David Knaggs
August 3rd, 2011, 05:16 AM
Forgive my lack of thorough research, but I was asked a question by an acquaintance and don't have time to really check it out for him, so I thought I'd just rattle off my thoughts here and perhaps anybody who knows of better, newer options might feel free to chime in.
From his email:
"I want to get a decent HD video camera for capturing footage on blue/green screens, good enough to make music video clips to edit in Final Cut pro. I just wanted to know what cameras you would recommend... we are on a budget but we want to get the right product and there are so many to choose from.
Could you recommend a few cameras that would suit, keeping price in mind Sony, JVC, etc..."
My immediate thoughts were:
Sony PMW-EX1R with an Atomos Ninja recording to ProRes 422.
A Panasonic AF100 with a Ninja (or would it need a Ninja if the Panasonic codec is good enough for greenscreen work? Although I vaguely recall that the AF100 might not actually use the DVCProHD codec, for example).
A Sony FS100 with a Ninja (ProRes 422).
I wouldn't think that a video DSLR would be suitable for greenscreen work due to the moire and aliasing issues caused by the line skipping (despite the attractive pricing of $850 for a Rebel T3i). Although I was wondering if this new 3X internal zoom feature (or whatever it's called) on the T3i is supposed to use a smaller part of the sensor and might not use line skipping???? But I think I read somewhere that Canon also put a watermark or something on a corner of the HDMI output from their DSLRs which will ruin the purity of any images captured to a Ninja anyway. So, unless someone has had a positive experience using greenscreen footage from a video DSLR, I don't think I could recommend one.
I don't know if the JVC HM100 would be any good for that kind of work or if any of the newer, smaller Panasonic or Canon video cameras could give a good result.
I rarely shoot greenscreen, so my thoughts could be way, way off with all of this. Recommendations from those who are actually getting good greenscreen results with less expensive HD cameras would be most welcome.
Thanks.
From his email:
"I want to get a decent HD video camera for capturing footage on blue/green screens, good enough to make music video clips to edit in Final Cut pro. I just wanted to know what cameras you would recommend... we are on a budget but we want to get the right product and there are so many to choose from.
Could you recommend a few cameras that would suit, keeping price in mind Sony, JVC, etc..."
My immediate thoughts were:
Sony PMW-EX1R with an Atomos Ninja recording to ProRes 422.
A Panasonic AF100 with a Ninja (or would it need a Ninja if the Panasonic codec is good enough for greenscreen work? Although I vaguely recall that the AF100 might not actually use the DVCProHD codec, for example).
A Sony FS100 with a Ninja (ProRes 422).
I wouldn't think that a video DSLR would be suitable for greenscreen work due to the moire and aliasing issues caused by the line skipping (despite the attractive pricing of $850 for a Rebel T3i). Although I was wondering if this new 3X internal zoom feature (or whatever it's called) on the T3i is supposed to use a smaller part of the sensor and might not use line skipping???? But I think I read somewhere that Canon also put a watermark or something on a corner of the HDMI output from their DSLRs which will ruin the purity of any images captured to a Ninja anyway. So, unless someone has had a positive experience using greenscreen footage from a video DSLR, I don't think I could recommend one.
I don't know if the JVC HM100 would be any good for that kind of work or if any of the newer, smaller Panasonic or Canon video cameras could give a good result.
I rarely shoot greenscreen, so my thoughts could be way, way off with all of this. Recommendations from those who are actually getting good greenscreen results with less expensive HD cameras would be most welcome.
Thanks.