RED of course was first to the game when they released the RED One a few years back. Since then it has been both a popular and hated camera choice. The choice to shoot 4K RAW was a godsend for many shooters, however the RED One came with a good deal of frustration and anyone who has shot with it will attest that it is a camera you can’t fully trust. RED announced a few weeks ago that they were slashing prices on all their current cameras. The One body was brought down to an incredibly low price of $4,000. Of course it sold out quickly so that deal won’t be available at the time of this article. Still the RED Scarlet and Epic bodies were also slashed putting RED at a much more competitive place in the market. Still, when you price out a full kit for the One, Scarlet or Epic, the cost shoots back up.

Canon showed off their C500 and 1DC at NAB. While many were hoping Canon would come in as a low priced competitor, Canon had other things in mind. Pricing for the C500 and 1DC were set at $26K and $13K respectively and still required an external recorder for 4K acquisition. The first company to meet the demand was AJA with their Ki Pro Quad. The $3995 recorder can capture up to 10 bit 4K to solid state drives.

Sony shocked many when the FS700 was announced. A camera that can shoot up to 240fps in full HD with numerous bells and whistles shooters have been dreaming about and the promise of a future 4K upgrade. At $8000 the camera seemed to come in a very competitive price point, but the Sony’s plan for implementing 4K on the FS700 was left with several unanswered questions.

Come November when Sony announced their F5 and F55 cameras. The F5 as a big brother to the F3 and the F55 as a little brother to the F65, both coming in to fill some gaps that would allow direct competition with Canon and RED’s higher end lineup. While the F55 can shoot 4K right out of the box, the F5 can’t. It requires Sony’s new R5 4K recorder. It was then revealed shortly after that the R5 recorder will also work with the FS700 via firmware update and hardware module. Awesome! …well until the pricing was revealed. Sony’s 4K roadmap for the FS700 looks like this:

AXS-R5 4K recorder – $6300
HXR-IFR5 adapter module – $2000
AXS-512S24 512Gb Memory Card – $2100
Firmware pricing – ???
Battery and other accessories – ???

Total – >$10,400

So 4K on the FS700 will cost more than the camera itself. Now before you get your whiskers all bent out of shape, let’s talk about what that combination will get you. According to Sony the R5 recorder will shoot 16bit RAW and the FS700 can shoot up to 60fps in 4K RAW. 16bit RAW is what REDs shoot to so now we have a camera that can shoot 4K RAW up to 60fps and HD AVCHD up to 240fps which is more than what the Scarlet can do and less than what the Epic can do. If we were to compare pricing:

RED Scarlet (ready to shoot) ~$15K
Sony FS700 (4K ready) ~$18K
RED Epic (ready to shoot) ~$30K-40K

Let’s also bring up one thing that the FS700 can do that RED can’t. What happens when you don’t need 4K RAW? With the FS700 you can just disengage the 4K recorder and be on your merry way shooting HD to the built in AVCHD codec, which has proven itself amazingly robust for most applications. With RED, you are stuck with RAW unless you want to drop $13K on a module to shoot at higher compression rates. This makes the FS700 a much better camera for documentary and web video.

Hey, what about the RED One? Well assuming you can find one, there are a few limitations you will be facing. First off, it shoots to 12bit RAW…not a big issue, but something to keep in mind. Like the other RED cameras, $4K doesn’t get you “ready to shoot” camera. The necessary accessories will cost you a few thousand dollars extra. And perhaps most importantly, the RED One has nowhere near the sensitivity of the new RED cameras or especially the Sony cameras.

One camera we haven’t mentioned yet is the Black Magic Cinema Camera. Technically since this is a post about 4K, the BMCC doesn’t qualify, but we’ll bring it up for the sake of argument. The BMCC is a solid contender with 12bit 2.5K RAW as its default recording format and the option to record to ProRes for smaller file sizes. Where it suffers is in frame rate options (maximum of 30fps), crop factor (smaller than micro four thirds), battery options and on camera controls. It is essentially the HDSLR of RAW video; not the perfect video camera, but a powerhouse in a small body. And at $3K, it really packs a lot of bang for the buck.

So what’s the most cost effective option for 4K? There is one last option that we haven’t talked about. The FS700 + Sony’s 4K option gives you 16bit 4K RAW. But remember back when we talked about the AJA Ki Pro Quad? 4K 10bit for $3995. Sony has hinted that the FS700 will support third party 4K recorders. Right now the Ki Pro Quad is one of the only 4K recorders on the market. Assuming it is supported, all you should need is the 4K firmware upgrade for your FS700 to work with the Ki Pro Quad. Since the Quad has built in debayering, it can handle the RAW signal on the C500 and FS700 and convert them to 4K 10bit 4:4:4 ProRes. Not quite Sony’s 16bit RAW option, but less than half the price. We also spoke to Atomos at NAB who has promised that they are working closely with Sony and plan to release recorders to support future generation cameras. 4K is a logical progression and I wouldn’t be surprised to see a cost friendly Atomos 4K recorder announced at NAB 2013.

So if the Ki Pro Quad is supported and the 4K firmware update for the FS700 doesn’t cost more than $1000, you could be shooting 4K 10bit 4:4:4 ProRes on the FS700 for under $13K. This puts it under the price of a Scarlet.

16bit RAW, 12bit RAW, 10bit ProRes…what flavor do you need? Do you need them at all? With camera prices dropping so rapidly, renting 4K may be easier than purchasing it. Rent a RED, buy a FS700 and rent the 4K adapter…there are so many options to choose from. The 4K update for the FS700 won’t come till Summer 2013 so if you need 4K now, RED is your main choice. But something tells me NAB 2013 is going to have even more 4K announcements than ever before.

• Shot 1 RAW Files
• Shot 2 RAW Files
• Shot 3 RAW Files
• Shot 4 RAW Files
• Shot 5 RAW Files

Photo credit: John Brawley

It was the spring of 2008 and I had been a video novice for close to a year now. I owned a Canon HV20 with a Cinevate Brevis35 DOF adapter. I barely knew anything about lenses, ISO, lighting ratios, blocking or dynamic range. All I knew was that I was eager to learn and get out there and start experimenting.

I started looking around for places that I could get involved with video. I was fortunate to have my name passed around to the video director at a local church and to receive a phone call asking if I’d be interested in volunteering. I jumped at the chance and soon was working on short promotional videos. After a month of working on several projects, I found out that they were planning on having a large men’s conference. I started coming up with ideas for promotional videos and one day (while in the shower) I had the idea for an opening video, similar to what you might see at the MTV or Academy award shows. Some sort of action parody that played before the conference opened up.

I went to the staff at the church with this idea, but to my dismay everyone, while liking the idea, was afraid that there wouldn’t be enough time to film it. Frustrated that I had this story in my head that would never see the light of day, I decided to grab a few of my friends and shoot a very rough version of the film. I grabbed my HV20 (no DOF rig), switched it to full auto and shot a quick concept over the course of 5 hours. I took the footage back home and edited it the next day.

I handed a DVD of the project to the staff at the church just two days after shooting it. I quickly went “viral” within the church and by the end of the week, I received a phone call from the video director that the pastor had changed his mind and was willing to shoot the video if I could do it in one afternoon.

The next week I arrived at the shoot and was handed a Canon XLH1, a much fancier camera than I had ever worked with before. One of the downfalls of using a camera you were unfamiliar with is overlooking important steps…like setting the proper audio level. I had an audio engineer with a boom mic running around with me but unfortunately I didn’t know to set the audio level manually on the camera. This resulted in some rather overdriven audio. …lesson learned I guess.

Despite the imperfect audio, the video was a hit and became the talk of the conference. We staged it so Pastor Mark ran down the center aisle immediately after the video to a cheering auditorium. Afterwards, Mark walked up to me and congratulated me on my work and followed that up with the statement:

“How’d you like to do this for a living?”

Heck yeah! Next thing I knew I was working in the video department at the church. I went from retail to banking and now doing something I loved! Unfortunately no job is perfect and I soon was stuck in the task of editing TV shows and working on video projects that didn’t exercise what I really enjoyed. Don’t get me wrong, I was learning lots and the job was way better than entering bank deposits, but the creative videos that I was initially hired for were few and far between.

The next year came and the next “Manly Man Conference” was nearing. I asked if we would do another intro video and everyone wanted to, but no one was willing to set aside the time to do it. When the conference was a week out and it was obviously too late to shoot anything, I was asked to do a motion graphic intro. I wasn’t happy with it and I think everyone afterwards really missed having the film intro.

When year three came, everyone was on board with doing a film. I came up with the idea of having Ross’ character brought back to life and brainwashed into killing Mark. I knew I wasn’t a good script writer so I found someone who had done script writing and directing before. I hadn’t worked with her before, but she had been volunteering in the video department so I thought I’d ask her to work on the film. I gave her the outline and asked her to flesh out the rest. I also asked her to direct so I could focus purely on my role as the director of photography. I received the script right before we were ready to start shooting. As I read it over, I saw some oddities in the script that I was concerned with. Some dialogue didn’t flow right and most of her comedy moments weren’t funny to me. I talked to the director and she defended her script. I didn’t have time for a rewrite and I figured I’d give her the benefit of the doubt.

This was the summer of 2010 and my HV20 rig was long gone. I had gone through a Canon XHA1 DOF rig and now owned a Canon 5D MkII. I was still new with DSLR video, but knew a little more about lighting and blocking. Still we were on a tight shoot schedule so I couldn’t work in all the dolly and jib shots I would like. As with the first film, this was all done with volunteers…no A-list Hollywood actors here.

As we shot each scene, I started to realize how Hollywood movies can get so disjointed and that no one really knows what the film will be like until the final edit. This was one of the first projects I shot non-chronologically. It’s really important to have a good script supervisor, continuity director and actors who can pick up where they left off days or weeks prior. We didn’t have any of that so we shot with fingers crossed.

During the shoot and the edit, the director and I butted heads quite a bit. There were things I wasn’t happy with in the film that she was insistent on. After that project, we decided not to work together anymore. Another lesson learned: pick people for your team that you have a similar creative vision with.

The church also launched a women’s conference and I produced films for both year one and year two.

By 2011 I had moved up to become the video director of the department. I did enjoy my job, but what I really enjoyed seemed to come once or twice a year. In August of 2011, three years after I had been hired, I was informed that they were downsizing the entire department and my position was being eliminated. They went from four full-time people down to one full-time and one part-time.

In 2009 I had launched Creative Edge Productions and did that part-time. This was the kick I needed to do video production full-time. It was time to either sink or swim.

Fortunately, things have since been going very well for us. I have two partners that have joined full time and in March of 2012 we moved into our first studio space. Creative Edge has taken us all around the country for productions with the US Dept. or Homeland Security, ABC World News, Good Morning America and dozens of other businesses.

A few months ago, I was contacted by Ross at the church asking if we’d be interested in doing another film for the fourth Manly Man Conference. I was informed that the theme of this conference was “The Matrix” and they had a very small budget. I talked to my team and we decided to take the small budget and run with it. We used volunteer actors again but this time we were able to plan things out a bit more. We location scouted and found some great places. I came up with the story outline and had one of my team write the script, but this time I knew I would be directing as well as lighting and camera. I asked the script writer to AD (assistant director) which freed me up to focus on the camera while we were shooting. For being his first script, it wasn’t bad, though there were a few week points. Acting is always tough with volunteers, though they did a pretty decent job.

Luckily my new Sony FS700 arrived a few days before the shoot which provided us a new style for shooting as well as the ability to accomplish some special slow-motion shots. I now owned a Kessler Crane Pocket Jib and Pocket Dolly and for this film, I took the time to plan out each shot as best as I could. I focused on making each camera move and angle motivated. I spent a lot more time lighting the scenes and making sure the lighting was motivated as well. When it came to post, Sean did a fantastic job. He and I think a lot alike so I know the edit would flow very well with what I had in mind. I sat with him through much of the edit and the visual effects. Fortunately as my skills have improved as a cinematographer, so have Sean’s in post. The VFX, while perhaps not movie quality certainly fit well with this film.

This was some of our best work to date. We ended up putting in a lot more work than the client paid for but we knew that the film had the potential to be something special and we wanted to see it through. Sure there are plenty of places to nitpick…the acting could be better, the script has some week points, continuity isn’t perfect…but in the end, I’m really excited about what we were able to accomplish with so many limitations.

I know as a filmmaker, director and cinematographer I’ve got a long way to go. What is encouraging to me is to look back at each of these films made two years apart from each other and see growth and improvement.

…and that is really the point of this article. I have no formal education; I’m all self taught. Six years ago I knew jack about film or video. Today I own a production company and have the privilege and enjoyment of working on projects from every walk of life. I wanted to show that it doesn’t happen overnight, but with some hard work and determination, anyone can get there.

Never before in the history of video have codecs been as hot a discussion topic then during the HDSLR revolution. We were given cameras that produced a beautiful image but were incredibly limiting. Banding, clipping highlights/shadows and transcoding headaches were just a few of the frustrations we pushed through.

As new large sensor video cameras came out, a gap opened up between certain cameras. For example, Sony gave F3 shooters their robust 35Mb/s XDCAM codec with the option to record sLog 3G444 in a 10 bit 220Mb/s file size. With the FS100, the same sensor was given to the camera, but sLog was not an option and the codec was limited to an AVCHD 24Mb/s. While many screamed at Sony for doing this, those who shot on the camera soon realized that, for it being such a compressed codec, Sony managed to cram a lot of data into it. Though it wouldn’t compete directly with the F3’s sLog footage, the FS100’s AVCHD was perhaps the most robust version of the codec to date.

RED finally dropped the Scarlet on the laps of eager filmmakers. Priced to compete directly with Sony’s F3 and Canon’s C300, many shooters were excited when they heard the camera would be available for around $10,000. Well that was until you added in accessories, memory cards, added storage, etc. For example, if you shot to AVCHD on a $30 Class 10 16GB SD card, you would get about 80 minutes of record time. If you shot on the Scarlet, a 128GB REDMAG which would run you $1250 might give you around a hour+ record time depending on which version of REDCODE you are shooting to. I have eight Class 10 16GB SD cards in my FS700 kit; cost me under $200 for all of them…I’ll let you do the math on how much eight REDMAGs would cost.

Jump ahead to NAB 2012 where Black Magic Design came out of nowhere to announce their Black Magic Cinema Camera. A camera that promised 2.5K RAW acquisition for under $3,000. Wow, it felt like the HDSLR revolution again but now with a proper codec. Who could ask for more?

RAW and uncompressed workflows are certainly appealing. They offer a huge amount of flexibility in multiple areas. When lighting, you can be a bit more lax in the highlights and shadows. In green/blue screen work you can be confident in a cleaner key. In color grading you can push the image much further. Sounds great right? Well there’s just one tiny thing we forgot to mention. RAW and uncompressed files are HUGE! A lot of shooters forget to factor in where they are going to put all this great footage when making a purchasing decision.

Before we go any further into that, we need to go back to some basic computer terminology: bits vs. bytes. For those who don’t remember, the bit is the basic building block of all computer code. 8 bits equal 1 byte which is the smallest amount of recordable data. To separate the two, we have the small “b” for bit and large “B” for byte. Bytes are what you usually measure data storage with. That was a 100MB file…it’s a 16GB memory card…etc.

When cameras list their bit rate, they are in fact listing in bits. It’s important to realize that 24Mb/s IS NOT 24MB/s. In fact, 24Mb/s is 3MB/s. This is very important when calculating hard drive space.

So now that we have that covered, let’s compare two popular codecs: 8 bit 4:2:0 24Mb/s AVCHD vs. 10 bit 4:2:2 220Mb/s ProRes HQ. Let’s say that you just purchased the Sony FS100 and you are planning on shooting your first film with it. You have the option to shoot to the native AVCHD codec or get an external recorder and shoot to ProRes. The short film will end up being ten minutes and during the filming process you will acquire about three hours of footage

Your temptation may be to record the best possible quality “just in case”. However, if you tested the FS100 in advance, you might find that the improvement you got from ProRes may be minimal at best. So if you shot that in your hard drive friendly AVCHD codec, you would have roughly 30GB of footage. Jump over to the ProRes version and you would have upwards of 275GB of footage. Now you can see how RAW and uncompressed codecs can quickly chew up your hard drive space. Not only that, but archiving becomes and equally difficult process. With your 30GB of AVCHD files, you could easily burn a Blu-ray or two and be set. At 275GB of footage, you would need either multiple Blu-rays, a dedicated hard drive or tape based backups.

Now I’m not saying that better codecs should be dismissed. You just need to make the decision of whether the benefits of those codecs warrant the giant file sizes. For the average shooter, they may never need anything better than AVCHD. On the other hand, a better codec may end up being vital for many of your productions. In fact, certain codecs are required for broadcast television. For example, the BBC demands a minimum of a 50Mb/s codec, something that is not available in AVCHD.

So the end question remains: What are your needs as a shooter? Do you do a lot of green/blue screen work? Do you do a lot of visual effects? Do you do advanced color grading? Are you shooting for broadcast television?

If none of those come close to a yes, then you may not need a super high end codec. The key is testing your camera and see where it works great and where it falls apart. Where do you notice banding, loss of shadow detail, highlights clipping, color bias, etc. and learn how to eliminate or avoid them. In the hands of a skilled shooter who lights right, composes correctly and is in tune with his instrument, he can make any camera shine.

Today it’s a lot harder to choose which camera to purchase simply because there are so many to choose from. Only a few years ago this wasn’t the case. In 2008, if you wanted the “large sensor” look for your video you pretty much had two options: get a 35mm “Depth of Field (DOF)” adapter or rent a Red One. Then one day a DSLR came to market with a little feature added in for photo journalists. Something they could take short web videos with so they didn’t have to carry an extra video camera with them on location. But when the indie film market saw the images that these DSLRs were producing, they quickly adopted them as a new form of acquisition. The problem was we were all using a fluke for our video work and not a professional tool.

Still from 2009 through early 2011, every cinematographer I knew had a DSLR in their camera bag and was shooting on it almost primarily. Of course camera manufacturers couldn’t ignore this for long and at the beginning of 2011 Panasonic released the first “large sensor” true video camera. The AF100 was an exciting breakthrough for filmmakers, though the micro four-thirds sensor was a turn off for many. Not to be outdone, Sony plopped the FS100 and F3 in the laps of eager professionals, giving them the choice between affordability or broadcast ready. Many were eager to see if Canon would finally cram a large sensor into a professional body and before 2011 was out, they announced their C300. Perhaps the most disappointing announcement as the price was aimed purely at the pro shooter leaving enthusiasts to keep tinkering with their DSLRs. And of course, after years of empty promises and missed dates, Red finally gave us the Scarlet. This has paved the way for second generation cameras coming less than a year after their counterparts; namely the Canon C500 and Sony FS700.

Today, those cinematographers I mentioned earlier who shot solely on DSLR each have a camera that fits their needs best. In fact I know five different video professionals that have an AF100, FS100, C300, F3 and Scarlet respectively. Goes to show you how diverse the market truly is. I myself just purchased Sony’s new FS700 which would make six of us with six different cameras. Now I will point out that we all still carry around our DSLR as the perfect B-cam and I don’t think I will ever be without one. That said, I can’t imagine shooting my professional work on anything less than a professional camera today.

I did shoot on my 5D MkII for two and a half years before upgrading to my FS700. With my DSLR I produced many commercials, corporate videos and short films which still hold up today. But after shooting on cameras like the C300, FS100, FS700, F3, etc. I can say that the day of the video DSLR being king has ended. Large sensor video cameras are optimized for video production and make life a lot easier. Most of them will produce an image that is vastly superior to DSLR. Whether it shows up in your final edit is affected by many factors, including color grade, resolution output and bitrate. But I can honestly say that looking at my 5D footage at 100% next to my FS700 footage at 100%, hands down the FS700 wins in every category.

So to answer the question in the title of the post, I would say that if you consider yourself a professional and you are charging clients for a video service, I think it’s time to upgrade from your DSLR. Large sensor video cameras are available at any price point and offer vastly improved image quality as well as features and ergonomics. I challenge you to rent a FS100 for a day or two and see how you like it. After dealing with all the work-arounds, hacks and compromises necessary for DSLR video, it will be hard to go back once you’ve tasted a true video camera.

If you are just a hobbyist, that extra investment may not be necessary for you. The great thing about DSLR video is that it is so cheap to get into; a lot cheaper than it was when I was starting off with a Canon HV20 and a DOF adapter rig. For half of my initial investment in that rig and a fraction of the size, I could get a used T2i and start learning video. Then when you are ready to move up, there are cameras at every level waiting to meet your needs.

Spec list:

• STM Lens Support for Quiet AF in Movies
• 18.0MP APS-C CMOS Sensor
• DIGIC 5 Image Processor
• 3.0″ Vari-Angle Touch Screen LCD
• ISO 100-12800, Expandable to 25600
• Full HD Movie Mode with Continuous AF
• 5.0 FPS Continuous Shooting
• 9-Point All Cross-Type AF System
• Multi Shot Noise Reduction
• Compatible with Canon EF and EF-S Lenses

In addition to the new T4i, Canon announced a brand new lens. The Canon EF 40mm f/2.8 STM is the first pancake lens from Canon. Pancake lenses are super portable and light weight making the T4i or any Rebel camera even more portable.

You can preorder the T4i here and the new lens here.