This is pretty straight forward, but what is really important is how much light is getting to the sensor. In a perfect world the f-stop would be a good gauge for all lenses, but in reality each piece of glass had different properties that change the amount of light that goes through the lens. The best glass loses the least amount of light and is closer to the theoretical f-stop. T-stop is just the measure of the actual light that gets transmitted through the lens, no matter what the glass. So, while it is possible to get different amounts of light through different lenses with the same f-stop, with same T-stops, you should get the same exposure no matter what lens you use.

In short: f-stop is theory and T-stop is reality.

Went to a panel on reporting from the front lines. On the panel was: Craig White (Chief Photographer, NBC News), Kaj Larsen (Producer/Reporter , Current TV), Phil Alongi (Alongi Media Solutions & 20 Year Producer for NBC News), and Brian Natwick (The Pentagon Channel). They all talked about their experiences in covering wars and conflicts. Pretty scary stuff. I am glad that there are people doing it, but I don’t know if I could do it. I wonder about the students. Will they be going out and doing that type of reporting?

Then I went to see Josh Schwartz, the man behind Chuck and Gossip Girl. He talked a lot about how hard it is to stay afloat if you are doing shows that don’t have a traditional audience. Younger viewers are turning to different delivery platforms to get this entertainment fix. That doesn’t necessarily show up in the ratings, and without the ratings you aren’t going to be on the air for long. He did give some hope in that some people are starting to get into web programming. Not much pay there yet, but there is a lot of freedom.

Saw a lot of equipment vendors. I’ll have a lot more to talk about them when I start ordering for next year.

Finished up the night at the RED User party. There were a lot of speakers talking about the different post production and color correction work flows. There were also a lot of vendors with RED specific accessories and add-ons. Got some good ideas from tonight’s presentations.

Tonight I went to the Roscor celebration at the Imperial Palace. It was a little party for customers of Roscor. It was a good chance to see what other people are doing out in the real world.

Next I went to the Indie Film Super Session. Brian Valente (redrock), moderated a panel consisting of Rodney Charters, Director of Photography, 24; Stu Maschwitz , Founder, The Orphanage; Charles Papert , Co-founder, Instant Films. They talked a lot about the RED camera and the Canon 5d MkII. Seems like there is a lot of talk about the convergence of Digital SLRs and video cameras. I see this being a big thing in the next few years.

Back to the DP workshop for more RED info, and then a session of Steadicam. There is a new wireless video system from IDX. Now you can fly a camera without being tethered to a recorder or monitor. Wireless makes it a lot easier for everyone on set.

Other announcements came from AJA. They have a new recorder, and a portable iO. I was hoping for an announcement from Apple about Final Cut, but no word yet.

After lunch there was a demo by Grass Valley showing their Viper camera. Not a bad camera, but it just seems like it is a little old and out of place. They were one of the first on the market, but it is showing its age. That coupled with the fact that Grass Valley is up for sale makes it hard to want to invest in them. They also showed their HD camera, the Infinity. This was the most video looking camera that we have seen so far. Definitely not what I was looking for.

Panasonic was next up. It was pretty much just a sales presentation talking about how great Panasonic was. Not useful at all. If I wanted that info, I could have just read a brochure. The one good thing they said was that they were bringing out cheaper P2 cards out. They will have limited read/write cycles but will be significantly cheaper.

The rest of the afternoon was Gary Adcock time. He is a really good speaker, with lots of energy. His first talk was about being a DIT. It is a new position in the film making work flow, and it is vitally important to the whole process. With so many different systems, cameras, recording devices, and post production expectations, it is becoming a super skilled tech job. Not sure how many people are up for being great DIT’s, but I imagine that they will be in high demand. There is a good pdf of tapeless workflow best practices on the Fletcher website. It is a modified version of Gary’s rules.

Gary then talked about LUTs and monitoring. I thought that this was a little too technical, with out a lot of easy to use information. I understand things a little better now, but I still have to do some research to get the basics completely under control. I will also have to check out some of the better monitors during the show.

Exibition floor opens tomorrow. I will have one more day of DP stuff, but will try to look at as much stuff as possible.

Next up was the state of the RED. Ted from RED talked a little about the history of the company and products, and then gave a little outline of their plans. All of this was pretty much on their website, but it was a good summary of everything. Best part was that he showed a lot of footage shot on RED. Some of the scenes were just amazing. I am so impressed with what this camera can do in the right hands. It was used is so many different fields; docs, features, music videos, corporate, commercial. I am looking forward to taking ours out for a spin when I get back to Doha. Seems that it is in Customs limbo right now, but hopefully that get straightened out soon.

Last of the night was an ARRI talk about their D21 camera. I wanted to see this camera, since it is one of the ones that I am considering for use at the college. I have to say that I was not impressed. The camera is large and heavy. Some of the footage was pretty good, but most looked like nice looking video. Not really what I was hoping for. It was nice to see the S.two’s OB1 attached to the camera. This allows for a little less complicated data capture solution. I am sure in the right hands this is a nice camera, but it seems like it is a bit hard to get the best results from this cam.

First thing that I think about when asked to look into cameras is what sort of accessories will be needed. When you start adding up the cost of a tripod, carrying case, microphones, lighting, and all the other little accessories you will soon find that the extras can cost as much as the camera itself. That is why I start off the list with cameras that are well below the $3000 limit.

First group is a couple of canon cameras. They are consumer cameras without good manual controls, but they still produce good looking images. They are both pretty cheap so there is lots of extra room for extras. Another downside is that there is no XLR inputs.

Canon HV40: ($1000) Consumer HDV camera. Very small. Not much in the way of manual controls. I had the HV20 which is the older version (and loved it). Great pictures for such a small price.

Canon HF S10: ($1300) Like the HV40 but records in digital to the internal drive or removable SD cards. Files need to be converted before using in Final Cut. No need to use a separate VTR for ingesting video.

Next there are a couple of Sony cameras. The FX7 is a newer camera but doesn’t have the XLR inputs that pros look for. They both leave some money for extras.

Sony FX7: ($2000) HDV camera, uses mini dv tapes. 1/4” Chips. No XLR inputs. Good zoom range.

Sony HVR-A1U: ($2000) HDV camera. A little older camera than the FX7. Has XLR for Audio. Reminds me of the PD150’s that I used to use for Standard Def cameras.

Next up is prosumer stuff. This eats up the full 3K budget without any room for extras. The Panasonic records to SD cards while the others are HDV cameras that record to mini dv tapes. All but the FX1000 have XLR inputs. They all have manual controls.

Panasonic HMC150: ($3500) A little more expensive, but it records to solid state SD cards. New camera, everyone is talking about it. The files need to be converted to quicktime before they can be edited in final cut (doesn’t take long, but adds an extra step).

Canon XL-A1: ($2999) This is an HDV camera so it records to tape. People seems to be very happy with the image it produces. Price doesn’t leave anything for extras.

Sony FX1000: ($3000) Upgrade for the FX7. Bigger Chips. No XLR Inputs.

Sony HVR-V1U: ($2995) Upgrade from the A1U. HDV, XLR Inputs.

Next group is out of the price range, but is the first group that can be considered low end pro cameras. I included this because it might just be a good idea to use other people’s equipment until you save enough to buy something better.

Panasonic HPX170: ($5200) Newest P2 based camera. Better than the HVX200s that we have. It is out of the price range, and the P2 cards can be expensive.

Sony EX1: ($6100) Records to SxS cards. They are expensive, but not as bad as the P2 camera.

Sony EX3: ($8400) Like the EX1 but with interchangeable lenses.

He mentioned a couple of good websites to check out. If you are interested in doing some surfing check them out:

Interactive Narratives

Multimedia Shooter

Both have good examples of the direction that new media journalism is going.

Check out the first one here and look at the other episodes on Vimeo.


FilmFellas - webisode 1 from Steve Weiss, Zacuto USA on Vimeo.

Zacuto and Vimeo presents: FilmFellas

Laughed my ass off after watching that. Funniest part is it is pretty much what acting is. Learn the lines and pretend to be the character.