Saturday, June 20, 2009

Sony F-23 Vs. Sony F-35

Sony has 2 Digital Cinema cameras.
The Sony F-23 is a 2/3" chip camera but it has 3 Chips that are stacked just like the layers of film emulsion. Some people would argue that the F-23 puts out better images than the F-35.
The Sony F-35 has a 35mm sized sensor, and a PL Mount ( one not 3 like the F-23) which enables one to use 35mm film lenses like Arri Master Primes, or Cooke S4's or Arri Ultra Primes or Angenieux Optimo Zooms.
The Sony F-23 uses B-4 mount lenses like Ziess Digi Primes.

Both of these cameras record in 4:4:4 and can record to a Sony SR1 Deck onto HDCAM SR.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

CANO 5D MARK 2 CHANGES THE PLAYING FIELD

The Canon 5D Mark 2 DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex) is a new still camera that shoots amazing video at 30fps. You might ask, 'why is a still camera on this blog?'.
The reason is because people in the movie and TV and Commercial industry are using this camera to capture images. 

Sunday, February 1, 2009

WHAT IS THE ARRI D-21 CAMERA?

The Arri D-21; not unlike the Panavision Genesis is also at the very high end of Digital Film cameras.
The Arri D-21 has an optical viewfinder which means that it has a spinning mirror shutter just like a film camera.
The D-21 has a PL mount which is found on all Arri 35mm film cameras and can accommodate any of the Arri and or PL mounted lenses made by Cooke and Angenieux.
The ASA of the D-21 is around 200.
The D-21 records to Flash Memory or HDCAM-SR.


WHAT IS THE PANAVISION GENESIS CAMERA?

The Genesis Camera is made by Panavision and can really be called a Digital Film Camera.
Panavision did a brilliant thing here and made a camera that their current and future customer base could use with only a lateral learning curve involved.
The Genesis utilizes all of the same PV mounted Panavision lenses that work on their line of film cameras.
The Genesis has a Super 35mm sized sensor and is capable of shooting at up to 50FPS.
The sensor in the Genesis is rated at 400 ASA ( thats why we call it a digital film camera)
and with the ability to open the shutter to 360deg. 
The Genesis can record to HDCAM-SR tape and to the new Panavision SSR-1 Solid State Recorder, which means that it is recording to Flash Memory and NOT spinning drives.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

WHAT IS A CODEC?
CODEC IS NOT A TYPO ON KODAK.
CODEC MEANS "COMPRESSION DECOMPRESSION".
When using High Definition cameras the analog signal is converted to 
digital bytes and the information takes up to much space for the device 
it is recorded on so it must be compressed when it is being captured or photographed.
I can be captured or (compressed) on P2 card ( above) or a HD Cam tape or an HD Cam SR tape e.t.c.
When the information that has been captured is played from one of the above mediums
it is then Decompressed.
Some Codec's have "Lossless" compression while others do not.

What does Pixel stand for?
The definition of pixel is Picture Element.
Therefore many Pixels or Mega Pixels ( 1 Mega Pixel= 1 Million Pixels) help to make up an image on a digital film or still camera.


Monday, January 12, 2009


What is Tape-less Media?
This Panasonic P2 Card (which stands for Professional Plug in)
This 16GB (Giga Byte) P2 Card is actually four 4GB SD Cards in an array.
So 4GBx4GB=16GB's
Sound and video is recorded onto these cards with different forms of compression.
Some of the great things about tape-less media is that it is infinitely reusable
and  there is no need to digitize as you would with film or tape.
Panasonic has just released 64GB cards.
Stay tuned for the next posting as to what an SD card is!



WHAT IS 1080P?
1080p stands for one thousand and 80 progressively scanned  vertical lines in 
on a High Def TV.
Progressive is the opposite of Interlaced, and is a better looking picture in most cases.


What does DI mean?
DI stands for Digital Intermediate.
A digital intermediate "session" is what takes place when a movie and or TV commercial is 
in the very final stages of completion.
What usually happens is the DP ( Director of Photography, Cinematographer, Cameraman) sits in a very dark room with a person that is called a Colorist who works on really cool looking machines that cost lots of money and make corrections to the color of a shot or particular piece of a shot or make a color movie a black and white movie.
This is all done digitally, ( as opposed to Photo Chemically) which is then stored on hard drive and sent to a Arri Film Scanner where the corrected information is then laser scanned onto FILM Negative so it can then be sent
to a place called Deluxe Laboratories so they can make 1000's of FILM Prints for the movie theaters.


Sunday, January 11, 2009

WHAT IS HIGH DEFINITION?
"High Definition when referring to a Television program means that anything 720 vertical lines or more is "high definition".
Now this brings up the question what is less than 720 vertical lines of resolution called?
This is called Standard Definition or some times referred to as SD.
So before HD there was SD and we payed a lot less for TV sets.