Le blogue de 6ixdegrés

(Nous avons décidé de re-publier quelques articles qui sont parus il y a quelques mois sur notre « ancien » blogue que vous n’avez peut être pas eu la chance de lire)

A Revolutionary New Way of Shooting Commercials? Almost, But Not Quite.

Digital video has changed dramatically in the last couple of years and is fast approaching something that almost looks like film. Not only is there the Red cinema, but there are also two new SLR cameras that have come out recently. Yes, the old-school SLR cameras that take « normal » pictures, but press a couple of buttons and you are now are able to record Video. The two cameras are the D90 from Nikon and the 5D Mark II from Canon and they are a hell of a lot cheaper than the Red or a Sony 900.

Obviously this opens up a whole set of new possibilities. An SLR camera is tiny compared to a film camera -making it possible to go where no camera has gone before. It is also a lot lighter and can in theory be mounted on all kinds of contraptions, giving us film-makers options that we never could have had before for a price that is affordable. They also use « normal » lenses which is really fun if you for example want to shoot fisheye or macro stuff.

When I first read about the D90 in New York Times I became curious to try it out on a « real » production. The opportunity came in the shape of a board for SODEC -- an almost ideal candidate because of a lot of close-up work, locked off shots and a relatively small budget. I suggested using the camera instead of the alternative of doing it on « cheap » video. Luckily Anton and Annie, my producers said yes.

Another dealbreaker was that I’ve had a Nikon SLR for a long time and I know this camera inside out -- so shooting with the D90 meant that I could be my own DOP -- something I’ve been wanting to try for a while now. Again Annie and Anton let me do it…did I mention that we have great producers at 6ix?

After checking out the D90 we ended up buying the camera and a couple of 8GB memory cards and slightly nervous, but excited I began my first professional job as a director-cinematographer…I like the sound of that! Shooting with the camera turned out to be a lot more limited than I expected. Anyone expecting to have the same options as a traditional videocamera in their hands will be badly disappointed. The camera was great for what we wanted to do. You can use any Nikon lens. I mostly used a 60mm Macrolens that gave us incredible shots with very little depth of field. Another lens was a 300 mm that also gave us a very limited depth of field (which is what I was looking for)

The conclusion is that the D90 is a great little camera. With some limitations it is pretty much possible to achieve a film-look (or better). For us using the D90 turned out the be the right choice. We got a gorgeous looking spot for a very small budget. However the camera has its limitations. It is great for anything that doesn’t move too much, is brightly lit and doesn’t need panning. The biggest problem for me is that the camera needs a lot of light to avoid getting grain and banding. At 100 ISO I always tried to be above 1/50th of a second which wasn’t always possible. In general it seemed very arbitrary when one would get nice grain-free blacks and when the blacks would be grainy. Also the camera only shoots at 24fps and only at the lowest f-stop. In fact during shooting it is not possible to change much apart from the focus. Furthermore the automatic exposure always kicks in unless the exposure lock is pressed -- which means you’ll look like a pretzel if you pan, while holding the button pressed (I imagine it must be possible to avoid having to press the lock by customizing the menus).

Finally the camera has a CMOS chip which means that panning and fast movements come out strange. To see what I mean have a look at the image below of the speaker. A normal camera records frames -- so instants of movement. A CMOS records like a television -- from the top down. This means that a fast movement going across frame is stretched because the top of the image is recorded earlier in time than the bottom of the image. This is especially an issue for fast pans or any lateral (fast) movement. I tried a test where I shook the camera horizontally while shooting (if you want to see what these look like there are plenty on youtube).

This is actually also a very cool effect that, in the right context, can be used for a really cool effect, but it also limits the use of the camera, especially for fast lateral movements and for special effects shots. By the way, the 20000 dollar Red has the same problem! -- It is particular for CMOS chips.

Soundrecording is through the tiny microphone on the camera so using it for anything else than a guidetrack would be a joke. Anyway, on a professional production where the sound is recorded seperately that isn’t really a problem.

The D90 shoots up to 1,280 x 720 pixes as AVIs (Motion Jpegs). The files are surprisingly small -- and I suspect, heavily compressed.

All in all, would I use the camera on another production? Absolutely -- especially outdoors, in well-lit environments. Well, truth be told, I’d actually rather use the Canon 5D -- once it comes out. It has the same problems with the CMOS wobble, but it seems to perform far better in the blacks. The video shot with the Canon on the link below was shot at 1200-1600 ISO -- something that would be absolutely impossible with the Nikon D90. It also seems like it is possible to change the f-stop, which would greatly enhance the possibilities and uses for this camera and finally it shoots 1,920 x 1080 -- full HD compressed as H264. In fact, my only quibble with the Canon (without having actually tried it out) is that it seems to have more of a « Video » look to it and also seems to still have some problems with banding. Check out the video and you’ll see what I mean.

The D90 and the 5D
The SLRs are an exciting new tool for film-makers. I look forward to taping them on to rollerblades, people’s foreheads, skateboards and all kinds of things, but their use is somewhat limited.

Oh…you want to see what the commercial ended up looking like?…click here to find out