New Options for the Budget Filmmaker

Looks as though we are coming up to some fairly exciting times, with a couple of cameras being released in the near future that look to make it a lot easier to get premium, professional looking footage without an enormous price tag. Although technology seems to be moving fast at the moment, its seems like digital video has been around for a long time, and for times has progressed very slowly. Of course it didn't make too much of a difference if the video was destined for the standard resolution television screen or regular dvd, but high definition has changed the game plan somewhat. Also as cameras move away from tape based systems to solid-state media, we've also seen a lot of horrible compression systems and file formats. But times are good at the moment, because some really solid offerings are coming along for the filmmaker that can't afford professional equipment, which I'm guessing is a great deal of people. Judging by the enormous amount of activity on the Red forums, I'd say there are a lot of people out there very interested in good value filming solutions.

The first camera I have already mentioned, which is the Scarlet camera by Red. They have mentioned on the site that the camera is currently being completely redesigned due to current changes in the market, and will hopefully be releasing some information about it in November, with units shipping in large quantities some time in 2009.

The second camera was just unveiled recently, but is already gathering quite a bit of attention. The strange thing is that it isn't even specifically made for video - the camera I'm talking about is the Canon 5D MkII, which is an attractively priced semi-professional DSLR. This camera has a huge full-sized 35mm sensor (35.8x23.9mm) which means it can use the full gamut of 35mm lenses without crop factor, and produces very clean images with a high dynamic range even in low light settings. The sensor itself is an amazing 21.1MP. The feature that is getting the most attention however is the movie mode, which offers both 1920x1080 and 640x480 resolutions @30fps. There are a lot of people out there hoping that Canon will either release the camera with a 24fps mode as well for more cinematic style shooting, or allow a firmware update in the future to provide this setting.

A short film has already been shot with a beta version of the Canon camera, and looks quite sharp. The stills in particular look insanely detailed and colorful. Check out this link for the film, Reverie.


There are a few drawbacks to keep in mind about this camera, however, the main one being that this is primarily a stills DSLR first and foremost, so the movie feature isn't going to be as strong as its main purpose. Some of the issues coming up are the skew (jello looking footage from sharp movements), although it is nowhere near as bad as the Nikon D90. Also the footage output, which is converted directly to H.264 in camera may not be the best option for more professional productions or discerning users (compression issues and more processing power required for editing). A possible workaround for the compression issues is the availability of an HDMI port, which may offer uncompressed HD output. Guess we'll have to see how that goes once the camera is officially released.

Still, the price of $2,700 for the body is very attractive, especially considering Pro-sumer camcorders can go for $5,000 upwards and have largely inferior specifications.

It will be very interesting to see how the Scarlet camera pans out in light of this recent news, and also the DSMC (Digital Still Movie Camera) Red is working on as well. It can only work to the budget filmmakers advantage with all these great innovations coming out.