Varicam vs Cinealta: 2 years on.

Sredwine asked in response to an old post on the Varicam vs the CineAlta:

Did you decide on varicam or cinealta? I am in the same decision making process at the moment as well, love to hear how you made up your mind -

The short answer is that we didn't end up doing the clip. It was a mutual agreement that we didn't have the money to do it justice.... meaning spending money on all the bits we'd stick in front of the lens. Y'know, the stuff the audience watches.

With two years hindsight, its easy to see where I went wrong: Your Camera Does Not Matter*.

Most low budget projects fail visually because of their lucklustre art direction, uninspired lighting, and confused converage. I'd take well art directed & well lit mini-DV over badly executed HD... and y'know what? If you've made the choice to work with MiniDV or HDV, then I reckon you're going to work harder to make those images pop cause you ain't got anywhere to hide.

Assuming, however, you got your technique down:

I'd shoot Varicam. You gotta work it hard in the camera cause the image falls down surprisingly easily. But y'know, you can work off firewire, and the cinegamma is nice, and being able to over/undercrank is damn useful.

Res is res is res.

Only use the cinealta if you can bring it in uncompressed at full frame. Otherwise you're just butchering the image.

*Which is not strictly true. Your camera matters the more your realise how little it matters and the more you understand why it matters. Which is all paradoxical but I'm not really interested in being sycophantic anymore. See also Ken Rockwell talking about this same issue with stills photography.

I hold this true of the Red camera too. Its going to be great for those who are ready to take the leap into high quality image quality. Everyone else is going to produce badly lit, badly framed, badly designed, high res crap.