When manufacturers (mostly Red) started pushing 4K, suddenly everybody wanted a 4K camera.

When the online “press” started promoting raw with the Black Magic Cinema Camera, suddenly everybody wanted a camera that would do raw.

In most cases, people wanting those new must-have cameras already had perfectly good video cameras, but the web-enabled instant transmission of knowledge (or what passes for knowledge), the hype hits everyone at about the same time and that hype feeds and multiplies and more hype happens. The end result–people often want what they don’t really need.

Any professional digital cinema camera made today is capable of producing images fit for the big screen. Assuming the operator is good enough. Yes, 4K has more resolution, but do you need it at this time? Yes, raw allows you to fix a shot that’s over or underexposed, but are you capable of lighting correctly so you don’t need to do that?

My basic point is: there’s a difference between want and need. I want a set of Zeiss CP.2 cinema lenses, for about $20,000. Do I need a set of Zeiss cinema lenses for the kind of work I do? The answer is no, I don’t need them. The lenses I use are more than adequate. Will a $20,000 lens purchase make my work any better? Not really. The slight gain in image quality would go unnoticed by anyone but me.

How about if I combine that $20,000 lens purchase with a $15,000 Sony F5? Probably more like $20K by the time I would get what I wanted with it. If I spent $40K on a new camera and lenses, would my clients pay more money for my work? Absolutely not. Would my video look better? Maybe a little, but I’d still light the same, so the difference wouldn’t be all that great.

My peer group would be impressed.

More jobs in the video production business is a good thing and there may be more work on the horizon from companies like Google and Amazon.

You can blame the hit $100 million dollar Netflix series House of Cards with Kevin Spacey and their pending reprise of Arrested Development series that put Netflix back in Wall Street’s favor and their share price back in the black.

I have to confess I was skeptical about House of Cards and thought the Neflix foray into content was folly. I was wrong and I’ll even go so far as offering a written apology if they bring back Firefly.

This is all bad news for broadcast television, which is getting hammered. The big networks were slow to embrace online distribution, just like newspapers, and more nimble competitors with fat wallets are eating their lunch. The broadcast dinosaurs have reacted badly to rise of online entertainment and now ratings in the 18-49 demographic have fallen a sickening 17 percent since last winter.

Broadcasters have survived up to now by charging higher ad rates for fewer viewers, but advertisers are beginning to balk. The more consumers turn from their TVs to the internet the broadcast networks are starting to feel like the people in Washington and New York in the first 30 minutes of Independence Day. Something bad is going to happen, they’re just not sure what.

All this is good news for services like Google Fiber, which brings digital content to living rooms at blazing speeds. That should terrify Comcast and concern AT&T, the later at least making an attempt with their U-Verse system. Comcast seems stuck in the tar pits of mediocrity with horrible customer service and no one is really going to miss them.

Anyway, it all bodes well for the future of video production. More production is more jobs and I don’t hear anyone on this board complaining.

For more discussion join out video board.

Many video editors who switched from FCP to Premiere Pro after Apple laid the X egg are now feeling just as betrayed by Adobe’s plan to discontinue selling boxed versions of its CS software in favor of a cloud-based subscription model.

That means if you want to stay with Adobe software your only option will be to pay $19.99 a month if you want Photoshop, or about $240 a year. A collection that might cost over $1,000 will be available for $49.99 a month or $600 if they commit to a one year subscription. Video editors are having none of it.

“I will absolutely not go to the Adobe Cloud system,” says video professional Bill Pryor. “It costs more money and once committed, you’re stuck. They can raise the fees anytime they want and you have no recourse but to go with another system. Adobe promised us a meaningful upgrade about every 18 months, and they did that last year. Now instead of giving me the upgrade for a reasonable price, they want me to pay a monthly fee forever. Screw that.”

Pryor is not alone as the comments in this StudioDaily article illustrate. Customers are balking at the idea of a mandatory subscription and the way it was dropped on them.

Adobe’s switch to subscription only is good news for Avid and Sony. Avid’s stock has been on the decline in recent months and Adobe’s announcement has revived interest in their video editing products, lifting their stock to $6.89 in late trading.

Sony has never been able to get much traction with it Vegas Video software, a product that was originally called CoolEdit Pro. That changed within hours of the Adobe announcement with many shops downloading the trial copy of Vegas 12 to evaluate it as a possible replacement for Premiere Pro.

The work Sony has been putting into Vegas may be peaking at an opportune time. The software supports 2K and 4K frame sizes and can edit 3D. Changes to the editing timeline will make Vegas familiar territory and new effects like shape masking, FX masking and color matching will be welcome productivity drivers for overloaded editors.

Bill Pryor is one of the people evaluating Vegas 12, which means adding a PC to their office for the first time in years. “As soon as time permits, I’ll download the Vegas 30 day trial and check it out,” says Pryor.

Just like FCP X was a gift to Premiere Pro, it looks like Adobe’s emphasis on subscription software is going to be a gift to Avid and Sony. If the execs at Adobe assumed users would fall into line, it proves they know nothing about filmmakers. The current firestorm is only the warm up act.  Take a lesson from Apple with the FCP X debacle or be prepared for users to jump ship.

This analysis at Slashdot shows how subscription software costs more.

Get the latest on Adobe’s FUM-BLE in our Editing Forum.

It was considered good form to buy a roll of film from the store. Then you’d try out each lens, maybe outside in the sun, inside in low light, shoot people, shoot wide open, stopped down, etc. If the shop had a film processing service, you’d let them process and make some small prints. You’d come back the next day, or whenever the film was ready, look at the prints, discuss pros and cons of the various lenses with the proprietor, and probably buy one or more lenses. You probably bought your camera from the same store, and you’d buy all your film there, your seamless paper, umbrellas, bags and cases, and so on.

If you live in New York City, presumably you can hop onto the subway and do the same thing at B&H, although instead of shooting film you’d shoot onto a card and look at the results immediately. Some other cities in the U.S. may still have full service, well -stocked professional photography shops, but I don’t personally know of any.

Today most of us are stuck with reading online reviews and ordering lenses from B&H. In the rare event that B&H is out of stock on the lens we want, we might go to Adorama as a second choice. Both stores have good return policies, so it’s safe to buy a lens and if you don’t like it, send it back. Shopping in this manner takes more time and you might get stuck with more than one shipping cost, but what’s the alternative?

So we depend on lens reviews to get our information about lenses. There are two kinds of reviews: the DPReview type highly measurebated, pixel-peeping reviews with charts and graphs and more information than you really want to know. These reviews are accurate, well written and definitely worth reading. However, in some cases you can come away with an impression that a lens isn’t as good as it really is. For example, when they do 100% blowups and talk about chromatic aberration and you read the numbers and think, “Oh s#@^, it has CA.”

In order for that information to be meaningful you really have to compare it with other equivalent lenses that they’ve reviewed. In many cases I think you’ll find that the CA of a particular lens may be irrelevant for filmmaking because it’s no worse than other lenses. The only way to find out for yourself is to buy a lens and check it out under real world shooting conditions.

I’m not knocking DPReview here. I think they’re pretty good. I’m just saying that even their thorough reviews aren’t going to tell you what you really need to know. Also, most lens reviews are done by and for still photographers. But today many filmmakers use still camera lenses on digital cinema cameras. You might see a review that criticizes a lens because it doesn’t have auto focus, yet mention nothing about the focus throw.

The second type of review is the one written by an individual user.  On B&H these are under “Customer Reviews.”  You can google the lens you’re interested in, for example, “Rokinon 35mm cine lens review” and find hundreds of posts about the lens.  You might want to try that and read a dozen or so of the reviews for that lens. I’ll bet you’ll come away with a very positive feeling about the lens. That’s what I did.

In fact, the reviews for the Rokinon cine lenses were so positive that I ordered the 24mm, 35mm and 85mm from B&H. When they arrived in three days I went into the studio and set up a soft LED on a rack of products. The products were white plastic jugs with blue and red graphics, in front of the green screen. The meter read F4, so I did the shot (at T4 on the lens since it’s measured in T-stops), pulled the card and checked it out on my editing monitor.

It was great. The color was perfect, the contrast excellent, sharp as any of my pricier lenses. I was thrilled with my purchase and was getting ready to open up the 24 and 85 packages. But suddenly I realized that I had shot at F4. All lenses look good at F4. Between F4 and F5.6 is the sweet spot for every lens I’ve ever used.  But the main reason I wanted the Rokinons was because of their speed.  I do a lot of my shooting between F1.4 and F2.8.

I went back to the studio and did some additional shots between T1.5 and T2.8. In the camera’s screen, things didn’t look so good. When I checked the footage on the editing monitor the contrast was way down, the color wasn’t as brilliant, and everything got softer. At wide open I considered the shot unusable. At 2-2.8 it got a little sharper but was still soft and the color and contrast wasn’t so good. Also, when I compared the lens to my Nikkor 35, I found that it was probably around 40-42mm—defnitely longer than 35mm.

When I called B&H to request a return authorization, I got the usual topnotch customer service, had the RA in a few minutes, had a couple of Zeiss lenses ordered to be shipped after my return was credited. I decided that my life is too short to shoot with cheap lenses that have problems I have to work around.

So…were all the reviews I read bogus? No. Not really.

In some of the reviews, I would read things like, “…the lens really shines at T4…” A few people said it was a bit soft wide open, but the vast majority of the reviews didn’t complain about anything, though a few did say it looked the best at T4, the implication being that it’s probably softer wide open.

I read one review complaining about the contrast and color. I never saw a post showing the lens unusably soft wide open. Until I returned them: I happened to be on EOSHD the day after the return and ran across a post from a person complaining about softness. And yet in the same thread another person said his 35 was perfectly sharp at wide apertures.

Then I heard from a friend who does a lot more high end work than I do and who talks to lots of people at big rental houses. He said he’d heard that there are big variations in different copies of that lens. In other words, it’s the luck of the draw. You might get a good sharp one or you might get a soft one.

I don’t mean to knock the Rokinons. Lots of people love the lenses. Matthew Duclos gave the 35 a very favorable review. I guess he got a good one; I got a bad one. A friend of mine here got a set for his C300, and when I saw them I was favorably impressed. However, we were in a coffee house at night, doing some hand held shots. I never checked out his lenses in detail as I did mine. I think he got a good set or he would have complained by now. It could be that the 24 and 85 lenses in my order would have been fine, but I didn’t want to spend time sending the 35 back, checking out another copy, maybe sending that one back, etc.

So here’s the thing about those customer reviews: some people get a good copy and love the lens. Others like me get a bad copy and don’t like it. And I believe that still others probably checked out the lens in available light and that light happened to give them an F4 exposure or better so they think the lens is awesome.

My totally unscientific conclusion about the Rokinon 35 is that there must be variations in quality control.  I’ve been through that before with a Sigma f2.8 24-70. I got one that was too soft at 24mm at f2.8, so I sent it back. The difference in the customer reviews on that lens was that there were lots of reviews talking about softness at wide open apertures and talking about variations in different copies. I recall that one person said he sent back three different lenses before he got a good one.

In the case of the Sigma lens, I knew what to expect but decided to take a risk. The lens was soft so I sent it back to B&H. With the Rokinons, I wasn’t expecting the softness because of the overwhelming quantity of good reviews.

I think (and this is just my opinion) there is a tendency for people to get caught up in the hype. The availability of cheap cine style lenses, for example, is such a nice thought that people may be overlooking the downsides to the lenses.  One professional filmmaker I know has a more critical opinion. He thinks that many people who buy the lower cost lenses have probably never shot with quality lenses on anything other than DSLRs, so they aren’t as critical when it comes to color and contrast, and they may not go to the trouble to really check out a lens in detail. I think that may be a bit cynical, but it is a fact that people seem to be very positive about anything involving cameras and lenses that they’ve spent money on. They want everybody to buy the same thing they bought. I see this more with cameras than lenses. I don’t think they consciously post deceitful comments, but they might overlook things a more objective person would see.

Basically, it’s a let-the-buyer-beware world out there. Reviews and comments on some websites may be accurate, while others may be misleading or even totally misinformed.

What does all this mean about the usefulness of lens reviews? I think it means that you should read the reviews and learn from them, but don’t put all your trust in them. Most importantly, don’t go to eBay and buy lenses from a place where you might have trouble returning them.  Also, check out non-review sites, such as this one, EOSHD, and other sites made up of filmmakers. Filmmakers generally want their lenses to look good wide open, while still photographers shooting with “full frame” cameras may not be as concerned with that. Most importantly, buy from a reputable shop like B&H where you can return what you’ve bought if you don’t like it.

There is:

-   Crap

-   OK

-   Good

-   Excellent

The single factor that determines those categories has always been the one that stymies us all: Cost.

Until recently.

Samyang started making acceptable quality but (relatively) low priced lenses with Canon EOS and Nikon mounts in 2011. Fast lenses—F1.4. Then last year they began to convert those lenses to cine* lenses. Now they have an 8mm, 14mm, 24mm, 35mm, and 85mm. A 50mm is on schedule for the end of 2013 or the first part of next year. The 24, 35, and 85, and presumably the upcoming 50, are all T1.5. The 14mm and 8mm are T3.1, and T3.8 respectively.

I was close to becoming fully committed to Zeiss ZE still camera lenses for my FS100 but decided to hold off to see how the Rokinons (Samyang) cine lenses checked out. The consensus throughout the world is that they’re the best deal you can find for the money. They’re not as well built and solid as Zeiss, maybe not as well built as a Canon L lens but they have much better focus rings for use with digital cinema cameras. And they’re a fraction of the cost of the equivalent Zeiss and Canon L lenses.

In addition, the Rokinons allow smooth aperture changes because, like cinema lenses, they have no click stops. Focus ring gears are permanently attached. Focus marks are on the side for better visibility when shifting focus. What’s not to like about all that. I placed my order with B&H.

- STOP THE PRESSES -

The above was written before the Rokinons were delivered. A friend of mine bought the same set for his C300 and I had checked them out and they looked pretty good to me, so I ordered a set. However, I had only checked out his lenses one night, with a hand held camera, at a coffee house, focusing on the cheesecake and pie through the glass of the cooler, the computers against the next wall, etc. I didn’t see any problems so I ordered the same set.

When my lenses were delivered, I opened up the 35mm first and decided to put it through the paces before opening the others. I set up a product shot with a variety of colors and contrast and well lighted. I put the camera on a tripod and checkout the Rokinon against the Nikkor 35. Guess what–I didn’t like the Rokinon.

While my friend’s 35mm looked good wide open, this one didn’t. At F4 it was as sharp as a Zeiss, or probably very close. But wide open it was soft. It got a little less soft when stopping down a bit to T2 and 2.8 but was still noticeably softer than at F4. The contrast seemed less as well. I had read one user review that mentioned the contrast and also a slight color shift when shooting wide open. A couple of others had said it was softer wide open. Some phrased it in a more positive light: the lens really comes into its own at T4, etc. In other words, it’s sharp at T4 but not at wider apertures. That’s like saying Jennifer Lopez looks good in tight jeans. All lenses look good at F4.

But my friend’s 35mm Rokinon looked good at wider apertures. Again, It that situation wasn’t as controlled as my test. Another friend who is more of a lens freak than I am said he’d heard from several sources that there was some product variation in these lenses. I had run across that with a Sigma 24-70 f2.8 a few years ago. It was noticeably soft at the wide end at f2.8, so I sent it back. I did the same with these Rokinons–sent them back and bought more Zeiss lenses. So the logical conclusion seemed to me to be that I had a bad copy in the 35mm. I could have returned it to B&H and got another, and it could have been that the 24mm and 85mm were OK, but I made a decision that I really wasn’t ready to work with cheaper lenses and their eccentricities.

Unless you spend more money than a luxury automobile costs, you’re going to find that most all lenses have some sort of limitation. Good still camera lenses like Zeiss and Canon L are usually pretty consistent throughout the ranges. While an f1.4 lens might be softer wide open than stopped down, the difference will be negligible for most users. I didn’t feel the Rokinon difference was negligible. I don’t mean to knock Rokinon. Lots of people use them quite successfully. Matthew Duclos likes the 35 and gave it a very positive review. That leads me to believe that the theory about manufacturing variances is valid. I probably just got a bad copy. I probably could have worked around the wide open softness–I don’t have to shoot wide open all the time. But a question popped into my head: Why are you spending money on lenses that don’t really look any better than your old Nikkors? I couldn’t come up with a good answer for that, except that I liked the fact that they were all fast lenses.

But if they didn’t look good at big apertures, what’s the point?

The thing that really turned me off the 35mm was that it really wasn’t a 35mm lens. In comparison to the Nikkor 35, it looked more like around 40-42mm. I didn’t like that at all. The result of all this is that I went back to my original lust for Zeiss lenses and spent more money. I got the 25mm f2 and the 35mm f2. Those two lenses cost more than the three Rokinons. They cost more than 4 Rokinons.

I already had the 50mm f1.4 and will get the 18mm Zeiss later in the year, hopefully. The Rokinons, had they been more acceptable to me, would have given me faster speeds, no click stops, and markers down the side for easier visibility when following focus. What is the lesson learned from trying out these new cine style Rokinons and then sending them back?

First, always buy any lens long enough in advance before a shoot to check it out thoroughly. Unpackage it carefully in case you do send it back. Be aware that with cheaper lenses there may be manufacturing tolerances that aren’t the same as those of higher quality lenses. Always buy from a company like BH so you can return a problem lens easily with no hassle.

There’s one more point to make. Online reviews. Trust them or not? The Rokinons have excellent reviews, and you have to look hard to find any talk about problems. However, if you do a specific search for a specific problem, then you will find all the complaints. This is something I should have realized but didn’t. If you google “Rokinon cine lens soft at T1.5″ or something along those lines, you’ll see some posts where people talk about that issue. But if you read a hundred user reviews, probably 90% of them or more will be very positive.

Rokinon lenses did not work for me, but they might work for you. As I mentioned, a friend who has a $15K C300 and makes great images got a set and loves them. Could be the luck of the draw, could be I’m overly critical, could be I could have got a different copy of the 35 and been a happy camper…who knows. In my opinion, and this is just my opinion, if I were starting out and trying to be economical in my gear purchases and didn’t have any lenses at all, then the set of Rokinons would probably be OK. They’re fully manual, have better focus rings than L lenses, no click stops, focus gears built on, and are a great deal for the money. You may have to go through some returns to get what you want. They are available in Nikon, Canon and Sony E mounts. If I couldn’t afford the Zeiss, I could work within their limitations. But I gritted my teeth and popped for more Zeiss glass. I’ve always had excellent lenses and am at a fortunate place where I can still have quality lenses. If that were not the case, I could make movies with the cheaper lenses.

*A note about “cine” lenses. The Rokinon lenses are marketed as cine lenses but in reality they are simply still camera lenses that have been modified in the same way Duclos modifies lenses. They’ve had the click stops removed, focus gears attached, and they’re marked in T-stops rather than F-stops. Markings are oriented to the side like cine lenses. However, a true cine lens will have a much longer focus throw (usually around 270 degrees), markings will be much finer and more accurate, all front threads will be the same size, all will have the same wide open T-stop (the Rokinon wide angles are slower than these three), and most importantly real cine lenses will not breathe, or will not breathe enough so you’d notice. ]]> http://dvfreelancer.com/2013/05/03/why-rokinon-cine-lenses-work-for-me-but-maybe-not-for-you/feed/ 0 http://dvfreelancer.com/2013/04/08/black-magic-nab-cameras-available-for-preorder/ http://dvfreelancer.com/2013/04/08/black-magic-nab-cameras-available-for-preorder/#comments Mon, 08 Apr 2013 22:35:06 +0000 Admin http://dvfreelancer.com/?p=550 Two new cameras from Black Magic, just announced at the National Association of Broadcasters meeting in Las Vegas this week, is already available for preorder at B&H.

One is being called the Pocket Cinema Camera (cue the standard jokes).  The specs are impressive for the footprint.

Super 16mm Sized Image Sensor

Active Micro Four Thirds Lens Mount

13 Stops of Dynamic Range

Records Full HD 1080 CinemaDNG RAW

Apple ProRes 422 (HQ) at 220 Mbps

ortable Design (5″ Long and 12.5 oz)

3.5″ LCD Display with 800×480 Resolution

Uses SDXC and SDHC Memory Cards

EN-EL20 Compatible Rechargeable Battery

HDMI, LANC, 3.5mm Audio Input and Output

The second new Black Magic camera is a 4K production camera that doesn’t look a whole lot bigger than the Pocket Cinema Camera but outputs 4K RAW and that’s likely to be a game changer in a lot of productions.

4K Super 35mm Sensor with Global Shutter

Canon EF Compatible Lens Mount

Records 4K (3840×2160) & HD (1920×1080)

Compressed CinemaDNG RAW

Apple ProRes 422 (HQ)

Bulit-in SSD Recorder

12 Stops of Dynamic Range

6G-SDI Output for Ultra HD via One Cable

5″ Touchscreen LCD (800×480 Resolution)

Includes DaVinci Resolve and UltraScope

With some filmmakers already pre-ordering both cameras, it’s going to be interesting to see if Black Magic can sweep aside the last vestiges of the old DSLR filmmaking market for a brave new crop of high end video cameras.

Stay tuned, this is going to be good.  Join the discussion already going on in the DvFreelancer Camera Forum.

One side shot with Canon 24-105, other shot with Sony 18-55. Can you tell which is which? Click on the image for a larger version.

I love good lenses. The feel of a Zeiss lens when I turn the focus ring is probably the same to me as a sip of a bottle of $500 wine to a wine connoisseur. Zeiss ZF and ZE lenses provide an excellent quality image. The Canon L lenses look good too, though they don’t feel as good or seem as well built as the Zeiss. Both are expensive.

Last fall I ended my participation in the DSRL revolution with the purchase of a Sony FS100. I didn’t get the kit deal with the Sony 18-200 lens because I had the Canon 24-105 L lens plus the 70-200 L.  The zoom range was covered, and the 24-105 had OIS. Also, all my lenswhore friends had no respect for the Sony lens, and being a lifelong lenswhore, neither did I. But after using the camera for a few months I’ve come to regret not buying that 18-200.

The 24-105 is significantly heavier than the Sony lens. Insert the Metabones adapter between lens and camera and the weight is increased and is farther from the center of gravity, making it feel even heavier. Makes me nervous to use it without the lens support, which requires setting up the rods and all. The 70-200 really sticks out there, though it’s lighter than the 24-105. So I began to wonder what it would be like to give up the  70-200 and the 24-105, which I consider one of Canon’s best zooms, and go with that long range superzoom. It would be more convenient, but at what loss in quality?

The advantages to the Sony lens: lighter weight, shorter length, no adapter, a single lens to cover the range of two, and an OIS system that allegedly works better for hand held walking shots. Disadvantages: Not a constant F4 (it goes from 3.5 to 6.3), not an L lens, probably not as sharp.

I decided to do a test between the 24-105 and my Sony kit lens I got with the NEX-7. That lens is an 18-55 f3.5-5.6 and costs about $200 with the camera, less than $300 if you buy it outright. I figured if it looked halfway decent, then the $900 18-200 should look better. But I expected it to look really soft compared to the L lens.

It actually looks pretty good. The frame grab you see is from the video clip that was shot with the L lens at f5.6, close to 55mm, and with the Sony lens at 55mm, f5.6. The camera was set at 5600K and I forget which picture profile. Nothing was done to the clips; I just loaded and overlapped them so I could watch side by side. Some daylight is coming in, some overhead fluorescent. Both shots looked less red in the original than after exporting to H.264. I don’t see all that much difference in them. Seems to me that either lens is good.

A competitor has materialized to challenge GoPro with a rugged, waterproof housing, wifi and LCD screen included in the base model.

With a price tag of $399 the Drift HD Ghost is priced competitively with the GoPro Hero 3 and has some compelling features including a wireless remote and the ability to control the camera with a smartphone app available for both iOS and Android.

Probably the most useful feature is the built-in 2 inch LCD screen that lets you check your field of view before heading off down the mountain.  Another drift feature is a rotating lens that lets the camera auto-level regardless of the mounting angle.

Where it falls down is being limited to a waterproof depth of just nine feet, not even the bottom of most swimming pools. So there’s no danger of edging out the GoPro for water sports.

Otherwise the Ghost offers a range of video option from 1080p HD at 30 and 60 fps all the way down to WVGA. Another advantage to the two-way remote, that you can mount on your wrist, is that it clearly indicates the camera’s operational status.

If Drift can improve their camera’s underwater performance while keeping a lid on prices they’ll have a winner.

Join the action cam discussion in the DVFreelancer Camera forum.

Recently the video business has had its share of upheaval. First the DSLR revolution put cameras capable of producing near film quality 1080 video at 24p. While most video professionals had upgraded to HD long before then, the DSLR revolution opened the floodgates of HD video. In the midst of the HD transition, Kodak filed bankruptcy.

The sudden flood of HD forced vendors of video editing software to up their game. Sony and Adobe reacted well and got their products working with both H.264 and AVCHD. Only Apple fumbled with the redesign of and disastrous release of FCP X. And then there were two.

The advances in computer power and NLEs in turn put pressure on VFX and post houses, to the point post houses are listed in the top ten of dying businesses.

Through all the turmoil in the video world, the basics of filmmaking haven’t really changed. Only the hardware is different and most of costs much less than it used to. Here are some timeless qualities to good video.

Half of Good Video Is Good Audio

You can shoot fantastic video but if no one can understand the dialog, your film is going to get hammered. Spend enough time and money to get decent audio.

It’s All About The Light

Lighting is one of the least sexy aspects of filmmaking but one of the most important. Good filmmakers will wait for hours until the light is just right, great filmmakers make light their bitch and bend it to their will. You can never have too many lights, reflectors, scrims, cookies, flags or gels.

Edit Tight

Ever notice that movies are sharp cuts from scene to scene? That’s not an accident. Even in the age of digital effects and drop-in dissolves nothing beats tight editing. Few things can take an average movie and make it better than shaving off unnecessary frames. When you think you can make it any tighter, go back over it again and cut, cut, cut until it starts to affect continuity.

A Great Script Is Better Than a Great Camera

If you have a great script with a compelling plot, the camera and gear become secondary. For an example take a look at Craig Brewers The Poor & Hungry. It was shot on a Sony Hi-8 camcorder, yes that’s an analog SD camcorder, and $50 in shop lights. It ran for six weeks in local Memphis theaters and won at the LA Film Festival.

90 Percent of Success Is Just Showing Up

That tidbit of wisdom is from Woody Allen and it’s just as true today as when he was banging his adopted daughter. A small amount of actually doing something is better than all the grand ideas you could ever have. The most successful filmmakers out there are the ones who have been kicked out of places, threatened with arrest and had people quit on them in the middle of projects, but they just keep chugging away. The keep shooting, keep refining their scripts, and they beg, borrow and bribe people to get the locations they want. They’re successful because you simply can’t get rid of them.

Notice none of these points mention anything about cameras, frame rates, dollies or anything that the majority of wannabe filmmakers spend their time worrying about.

I’ll leave you with one piece of advice I got from Craig Brewer when I was talking to him about property releases at a film festival. He cut me off about halfway through my question and in his deep, baritone voice said, “Look, don’t get hung up on the details. Just go shoot your movie.”

To join the discussion, join us in the DVFreelancer Camera Forum.