution by being 2K and having a 2/3 chip? Was it budget reasons or did its "look" benefited these projects? I'm only asking as you sem to be very demanding on digital capture being able to surpass that of a 35mm negative.

[David Mullen ASC]

I did one of the first F900 features back in 2000, a 15-day feature that cost about $250,000. Most of the other F900 features I did followed soon after that one, my reward I guess for being one of the first...

Two had budgets as high as 3-mil -- one was full of low-cost effects (D.E.B.S.), so that was the director's reason for wanting to shoot in HD (that and she liked the look, which was sort of comic book plastic colors, etc.) and the other was a family dinner table movie, 11 people around a table, two cameras all the time, and HD was the only way to shoot as much coverage as the director wanted (something like a 40:1 or 60:1 ratio by the end.)

The other six F900 movies were all pretty low in budget, one cost only $100,000, we used the director's personal F900 and a crew of me, two PA's assisting me on camera and what few lights I had, a AD, a sound person, and an art department person. Another was nearly that small, $250,000, a 3-week shoot in St. Petersburg, Russia with a former documentarian who originally wanted to shoot the movie on PAL betacam - it was a faux documentary so it sort of made sense, and that was his comfort zone. The rest of the F900 movies were all under 1-mil productions -- the last one I did was back in 2005. By that time I was itching to shoot on anything else, anything a step up from the F900 -- the Viper, F950, Arri D20, etc. Problem back in the early-2000's was a lack of a 4:4:4 1080P tape recorder that was portable; cameras like the Viper were dealing with data recorders, but the whole issue of sending data recorders back to post houses for back-ups, etc. was too difficult for low-budget productions, and renting a D5 deck was too expensive. The SRW1 HDCAM-SR deck helped revitalize the Viper and D20 since tape was, at that time, much easier to deal with than uncompressed data.

Luckily that trend is over, using the F900 for features. For years after that, I was shooting in 35mm again, but when the Polish Brothers approached me about doing two movies three years ago, and that they wanted to shoot them digitally, I agreed and basically laid out their options -- they chose the Red One camera, partially because it was affordable enough for the producers to buy two of them and then sell them off at the end of production. But I was happy because I was tired of shooting 1080P HD on the lower-budgeted stuff.

Our last movie, "Big Sur", was slated to be shot on 35mm with a mix of VistaVision for the landscape shots, but we were pushed to shoot digitally because of a very tight budget -- luckily we got a deal to shoot on the new Epic camera, partly thanks to support from Red. To me, the closest digital camera to a VistaVision sort of look is the Epic. I wanted a sort of Ansel Adams feeling to the widest landscape shots in Big Sur, hence the desire to find a high-resolution camera.

[Fat Duke]

David, you're very kind in laying out your experiences from recent years on those films.

At the risk of being nosy, would you mind letting us know about your experience with the Epic? Did it deliver the images you and director needed in terms of mood required by the story? I believe that we are now at a stage when having the option to shoot digitally is not always seen a cheaper solution to film, but as a genuine option that might provide the film makers with the images and the workflow they might need for a project. So, do you feel the Epic turned out to be more of a blessing than a compromise? Since you seem to be quite enamoured with its technology?

And also, do you have any idea when will the film come out? Or when will they post a trailer online?

Thank you.

[David Mullen ASC]

"Big Sur" is still being edited and it was made without a distributor in place, so I can't say when you'll start seeing any clips. I'm hoping that it will play at some film festivals next year, like at Sundance, but we'll see.

I'm hesitant to make a final judgement on any camera or film stock without having done the final color-correction and seen it projected. So far, I've only seen some shots in a D.I. theater and played around with them. What I've mainly noticed right off the bat is how clean the Epic image is even at high ratings like 2000 ASA. The lower compression rate and wider dynamic range also play into giving the image a lovely, smooth, clean look that is not plasticy or electronic in texture. Can't say too much about color since the whole look of "Big Sur" is desaturated, but when I've seen of my shots pre-desaturation, the colors look very natural.

It's not far off from the Alexa look, which is a bit softer as you'd expect. The sensor or low-pass filter inside the Alexa also seems to cause a mild glow around light sources in dark scenes. Alexa is the king so far in overexposure latitude though Epic is not far behind.

There's no right or wrong approach here but the Epic being a small box has certain advantages and disadvantages over the rectangular shape of the Alexa. The advantage is obviously that the camera can be stripped down into a small box with all of its processing and RAW recording capability still intact. Anything small & lightweight will be an advantage for certain types of shots. The disadvantage to the modular approach is that the camera can become a mess of accessories, arms, plates, etc. needed to attach stuff.

The Alexa, on the other hand, being close to the classic camcorder design (which should get more praise than it has) quickly goes from handheld to studio to Steadicam mode with hardly any accessories needed. The menu system is also very well designed. I didn't get to use the Redmote that comes with the Epic so I can't say how it compares in terms of ease.

ARRI realizes the advantages to a smaller profile camera hence the new Alexa-M ("M" for modular") announced at NAB, which basically splits the camera in half so you have the sensor & lens in a small unit. Great for 3D rigs. But it's not self-contained like the Epic, you still need to be cabled to the other half of the camera plus a data recorder of some kind as well if you want to record RAW instead of ProRes.

I like both cameras, Epic and Alexa, and which I'd choose would depend on a number of factors, from how much resolution I wanted to have available to me in post, to how quickly I felt I could work with either cameras in a run & gun shooting situation. But considering that "Big Sur" was shot in 21 days, clearly I was able to work pretty quickly with the Epic on a set with minimal crew members.

Obviously Roger will have his own opinion about this, but if he were going to do some sort of landscape movie with a lot of big vistas, I think he should seriously look into the Epic, check it out. On the other hand, once Alexa comes out with an optical viewfinder, I think Roger is going to be so happy that it will be hard to get him to consider something without one...

[Roger]

Just to clear something up in this endlessly circular discussion. I have only finished one film, In the Valley of Elah', at a 2K resolution. Every other film I have done with a digital finish has been done at 4K.
"In Time" was shot on the Alexa and recorded uncompressed, which is slightly inferior to Arri RAW but was all that was available at the time of the shoot. I intend to shoot my next film on the Alexa using Arri RAW. No way do I see shooting digitally as a step down from shooting on film emulsion, whether recorded as an uncompressed file or as Arri RAW. Quite the opposite in fact. I would not be shooting digitally if I did not feel I was gaining both in image resolution and in colour rendition by doing so.
To illustrate my point, I did an experiment the other day blowing up some images that were recorded in Arri RAW and I found a full 40% enlargement was quite acceptable. If you were to try enlarging a 35mm film frame I would suggest 15% might be stretching it. I thought that quite revealing.
I also intend any future digital finish to be done at 4K. True, the RAW file is something less than 3K but I have made some tests and there is a marked difference between that and a 2K output.
Regardless of what a manufacturer might say about 'K' and about bit depth etc. I rely on my eyes to tell me what I am seeing.

[MarcVanOsdale]

Regardless of what a manufacturer might say about 'K' and about bit depth etc. I rely on my eyes to tell me what I am seeing.

Topic Settled.