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.

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.

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.