stills and video camera convergence

[Fordo]

Ive been reading a few articles of the latest batch of dslrs that can shoot full hd video, and a lot of people are predicting that we'll see a convergence of still and video camera technology in the near future.

I wondered what everyone on here thinks?

Have a look at this:

http://www.usa.canon.com/dlc/controller?act=GetArt...

Its filmed on a Canon EOS 5D MKII - a dslr

I come from a background as a video cameraman- and i think some footage there is absolutely stunning in places. It was shot as a promo for canon to show the capability of that camera. I read a 'making of' about the film, and I think a total of 10, very expensive lenses were used. While the footage is great, if you include the price of hiring that many lenses, I'm sure the same quality footage could have been filmed, probably cheaper, on a pro HD camcorder, with some decent lenses.

The idea of video and stills cameras coming together worries me slightly- I do like the idea in theory- still camera lenses are much cheaper than video camera lenses- Id love the ability to bolt on a fast 50mm prime and get a really shallow dof, on a budget shoot that normally couldnt afford that look.

But, it also worries me that a lot of stills cameramen will now think they can be video cameramen, and vice versa- to me, theyre very, very different fields, needing experience in very different things. Im a very experienced cameraman, but im only an amateur when it comes to photography.

Also, I can see people trying to cut corners by hiring in a dslr for video, instead of doing things properly and hiring in a proper pro video camera. It would be my worst nightmare to get on set to find Someone's hired me a dslr instead of the xdcam hd id asked for- I cant put a dslr on my shoulder, I cant mount a dslr properly on my steadicam, the dslr doesnt have xlr ports for sound, the dslr doesnt have built in ND and colour wheels, dslr lenses can suffer form focus breathing (which doesnt matter in stills), I cant get a remote focus controls for a dslr lens, dlrs wont generate time code or have a genlock port, I cant adjust the colour matrix to match other on set cameras.... and so on

However- I can see some great advantages to dslrs that can do video. If im shooting a film, and need to put a camera somewhere awkward or dangerous- the smaller form factor and solid state of a dslr, could make them very suitable.

I just cant see video and stills cameras every fully coming together- its like swiss army knives- can be useful, but youd never use one for performing surgury or cutting down a tree!

Id be interested to know what people think

[Simpo Two]

My background is video too (produced corporate work for almost 20 years), and like you I see them as separate disciplines. A still is fixed and bears more scrutiny; a video clip has a start, middle and end and needs equal but different planning.

Technically there's no doubt they're converging behind the scenes, but the amount of data from a 25Mp sensor running at 25fps is ridiculously unnecessary, even for the much vaunted 'HD'. It's a bit like buying an F1 car to go shopping and then having to replace every component to make it go slow enough. However, the industry has to sell stuff and there seems no shortage of people willing to buy the latest must-have feature-packed box, credit crunch or not, so yes, it will continue.

[Fordo]

I wish, instead of adding bells and whistles, that someone would make a camera that goes the other way.

I want a really simple camera- metal case to make it tough, 35mm sensor size, 35mm bayonet lens fitting so i can hire in 35mm film lenses, a decent standard recording format, like hd cam, and a record button and a viewfinder. - i dont need an lcd screen, i dont need shot transition, i dont want auto tracing white balance, i dont want auto iris etc etc.

Same with dslrs really- i dont want to pay £1000 for a really decent one- but why cant i have a stripped down one, without the bells and wistles, for less cost? I dont want face recognition, just a decent lens and decent chips in the camera.

Edited by Fordo on Tuesday 23 September 11:52

[Simpo Two]

Fordo said:

I wish, instead of adding bells and whistles, that someone would make a camera that goes the other way... why cant i have a stripped down one, without the bells and wistles, for less cost? I dont want face recognition, just a decent lens and decent chips in the camera.

I'm rather out of my territory here but how about a Sinar M?

http://www.sinarbron.com/sinar/digital/mp1.php - modular and will take Nikon 35mm lenses.

Rather more than £1,000 though!

[Zad]

I don't think it will be using all the umpty billion pixels in the conventional way to do video. It is difficult to explain without diagrams, but it is a process called "binning". Instead of reading out every pixel of every line, it deposits all the pixels from each line into an on-chip line buffer. It will then add several more lines to the buffer. This is a massively parallel operation and adds no noise. This line is then read not unlike a conveyor belt with buckets on it. Normally it would deliver one bucket at a time, which is then measured (digitised), but in the case of video it may output 4 or 5 buckets into 1 big external bucket before digitisation. Again, adding these buckets together is a low-noise process and done in hardware, so it is very efficient.

[Cuban]

Personally I am delighted at this new direction and am about to purchase the
Nikon D90 having tried it out today.

Two of my best friends are cameraman, albeit at different levels, one for ITV
News, while the other is a freelance, doing company promotional films etc.

However, with me having the D90 it will add a huge scope to what I do both for
a living and for fun.

On the Driving Adventure tours, it is simply impossible to consider having a
cameramen with us at all times as we travel around 20-25,000 miles a year on
the tours, so to be able to capture a split second moment in time on video
for web use will be a great addition to the tour photography that I shoot.

In addition, as a budding hobbyist photo-journalist, having small video clips
to add to my articles and images will again add another dimension that I could
never do before as I simply cannot carry that much kit and juggle between a
standard video and a camera, so much so that I stopped using my HD video
recorder about 18 months ago.

I still would hire in my friends to shoot promos, presentations and even
documentary style footage, so they have nothing to fear from this new
DSLR evolution.

[Fordo]

Cuban said:

Personally I am delighted at this new direction and am about to purchase the
Nikon D90 having tried it out today.

id love to see some footage once youve settled in with the d90- it looks like a cracking bit of kit

I must admit, I can see myself eventually getting a dslr with HD capability- it like you said, great for those moment when you need to capture something, and you dont have or want to have a hd video camera with you.

I can see the low consumer end of the market becoming saturated with point and shoot camera / video camera hybrids soon- ones that probably compress the footage horribly with avchd format or similar, and i'll have endless conversations with clients explaining why theyre point and shoot HD footage actually isnt full HD.....

[DucatiGary]

i like the idea of using the lenses i already have for video, 5d mk2 is deffo on the shopping list, or is that saving list?

i want one either way and the video side makes it more desirable for me even if it will not be used very often.

[Cuban]

Fordo said:

Cuban said:

Personally I am delighted at this new direction and am about to purchase the
Nikon D90 having tried it out today.

id love to see some footage once youve settled in with the d90- it looks like a cracking bit of kit

I must admit, I can see myself eventually getting a dslr with HD capability- it like you said, great for those moment when you need to capture something, and you dont have or want to have a hd video camera with you.

I can see the low consumer end of the market becoming saturated with point and shoot camera / video camera hybrids soon- ones that probably compress the footage horribly with avchd format or similar, and i'll have endless conversations with clients explaining why theyre point and shoot HD footage actually isnt full HD.....

No problem at all. I'll be on tour in America for most of October and that will include shooting at
an ALMS race, so hopefully it will be tested in many different ways.

As you say, the market will flood with these in varying quality, but at least the quality of the
footage on Youtube will start to increase over the phone footage!

[Simpo Two]

Cuban said:

As you say, the market will flood with these in varying quality, but at least the quality of the footage on Youtube will start to increase over the phone footage!

Or just keep freezing as the buffer fails?

[Stigmundfreud]

ah the camera man now faces the threat of the new influx of "cameramen". Just like the pro togs have suffered now they will too

[Simpo Two]

Stigmundfreud said:

Just like the pro togs have suffered now they will too

Other way round actually! Small time MDs and marketing assistants armed with high street camcorders have wrecked much of the corporate market and made it untenable. When I had a client who got one of his staff to make a video on his mobile phone - and thought it was *good* - I knew it was time to bail out and fast.

Fortunately the rise in cheap technology that closes one door opens another.

Edited by Simpo Two on Tuesday 23 September 23:48

[Stigmundfreud]

this for you must be a major thing though

You can nab the wedding video too, save them a bundle and make a few extra ponies for yourself

[bobthemonkey]

The D90 and 5d MkII both suffer from motion blur. This is as a result of the nature of CMOS sensors; they have a read response time, and it is not easy to reduce this. This was never too much of an issue as DLSRS never went above 10ish FPS. Now we are getting 24-30fps. The blur is slightly better on the 5d, but that may be due, at least in part to the fact that Canon have been more careful with the footage they released. Most of it was filmed on cinema class tripod heads that cost more than the camera by all accounts!

While the 5D can produce a higher resolution image than the D90, the D90 shoots at framerate more favourable to cinema, while the 5D's video will not convert well. (The 30p to 224p translation is never that nice IIRC).


There have been some interesting developments with reduced response time CMOS sensors, designed especially for cinematography. This has mostly been for the big cine-camera guys like Panavision/Sony and Arri as well as tech companies as an engieering exercise. There has also been work by RED, which is the new project from the guy behind Oakley sunglasses.

Red currently ships a £10,00 body with a sensor that displays little, if any motion skew. They have a visually loseless codec which will store around 5 minutes of RAW from a 1.6 crop 35mm sensor (about equivilent to full frame motion film) on a 8Gb CF card. Stills pulled from the footage as TIFF's could easily pass as coming from a conventional DSLR. The camera can use regular cine glass, as well as Nikon and Canon Lenses. I know that a thrid party has a working EF-S implementation, allowing full use of the lense motors.

They have also have just announced a convergence product, but no details exist. I suspect that this may well be the more viable video camera as it comes more from a video background than a still background. It should also use the main sesnor, unlike the Nikon and Canon offerings, of which at least one use the liveview sensor for video. It also has the benefit of coming from the mind of a proper camera nut. The boss shot most of Oakleys early TV spot, and owns a good range of cameras and glass, including a a Hasselbald used on the Moon and the 1200mm Canon telephoto, of which only 12 exist.

Sorry for the possibly incomprehensible ramblings.

Edited by bobthemonkey on Wednesday 24th September 00:49

[Simpo Two]

Stigmundfreud said:

this for you must be a major thing though

You can nab the wedding video too, save them a bundle and make a few extra ponies for yourself

Actually no - wedding videos are almost always naff and they don't fit into my supplier network - hiring 2-3 cameramen/kit and and edit suite/editor for a few days would send it spiralling to £5-10K. I direct video shot by shot to a script - that's needed for corporate but weddings are more of a 'shoot everything, strap it together somehow later' subject and the prospect of trying to make something nice from a box of unknown rushes horrifies me. The difference with stills is that I can do everything myself.

Anyway, companies don't want to spend £5-10K on video any more - at least, I can't find them - so that's the end of that.

[4hero]

Simpo Two said:

Anyway, companies don't want to spend £5-10K on video any more - at least, I can't find them - so that's the end of that.

The company I work for still hire professionals to produce video for websites we build. One or two of the guys here "do video", but we always opt for professionals.