DECEMBER 2014
Vol 209
Sony PXW-FS7 on Show There was quite a crowd in Auckland at the Sony presentation for the FS7 camera. There were some demo reels from shooters who had been given the camera to see what they could make of it in a day or two; then followed a "features and benefits" from Sony's Nick Buchner and finally, a chance for a "hands on" – most appropriate since the FS7 is targeted at the handheld cinema shooter. Yes, pause, if you think like me, this market segment ( that grew with people discovering that certain DSLRs could record video ) is a non sequitur, probably brought about by a search for a fashion statement rather than good image quality. Having said that, with a carefully chosen lens for a particular shot, the FS7 is undoubtedly a very versatile tool for a serious Stuart and “grandpa” Ken with the FS7. shooter. awesome camera; a lot of similarity is drawn of course To find out how and more, let's begin by questioning between the Sony F5 and the FS7 based on it having Stuart Barnaby from DVT. exactly the same image sensor. However, I believe the Ed: Now Stuart, as one of the key Sony dealers in FS7 is going to fit a slightly different market to the F5 Auckland … and allow a lot more accessibility to people who want to Stuart: “The key” Sony dealer in Auckland please. do off-speed recording like the slow motion material that Ed: Yes ... well … you’ve been waiting for this camera we saw today. Amazing skateboarding scenes done in for quite some time and there’s a good reason for that? slow motion, cooking that you can do in slow motion, all Stuart: Yes, since it was announced. It’s an sorts of features which open up a whole new range of
creative opportunities. There’s 4K recording onboard the camera and heaps of lens options as well at a very low cost.
straight out of the box, you can certainly trick that up a little bit more and you can really do run and gun type shooting with that camera.
You don’t have to go out and buy PL mount glass, you can put relatively inexpensive E-mount Sony lenses on the front, or you can spend a few extra dollars and put some Canon or Nikon glass on the front with Metabones adapters.
Ed: Just as long as you’ve got the right lens – and we did see a zoom lens from Sony that looks as though it’s going to make that more of a reality than by using the still lenses?
Ed: Now in the past, Sony has always had a ladder of their cameras showing “this is the entry level and this is the next one and this is the better model and then there’s the top model up there.” Where does the FS7 fit with the F5 and the F55? Stuart: Well it’s interesting. Since the FS7 was announced, we’ve actually sold two F5 cameras, so it definitely doesn’t displace the market for F5 cameras which is very strong particularly in New Zealand. Obviously, with an F5 camera, there’s a list of features that the F5 has that the FS7 doesn’t have. One notable one of course is that it comes with a PL mount adapter out of the box.
Ed: Yes but they have to be done with a different workflow don’t they. They can’t be done in the same workflow that you use with an ENG style camera?
Stuart: I imagine a lot of the customers for the FS7 will go with the Sony lens; they like the FS7 because it’s a package. It’s got battery systems, card systems, card readers, viewfinders, lenses all out of the box from Sony that they can easily put together – they don’t have to be a “tech whizz” to do it. The menu system is very similar to an EX3 or an NX5. People who have used Sony cameras in the past will be very at home with that camera and I think the lens from Sony, when it comes out, will be a very common accessory for the FS7 because it makes it very easy to use. I think it will be used in that lower end corporate market and, really, it’s only a few thousand dollars more expensive than the current popular production cameras like the X160 or the X180 … it’s only a few thousand dollars more to step into an FS7 and I think many of our customers will want to spend that extra $3,000 to $5,000 to have the additional features – the slow motion, the shallower depth of field, when they choose to have it. There are ways of shooting on the FS7 with larger depth of field if you know what you’re doing, and I think it will become very popular for that use. Ed: Now one of the points Nick brought up, and I was very pleased that he did, was clearing up some name confusion. He talked about Alpha being a lens system and within that lens system, there are two types of mount – the A-mount and the more popular E-mount?
Stuart: I think that line is now very blurred and, with the way the FS7 can be thrown over your shoulder
Stuart: Yes that’s right. The A-mount is probably a little bit older and the E-mount is the current flavour for
Ed: So with the range of Sony cameras now available, it really does fit a niche? Stuart: Absolutely, Sony like pigeonholing exactly where all these cameras are going to go. The reality is that the customers determine where they’re going to go. I can see a lot of F5 owners buying FS7s to use as a second camera. I can certainly see a lot of DSLR customers who have been struggling … Ed:
Really – struggling with a DSLR?
Stuart: Absolutely, with a range of issues – definitely jumping into the FS7. And I really ultimately think, today, the FS7 is just the current version of the EX3. It fits the market like the EX1 and EX3 did when they first came out and I think the FS7 will ultimately be a very popular camera of the future. Ed: Except the main difference is that it’s a cinema camera and we don’t want to blur that line do we? Stuart: Aaah yes we do, because whether it’s commercials or corporate productions, general video production is increasingly being done now with large format image sensor cameras.
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motion capture lenses. When you look at the Sony Alpha lens systems, particularly the E-mount lenses, there’s an amazingly wide range of lenses available, and anyone with the Sony Alpha cameras will be aware of this. But for us in the video world, the fact that you can buy a very inexpensive E-mount lens, put it on the FS7 and have servo control, like you’re expecting with an ordinary general video production camera, is really good. However, I think that most customers, when they look at the existing still camera E-mount lenses, are probably still going to go with the new SELP28135G lens with servo control and image stabilisation. However, I still think there’s a large number of customers who have got Canon lenses or Nikon lenses that are going to want to use a Metabones adapter and that’s all possible with the FS7 … all the way up to PL mount lenses, you can stick anything on it, which is great. I think the attractiveness of the FS7 is the low price point and, with the new Sony lens, you’re going to be able to get that at under four grand and put it on the front and have a complete system really easy. Ed: But if you are going to use this camera in a more ENG type role, having the Sony E-mount lens with the autofocus and the image stabilisation must be better than having to use it with still lenses? Stuart: Oh absolutely, definitely, for sure. It was interesting, talking to one of the DOPs here tonight and I asked “well, do you like that shallow depth of field, out of focus sometimes look?” And he said, “yes.” Ed: I hope you then asked if it was important to capture that look in 4K? Stuart: Nothing makes out of focus video look better than shooing it in 4K! Look, I think they want a camera they can shoot everything in … and you know, one of the other people in the crowd today asked “can you shoot everything in focus, can you do that?” The answer with the FS7 is “yes, you can.” It’s got a wide range of uses and I saw some remarkable results on the FS7 back in our showroom when we were shooting with some Canon lenses with a Metabones adapter. You would be amazed – and in fact, here tonight, they couldn’t do justice to the camera because of the projection set-up but if you come and see us at DVT and view FS7 material on our Ultra HD Sony 55 inch screen, we will knock your socks off with the image quality that you can get out of this camera.
Another Sony dealer’s point of view is Protel in Auckland and Wellington tonight represented by Ken Brooke. Ed: Ken, Protel is the other major Sony dealer in New Zealand ... Ken: Did you say “the” major dealer? Ed: Yes, well, that’s what the other person said, but anyway Sony FS7s, they’re flying out the door? Ken: Yes there is a worldwide demand for stock. As you know we have two offices and so we received demo units for each office. At the same time we ordered additional stock to cover potential sales, however customer demand was so great, I happened to take two days leave and when I came back they’d both been sold. Ed:
So why do your customers want them?
Ken: The Sony FS7 is a very well-designed product and once customers get their hands on one they really don’t want to let go. The FS7 price point also fits well in the professional market, priced between the Sony F5 and Sony NEX-FS700. So the FS7 fits right in the middle of the price range. Customers love getting the latest 4K technology with high end features and the offer of future software feature upgrades. Ed: I guess that’s it – however you do have a wide range of cameras available that people can come in, have a look at and try. You’ve got the Sony’s and Canon’s, Panasonic, Blackmagic’s, GoPro’s so there’s a wide choice there now? Ken: Yes, we have a variety of camera stock at present. We’ve also noticed there’s been a short term increase in the number of people interested in the Sony NEX-FS700 at the new reduced price point. Ed: But you’re still getting people coming in for ENG style cameras? Ken: Yes we certainly are and one of the new Sony cameras, the PXW70 XDCAM compact camcorder is proving a hit. Ed:
He’s a man of numbers, this Ken.
Ken: The PXWX70 has a beautiful single 1” 20 megapixel CMOS sensor in it. Sony tonight announced next year they are going to offer a paid firmware upgrade to enable future ability to record in 4K Ultra High Definition in the camera. The PXWX70 camera is only $2,885 plus GST at present. They are physically small and unobtrusive, very low cost, have HD-SDI output and can record in various formats – including HD XAVC Long GOP ( for 422 10-bit sampling ), AVCHDTM, and DV® – to meet all particular needs. When it’s 4K UHD enabled, it’s just going to be even better. As these modern cameras have their software/firmware upgrades added to them it is difficult to see where it will all end. Ed: There was some buzz tonight about the internal recording on XQD cards. Is it that people are getting used to the quality level of the internal recording and not so much wanting those external recorders anymore, or is there still a big market for external recording? Ken: We find there is a demand for both; we sell Atomos and have pre-sales for the new 4K Shogun expected early December and Convergent Design Odyssey external recorders. And yes we have a customers come in for some DV tape.
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Ed:
Oh, friends of mine?
Ken: We do advise customers still using tape to start looking at new camera options basically because tape is getting harder to get hold of and also when the tape mechanism eventually fails the parts are starting to run out. So there are still people transitioning from tape to cards and working out what they’re going to do with the files, and then of course you’ve got these new high octane cards, XQD, CFast2, which are so fast you can record 4K on a single card and Sony have come out with different flavours of those. It’s interesting discussing camera and recording options with customers. Ed:
It’s a moving target?
Ken: It moves so fast we have to watch our stock levels as technology moves on. Ed: So really, people do have to plan ahead; they can’t come in and always expect that you’ve got something sitting there, they do need to come and talk to you and then place an order? Ken: Our stock varies on the day; obviously we get stock in regularly so sometimes we can say we have one in stock. We do try and hold stock however because of the number of different cameras that are emerging each month – there’s a proliferation of new models – we’re tending to sell our stock quicker than we would have in the past as products are replaced more rapidly. Ed: But it doesn’t mean that the previous models are no good anymore, there’s still a lot of life left in many of
those older models and I understand the F5 is still a popular model? Ken: Yes people who have bought any digital cameras in the last few years can be assured that there’s a lot of life in all of them, because they’re not going to wear out. There’s no tape mechanism to wear out and you can still get very good images. Often your lens can be transferred from one camera to the next or re-used with adaptors. The Sony F5 is still a very current model and new V5.0 Firmware is due for release in December which will enable Interval Recording and much more. Ed: That’s it, and if they’ve bought them cleverly, they’ve bought them for a particular purpose, a particular workflow and as long as that continues, that camera’s still going to do the job? Ken: Exactly, basically buy to suit the application on the day and expected future use and consider what you expect to get back for hire over the next 1 or 2 years – obviously customers need to get a return on investment. We offer finance so customers can pay over a longer term which can be beneficial. Ed: So is there an opportunity for people to come into Protel and have a look at some of these new cameras at any time? Ken: Certainly there’s always an opportunity to do that, please drop in. Our stock is moving so fast, it would definitely pay to give us a call or call in to discuss your options. At the moment, if you’re looking at purchasing the FS7 camera prior to Xmas, it would pay
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could get enough of these cameras – we just can’t. But, yes, it was great to see a turnout of about 70 people here tonight who are keen about the PXW-FS7 and I think that confirms the very strong position the FS7 has in the market for large sensor cameras. It’s very affordable, it’s not a major step up from a fully rigged DSLR type system, but it offers the handling as well as the performance that a motion picture camera should deliver, without the compromises that a DSLR or some other types of lower end video cameras impose.
Call us: Ken on 09-4140477 and John on 04-8019494 Now, to finish us up, Mr Sony himself, Nick Buchner from Sony Australia-New Zealand. Ed: Nick, a very successful evening, lots of people here very keen to hear about the FS7 and people are still holding it, looking through the viewfinder and liking what they see. Are you happy? Nick: happy and importantly them. I
We’re very probably more they’re ordering really wish we
The F5 with the shoulder kit and Nick.
Page 8
Ed: What I have heard from people tonight is that this is something that a DSLR user could take and say “wow, this really is a proper cinema camera?” Nick: Certainly the features and functions give you that, but I also think it’s really important to talk about lenses, because some people tend to get stuck on “well I’ve got this type of lens and it has to be used on the same brand camera”, whereas one of the beauties of our E-mount, which is part of Sony’s Alpha lens system, means that, not only can you use a huge range of E-mount lenses that we and others make – for example Zeiss make lenses in native E-mount – but also the very narrow flange depth or the distance between the sensor and the mount that the E-mount has means you can fit adapters that allow pretty well anything, whether it be Canon EF or Nikon or Leica or Pentax or whatever to be fitted onto the camera, so you can use any flavour of current or vintage glass that takes your fancy. Ed: That brings me onto the practical question that, here is a camera that is very versatile if it’s correctly used and I would say that one of the main ways of making it a very versatile camera is to get that specific Sony zoom lens which gives you autofocus and image stabilisation – so you can use it handheld? Nick: In conjunction with launching this camera, we have launched a new E-mount lens which is our first one designed for motion picture shooting rather than predominantly for still shooting. We’re talking about a 28-135 zoom which has independent iris, zoom and focusing rings; it’s optically stabilised; the zoom is
servo powered so you can control it externally, for example, from the power grip or top handle controls of the FS7. In addition, all E-mount lenses will autofocus as will this one, which is a feature that some professionals don’t need and other professionals say comes in very handy and occasionally saves their bacon. So it’s quite an exciting and versatile lens. Unfortunately, it’s coming a little later. The camera body is already shipping, the PXW-FS7K kit version with body and lens is expected next month and the lens on its own is expected in February. Ed: What puzzled me was Sony launching a cinema camera that is ergonomically designed to be handheld. To me, that didn’t seem to make sense, but I guess there is a market for it and the arrival of this particular lens makes that make sense? Nick: You said something earlier about “the right tool for the job”. People are now wanting to shoot with a large sensor look for documentary type content, reality television type content, current affairs for television or even just handheld music video, drama or event coverage. Obviously that leads to having to develop a whole skill-set around operating, particularly focusing. Ed:
Do you offer lessons in skill-sets?
Nick: I’m no focus puller but focusing is certainly something that people have to be very conscious of in developing their skills when working single-handed. And as long as people do want to use large sensor cameras in more versatile fashion handheld or shoulder mounted – then developing a lens that complements
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that style of shooting at a much lower cost than a traditional EFP/ENG lens, and certainly at a much lower cost than a cine-zoom lens, I believe makes a lot of sense. Ed: It does. I guess the other major point that I got out of tonight was your presentation about the range of upgrades that are coming from Sony that will add to that capability of this particular camera and the others in the F series? Nick: Most of the enhancements I talked about tonight were in relation to the F55 and the F5. Right from the outset with those cameras, we made it clear that we were committed to seeing them evolve, not just have a six month life and be replaced by something else, and so we’re now heading towards two years into their life. We’re almost up to version 5 of the software and each upgrade has been free. At NAB earlier this year, we announced a range of enhancements which are now just about to start shipping – for example, the option for the F5 and F55 to record ProRes or DNxHD onboard; that will be here very early in the New Year; the build-up kit which we were demonstrating tonight which turns the F5 or F55 into a fully featured shoulder mount style with a whole lot of enhancements; and also the ability to upgrade an F5 part of the way to being an F55 by adding the ability to do 4K onboard recording using the XAVC codec and provide live 4K output. These are all ways we’re demonstrating that these cameras are evolving, not just standing still. Ed: And that’s it … so you’ve bought the camera, it’s not going to be a lame duck. All of these cameras have the potential to upgrade, keep up with pretty much the latest technology? Nick: That’s what I believe we are demonstrating. Taking one step back from being a camera manufacturer and my role to market what we produce, I can understand people’s consternation at the rate that new cameras are introduced to the market. Unfortunately, that’s led to a situation where producers will often demand or specify the latest camera because they’ve heard about it, read about it, some mate told them about it, and as a result, when they try and hire a cameraperson, they say “we want the XYZ123” without really understanding what is better or not better, what it might bring to enhance their production – at the end of the day, a good cinematographer should probably be able to turn in a good result regardless of what camera they’re using. I think it’s a shame that very good cameras sometimes have relatively short lives because it’s not always about having the latest, it’s more often about the hands that the camera is in. It’s an interesting paradigm where, if you go back not too many years, certain cameras were the industry standard for 5, 8, 10 years. Now there continuously seems to be something new. The good news is that certainly with Sony’s F series, which we realise are considerable investments for both rental houses and independent owner-operators, I believe we’ve shown quite resolutely that our cameras will continue to evolve.
three things. Probably the simplest thing it does is to allow V-Lock batteries to be used with the camera, so that gives extended running time and also changes the weight and balance of the camera. The second major thing this unit offers is a range of interfaces that are not on the camera, so extra audio ins and outs, power taps for running external devices, a four pin XLR input for DC powering, timecode in and out and genlocking – all things that you need if you’re doing a multi-camera shoot for example. All these interfaces are not present on the camera without the extension unit, but you get them easily by adding the XDCA-FS7. The third key thing it adds is the ability onboard the camera to record in the ProRes codec. That will be added via a free software upgrade. The extension unit should be available from December, the ProRes function will be activated a couple of months later, adding just another string to the bow of the camera to be able to record not only XAVC and HD422, but also ProRes. Ed:
It just increases its versatility?
Nick: Exactly – it gives you flexibility to deliver the format your client wants, or simply the format the postproduction system is comfortable working with. ProRes is fairly ubiquitous, but I did make the point tonight that we see XAVC, which was first introduced with the F5 and F55 about 18 months ago, becoming more and more common. It’s being included on pretty well all our latest pro camcorders and people are discovering that XAVC is a very robust codec; being a 10-bit and 422 based codec, it stands up very well to grading. Of course RAW is always the optimum, but there are some overheads to be taken into account with RAW. XAVC is very efficient in terms of data rate and hence the amount of storage required, and that’s becoming a key consideration. It’s also very well supported by pretty much all the major editing systems. Of course, there are some people still using Final Cut 7 which doesn’t support XAVC at all, so that’s possibly why they prefer ProRes but we’ll shortly have that option available for the FS7, F5 and F55. So it just increases the total versatility of the whole system. Ed: And if all that’s confusing you, go and visit your dealer of choice? Nick:
Absolutely.
NZVN
Ed: And the last question – an item for the back of the FS7 caught my fancy, something that you can put a V-Lock on and …? Nick: That’s the XDCA-FS7 Extension Unit and it essentially does
“Santa” Richards snapped asking Stuart if he’d been good this year. Page 12
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Hive Plasma Lighting While wandering the show corridors at IBC, I was waylaid by Robert Ruther-ford from Hive Lighting. Ed: Now this is nothing to do with bees is it Robert? Robert: No, we admire the bee, and our lights are named after bees, but real bees are not used nor harmed in the production of our lights. Ed: What intrigued me and made me stop and do this interview is that you mentioned the magic word in lighting, and that is “plasma”. So you’ve cracked it have you? Robert: Yes well, plasma is light. The sun is made of Robert with “tic-tac” sized plasma bulb. plasma; lightning is a form of plasma. Plasma is actually the in the daylight range, so you can simulate a warm most common form of matter in the universe, it’s more sunrise, sunset, golden hour at about 4600 Kelvin; you common than gas, it’s more common than liquid and it’s can pass through the noonday daylight at 5600 Kelvin more common than solids because it’s the stuff that and you can go all the way to a nice deep moonlight stars are made of. effect at 7000 Kelvin, all with this dial on the back that’s Ed: So you’ve trapped stars in your bulbs have you? easily adjustable. What this is doing is changing the Robert: Exactly. frequency that the bulb is operating at … Ed: Well he is American folks. Keep going, dig a Ed: That the bulb is being excited at you should say, deeper hole. rather than “operating”? Robert: What we’ve done is to create a small quartz capsule that’s filled with a gas blend that we excite using a radio frequency driver, and it shifts the gas state into a plasma state. It heats up and it turns into the fourth state of matter. So it is a tiny little arc formed inside of our little “tic-tac size” bulb, but the difference with existing technologies like HMIs and metal halides is that it doesn’t require any electrodes or a filament like in a tungsten bulb, to illuminate. Ed: And the main thing is that there are no wires going in or out of the bulb, so it is completely sealed and therefore should last …? Robert: Up to fifty thousand hours. So you can talk to my son about a replacement bulb if you need to. Ed: So what then would fail in it after 50,000 hours? Robert: It will get slightly dimmer and slightly bluer over time as some of the elements in the gas mix can adhere to the inside of the quartz capsule, but that is a process that takes 10, 15, 20 years to accumulate depending on usage. The beautiful thing about plasma not having electrodes, not having filaments is not only its very long lifetime, it’s its pure colour quality. Because there’s nothing to degrade, no little bits of metal to flake off over time and get into the plasma mix, we have a true full spectrum light source. Ed: Aaaah, that was going to be my next question – is it mono frequency or is it multi frequency? Robert: The light’s actually operating at 450 MHz, so it’s a completely flicker-free, full spectrum 94 CRI source. CRI is a measurement of colorant but it has its flaws – it’s only a measure of either 9 or 14 different colours. With a full spectrum light source such as ours, you can actually see the difference in that it’s not just that we have this red and this yellow and this green and this blue, we have all the nanometres in between. Our lights are also colour temperature adjustable anywhere
Robert: Excited at, yes. Ed: So that’s it … there are no filters, there are no phosphors, it’s how you excite it is what you get out of it? Robert: Exactly, it’s all happening inside the bulb itself, so you’re not dealing with any inconsistencies that can come up with other light sources when you use gels for example. It’s as if you are tuning daylight. Ed: Okay, so what’s the catch? Robert: The technology does not dim, so for dimming you need traditional methods. We’ve invented something called wire diffusion scrims … not our invention but a trusty reliable one. The other disadvantage with any new technology is that it takes a little bit of a learning curve to figure out how it works. It is not currently and is not ever going to be a 3200 tungsten colour temperature replacement so, yeah, the biggest disadvantage is it’s not going to replace tungsten directly, it does look great with gels, but it is fundamentally a daylight source and it doesn’t dim electronically. Having said that, you can dim it mechanically or use any sort of traditional method to dim it down. We like to present this as a lighting instrument, as a precise lighting tool. We do daylight in the range of anywhere from a 400 Watt HMI replacement to a 2.5K HMI replacement and our lights use half the power of an HMI to achieve that output, so it’s also a very energyefficient source as well. Ed: So this one we’ve got here is a standard 12x12 … oh no, it looked like a 12x12 from the back, but in fact …? Robert: It’s actually a parabolic beam reflector inside of a square house, so it’s sort of a hybrid. We have a huge amount of output up on the ceiling … more on page 17
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Ed:
The size of a Mintie?
Robert: There we go, the size of a Mintie! Ed: He has no idea what a Mintie is. Robert: I do not, I do not. Ed: Excellent. Now you were also telling me that this is something that you can put out in the rain? Robert: Yes, so while there aren’t holes in the fixture for ventilation, everything is completely waterproofed and sealed on the inside, so water can just pass through it. Don’t put it underwater, but it’s completely fine out in any sort of misty conditions or any weather … Ed: Because the power supply is a separate unit?
Ed: I can clearly see an area illuminated on the very high ceiling of this hall – impressive. Robert: This is only pulling 250 Watt. In Europe, you can plug 10 of these into a standard wall socket without having to worry. They can run on any voltage 90-277 Volt, so you can plug them in anywhere in the world; we have a series of different power supplies, so there’s dual power supplies, you can run two of them off a single power supply, you can run them off of battery packs for hours and hours at a time. Ed: Now tell me, is it focusable? Robert: The beam itself in the Wasp Par that we have here is a tight 10 degree beam. The way that we can adjust that beam is with a huge number of accessories as well as drop in lenses. So we actually have holographic diffusing plastic lenses – they work great with glass lenses of course, but because there’s very little heat in the beam, the holographic lenses allow about 40% more light transmission than a traditional glass lens. This one here is a super wide so it’s diffusing the light out completely. We have spot, medium and other wide ones to be able to drop in for different effects. The other thing you can do with it – you can put what’s called a Source Four Leko directly onto the front of it and it works as a theatrical spotlight. You can put two different ones together which we call the “killer configuration”. You can do a 2 light, a 4 light or a 6 light killer to replace your maxi style fixtures, such as your 6 lights or 9 lights; and then it also works with standard speed rings, so you can do square soft boxes, octagonal soft boxes, we have an attachment so you can attach a photo umbrella. It’s all designed to work with existing accessories, existing sizes, any accessory that works with a 400 Watt HMI will work with the Wasp Par as well and so really it’s a very versatile light source. Even though it’s a new technology and very cutting edge, we’re presenting it in a way that works traditionally so you know how to light when you’re using it.
Robert: Exactly, the power supply is a separate unit; it’s also DC powered, so it’s actually safer in water than any other AC source would be. The other advantage is that it’s a fully flicker-free source. It’s actually operating at 450 MHz which means it is flickerfree theoretically up to 225 million frames per second. We’re still waiting on the camera guys to get that slow, but I think it’s just still photography at that point anyway. So we do a lot of high speed commercial shooting, automotive crash testing, military testing, scientific and industrial testing … these lights are great for everything from table top work to rocket launches. Anything you want to shoot in super slow motion where you need more light, these are a great flicker-free source for super slow motion and high speed cameras. My advice is that you keep an eye out for this plasma lighting technology – whether they make a Mintie or NZVN not!
Ed: Alright, and the big question, the cost? Robert: So the Wasp Par is US$2495 so it’s actually less expensive than many HMIs for an equivalent output, but half the power, full spectrum daylight, adjustable colour temperature and you never have to change a bulb. Ed: That’s got to be good and obviously you’re seeing here whether there’s enough excitement from the market to continue to develop, because clearly this is just the start of hopefully something big? Robert: Yes exactly. Right now we have this tic-tac sized bulb; we’re working on a bigger size – I don’t know what the correct candy size is … Page 17
When only an ARRI will do We are in Melbourne, Australia with Malcolm Richards from Cameraquip. Malcolm has been recommended to NZ Video News readers by Stefan from ARRI because Malcolm is surrounded by ARRI cameras – film cameras and video cameras; there are ARRI badges everywhere. To put it mildly, he’s very keen on ARRI. Ed: When did this relationship first start Malcolm? Malcolm: The first ARRI camera I used was probably in about 1968 when I was at a film school called Swinburne, which is still running today, albeit in a different place. They had a couple of ARRI 16BL cameras, one of which was the first ARRI that I ever used. After that, I joined a film production company owned by Fred Schepisi and the DOP was a guy named Volk Mol, a Dutchman who was also an ARRI fan and that was the first time I used a 35mm ARRI. Ed:
And you’ve been ARRI ever since?
Malcolm: Pretty much. I have been forced to use other brand cameras on a few occasions and each time, it was less than satisfactory. That put me off other cameras completely. Ed: Okay, but I guess the chemical film market is not in a healthy state in Australia? Malcolm: No, at the moment there’s very little film being shot; the most is being shot by students as far as I can tell. Swinburne the film school and the Melbourne University Victorian College of the Arts Film School are both shooting film. They both have film cameras – ARRI 16SR3s, 435s … Ed: So your business … I guess you started out renting out film cameras? Malcolm: I was a cameraman for almost 20 years from about 1969 through to 1988-89 and then the business side of it overlapped from about 1983 when I started Cameraquip and bought my first ARRI cameras, which were originally for my own use. Then one particular cameraman, who shot The Man from Snowy River, Keith Wagstaff, said “can I have a camera of yours for a television series for 6 months?” I said “oh, okay, but what am I going to use?”
Malcolm in his camera museum.
Australia very rapidly, it was almost like Christmas came along and it stopped. This is about 4-5 years ago and it was quite amazing how quickly it did stop. Ed: So before that, there were very good television cameras around, but there was still a high demand for film? Malcolm: Yes. Almost all feature films were shot on film up until when the Sony F35s and such or the Panavision Genesis came along from what I remember. I’ve always been a film person; I did shoot a lot of video when I was working as a cameraman and that kind of put me off it a lot because I knew how bad it was. Ed: Well that’s subjective Malcolm? Tell us – I’ve never shot film apart from an 8mm wedding for a relative, but the rest of my life has been video – what is it about film that you find so wonderful? Malcolm: It’s just got a lasting quality. Film that I shot back in the 60s and 70s I can pull out of a can today and scan it into a quite good high definition digital format and it looks fantastic. Whereas, you get a bit of video that was shot back in the 60s on a Marconi Mark VIII on a 2 inch machine and it looks terrible. You know you can get film from the 40s or 50s, scan it on a good quality scanner and it looks fantastic. I believe it’s still better than most digital formats, even up to 4K.
Well, I ended up having to buy another one, just so I had one for myself and a backup camera for him, because as far as I could tell, I think it was probably one of the first in Australia, the 16SR2. Ed: So you had those film cameras and then the digital age came along with television cameras, and people started to move into recording on video where ARRI was a late starter. What was your feeling about your business at that stage when film was slowing down, television was picking up, but ARRI wasn’t in the game … did you go elsewhere? Malcolm: Not really, no, I stuck with the film cameras. The rental trade in film cameras actually stopped in
Studio shoots were carefully managed in earlier times. Page 18
The important thing is the subject matter in the film, not really necessarily the quality of the picture. The picture’s important, in a sort of subliminal fashion, but if it’s a little bit unsharp or it’s a little bit shaky sometimes it doesn’t matter, the story’s what really sells the movie. Ed: It’s not what’s called shooting yourself in the foot is it – admitting to that? Malcolm: No I’ve always felt that way. What’s the point of making an incredibly visually high quality film if it’s got no story? Nobody wants to see it, nobody will buy it. Ed: And the best ones, the ones that you remember are the ones that have a good story, but also are cinematographically beautiful? Malcolm: Yes, certainly that helps, but the story is definitely a very important factor. The digital age has definitely had its advantages for the motion picture industry. Since film scanning in high resolution started, it allowed for better quality special effects and easier editing and such things. That’s where I always thought it was important, because the acquisition end was still better on film and I think to a degree it still is. If you shoot 35mm I still feel it’s a better looking image than most digital cameras. Ed: That’s something that’s always puzzled me because I would have thought that by going straight to a digital sensor, you are bypassing one step of the process … Malcolm: It’s not just a step, it’s the material that you’re recording it onto. The film itself has its own characteristics which are extremely hard to duplicate with a CMOS sensor or whatever. It’s getting better, it’s almost getting there in my opinion, but it’s not quite the same. One problem, which will always be a problem I think with digital sensors or any camera sensor, is it’s made up of a fixed array of pixels which don’t move. They’re all stuck in one spot and you shoot a picture of a shirt like yours and you’re sure to get moiré which you don’t get with a film camera, because the grain isn’t randomly moving over the image; whereas in a piece of film it’s all over the place and therefore you don’t get that issue of horizontal lines or vertical lines starting to match up with a number of pixels on the sensor.
even with digital cameras. Digital cameras still have that sort of “plasticy” video look to a degree but one of the few cameras that doesn’t is the ALEXA. I do strongly believe that, because it was developed by a company that specialised in film cameras, the look of the image was very important to them – that it had that filmic look to it, and that was the reason I held back on a lot of the other cameras, because I just looked at the pictures and I thought “this just looks like a large format video camera; it will still have the clipping in the whites and the crushing in the blacks and it has bad gamma and it just doesn’t have that subtlety that good film does.” Ed: …?
So it was the advent of the ALEXA that you saw
Malcolm: There was no choice really at that stage because, even though we had a D-21, it was not considered a good camera because it was too heavy, it was too hard to use and it wasn’t fast enough in terms of ISO for most people of that vintage … although in our day, when I was shooting, 100 ASA was fast enough, but these days they can’t shoot unless it’s 400-800 ASA, so I don’t get that one, but that seems to be the way it is. Ed: So in terms of your business, it must be quite limiting if the ALEXA is the only camera that you’re renting out? Malcolm: It’s a bit limiting … I do sub-hire in other cameras from other companies whenever necessary. Ed: But you’re seen as the ARRI house to go to in Melbourne? Malcolm: Well I guess that’s up to people’s opinion, but I’ve always been just mainly ARRI cameras. I’ve had a few other film cameras like Mitchells and specialised ones, but in digital cameras, I’m basically 99% ARRI. Ed: But then it’s also the other equipment that goes along with it, because ARRI has the lenses, it has the accessories? Malcolm: Well definitely the beauty of buying an ARRI camera for us, is that everything fits it except the magazine and the film. You can take all your accessories, pretty much, off an ARRICAM or a 435 and they screw straight onto an ALEXA, so you don’t have to
Ed: So is this another example of a picture’s quality is not just its resolution? Malcolm:
Yes I think so.
Ed: But then how do you justify that to Stefan who’s selling you ALEXA cameras with digital sensors? Malcolm: He knows that I’m a film man; he’s never argued with that one. Ed: So still if you were to make the best possible moving image, you would shoot it on film and then scan it? Malcolm: I would shoot it on film if I felt that I wanted the best possible image, yes. I think you’ll find a lot of cameramen still will. There are a few who have been converted over who are at the top end, but I bet you could speak to a few top end cameraman and they’d still say “I’d prefer to shoot it on 35mm.” Ed: So if we take the comparison now, shooting a feature film with film or with digital, you would still choose the film? Malcolm: I think it has its own particular characteristics that make it attractive. The film “look” is still what a lot of cameramen are trying to achieve now, Page 19
It cost a lot when new.
reinvest in follow focuses, matte boxes, lenses, tripods, even batteries and things – they’re all interchangeable on the ARRI video cameras with the film cameras. We have a big stock of 35mm lenses, which obviously came from film cameras, and they go straight onto the ALEXAs, whereas for companies that have been exclusively video with small chip cameras, their lenses just wouldn’t fit – their B format lenses don’t fit large format cameras. Ed: I would imagine it was a fairly easy transition for people who are using ARRI film cameras to move to the ALEXA? Malcolm: The ALEXA is designed very much in a film sort of style where it’s very user friendly for an operator. They can look at the panel on the side of the camera and they can immediately identify with ASA, shutter speed, you know all of those things are there and really easy to control compared to a lot of other companies’ cameras. The menus in some of those other cameras are horrendous and you end up going round in circles half the time trying to find out what you want to do. Ed: So is that the difficult part – explaining the workings of an ARRI cinema camera to someone who has come in from the video world … it’s easy to explain how an ALEXA works to someone who has had an ARRI film camera, but to somebody who has come up through television and they’re looking for a camera for a particular job, is it hard to sell the benefits of the ALEXA to them? Malcolm: Not really I don’t think. You don’t tend to find as many cameramen who are strictly video
Paul Hogan (left) and Malcom (right).
experienced and have no film experience doing the kind of work that we tend to do, or have tended to do, which is mostly high end TV commercials or feature films, or to a lesser degree, for the last 10 years, television series, because series went largely from Super 16 to video over a period of the last 10 years, which I didn’t pursue myself because I didn’t really want to buy
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Malcolm: I t ’ s just a feeling that you get when you look at the image. It’s more cinematic looking, it’s more filmic looking … it looks like film more than a lot of the television or digital television cameras. Ed: You mean there’s no ringing? Malcolm: Well they don’t have to enhance the image so much, they don’t wind in aperture correction or whatever they call it these days. I mean, there’s still a lot of those middle of the ground cameras ( without naming names ) where you can see they’ve put a lot of edge on things just to make it look sharper, but sharpness isn’t necessarily always what you want, This is what sets used to look like. because I think it makes images look artificial. In fact, at the moment, we’re television cameras as such. I don’t see the ALEXA finding a lot of the young cameramen who have soured being classed in the same area as a television camera; off that look are renting old lenses. We’ve had a it’s designed differently … renaissance in old lenses going back to the 60s and Ed: They call it a cinema camera for a reason I they’re out constantly – you know the Bausch and Lomb guess? Super Baltars which are off a 60s Mitchell and Cooke Malcolm: Yes I think so. Speed Panchros which are 60s … anamorphic lenses Ed: So are there jobs in Melbourne – you say feature have been very strong too because they like the shallow films …? depth of field and they don’t like the excessive sharpness of a lot of the modern lenses. Malcolm: Television series have come back again to the large format sensor such as the ALEXA. The ALEXA’s probably the most popular camera for doing quality TV series now, and certainly for feature films, it’s definitely the main choice. I don’t know the percentage, but it would have to be pretty high. The Sony F65s and those things are reputedly very good cameras, but from my perspective, they’re still a little difficult to use. To record the top quality recording, a lot of the cameras need external recorders and, up until recently, that even applied to the ALEXA, but it doesn’t anymore, because it’s got the built-in Codex recorder which will record ARRIRAW which is about as good as it gets. Even though the camera’s technically not 4K, it’s still very, very good. But it’s not just the number of pixels in our opinion, it’s the quality of the colour, the latitude of the exposure – you know 14 stops is getting close to film, it’s still not quite there yet, but it’s pretty good, which means that you’ve got a lot of latitude for grading which you never really had with cameras that just recorded similar things to Rec.709. It was either there or it wasn’t you know; it’s black or it’s white and that’s it, whereas when you’ve got 14 stops you can really manipulate it like you would a piece of colour negative. Ed: You say “colour” – how does the ALEXA show good colour? Malcolm:
That’s a tricky question I guess …
Ed: It is, I’ve never found an answer to it. You look at it and you say “that’s lovely”, but how do you define that? Malcolm: It’s something probably that I couldn’t answer. It’s probably too technical for me to answer that one. Ed:
It’s just the look?
Ed: So that’s it – you go 4K, you get the very high quality sharp lenses and then they soften them? Malcolm: Ed:
Yes.
Explain … it’s the look isn’t it?
Malcolm: It’s purely the look, yes. it’s the look you know.
Everybody says
Ed: What I heard from a filter manufacturer years ago at NAB, when high definition first came out, was that their biggest selling filter was a soft filter for the female TV presenters who didn’t like the detail on their faces. Malcolm: And I’ve had that same experience. When Raquel Welch was out here a few years ago, she insisted that she be photographed with these filters called Mitchell Bs. So I had to buy in a set of Mitchell Bs from Los Angeles, specially to put on the camera that was shooting the production she was on; and then they hired them again when she came out to do the Logie Awards or whatever it was and put them on the TV cameras to make it look the way she wanted. Ed: Well when you’re at that level you can get what you ask for, can’t you? Malcolm: Yes, exactly. There are certain aspects of the way you photograph things, or the way you light things that you could say are subliminal – people probably don’t notice them, but in not noticing them, it probably has some psychological effect that isn’t really plainly obvious. That’s something that is achieved by a good cameraman and a good director and a good writer. It’s a tricky one. Ed: So you can even take a bad tool and you can tell a story? Malcolm: Oh you can definitely tell a story, but certainly a bad tool is not a good tool. It needs to be a
Page 22
reasonable tool to achieve it to a certain degree I think. There’s a kind of level where you need to get to before people will notice it’s no good – it’s a poor quality camera, or it’s a poor quality projector … Ed: That level that you’d say would be the minimum, where does the DSLR style camera come on that range? Malcolm: It depends on how it’s used. I think a DSLR can record pretty good pictures, but it’s limited by what you can do with the movement of it and the exposure. They’ve got a limited latitude exposure-wise, you know panning and shooting moving objects can be a problem because of the way it records the image. It’s not really designed for motion picture style images – you know, subtle things you see, like somebody’s strapped a camera to the wing of an aircraft and you can see the propeller turning around and it looks all bent and Crane used on ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ and it still works. twisted because the shutter in the camera is not a conventional style film Ed: Now tell me, Sydney … the Sydney production camera shutter. It’s just stuff like that which can be companies, rental companies, are they the ones that irritating and maybe a lot of the young people don’t get all the big jobs and Melbourne is second fiddle or notice it or think there’s anything wrong with it, but I what’s the relationship between your two big cities? think it spoils it a bit if you’re used to conventional Malcolm: Well Sydney do tend to have a lot more motion picture images or even conventional video production going on up there, but there’s a lot more images. The difference between a DSLR and a proper competition in Sydney as well between rental houses video camera is even quite noticeable in my opinion.
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Malcolm with ALEXA fully kitted
Page 25
and production companies. In the past, there were companies like Panavision, Lemac and ourselves who were doing most of the feature films and top end commercials and television series, that kind of thing, but in the last 5 years I’d say there’s a lot more smaller companies, or almost backyard operators, who’ve got one camera, who are out there chasing work all over the country. They’ll jump in their van and drive from Sydney to Adelaide or to Melbourne or to Brisbane just to get work, and constantly you’ll find you’re competing with these guys who have got 1 or 2 cameras. Ed: But are you really competing, because surely they can’t offer the same service? Malcolm: They can’t offer the same service, but that doesn’t seem to matter as much. These days, people are more worried about
budget than service I think and that’s one of the things that’s really become disappointing with the business, is that it’s all to do with how big a discount you can get rather than whether you can provide 2, 3 or 4 of these cameras; or can you supply another one if that one breaks down; or have you got another set of those lenses? We do find that we’re constantly sub-hiring lenses to other people all over the country, even between us and Panavision, Lemac – what we could call the principal rental companies, they’re all hiring lenses and bits and pieces off us or off each other just to accommodate what they don’t have. Ed: But opening the industry up to the smaller operators with their little cameras, isn’t this expanding the market? Malcolm: I don’t think so. I think the amount of work that’s available is still limited and, now that it’s being spread over a lot more operators, it’s causing prices to plummet. I’ve never seen prices drop so much as in the last few years. Ed: But then, with the number of TV channels that are being added all the time, broadcast and now Internet channels, there’s a huge amount of work out there for low budget? Malcolm: Possibly … we don’t do a lot of that kind of work and I haven’t gone out looking for it particularly. Ed: But surely there are parallels in other areas of business where – for example car manufacture, your top end models are still there; the sales of BMW, Rolls Royce etc have always been good. Even though very few people can afford them, they’re still higher than what they’ve ever been, because the market’s enlarged?
are travelling all over the country. I was resisting it a lot in the beginning, but I’ve just sort of felt well, you know, you may as well make money out of the lenses because you’ve got so many of them, there’s no point fighting it constantly and saying no, you can’t just have the lenses, you’ve got to have the camera. Because there’s so many different low budget cameras around now that take 35mm lenses, everybody wants to hire lenses because, quite often, one lens can cost 6 times more than the camera, whereas in the past that was never the case. Ed: So where do you think the … I wouldn’t say the problem, but where is the block? You say the budgets have reduced, people are looking for cheaper and cheaper options, but at some point, the quality is going to suffer. Who is making that decision that this is acceptable quality for broadcast or for a documentary or whatever? Where is that problem – is it with the client, or is it with the producer? Malcolm: Oh it’s even further than that. I think it’s often the distributor or the television station that will accept almost anything now. And what they’re broadcasting is quite often just rubbish. You know, you could spend a fortune on the production, record it in 12K and it will end up no better than you’d get on your iPhone, on reputedly high definition television, and that’s what’s happening constantly. You look at the high definition channels here in Australia and you find that a lot of the stuff they’re broadcasting is up-res’d low quality.
Malcolm: The problem being that the high end doesn’t really exist as much in terms of equipment anymore. In the past, 35mm cameras would cost anything from between $150,000 to half a million dollars. Now that was not affordable to a lot of small companies and certainly not to private operators, but now any man and his dog can practically afford even an ALEXA, because they’re $80,000 or thereabouts. Ed: Aaaah but then you’ve got to put the lenses on them? Malcolm: That’s right, you’ve still got to get lenses, but you can always hire those lenses from somebody else and that’s what’s happening. As I say, lenses
Hugo looks after the hire kits for Cameraquip in Melbourne.
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Ed: Yes – I think it’s similar where I come from … I could offer examples! Malcolm: No well it’s true – I mean there are only a few high def channels broadcasting in Australia. Ed: But you’ve actually got a mandate from the government haven’t you – there’s supposed to be so much high definition on television in Australia at any one time? Malcolm: Well they’re transmitting high definition, but it’s not necessarily from a high definition original. Ed: 9?
Just sort of spread that pixel over a block of 4 or
Malcolm: Yes, and you can look at any high definition channel at any one time and I guarantee most of it has come from low quality material originally. Ed:
But who cares?
Malcolm: Only a few people care; only a few people actually notice. Ed:
Okay, but then who’s in the right?
Malcolm: Who’s in the right? We can only blame the stations really, because if they have the material available to broadcast in real high definition, they should … but they don’t. That’s my opinion and it’s even the same with cinemas to a degree. I think quite often you’ll find what’s being screened on the sheet isn’t necessarily as good as it could be even if it is digital. It’s still got a lot of compression in it. I was talking to a friend of mine who is involved in that end of things and he said “you can fit a whole feature film on a 150 Gigabyte hard drive” – and what that means is there’s an awful lot of compression going on, even if it is 2K or whatever it’s supposed to be. Ed: So what should be done about it – what’s the future Malcolm? Malcolm: It’s all to do with how much they can squeeze onto a hard drive or whatever they want to squeeze it onto for broadcast or projection.
goes down the pipes, it comes out as something much less. It might as well have been shot on an iPhone! I just find it a bit depressing really. Ed:
Well then, we had better stop there.
Ed: Because now you can watch a movie on your iPhone? Malcolm: Yes, but how good is that … it’s not very good is it? Ed: Do you think people like us are dinosaurs? Malcolm:
No, no.
Ed: So you think there’s hope? Malcolm: I think there’s hope for us. What’s ironical really is that cameramen still strive for perfection in the original product; they’ll insist on the best camera and the best lenses and you know “it’s got to be 4K” or “it’s got to be 6K because I want to do this, I want to do that” … then by the time it
Malcolm has a real view through the lens. Page 27
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