Know Your Cameras Foo!

There was a time when it was a cinematographer's sole discretion, or at the very least a collaborative discussion between Director and DP that yielded a final say on which film stock to shoot a motion picture.

With the advent of the digital revolution, this all seems to be changing.  Nowadays it's almost as if before a movie is even conceived, the format on which it will be shot is decided. 

"I want to shoot my film on the RED ONE!"

Oh the cry of the indie masses, we hear you, but do you know WHY you want to use that fancy looking pile of camera? 

"It shoots 4K, it has 35mm depth of field... it's the newest derned shiniest thing that shoots pictures in these here parts see!"

That's generally where the list ends.  Back in the day, you know, when people actually knew what they were doing and why... we made choices on camera/film stock based on narrative reasons.  Each film stock has a very unique and distinctive treatment of color and latitude which lends its importance to very specific visual storytelling necessities.

You don't shoot "The Pianist" with the same stock you shoot "Transformers 2", there's method to this madness.

But these days everyone seems to have this delusion that there is one camera to rule them all.  Before I begin to discuss exactly why the RED isn't the wunderkind-camera-of-the-millennium like almost every indie producer working today would have you believe, I will put it out there that the RED ONE is most definitely not a camera to be ignored. 

However, what most people these days don't realize is in this new digital playground, choosing a camera is akin to choosing film stock.  You don't shoot a RED project with a Panasonic, and you don't shoot a Panasonic project with a Sony.  Just the same you don't shoot Kodak when you should be shooting Fuji...

Let's talk numbers for a moment, I'll try to keep it from getting too cryptic.  4K, the RED's biggest draw, is the super cool bigger brother of 720p and 1080p.  He's got an electric blue 1987 Camaro drop top, the ladies love him, and all his friends treat 720 and 1080 like a couple of chumps when they tag along.

What importance does 4K resolution serve?  Actually, on this one I would say quite an important role indeed, or at least on the surface it might seem that way.  4K means, much like 1080P (which is 1920x1080 pixels), your image is 4096×3072 pixels.  Ideally, you'd think that more pixels equals better picture, but that's where numbers, science, and good old fashioned movie watching show that it's not as important as you might think.

First off, almost no theaters project digital in 4K, they project in 2K.  Yes, even Hollywood's fanciest most techno-driven futuristic digital theater, The Arclight on Sunset Blvd, projects half the resolution at which Joe Filmmaker feels he needs to shoot his shitty ass web series, short films, and music videos.

It has been proven that the only people that gain anything from the extra detail of 4K are those who are sitting within 1.5 screen lengths from the screen (and by screen I mean theater screen... something most projects shot on the RED will never see).  This means, If I were to tip the screen down over the audience and add half it's height, those people sitting in the seats it covered would be the only ones who might be able to perceive the increase in definition, and I stress MIGHT.  Generally, those are the seats nobody wants to sit in. 

I would also like to ask, for those of you who have seen any of the following films (Zodiac, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Slumdog Millionaire, Sin City, Collateral, Star Wars: Ep. I, II, and III, or Superman Returns) in the past years since digital cinema became a reality for big budget studio films, did those movies not feel like real movies to you?  Did they lack something in their framing, depth, or overall detail that was so unnerving you thought you were watching your niece's ballet recital for 2-3 hours? 

I know for myself, especially with Zodiac and Slumdog Millionaire, that I was so engrossed in their stories, acting, consistently high production value, and expert framing, that I never stopped to think they were less than ideal in quality... because they are not.  They are just what they needed to be.

But this is what producers today seem to believe.  Not because of some hidden agenda to discredit great cameras; more because they have no idea what really makes a good image, but they do know what's hot on the market.  Now, the cameras that shot some of these films are being looked at as less capable, less desirable, and thus get their owners less work now because they aren't the newest kid on the block.  For those of you putting together low budget productions, shouldn't that pique your interest?

I once listened to a producer ask a well recognized DP, whom I was sitting next to at a panel discussion, whether he should take his friend up on an offer to shoot for free on a Sony F900 (mind you this camera still goes for $50,000+ for body alone today), or spend money on a RED.  He seemed almost depressed or disgusted by the idea of using this "lesser" camera.  I jumped in because I just couldn't believe it... technology might advance, new cameras might be easier to work with, fancy solid state workflows might be replacing tape, but in the end the question is: does the camera put out a cinematic image?  This idiot, who's shooting a crummy, low budget independent horror film with no distribution, has an opportunity to get for FREE the same camera that was good enough for George Lucas, Robert Rodriguez, and countless others who cut the path before him... "what sort of producer are you?"  I asked, "did the image this camera put out 8 years ago suddenly become beneath your sensibilities?  Work with what you can afford, and in that, what will afford you the best image for your story."  The DP who was originally supposed to answer this question smiled, squashed his laughter, and patted my shoulder in agreement.

Slumdog Millionaire was shot on a camera with half the resolution of a RED ONE, and with an image sensor half as large, yet somehow this disgusting, lowly, piece of crap camera put out an image that WON AN ACADEMY AWARD... how ever did this happen?!

This brings me to a very important point that it's the eye BEHIND the camera that makes an image worthy of lighting up the silver screen.  I'm more than certain that Anthony Dod Mantle could make a cell phone camera feel like more than it's meager parts if it were asked of him... which he pretty much did by filming "28 Days Later" on a pre 24P standard definition Canon XL1-S. 

OF COURSE it didn't look like 35mm Kodak Vision 3 stock, it was grainy and soft, but the brilliance behind their decision was that in every possible way their choice benefited the production.  The image itself lent a documentary feel to a situation that cried for you to feel like you were right there; the low cost of the camera meant they could have more cameras covering large events at no risk to production budget; and lastly the brunt of the budget was for once able to go into mis en scene.  Makeup, locations, extras, props, effects... these are all major costs for a film.  The camera didn't need to add another humongous cost and so what was being placed in front of the grainy, filthy image felt all the more real -- thus: here is an example of producers/director/DP who actually functionally reasoned their choice in digital acquisition.

The other major component that people are going gaga over these days is RED's 35mm sized sensor (now being threatened by this DSLR revelation which is a blog unto itself).  Now, as a DP myself, I will not sit here and tell you that it's not ideal to have that amount of control over depth of field, but here's why it's not as important as the camera nut whispering in your ear might tell you.

Last year I was talking with the reps from Band Pro, which are the retail face for Sony's major digital cinema cameras, and they were telling me the F23 (the 2/3" imager successor to the F900 and F950) was being almost completely ignored.  Why?  Why would a $200,000 camera that's the next in a line of cameras that defined digital cinema for  decade not be finding work?  The answer was Sony's more expensive F35, a similar camera that competes with Panavision's Genesis in specs that rocks a 35mm sized image sensor, was king of the roost.

Let's just make a note that we're talking a whole different ballpark of camera here.  The image output of the RED can't compete with the F35 or the Panavision Genesis, these are cameras for the biggest budget digital pictures in production by the major players.  However the concept is the same, image sensor size dictates depth of field so when you have 2/3" imagers going up against 35mm imagers, 35mm wins hands down when it comes to your ability to control depth and focus. 

However, this is tied in with how wide you've set the iris of your lens (the wider the iris, the shallower the depth of field) so when we get back into balancing budget with the available tools in your cameras, you should understand that 2/3" cameras like the F23 (which shot Cloverfield and Public Enemies), The Viper (which shot Benjamin Button and Zodiac), or the Silicon Valley SI-2K (which shot Slumdog) are perfectly capable of shooting with what your audience would consider cinematic depth of field.  Most DP's shooting 35mm, whether digital or film, are shooting with their lenses stopped down to a depth of field that matches what the 2/3" imagers put out with the iris wide open.

If this sounds like jargon to you, just understand that the RED is being chosen over competing cameras in its price range because of the depth of field.  I'm telling you if you put any of those competing cameras in my hand, I will produce just as cinematic an image as I would with the RED.  Your DP just needs to know what he's doing. 

So now that we understand why people are going after the larger sensor, I can cover its drawbacks.  Color suffers, plain and simple.  The larger a sensor, the more heat it generates.  On smaller imagers, you generally have 3 separate chips, which means for each and every pixel you are getting information for luminance (or brightness) and red, green, and blue color signals.

With the larger chip, because separate RGB sensors would produce so much heat (until of course the technology allows us to do so) it has to do all that the 3 chip sensor does with a single chip.  There's no free lunch, and the answer is what is called a "Bayer pattern", the same tech that's in your mom and pop home video camcorder.  This means that each pixel on the chip gets a single color, and luminance information.  The colors are spread out across the imager like a checkerboard between red, green, and blue, rather than all three feeding into every pixel.  This makes an image that's both washed out, and less true to real life. 

The moral of the story here is not that the RED is a hack job camera.  Far from it, the depth of field is a benefit, the 4K is nothing to sneeze at for effects and compositing in post, but really those things aren't the only factors that go into why we choose a camera or film stock.  The RED has a specific "look", Panasonic's cameras have a specific "look", Sony's cameras have a specific "look".  So stop hiring your DP's because of the camera they bring in tow, hire them because they are the kind of person that helps you choose the right tool for the job, and then knows how to use that tool.






-Nick Harris