Let's Maintain the Quality!
Cheap, But At What Cost?

Opinion by Russell Stiggants

Did you hear the one about the British film cameraman who came Down Under to shoot a major documentary in the Outback?

Having only shot in the pastel lights of the (European) Northern Hemisphere, he figured his light meter (remember those?) was faulty when it kept giving him a reading of f22. So he compensated, didn't he?  Trouble was, his light meter was right and he took back to England thousands of feet of film badly under-exposed. Guess what? They sent him back to get it right (with a size-9 imprint on his butt!).

The point of the story is that good ol' toy DV cams capture light in something of a similar way – the temptation is always there to overcompensate. I guess the experts could tell us in detail, but DV cheapies only have a very moderate f-stop tolerance to light. Clearly the more expensive the camera, the greater the camera's ability to "see" nuances in tonal range (in other words, the greater their ability to see detail in shadows).

It goes without saying that Mr. Sony or Mr. Panasonic put a heap more tekky things in cameras worth $50k than they do in cameras worth $5k.

.....and we haven't yet discussed the merits of the various tape formats to record the images!

I can't claim to be a cinematographer; rather I am a videographer "made" by the technology of recent years. (Actually I'm a TV journalist who saw opportunities to grasp total "field" control when 3/4" ENG/EFP came along in late 70s/early 80s, and have since wrested total creative control thanks to Betacam SP and Media 100).

But I digress........

Down Under in the eye-popping light of Australia, I find that the Canon XL1 is too saturated with colour -- it appears to me as almost too unreal. I had occasion recently to shoot with it in the quirky light of late afternoon winter sun (the sun shines most of the time here, even when it rains!) and found the greens and some of the yellows oversaturated. Speaking with the Canon people I understand that Canon's "pixel shift" technology might be to blame -- but as a simple producer/shooter, I found the techno-gibberish too difficult to get my head around.

The Sony VX1000 I found to have very much more "natural" light feel and look. I agree with other correspondents that the viewfinder is ordinary, which raises other issues about DV cameras which we won't go into here.

The bottom line is that too many camera operators don't realise -- or haven't the experience to recognise -- that they must shoot within the limitations of DV (at the cheap end). While DV cams’ weight and size gives us unimagined freedom in the way we shoot, that freedom comes at the cost of less sensitivity to light (and a heap of other things, but let's not get into those!). Ironically, we can compensate for light insensitivity (in places where light values turn DV images "muddy") by lighting the scene -- but that creates cost and logistical hassles that no DV videographer wants today. In other words, it might be great shooting with the DV "toycam," but if you need a full lighting kit and crew to make it look good, who's fooling who? In fact, shooting toy DV cam may indeed prove to be false economy.

The bottom line is that the pro cameras are expensive for a reason. They simply give better pictures, and so do the more robust tape formats, BetaSP and above.

That's not to say that DV "toycams" don't have their place, but I worry that people who claim to be doing TV specials and other high-end productions with toycams and getting so-called "great" results are fooling themselves and dumbing down their audiences by lowering the technical quality of television. (Mind you, in NTSC it may not matter as much as it does in PAL, but that's another story.)

What comes first -- the ability to be freed from the traditional weight-versus-flexibility yoke of cinematography/videography -- or the quality of the image?

I guess it may not matter in the months to come as new cameras hit the market. But on the other hand, history shows that Mr. Sony and Mr. Panasonic know exactly where the market is. Basically, if you want a decent picture, you pay a decent price (read "pro"); if you're happy with ordinary, you pay an ordinary price (read DV toycam).

 ....and we haven't yet got into the argument of 16:9!!!

The times certainly are a'changing. But as videographers, let's maintain quality as long as we can.

Russell Stiggants has had his own production company for 20 years after working in Australia and London in television news as a journalist. He's produced a number of successful documentaries for Australian television and produces corporate documentaries for Australian government departments and some of Australia's best known companies. He currently shoots on Betacam SP and edits with Media 100. Reach him at rcsman@chariot.net.au.

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