HD For Indies

Hey all - I said I wouldn't say anything until I was sure, so I waited until it happened - today was the big multi-camera shootout, and it went very well.

Here's what we shot with:

Sony F900 to tape (1440x1080 8 bit compressed HDCAM) and uncompressed 1920x1080 10 bit 4:2:2 to disk
Panasonic Varicam to tape (960x720 8 bit compressed DVCPRO HD) and uncompressed 1280x720 10 bit 4:2:2 to disk
Sony HVR-Z1U to tape (1440x1080 8 bit MPEG-2). The plan was to shoot that to disk as well, but I was late getting my ducks in a row and didn't get the HD analog to HD-SDI converter in time
Canon XL2
Panasonic DVX100A

I figure these are the cameras most likely to be used by indies on a shoot. It would have been nice to have an SDX900 as well (DVCPRO50 SD camera), but so be it.

We had some snafus at first with the Varicam, the folks it had been rented out to before wacked out all the settings and it wasn't until an hour or two into shooting that we finally got it all figured out. Apparently, even after restoring to factory defaults (the "nuke & pave" option to fix these things), the default looks pretty desaturated. Apparently, "high color" is NOT the default factory setting, and it makes a HUGE difference. The colors looked very washed out as compared to the Sony F900 UNTIL it was set to high color, and then the results looked stunning.

We shot with some ugly furniture (dark matte brown fuzzy and orangish/reddish leather shiny), with some funky textured rugs in the background. This was basically all the ugly stuff in my house to torture shadow detail, highlight response, pattern detail capturing capabilities of the cameras. I had some brightly colored plates and bowls on a little table between them.

We shot some camera charts for basic reference, a focal chart and a MacBeth color chart.

We shot seated conversations wide/medium/close under regular studio lighting and low lighting in studio, we shot 24p and 60i/60p (only for sake of slowing it to 24p), we shot panning shots, we shot handheld, we shot outdoors on sticks and panning, we shot a whole buncha stuff.

It went very well and I'm amazed at how much talent, help, knowledge, and gear folks were willing to contribute.

Thanks very, very, VERY much to Ian, Jen, other Jen, Jennifer, John, Kirk, Robert, Blayne, Craig, Kevin, and anybody I missed (sorry, tired, 3 hours sleep and 12 hour day) for their time, help, gear, and patience with me.

So this week I'll capture all the footage and start comparing everything. LOTS to play with.

-mike