Where's the Red Scarlet excitement?
The 2/3 Scarlet is not that Exciting to me as a stills photographer looking to expand my business offering with simple digital motion because..
a 2/3 chip means all my nikkor lenses are basically too longThis means
I would need to spend more on glass, captital, maintainance, insurance
I will need to carry more glass
The res of the 2/3 scarlet is '5mp' This is not high enough for me to use it as a primary stills camera
Therefore
I cant abandon my stills camera
I need to carry two bodies/chargers
Do two workflows
The res of the scalet is 3k - this is exciting for the film gang but realistically any clients I have who are employing me to do stills and shoot some motion around the edge of that job are only going to need 1080 maximum or most likely YouTube size
Therefore the motion resolution is not that relevant to me/my clients
Therefore the 2/3 Scarlet is not, IMO, that exciting to stills photographers doing some motionI am not excited about the S35 or FF35 scarlet because is it is not going to be available for some long time - maybe Ill be excited when they actually get near to hitting the streets -those cams should bypass the problems outlined aboveAdditionally from what I can see on RedUser it is not clear if the camera has AF - a critical IMO attribute in shooting stills at commercially viable speeds
Also some minor attributes in control of the camera are not clear, for example to switch between stills and motion you need a different set of settings available at the flick of one switch
eg
Stills 250th/F4/800ISO
Motion 50th/F4/200ISO
Are usable settings, shooting stills at 1/50 is often a no go
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This is my vision for a 'combo cam'..Delivers at least 10/12 MP stills
Has AF for stills
Has two settings menus
Delivers non alaised 1080 diitgal motion at 24/25/30p (preferably RAW of course !)
Has monitorable controlable sound recording
Has at least 720 output for monitoring the motion recording
Has a chip size of at FF35 for stills and S35crop mode for motion
Costs no more than $10-15K US
Such a device would enable an 'operator' to shoot both pro stills and HD motion with one body and set of lenses
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Some notes/thoughts on DOFThe small chip does restrict creating shallow DOF but the scarlet primes are of Fstops that dont exist in the stills world eg 8mmF1.5
Such lenses can create shallow enough DOF to create reasonably cinematic frames
While us stills photographers may now feel that S35/APS does again not give decent DOF characteristics it is again due to the glass we can choose
I have struggled on how films are getting narrow DOF with wide angle shots with such a 'small' image sensor (s35/aps) until I discovered again that cinema lenses are available in different specs to still lenses
eg Zeiss 18mm F1.2 - (such lenses dont cover FF35, cost $$$$ and are MF only therefore not very good for stills)
Aditionally I have noted that 'cinema' often has appealing blurred backgrounds while keeping lots of the subject in focus - I now realise that a lot of this is to do with 'deep' set design - a luxury not available on many stills shoots !
A small chip does not have, therefore, to restrict ones control of DOF but does restrict that control if you are using that small chip with currently available still photography lensesAgain a larger chip that allows use of still lenses is an attribute once one discovers the price of cine lenses eg
http://www.red.com/store/295-0014Graham 'attacks' the FF35 canon 5d look (for film making) as too narrow in DOF for use in motion recording, I agree that many films shot on the 5d at f1.2-F2 look stupid because the lack of DOF is both aesthetically confusing and overly technically challenging in terms of sustaining focus on moving subjects
Intelligent 5d users (such as myself?) are finding that this camera looks cinematic when shot in the F4/5.6/8 region - this is another amazing boon when it comes to selecting lenses because even more money is saved
I get my f4 spec on just two lenses 24-105F4 and 70-200 F4, a lens set that is very cheap in comparison to cine lenses or even a decent set of photo primes
Small chips force one into a different leagu on glass spend....
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What is my toolkit right now?I use a nikon D3 which gives me all the still performance I want
I capture motion using a Canon DSLR and Sony Ex1
This is obviously a mess in terms of kit lugging.
The sony gives 'good' 1080 with a limited choice of DOF
The Canon gives amazing DOF while not aquiring full 1080 res, doubling on occasion with my still lenses this matters for some shots not others
So where would a 2/3 scarlet get me ?
Well it would give me a cleaner 'EX1' but little more
Where would a S35/APC scarlet get me ? - maybe a long way towards a proper combocam if matched whith ultrafast wide angle glass that currently does not exist in AF