There have been a few developments in the world of high quality digital acquisition in the last few months.From the announcement of the EOS Canon 7D that shoots 24p,25p and 30p at full HD to the Convergent design nanoflash.By far the most compelling of late though is a Cineform HDMI/HD-SDI capture device.It is not made by Cineform but it records to the codec.This is very exciting indeed ……..until you see the price.At just around $ 5000 one is almost in the RED scarlet territory.You may as well wait or do the DIY route.If it were $2000 it would be a steal – the same price as the promised Cineform recorder from the company that makes the greatest compressed codec on earth – period.
Went around to ASK Electronics here in london off Tottenham Court rd and got myself a Canon 5D Mark II – they had 2 in stock and one without the lens kit.I had been hearing all the rave and hype made about this camera and Vincent Laforette’s shoot a few months ago had me almost shelling out for this camera.The low light performance is insane and the still pictures are unbelievable.I will be taking tons of stuff on this baby during the summer to make my short films and music videos so watch this space and the video section on the main web page.
If you have no idea what the quality of this camera is then go ahead to Vimeo.com and check out all the vids made by this baby.It is insane how good it gets.The one bummer was no manual control – and guess what Canon have addressed that with a new firmware.Guess the collective number of voices across the world had forced the hand of the company……..now 24p would make this camera a true competitor to the higher end stuff.I am still interested in a GH1 hack to get a direct sensor feed in the Andromeda style that was done to the DVX series of Panasonic cameras.(It is not possible to get any decent live feed from the GH1 HDMI port at this stage so I have abandoned that idea.That would be very interesting to explore.Imagine shooting raw sensor data to a computer with this baby.Rumour has it that an Irish company may well be interested in this mod.Well I am in if this can be pulled off…………..want my deposit?Problem is cannot trace them down.
I was asked by one of the organisers (Wolfy)of a borough wide church meeting to make a short video of ‘the Lord’s prayer’ in various areas of the borough.This will be shown at the Hammersmith town hall in about a couple of weeks.
I went out with a nice cast and we filmed in a few local locations.I will update this post with the finished video when it is done.This time I left the SGblade and the HFS10 behind but instead opted for the Sony SR11 and the portable Cineform recorder.Attached to a Gorillapod the setup was nice and portable and no tripod was used.Made for a nice change.This setup also did not attract too much attention either so the smaller the package is the more discreet the shooting and I loved that today.I have updated my cineform recorder as well so it is more robust now.Man tyhe number of times I wished it was a light portable GH1 – recording to cineform.
During my search for a solution for the dilemma of the poor codec implemented by Panasonic on the new Lumix GH1,( I tend to be rather particular about video quality ) I have discovered that there is a video on Panasonic’s own website that shows that the G1 (non- video) can possibly output live video out of the AV port.
Check this video of the little non-video G1 cam out guys…..the little brother of the Panasonic Lumix GH1.
1 minute 24 seconds.Did you see that????It is connected to an HDTV and I believe it may be via HDMI ( 3 minutes 21 seconds ).It may be composite but I don’t know as it is hard to make out in such a small video.It may well be SD or even HD.Either way – I went to my local Jessops ( a camera shop here in the UK ) to see if I could get it to output a live signal and guess what – nothing.Twice I have tried to do so but failed.But surely this means that the camera is capable of doing this as shown in this video but we know not how.There is no hiding it now is there?The G1 outputs live video…..but Pana may have disabled it for the rest of us.I can see why though – uncompressed HDMI on this little puppy would open up a whole new world of independent film-making for the rest of us.
Edit : Just discovered that it is actually the AV port and it is done by pressing the trash can button for a few seconds.
Seems like the camera outputs SD to an external monitor.That may not produce a bad picture but it is too small for HD production.Even if it output through the HDMI port it may just be a copy of the LCD display resolution.
In fact it has been confirmed that it doesn’t even have live SD composite out.So there is no way to externally monitor at all. Oh well – back to my HFS10 I go……mind you I am not complaining it is a beauty.And onward and upward until the Red Scarlet arrives.
Well,well,well.I have had my eye on this puppy for a while.It promises to be the most revolutionary camera of the decade in my humble opinion.Yes the RED one is miles ahead in many regards such as frame rate options,time lapse,RAW codecs etc but for once the indie filmaker has a few things on his side in one camera.Affordable price,portability,a huge sensor,( hopefully great low light performance), interchangeable lenses,( including Leica lenses – yum yum ), DOF control,24p and HDMI output.Panasonic have put quite a bit of thought into this camera and if it offers uncompressed HDMI output then I am sold.I was down to buy a Canon 5D Mark II until I realised that Canon had deliberately crippled the camera.No manual control,uncompressde HDMI or 24p.I cancelled my pre-order.
Well as for Panasonic I wrote to them in January and enquired about the possiblity to test the GH1 HD.They turned me down he he.Not enough clout I suppose….
Self contained and portable
Spent an afternoon working with the Magma chassis and a briefcase.Lots of soldering,taping,glueing and binding but managed to get it all in.Laptop,battery,invertor,power supplies,cables – all of it and it works great.Great thing about the magma chassis is that it actually can take pretty much any pci express card out there.HD-SDI,HDMI even camera link.
Well this baby arrived on time and I have had it for a wee while now.In a word – it is a beast.This was a shoot I did the other day when I went for a stroll in my local borough.Man the image is sharp.Love it,love it, love it!!!
I have been capturing HDMI from my consumer camcorders now for a while and as I get asked quite a bit about how I do it I thought I would make a short tutorial as to how I go about it.
Hope this helps.
Went around to ASK Electronics here in london off Tottenham Court rd and got myself a Canon 5D Mark II – they had 2 in stock and one without the lens kit.I had been hearing all the rave and hype made about this camera and Vincent Laforette’s shoot a few months ago had me almost shelling out for this camera.The low light performance is insane and the still pictures are unbelievable.I will be taking tons of stuff on this baby during the summer to make my short films and music videos so watch this space and the video section on the main web page.
