What also surprises me is Hollywood, because why would they make the 5D2 or the 7D their battleships if there are some more powerfull 4K Raw options like Red, Arri, Thomson etc...
Sorry for the long response.
The thing about all professional production, still or moving everything is now time and budget compressed.
Time eats money either on set or in post production.
Regardless of what you read in the PR pages, everyone in every genre of image creation is coming in at less money, offering more content.
Small production is the goal and the one thing the 5d2's type of cameras offer is excellent low light capabilities. In fact in motion it is somewhat amazing how little light it takes to craft a scene with a 5d2.
The files aren't deep like the RED but the cameras work in almost any space, require small heads and supports, lenses, even dedicated lenses are cheap.
Hollywood likes the idea of smaller crews and faster production. They pay the talent less and for episodic cable TV they can attract bigger names as long as they don't tie up their schedule for 7 months.
Stills of motion, it's all the same right now. Everybody that writes the check wants faster turnaround, less production costs and more content because they believe the attention span of the viewer is fragmented and short.
(they're probably right).
Remember that few productions are ever projected at 4k, fewer systems even accept 4k files for coloring and editing, so right now we're talking about knocking everything down anyway.
It's the same with stills and when your talking camera costs, shooting a "low" budget film like the Kings Speech at 15 million makes the costs of a RED look cheap, multiply that by multiple cameras and your talking about rentals of $10,000 a week instead of 3 and with higher powered lights,
the costs is just goes up exponentially. Slow the production down by weeks or a month using traditional lighting and that 15 million can easily go to 18. 3 million is a lot of money.
Now I'm not against using the best possible tools available, but we're living in a changed world and margins are tight, probably will get tighter before they go higher.
When it comes to skin tones, either in stills or motion, the ability to work with low powered leds and a few small hmi's up the production speed 4 fold, especially those leds that allow on boards kelvin changes.
What does this have to do with skin tones. Well, the closer you are out of camera, the less time you spend in post and though I love the RED raw file, even using a RED Rocket for processing, it's still another long step in the chain.
At least the RED shoots 4 QT movies with the raw, though the downside is they lose their color settings and noise reduction.
Wanna scare a client? Show them a out of camera RED QT movies with yellow/green faces.
Regardless, at the write the check level it's all about money, more today than any other time.
We just finished a project where each scene was shot on white, shot on white with props, shot in room sets, in three different orientations and all shot on video.
I wanted to use my Contax for the stills, but going from flash on white to HMI and LED's on the room sets just made switching cameras something that really wasn't in the time parameters.
I did use the RED for all the motion, because I own it and it is the 600lb gorilla in the room. Clients notice the RED and as silly as that seems, I think it's appreciated that we brought in a sledge hammer to swat a fly, but I could have shot the motion with the 5d2 also.
The RED does have 4 audio channels and that makes a big difference when compared to the dslrs. Anyway. . .
The good thing about the RED file is in some instances I can use a few of the motion frames for stills. In some instances that is just another added bonus and today you have to give much, much more than expected.
But to answer your main question, Hollywood does not spend money just to spend money, because there are a lot of fingers in the pie. Production companies, actors, actor's production companies, studios, distributors, insurance, promotion, managers the list is huge and once you split it all up, even saving $10,000 a week adds up.
But who here would not like a camera that shot the perfect color out of camera, with the perfect look, the specific style? Time is money and saying we'll fix it in post, still or motion makes everyone shiver a little.
Since this is the medium format section, the thing that has always somewhat marginalized medium format is the focus speed, iso, lcd, computer dependency and costs.
LCD has been addressed by one company, iso is still somewhat marginal, especially when with motion we're going to small wattage continuous lights and post production usually is ramped up with larger files and specific processors.
As I always buy as much equipment as possible, I weigh what I will spend on each project, or each year and now the only thing I'm looking at is more hmi's more led lights. It's becoming a continuous light world and whether we like it or not we're all asked to do more.
As far as cameras, I'd probably buy an Epic today, or another RED for the second camera and backup just because I think it's worth it, though my Canons will still be used until the paint wears off. The only still camera that gets my attention is the chrome hasselblad and just because it's noticeable in the room. I know that sounds silly, but it is different, expensive looking and carries a traditional high end name.
IMO
BC
