As a follow up to one of my most popular postings on 3 digital video cameras – I have a new one. And it being influenced by the New Video Reality – the video camera field is getting awfully crowded as all the major SLR makers are putting out 1080P HD video using full-frame 35MM sensors plus all their great interchangeable SLR lenses. So the sky is the limit on what is available. And here is the Sky:
ARRI Digital Camera System D21 delivers 3500P at 1-60FPS starting at a base 800ISO and going up. Cost starts at Euros50,000.
The cameras will start to appear in June 2010 and have some notable specs already. The camera uses 3 variants 35MM full frame sensor, 16:9 to 4:3 aspect ratio, a choice of on-board hard disks, and wifi-remote video control capabilities.
Red Digital Cinema Camera also see here for more info
Red Camera takes a core module approach – building the core camera then adding their own and 3rd party lenses, hard drives and other accessories to customize the camera:
The specs on the Red Digital Cinema camera are top end 4480 x 1920 pixels at 1-30fps down to 2048 x 11152 at 1-120fps with 16:9 aspect ratio using a 35MM Mysterium sensor cropped for 16:9 operation. The camera has been in stock and available since late 2008 at a cost of $20,000 for base body + $20,000 for a 5 lens mount set. Software to read rEd Camera’s .R3D files include Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 and After Effects CS4.
Vision Research takes a different tack, delivering extremely high speed frame/second rates for large but not ultimate HD frame sizes. The Phantom V710 delivers 1280 x 800 images at 7530fps.
These frame rates require enormous amounts of very high speed disk space because 1 sec at full resolution full frame rate[7530 fps], requiresnearly 3GB sec of disk space. The bid with Vision Research is getting the images recorded let alone edited. However, Vision Research has add on software for doing precisely that. the caost range from $10,000 for the start Miro camera to more than $50,000 for the Phantom.
High End Video Camera Trade-offs
These high end video cameras deliver very high resolution cinema recordings with a wide color gamut as well as dynamic range [3-5 f/stops]. They are now matching if not bettering film video cameras with the advanatge of digital post production. But the prices start at $20,000 and with all the bells and whistles can easily top $100,000. As well the storage requirements and recording rates require huge hard disks performaing at very high recording rates – often pressing the state of the art. Last, the availability of software to process and edit the images is also just catching up with what the camera can produce. But the writing is on the wall, digital imaging will go video. To get a still image users will just pluck the best from a 30fps 10MPixel video file. Conversely think of your digital camera as having 30fps unlimited period bracketing capability.
Thanks to Filip Slinko at Downtown Camera for some key pointers as to where the action is emerging.