OT: Zacuto's Great Camera Shootout '08

Cliff Etzel wrote on 12/10/2008, 12:39 PM

Great video on a round table discussion on image quality vs price.performance.

http://vimeo.com/2437826

They show controlled lighting footage for several cameras - from the Nikon D90 & Canon 5DMkII shooting video all the way to 35mm film - an eye opening piece of information.

Cliff Etzel - Solo Video Journalist
bluprojekt | solo video journalism blog

Comments

Coursedesign wrote on 12/10/2008, 1:45 PM

Thanks, great work!

I thought 35mm film was by far the best. Demonstrably better for this particular scene.

The Sony EX3 was amazing.

The Letus Extreme gave a rather lowres image, while the Letus Elite was much better.

The HVX200 looked A+ great when shooting the discussion (they used 5 HVX200s for this), not so hot with various adapters (too much resolution loss).

The Canon 5D MkII? Well, look at those shadows. Needs lighting skill there to get good results.

Nikon D90? Umm, or was it upscaled Mattel Pixelvision? Major league low resolution and unpleasant contrast rendition.

What about the RED? It is clear that this is a camera for tweakers who don't mind spending a lot of time on getting everything right.

Even in this case with experienced DPs taking the time, I didn't think it looked as good as one might expect, and certainly not as nice as the 35mm film shot.

Fleshpainter wrote on 12/12/2008, 6:49 PM

I want to know what the settings were for the online video that is shown on the site. I want my flash to look like that - not like youTube.

Cliff Etzel wrote on 12/12/2008, 9:22 PM

I do know that Vimeo likes to have h.264 files uploaded for encoding. The 5 camera shoot was done on HVX200's - I would imagine it's a matter of test - and retest... and retest... until it looks right.

Cliff Etzel - Solo Video Journalist
bluprojekt | solo video journalism blog