Audio Media - September 2008 - (Page 66) video guide A Sound Pro’s Guide To Video HD Acquisition: Part 3 KEVIN HILTON continues his wandering through the widening land of HD camcorders; and this month visits the Panavision Genesis and Arriflex D-20. T he relatively short history of film and television cameras is the usual story of pioneering units that set the trend and then are superseded by the next generation, which itself can come under threat from any newcomers to the market. The established names in film cameras like Panavision and Arri, which replaced earlier brands such as Mitchell, have appeared to be unperturbed by the appearance of more sophisticated video models, but their positions are now more under threat from digital cinema. These look like the real thing, as makers of traditional film cameras would doubtless think of them, and work with most of the lenses favoured by cinematographers, but capture high resolution pictures on digital HD tape or hard disk media. Where they differ from video cameras and their HD equivalents is that footage is uncompressed and of high resolution, which makes them comparable to the good old film machines that their proponents hope they will usurp. pictures, the chips used produced a frame size more like mm film, with a corresponding depth of field (see glossary). To get around this, Panavision employed optical adaptors placed between the lens and the camera body but this still caused a reduction in the quality of images that was deemed unacceptable for feature films. Because of this, Sony HDCAM camcorders are usually teamed with Zeiss, Angenieux, Canon, or Fujinon lenses. After absorbing these setbacks and losing ground to competitors from the video sector, a concerted effort was made to create a digital camera that would be wholly a Panavision product, with the cinematic sensibilities associated with the company’s I n The S crum The digital cinema camera market has become quite crowded in a short space of time and film stalwarts Panavision and Arri are staking their claims while fending off competition from not only long-time video contender Sony, and Thomson with the Viper (see AM July ), but also bright new media contenders Dalsa and Red. In an effort to produce the next generation of feature film cameras, Panavision had originally collaborated with Sony, bringing together the film and video/HD expertise of each. This resulted in a ‘Panavised’ version of Sony’s CineAlta HDW-F (see AM June ) HDCAM camcorder, which was used on Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones ( ). Several operational problems arose with this camera, concerning both the lenses and the camcorder itself, so George Lucas made a momentous break with tradition and did not use Panavision at all for Episode III - Return of the Sith ( ), instead shooting on Sony HDC-F cameras with Plus Digital lenses. Chastened by this rejection, Panavision set about designing its own new age camera and came up with the rather self-consciously named Genesis. The manufacturer’s stated aim was to produce ‘a film camera that shoots digital’, which is how the Genesis is promoted, but the priority for the designers was to make Panavision’s proven mm lenses part of the system to ensure the best possible quality picture going through the electronics and on to the chosen recording medium. The problem with the Panavised CineAlta was that, as a -chip video camera, most lenses designed originally for film cameras cannot be fitted to its body. With many mm lenses, and this was the case for Panavision’s range, the prism block of the camcorder did not have enough space for the back end of a film lens. In such a situation, with the lens not fitting properly into the housing, the anomalies produced through the prism seriously degraded picture quality. To further put film types off the idea of using a camcorder designed primarily for video, despite it producing HD film models. To this end Genesis appeared in with the promise that depth of field was not compromised and it had the same movability, dynamic range and colour, and sensitivity features as its film forebears. R evelationar y Technology Like the Thomson Viper, the Genesis is a full bandwidth ( : : ) camera featuring a high level of colourimetry (colour perception) and sensitometry (relating to light sensitive materials) and, possibly the most critical feature of all, a recording area corresponding to the Super mm format. This last feature means that the focal construction of the Genesis matches standard Cine Primo lenses, as well as zooms, and so can produce a genuine mm depth of field. Unlike most video cameras used for features and TV dramas the Genesis is based on a single CCD chip, rather than three, which has raised doubts about colour quality. This sole array has a capacity of . mega pixels and operates using x horizontal RGB filtering, with the same number of pixels for each of the three primary colours. Vertical resolution is reduced to lines through the process of pixel binning, where charges are combined by an on-chip CCD clock timing circuit to improve frame rates and signal to noise ratios and decrease picture noise, giving a pixel resolution of x , approximately two thirds the resolution of a k film scan. > SOUND PRO'S VIDEO GLOSSARY Depth of Field This is the section of satisfactory focus that is both in front of and behind the principal plane of focus in a camera shot, and is realised by using a wide-angle lens, which delivers a short focal length, narrow apertures, usually through setting smaller f-stops, more depth from the lights, a longer exposure time, or more distance from the main plane of focus to the camera. More depth of field comes with deep focus, while its shallower counterpart needs focus to be changed in relation to the action. 66 AUDIO MEDIA SEPTEMBER 2008
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