Rai & Markus' "Drake" HD camera

[Jason Rodriguez]

BTW, you can find people in the U.S. for cheap too, just don't expect them to be really good or Union members (Local600).

If they are people you know though, sometimes you can get good rates that way also, but again, you can't expect that level of pay all the time, expecially when they're used to getting paid four times that amount or more for other stuff.

[Joshua Starnes]

Originally Posted by Juan M. M. Fiebelkorn

Wow, that should be the reason why Spike Lee was shooting a BMW comercial this past Saturday just 2 blocks from here!!! :0
Imagine Lee shooting Buenos Aires to make it look like New York!!
Amazing, isn't it?

These days you get a full HDCAM (F900) for less than 2K here.
A DP goes for u$ 1333 per week for a feature length film (usually 6 to 8 weeks) or u$ 350 per day if shooting a commercial.
DP is one of the highest salaries here.
Another example. Catering service is around u$ 8.30 to u$ 16 per day per person.

That's it, if I ever get a chance to make a studio film, I'm shooting it in Buenos Aires.

[Michael Maier]

Shooting Buenos Aires for N.Y? That must be interesting. Buenos Aires looks nothing like NYC. If he wanted to shoot in South America for NYC, he should maybe have shot in Sao Paulo. But I guess maybe the prices were really what attracted him :) You never know.
But regardless, Buenos Aires is a lovely city.

[Juan M. M. Fiebelkorn]

Well, if you know Buenos Aires, for sure you know "Obelisco" area.
That area can look really like NY when on film.You would be amazed by how many actual commercials for USA and Europe are being shot here that way.
The thing is you can't never tell if it is shot here or N.Y. :)

BTW those prices are for "top quality" crew.
Also Brazil prices are quite simillar.Big differences are:
B.A. is quite different to any Brazilian City and viceversa.
You have a wider selection of actors and extras here than in Brazil.
More than 90% of people here is European white type.So that makes the castings quite easy.

[Michael Maier]

Yeah, sure know the place you are talking about. It's the square where they have this mini Washington Monument. It's the main square isn't it?
I guess you might be right. If they are mainly tight shots, it could pass as "NYish". But you guys seem to have great deals on gear and labor down there now. I would imagine that with a 200-300k budget (US dollars) you could make a great HD feature down there. Is it easy to rent american cars there too? Any price idea? That would be a must when trying to pass as NYC. Lots of yellow Crown Victoria cabs and american cars, buses and some N.Y.P.D cruisers.

[Juan M. M. Fiebelkorn]

Wow.

It has always been cheap in fact.If anyone is as old as me, he should remember the "not so good" "Highlander 2". It was shot here many,many years ago.

A normal feature length movie goes like this:
Normal movie :Around $120K
Higher production movie:170-180K
Big budget (means cars exploding and the like ;):350K-650K
Astronomical: $ 1 million.With that I guess you can make miracles..

The "Obelisco" has nothing to be with a main square or the like.It is just a monument.
The main place is "Plaza de Mayo".You can see it in "Evita".
I guess it could be quite dificult to get american cars.
95 percent of cars are European.Renault, Peugeot,Volkswagen,Audi,Alfa Romeo,Rover,Fiat,Citroën,Seat.Ford and Chevrolet are also European style.
I guess there is some place which has several yellow cabs, but I don't know where is it or how expensive it could be.I just know 3 or 4 months ago a saw a couple of them while seeing a commercial shooting.
Hope this helps.
If anybody here needs more info just email me and I'try helping you to get in contact to anyone renting equipment or giving production services :)

[Michael Maier]

WOW you say?

I should say WOW to those prices. Awesome. Wish was like that over here :)

I see, I think I got confused with the main square. It's been a good 10 years since I been there.

If you can't rent american cars, how's Spike doing to make the city look like NYC? It sure would help a lot.

[Joshua Starnes]

Originally Posted by Juan M. M. Fiebelkorn

Wow.

It has always been cheap in fact.If anyone is as old as me, he should remember the "not so good" "Highlander 2". It was shot here many,many years ago.

I do remember that, I also remember that the movie got shut down before it was finished being shot (one of the reasons it was so bad) because it was over schedule and over budget.

Makes me wonder just what in the hell they were spending the money on.

[Juan M. M. Fiebelkorn]

Well, I guess they chosed a "bad" or "not so good" producer.
You know, if you go to a foreign country without having some previous knowledge about who you are working with, anything can happen.
I know one guy, who has a really bad reputation, who became rich just selling them old cars like Ford Falcon models.
I also know they wanted far more than what was posible with that money.I guess someone thought things were cheaper than what they really were.
I don't know why but foreign people usually think "everything" is cheaper here.
For example, if you pay $ 500 for a 1,000 feet can in USA it is for sure that it will cost more here.
Same happens if you want an american car that isn't made here.
People need to understand that the cheap things are the ones made here.If it is imported it won't be cheap.
End of Story: You need some people with Spanish language knowledge, make them check every price with every place, and then ask for references about the local people you are working with.
Understood?
Europeans do it always that way and it works for them.
hope this helps.

[Levan Bakhia]

I read throu all of the thread, it was very interesting. Thou I still have some questions, if anyone can unswer. I realy like to quality of the samples form the site, it look like film and camera seems to do well. But, how come nobody mentions the frame rate? I mean, I think it is a major disadvantage not to have higher frame rate capture possibility, of course I don't mean like those super high speed CMOS cameras that shoot at thousands of frames per second, but to have at least 60fps would be nice, for some slow motion effects.

Also I wonder if I understood it right, does this camera has an option to upgrade the sensor in future when newer sensors will be available?

I plan to purchase the camera, as soon as it will be available, but I really would like it to have a higher frame rate, this is way I hope maybe later with a better sensor I could have that upgrade.

I am not engineer, so I hope you don't get bored, if I write some unprofessional statements above :*)

Also can somebody explain the case with 8bit and 10bit thing. I didn't get it well. There was somebody critisizing the camera in this thread, for it limit to 8bit. I mean, I like the final images, and all the depth and the look, but I wonder how flexible will I be when I will color correct my image in post. Does 8bit mean I will not have enough color data for that?

Please be kind, anyone, explain this matter, so that I could make my final decision. I need to buy a camera as soon as possible for my project.

AND NICE TO MEET EVERYONE :*)

[Steve Nordhauser]

Levan:
I will try to address your questions. First, yes there are cameras that will run much faster. The Altasens 3562 can do 1920x1080@60fps and 720p at 120fps. Speed costs money so you don't go faster than you need to. The interface between the camera and capture costs more, the system design is more difficult and the RAID storage goes up. Read about Obin's exploits in trying to get 1080p @24fps recorded without issues to understand why people don't go to 150Mpix/sec data rates without good reason.

When you say upgradable sensors, you really mean camera head since you need the associated timing control, A/D, gain stages and interface to make a camera head and the design of each is unique. I believe that this has come up a few times. It is a good goal. You need a point of continuity- probably the interface to the camera head - and approximately the same data rates to keep the rest of the system the same.

8/10 bits. The signal captured by the sensing site on the sensor is analog - continuously varying voltage. To create a digital value, you must go through an Analog to Digital converter (A/D). While you can set the range of the A/D to cover the full signal at any number of bits, the bits determine how many steps there are from black to white. Think of a really bad setup - 2 bits - so you get four combinations or steps. No matter what you do afterwards to smooth those steps so the image doesn't look ....steppy, you can't get more information beyond what is captured at the A/D. More is better. It is more complicated once you talk about log/linear and compression, but I'll wait until you digest this and let you ask.

Pleased to meet you too. It is an adventure here.

Edited:

Originally Posted by Levan Bakhia

But, how come nobody mentions the frame rate? I mean, I think it is a major disadvantage not to have higher frame rate capture possibility, of course I don't mean like those super high speed CMOS cameras that shoot at thousands of frames per second, but to have at least 60fps would be nice, for some slow motion effects.

Also I wonder if I understood it right, does this camera has an option to upgrade the sensor in future when newer sensors will be available?

Also can somebody explain the case with 8bit and 10bit thing.

AND NICE TO MEET EVERYONE :*)

[Levan Bakhia]

Thank you steve,

It is always like this, but having unswers to some question must lead to new questions. First of all, I know about Altasens camera, but I am not technician, on their web site I only see the specifications that might or might not be uderstandable for me. I would like to see the actual footage from the camera. What I do as for my business I shoot TV commercials, and I work on 35mm film. If you go to www.sarke.ge/clips you will be able to download my works. ( there was some problem with the server, so maybe not today ) Working on 35mm is a lot of cost, and that is not a new to you, so what I am trying to do repace it with something else. My current workflow is, I shoot on film, I develope, I do telecine and color correction on those expensive equipment, transfer it to SD and edit the commercial. I do own my editing hardware (final cut) I plan to buy FinalTouch HD for color finishing, and I would like to have a nice camera, to have a film like image, with a good DOF and enough color information and resolution to color correct my images with my FinalTouch. So the missing component at this moment is a camera, and I have a nice budget for it, around 25K. (of course less is always better :*) ) Now, problem is I don't have enough technical knowledge to assume wich camera is better just by reading the specs. With DRAKE camera I saw samples and I liked it. I went to NAB this year in hope to find something appropriate for me, I was also hoping to see KINETTA, but the only thing there I found was a DVX-100 upgraded by reel-stream. They showed me footage, the image looked nice but since it was using the standard lenses of DVX-100 it was FLAT. But then they refered me to P+S technics. Well the whole package would seem nice, but I am not sure if it was the best. After return, I learned about DRAKE from the thread. I also saw all this sumix and altasens and other cameras, but none of them have a nice site like DRAKE, the site that would explain everything, using some samples. At this moment I am defined to buy DRAKE system, but the only thing that concerns me is this 8bit and low fps problem.

Now this leads to a question, how about Altasens, how can it be compared to DRAKE in terms of actual picture quality? The most important thing for me is to have a flexibility in post color correction, because most of my work is beautiful for its beutiful colors, and I don't want to have the problem of setting the color on the stage while I shot, I want to think about it later. (like I do with film). So I need to have enough color info for that. I am not sure if the 8bit thing has to deal with it, but is seems that is does. (dynamic range???). Of course the DOF is another thing that is MUST for me. My final product is SD, and I not concerned with the final resolution, but I care for film look, and I think the higher the resolution of the footage, more flexible I will be in color correction process.

What does Altasens camera record to? Is it hard drive or what? How can I then transfer the image to my Macintosh?

Now about 8 bit vs 10 bit thing, this is what I udnerstood: sensor itself may capture (sense) the image and responds to it with different voltage, if you just think of it it could be more than even 10 bit, then this voltage has to be translated to digits, so that it can be recored as a pixel information. The higher the bits, more it differentiates between voltages. Every pixel, has its individual digital record, and it is either 8bit or 10bit or it could be 12bit or more. Now what is dynamic range?! I could understand it as a ratio of the lowest and the highest voltages a sensor can read, and thus bits are steps between them? more bits means more steps. I am right?

Now that is maximum I could get, I am totaly confused with this "log/linear" thing. But I know what compression is and I also understand what 4:4:4 or 4:2:2 means.

"A 10bit lookup table and a 8bit data stream are recorded in real time" <-- now this is from DRAKE site, what does it mean?

By the way, good news is that final version of DRAKE will have 10bit and 12bit options for recording.

I am all up to DRAKE, the only thing is fps.

Now I looked up at all the text and I have written a huge post, I hope nobody gets mad at me :*)

[Rob Lohman]

the number bits IS the dynamic range (in the digital world). So 10 bits is a
larger dynamic range than 8 bits.

Log encoding is a way to encode more bits into less bits. In this case 10 bits
get scaled into 8 bits, as I understand it some information will/could be lost in
this transformation (but this should be kept to a minimum). The most important
thing is that you keep your dynamic range (you don't just chop bits off).

The lookup table basically tells how to transform the 8 bit signal back into
10 (or how many) bits.

[Steve Nordhauser]

I almost agree with this. The dynamic range is the span from bright to dark that you can resolve. You have two things ready to bite (byte?) you. First, camera noise may render some of the bits unusable - lost in noise regardless of the A/D bit count. Second is the full well capacity of the sensor. For a low noise sensor, a deeper well means that the range of bright to dark can be greater, so more bits can be used to acquire the pixel value.

Log encoding is changing that linear description of the signal and converting it to a non-linear response - usually mimicing the response of the eye. This lets you use more steps to describe brightnesses that the eye is sensitive to. If done correctly, you can use this to decrease the number of bits per pixel without losing steps in the areas of brightness that are important. Rob is right - this is the way to decrease the number of bits used - truncation is evil.

The lookup table is just a map - if this value comes in, put this value out.

Originally Posted by Rob Lohman

the number bits IS the dynamic range (in the digital world). So 10 bits is a
larger dynamic range than 8 bits.

Log encoding is a way to encode more bits into less bits. In this case 10 bits
get scaled into 8 bits, as I understand it some information will/could be lost in
this transformation (but this should be kept to a minimum). The most important
thing is that you keep your dynamic range (you don't just chop bits off).

The lookup table basically tells how to transform the 8 bit signal back into
10 (or how many) bits.

[Levan Bakhia]

Rob, Steve, thanks a lot for your time. It is great that this kind of forum exist and one can get info and support from others.

Now I want to discuss the next thing: it's CMOS vs CCD in terms of bits. Like when you say 8bits on CCD sensor, it turns to 24bits since it there are 3 CCD, 8bit for each color, total of 24. When we are talking about CMOS 8bits does this also mean that there are 8bits for each color (RGB), I got confused because CMOS is a single chip. Now, if it is only 8 bits vs 24 bit, there should be a lot of difference between those two images, but there is not. Even I definately would say that CMOS images look much more appealing than CCDs. But how come 24bis vs 8bit is not a better image? but, then I get confused, there is no way CCD can be better, because then ARRI wouldn't choose CMOS in their D-20. On NAB I saw some footage of this camera and it was amazing, I think only high class professionals would differentiate it from film.

Also one more question, I didn't completely understood the log/liner bits, but I did get the fact that using log, would give us more details with lower bits. So, is DRAKE using log? I mean is it 8bit log?

Thats it,
I hope answers to my questions will aslo be usefull for other readers of this forum. :*)