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89 Comments
- AmazingSteve, on 11/20/2009, -0/+47A LOT of folks are finding out as of late that a fancy camera doesn't help a bad photographer. The other big complaint I hear is the price of accessories especially lenses. A lot of people jumped into DSLR's when the bodies became affordable without realizing that photography is anything but a cheap or easy hobby to pick up. There's an actual learning curve to be navigated and it can be steep at times and like any good art form the key is practice, practice, practice. Not the price of your gear.
It's just not a s easy as:
1.buy fancy camera
2.point it at something
3.???
4.Profit.
Sorry for the rant. Since the propagation of cheap equipment, I get like 50 demo reels a week at my shop from filmmakers, photographers, or editors that are anything but. The industry is swimming neck deep in them. - ubernoggin, on 11/20/2009, -0/+47So true. You cannot suddenly be a great filmmaker because you got a nifty camera. Conversely, a great filmmaker can make something good with a crappy camera.
- suprememilo, on 11/22/2009, -1/+38You may have a fancy camera but you will never have Michael Bay's budget for explosions!
- iPlunder, on 11/22/2009, -0/+26Anyone else click play like 40 times then realize it was a damn picture?
- Thistlejack, on 11/22/2009, -1/+24Agreed to a point. It doesn't mean we should let the RIAA and MPAA write our laws, though.
- stubear, on 11/22/2009, -7/+23And this boys and girls is why intellectual property rights are important. Allowing talented individuals to earn a living off their craft benefits society by providing us with art that might have never seen the light of day. Allowing people to take what they want at will serves no one but the people doing the taking. Digg me down all you want but you know it's true.
- ScottyAnimal, on 11/22/2009, -0/+16As is evident by the "Stunning <insert type of photography>" lists we see on digg. Most shots are mediocre, with a few stellar ones sprinkled in between.
- skidork, on 11/22/2009, -0/+14I feel ya man. My friend became a film major not too long ago, and I feel like he sucks ass. Don't tell him I said that.
- arthursk, on 11/22/2009, -0/+8It's the same with everything, people think they can be graphic designers because they have stock vectors, fruity loops make people think they are musicians, and riced out honda civics make ghetto kids think they're pro drifters... get over it guys.
- tedjar, on 11/22/2009, -0/+7Not to mention that as electronics get cheaper, dslr bodies keep going down, but the price of good glass is going nowhere. Even a cheap body is good enough to to tons of things with, provided you have good glass on it. Try telling that to mobs who use the "Idiot Square" mode and balk at paying twice what their camera did for a lens.
- jugglingjon, on 11/22/2009, -0/+6I don't know if I agree with that, if you're posting your photos to sites like istockphoto, and they're good, they can bring in some decent income. The freelance photo market has changed, that is for sure.
- whatupdoc18, on 11/22/2009, -0/+6What lenses do you have though? What if you used a point and shoot- would you be having the same success? Just playing devil's advocate, I agree that it's not ALL the tools, but they're pretty crucial.
- Dereliction, on 11/22/2009, -2/+7*****. Intellectual property rights only impose limitations on consumption in the market place. If they were removed the market would stabilize to a new, market-determined equilibrium and content producers would be rewarded according to the interest of the market. Intellectual property rights are merely duration-marked monopolies and monopolies are rarely (if ever) good for the consumer or the market as a whole.
In response to the artificial limitations granted by intellectual property 'rights' the market has responded--like any market does when barriers are imposed upon it--by leaning more and more heavily "black". It is simply a natural response and something utterly expected in these sort of conditions.
Worse, these effective monopolies stifle innovation in the marketplace. If intellectual property rights were removed from the market we would see an explosion in content alongside a much lower price point for consumers, spurring massive increases in demand (and later, higher and higher valuations for content that is produced and of quality).
Content producers--or rather those who traditionally "publish" that content--have a deeply vested interest in not seeing this happen, for (hopefully) obvious reasons. It may not appear so at first glance but actual content producers would benefit tremendously from a release of intellectual property rights, not the other way around. What they need is an education in economics, not a politician and a publisher's lobbyist to help them earn their way. - bieber, on 11/22/2009, -1/+6I'm going to be shooting a short film soon using the 5D Mark II as one of my cameras. Don't be mistaken, the availability of a full-frame HD video camera with interchangeable lenses for that price is absolutely huge. The cheapest digital camera that can compare to that is the Red One, for a much, much higher price tag. The more expensive small-sensor digital camcorders just can't achieve the kind of depth of field and low-light ability that you can get with this thing.
At the same time, of course, that's pointless if you don't know how to work with it. It's also worth noting that these video DSLRs are not video cameras, and they lack pretty seriously in the sound recording and live output departments, among other things (which is why the 5D Mark II won't be the _only_ camera I shoot with). If you take one out of the box and try to work it like it's a cheap consumer camcorder, you're going to get video that looks like it came out of a cheap consumer camcorder. So no, it won't make you into a filmmaker. It will, however, make it significantly easier to produce a good-looking film if you have the talent but not the $$. - wisewaif, on 11/22/2009, -1/+6Having just produced a film on the D5 Mark II, for my submission for Werner Herzog's Rogue Film School, I totally empathize with what the article is talking about.
But the thing is, where before the argument was that you had to spend $25,000 on a RED, now you can get pretty amazing footage on a camera like the D5 for a fraction of the cost. It saved me a ton of cash to not have to rent a RED kit at $800 a day.
I was extremely skeptical of using a D5, but after doing our location work with it, I was blown away. It's not for every use, and there are problems with focus depth of field issues and zoom, but if you know how to control it, it's an amazing piece of technology that serves the budget and the story.
But the article is right in stating the obvious, cameras will not make up for a ***** story, ***** sound, or ***** acting. You could make a film from the damn iPhone 3GS if you had a compelling enough story, but it just makes it where independent producers like myself can compete in a way that we haven't been able to before. Call me crazy, but I still believe that people like beautiful images that serve a story. The new crop of DSLR cameras allow for no compromise in what I want to put on screen.
But I do agree with the above. We recorded our sound separately. Canon needs to get off their ass on providing a better audio solution. - grumpyrain, on 11/22/2009, -0/+4So true losers. At least I am an awesome chef; you should see my pots and pans.
- kalvinb, on 11/22/2009, -1/+5If you can't hold a camera steady to tape a family picnic no one is going to count on you to get the shot when millions of dollars are on the line.
- chockster, on 11/22/2009, -3/+7All that says to me is that you don't know photography.
- ScottyAnimal, on 11/22/2009, -0/+4I am aware of how photography works. My point being these no name blogs create these lists and push these "amazing images" when half of them don't look as good as shots I had taken in HS on a regular SLR.
Digital photography makes the photographer lazy. I've seen it in myself. My shot selection didn't become as complicated because I could look and delete at a moments notice. With film I had 27 shots. If I didn't want to be wasting my own time I would take into account every aspect before opening the shutter. - RyeBrye, on 11/22/2009, -0/+4This article totally ignores the 7D... which is baffling considering it's a pretty damn good video DSLR.
- kalvinb, on 11/22/2009, -0/+4If you were to see all the pictures taken by a pro you'd see the same thing. The difference between a pro and an amateur is that the pro knows the difference so you don't get to see the hundreds of rejected shots. A pro doesn't try to peddle their mediocre shots as masterpieces.
- bigbird, on 11/22/2009, -0/+3Stock vectors a big part of graphic design now, why spend 2 hours drawing something when you can buy and modify it to your needs for 5 bucks? That's simple economics. (coming from a person who does graphic design as a job and has a business degree.)
- Zippo, on 11/22/2009, -0/+3Sure, so long as you don't need to edit it. Yes, obviously you can edit film, but it's not nearly as easy.
Film is great and all that, but if you want to pop the photo into Photoshop afterwards, you're going to need to scan it in - and lose quality in the process.
I'll take a high-end DSLR and RAW format any day. - kalvinb, on 11/22/2009, -0/+3Not everyone can be an artist just because paint is cheap.
Whatever you're doing as a hobby you have to focus on what you're trying to demonstrate. If you want to be a director then focus on framing shots, camera position, camera movement, etc. It doesn't matter that the quality of the image isn't professional, it's where the camera is looking that proves your ability.
If you want to be a writer then demonstrate your ability to write good dialog. If you want to be an actor then practice saying lines. There are no shortage of plays out there you can test your chops out with.
If you want to be a photographer then put in the legwork to go to interesting places and get the shot. If you're good people will notice that the only complaint they have is the limited clarity of the image and they'll give you a better camera and tell you to keep doing what you're doing.
Work with what you have and build up from there. At some point people will recognize that the only thing missing is better equipment and pay you to use it. - jrm125, on 11/22/2009, -4/+7If anything, a good camera makes a bad photographer stand out even more.
- tburke261, on 11/22/2009, -1/+4Still been shooting on the same Nikon D70 with different lenses for the last 4 years. Freelance for newspapers, personal work and a small wedding business. It's not the tools, folks.
- maildave, on 11/22/2009, -0/+3This is a great point. Glass is expensive. Even the stock lens is 24-105 f4 and costs around $1000. It's pretty slow, so it tosses aside a lot of the DOF you get from having a 'wide open' lens AND a lot of the low-light awesomeness.
I just bought the 5D body alone, and supplemented it with a 20, 50, and 85mm f1.8 set of primes. Got my cinema set for under a grand. Not TOO bad, and really sharp around f2.2. - inactive, on 11/22/2009, -0/+3the 5d is not intended for audio. canon makes cameras with xlr inputs, buy those.
- edwartica, on 11/22/2009, -0/+3Yeah.........common sense.
- ripple123, on 11/22/2009, -0/+3they dont mind complicated plots. take snatch and lock stock for instance. they just dont want the endless, boring, psychobabble plots that some indie films pass off as entertaining. the general public is quite a good judge of novelty. not some wanky psuedo-intellectual indie film maker.
- RyeBrye, on 11/22/2009, -0/+3Umm.. No. Your footage will look WORSE than a cheap consumer camcorder because even a cheap consumer camcorder will do autofocus while it is shooting and the DSLRs wont.
Most people are using at least an H4N for audio recording and piping the headphone jack of it to the camera for reference audio to sync with later. - BossKey, on 11/22/2009, -0/+2@DeathToaster, there are two specific reasons.
1) A lot of video cameras have small sensors with permanently attached zoom lenses, both of which make it hard to replicate cinematic depth of field. Digital SLRs have larger sensors and access to interchangeable lenses, both of which provide that richer look and far more flexibility that provides a visual vocabulary that you can usually only attain by spending tens of thousands of dollars more for a high-end, big-sensor, interchangeable-lens video or film movie camera.
2) A lot of video cameras suck pretty bad in low light. Digital SLR sensors have advanced pretty rapidly in this area, allowing reasonably clean images at ISO 1600 and up. If you watch the DSLR demo videos referenced in the article, what is not apparent to the layman is how *little* supplemental light sources were used. A normal video production would require acquiring and setting up an arsenal of supplemental lights to get an image to show up on the camera properly. These new highly sensitive DSLR sensors have allowed the demo productions to be shot in available light...at night! That might not mean much to you and me, but seriously, it makes the jaws of some pros drop to the floor. For a budget filmmaker, being nearly free of an array of lights and power sources greatly simplifies logistics...and budget.
All the focus on DSLR video is on the image quality, low light capability, and the flexibility you get at the price point of the body. Those do amaze. But the ways in which a DSLR falls short for video are also very real. The question for a filmmaker is whether shoring up the weak points of shooting with a DSLR will be worth it given the goals of their specific production's requirements, or whether it would be better to shoot with the usual video equipment and not get the visual benefits of the DSLR. The last option is to spec for the best of all worlds but pay through the nose for it (i.e. a lot more than a DSLR body costs). - inactive, on 11/22/2009, -1/+3More people are reading now than ever before it seems. Just because they are not reading what you may consider to be of good literature does not mean that they are not reading, people are changing their ways of living as life goes on, the principles of past years will differ. Same thing with standards, they are just changing, because you can not see that does not mean that there are no standards.
Who are you to tell people how they should live their lives? If someone only wants to wear a snuggie and watch explosions until the day they die, they should be able to and not have people like you criticize them. Life is in the eye of the beholder, think of every side of the issue you are going to present before you present it. Do not judge people based on your life experiences. - jasmus, on 11/22/2009, -1/+3I shoot with film SLR's, not out of some elitist snobbery, but purely because an old Minolta SLR with manual focus lenses costs so little. It makes me think about what I'm shooting, and it makes me aware of how the camera is working. I find the process of developing and scanning a pain in the ass, but when I can get setup with great equipment so cheap, I'm willing to accept I'll have to put more time into it.
- Cyberdactyl, on 11/22/2009, -0/+2Yes, the editor should have known better.
- 68024, on 11/22/2009, -0/+2What's a D5?
- bieber, on 11/22/2009, -0/+2The DSLRs are really exceptionally bad, though. You have no balanced input, and there's no way to disable the automatic gain control. Needless to say, I'll be running my audio into a different camera.
- soomprimal, on 11/22/2009, -0/+2Just to make sure you don't go around repeating that the the 5D is comparable to the RedOne, here's some clarification:
The RedOne is not even in the same league as DSLR video cameras. The maximum resolution of a RedOne is 4K which is comparable to 35mm film, that's a HUGE difference when compared to HDTV 1080p. (By about 4 times the resolution.) Also, the Red sans lenses goes for $18,000 and is considered a professional camera, not prosumer.
There are other prosumer level HD cameras that are better comparisons AND much cheaper, like the sony XDCAM or even the Panasonic HVX. (Yes more expensive but quality and workflow is comparable.) - rheaume, on 11/22/2009, -0/+2Autofocus... and film? Wtf are you on man
Films are shot with manual focus cameras, preplaned moves, focus pulls, tape marks on the floors.
He should worry more about harnessing the 5d light gathering - grumpyrain, on 11/22/2009, -0/+2You can not do weddings with a P&S; not from a technology standpoint but turn up as a professional with a coolpix and people won't believe you are serious.
The D70 is an excellent camera even for an entry level DSLR. (I have one myself). It is not just the tool, but the tool is important. The D70 gives access to shutter, aperture, white balance, ISO, flash compensation, metering mode WITHOUT entering the menu. That means you can setup from one shot to the next significantly quicker. The coolpix may well have the same capabilities, but if you have to cycle through 5 menus to change from one shot to the next, it becomes infeasible to shoot on anything but auto mode.
My wife has a lumix which takes surprisingly good pictures for a simple P&S, but there are some shots I have taken that would have been impossible on the lumix. (on the other hand, there are occasions where the D70 remained at home because it was too bulky). - BossKey, on 11/22/2009, -0/+2@RyeBrye - I just got a 7D which DOES do autofocus on video. And you know what? Everybody tells you not to. The Canon manual tells you not to. I tried it, and I won't either. The autofocus will hunt in the middle of your shot, and it doesn't look good. Real filmmakers do manual focus pulls...just like rheume posted.
- ARTLUKM, on 11/22/2009, -0/+1A high end DSLR does not shoot video in RAW. Red does though.
- Dereliction, on 12/02/2009, -0/+1Actually, I have a quite deep education and direct experience in economics and finance. In 88' I began work as an Investment banker before transitioning into a position as CTO for a company developing anti-fraud and back-end processing systems for banks. After leaving there I became a professional day trader for almost a decade before retiring. During that time I've always taken a deep interest in economic theory and philosophy and, due to my direct experiences, find Agorism to be the most descriptive stance regarding economics.
In all, I'd say I have a much deeper and broader knowledge related to economics than the vast majority of people, likely including yourself. I don't say that to brag but to point out how sorely your assumptions can backfire.
The thing you seem to ignore is the fact that many content producers erroneously benefit from copyright law so that the idea of utilizing a creative common license is counter to their bottom line--the ability to maintain monopolistic like control over a property is certainly valuable, even if artificial from the point of view of the marketplace.
Creative common licenses are actually a valuable weapon against companies who maintain these intellectual monopolies, helping to break them down and open the market into its more desired stance--one without the impositions of copyright law which drastically inflates the value of a product that has an infinite supply. This is why some organizations (and even companies) have fallen to use of creative commons in order to better combat companies who have had literal strangleholds, due to copyright law, in various parts of the market. Microsoft Office vs. Open Office is one example, naturally. - BossKey, on 11/22/2009, -0/+1I used to think that way, but at $10 a roll for color film plus drugstore-level processing, your ongoing consumables expenses outrun the cost of a good digital SLR+lens pretty quickly. A little less if you shoot black and white and process your own, but running a darkroom isn't exactly free either.
- ARTLUKM, on 11/22/2009, -0/+1Hope you like jello. Look into the 1D for an SLR that can actually shoot video.
- Katana, on 11/22/2009, -0/+1Very true, a good set of paints, brushes and canvas may make painting a little easier, but doesn't help if you can't paint. Same with photos, Ansel Adams is considered one of the best photographers of all time, yet his work is over 70 years old, you'd think with 70+ years of camera technology everyone would be master photographers at this point in time, but unless you can compose a photo an expensive camera won't do anything.
- paulvq, on 11/26/2009, -0/+1That's because he's wasting his time and talent in film school.
I say that as someone who spent a year in film school. - BossKey, on 11/22/2009, -0/+1We all know that to take a certain level of photograph, you need the tools and the skills...both. No one can realistically say "it isn't the tools" any more than they can say "it isn't the skills." Some photographs require specific tools and capabilities that will affect which equipment you choose, whether it's a long lens, a fast lens, clean images at high ISO, an accurate tracking autofocus, controls that you don't have to adjust inside a deep menu, etc.
If you say the tools don't matter for your photography, what that really means is that you did a great job picking your tools from the beginning, never have to think about them, and that your *specific* types of photography are not affected by the latest advances which *do* affect other people. - adminmatt, on 11/22/2009, -1/+2this is what infuriates me about this generation of "photographers." All too often you see a bunch of spoiled little rich kids buying up the most expensive cameras they can with amazing looking results. not because they actually have any skill; they bought it.
/rant -
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