HD DSLR Presentation at NMM
Posted on 28. Apr, 2010 by Scott Carnegie in Blog
Last night I headed to the latest and greatest presentation from New Media Manitobawith James Swirsky of Blink Works talking about HD DSLRcameras. It’s been a while since I’d been to a NMM meeting and I was pleased to see that the room was packed! They had 100 registered guests with 35 people on the waiting list hoping to get in. They’re new location at 1000 Waverly is great, easy to get to and easy to find parking, which were 2 challenges at their previous meeting place.
So, onto the presentation.
Now I’m not saying this to win friends; this was one of the best-prepared and entertaining presentations I’d ever been to at NMM. Sure, it was “just” a Keynote show, but the amount of relevant images, information, organization and video really told the story James wanted to get across. It was very well organized and entertaining.
He talked about the pro’s (which are many) and the cons (which are many) to using DSLR’s for video production. I admit that I’ve been sold on DSLR’s for a few months since taking a look at them and the quality of picture that they produce. Even with the cons it’s the final product that matters and the picture and sound are still superior to most camcorders out there as far as achieving a cinematic look.
He started with the pros (going from memory here) which are the shallow depth of field, the price point, the lens selection available, the compact nature of the cameras (no more wrecking your shoulder holding a BetaCam on it) and how well they shoot in low light conditions. Some of the cons are the way they handle audio (back to separate audio recording if you want good audio, which you should ) the tendency for image problems like aliasing and skew, the limit on recording time and the position of the viewfinder.
After the presentation James took questions from the crowd for about 15 minutes. I asked about external monitoring on location, he mentioned that he didn’t use any. Mid-Canwas there with their set-up which had an external HD (I think 8″) monitor plugged into the HDMI port of the camera so it is possible, though not as handy as a flip out LCD if you’re doing hand held work.
The main challenge I still see with this camera set-up are some of those camcorder pluses like timecode, carry handles, direct XLR inputs, etc. The “dream” now is to have the DSLR sensors and lenses available on camcorder bodies, which James showed an example of; a camera that looked a bit like Frankenstein. These are no doubt to be the next generation since consumer demand seems to be pretty high, but the advantages that regular DSLR’s will still have over these camcorder style ones will be their light weight and compact nature. So buy 2! A DSRL and one of the new camcorders that will be out with the sensors and lenses.
When I first saw some of the material from Blink Works about a year ago I remember thinking “how are they creating those images”? I knew right away that they weren’t using a regular HDV or HD camcorder, it had a depth of field and image quality that I hadn’t seen out of those cameras before. So now I have my answer.
A suggestion made was to take a traditional photography class to learn how to really control the depth of field and option with these cameras since they are so different than the video cameras many of us have been using in our careers. A good suggestion that I am going to follow.
Thanks to James and New Media Manitoba for a great presentation and nice chance to do some networking with other people in the media industry; it got me pumped up to get out there are create some great images in my productions.
