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Goodbye Varicam
After mulling things over for the better part of this new year, I have decided it is time to sell my Varicam 27F. In LA where I live and mostly work, 1080P is king and my Sony F900 is working every day. The same can not be said for the Varicam, so I feel it is time to try and remedy this situation.
The camera is very nearly brand new. I bought it from Abel Cine Tech about 16 months ago, but haven’t really done much work with it at all. All of my clients are either movie studios or production companies working for studios – and their mandate is 1080 not 720.
The diagnostics reveal the following facts;
Operation: 22 x 10hr
Drum Running 9 x 10 hr
Threading 80 x 10So one can easily see that this is not an often used camera and for the most part I am the only user. One person who is familiar to all on this list has rented this camera a few times and can vouch for it’s condition if necessary – just contact me off list for that name and contact info.
The camera is listed here on the Cow Classifieds, price is negotiable and includes the EC3 remote paint box.
Bruce Schultz
310-457-9032 -
7 Replies
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Hey Bruce:
I can understand your thoughts. Hollywood is a 1080p town and you just don’t walk on the Sony Lot with a Varicam. When Hollywood comes to me I have to rent a 1080p system. I can’t sell them on the Varicam. But that’s Hollywood. I am willing to bet that Sony will come out with a switchable 720p/1080i multi-format / variable frame-rate camera in the near future. They will have to in order to stay competitive as will all the other camera companies.
dp
Dusty Powers Video, Inc.
Coastal NC
910-520-5240 -
They already have with the 1500 model which is not a camcorder, outputs via the CCU can be 720 or 1080 and the head can do 60P.
I doubt Sony will have a 720P camcorder soon as they have defined 1080 as their HD standard whereas Panasonic has currently set 720P as their HD standard for progressive.
Tony Salgado
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I’m betting that the 2nd generation HD XDCAM is going to be not only an F900 killer, but really hurt Varicam also. This 2/3″ camera will use our existing lenses unlike the 1/2″ version now coming out and will also do variable frame rates at 1080. At that point I see no value in shooting 720 anymore. We all know it’s a bit of a stretch (pun intended) to move from 720P to 1080P but the reverse is quite simple and costs you no image degradation in order to service ABC, Fox, ESPN type 720 clients. All of my existing clients love the idea of the optical disk over the P2 or hard drive solutions promoted out there now. They recoil in horror at the idea of erasing camera original footage like in the P2 workflow, plus the optical disk is as cheap as most SD media and cheaper than HDCAM tape, and is automatically a perfect archive media.
The 2/3″ HD XDCAM will obsolete my F900 in a couple of ways as I see it.
First, it’s selling price (rumour has it in the mid $40K range)will allow 1080P rental prices to drop down into the Varicam and even DigiBeta levels that clients like. Secondly, at even 50mbps data rate – MPEG (being from 2X to 2.5X as efficient as DCT compression used by Varicam and HDCAM)has a theoretical equivalent DCT data rate of at least 100mbps to 125mbps which rivals both DVCPRO100 and HDCAM. The maximum data rate allowed by BluRay double-density is 72mbps, and it’s anybody’s guess where the camera will end up – somewhere between 50 – 70mbps. So the image quality will be at DVCPRO100 level and possibly even HDCAM level, plus with a true 4:2:2 color space, it might end up being the best solution for blue/green screen work over the F900’s 3:1:1 color.
The HD XDCAM NLE feeder decks will be affordable to migrate to. The single layer (1/2″ HD XDCAM) feeders are listing at below $10K.
Finally, the MXF wrapper will put 1080P HDCAM quality footage into your NLE at storage overhead costs below DVCPRO100. Avid and FCP should be announcing at NAB full support for the MXF file format.
I’ve owned cameras so long that changing them out is a natural progression (remember our tube cameras Dusty?). I still upgrade my computer a couple of times a year so it’s not that bad, but still, with all the improvements made now one has to stay as ahead of the curve as possible. Besides, how much more fun can you have than to be shooting with a new and better camera system every few years? That’s why I love being a photographer.
If I’ve portrayed any of this incorrectly, I’m sure someone will step up and correct my errors.
Bruce Schultz
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The only part of the bright future you’ve painted that doesn’t sounds quite right is “MPEG2 is more efficient than DCT”. IMX at 50 mbit/sec is nowhere near DigiBeta at 90 mbit/sec. I wouldn’t say it is worse than DVCPR50 because my IMX mileage is thousands of hours and DVCPRO50 is a couple of dozens but I wouldn’t be surprised if someone said it is.
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Digital Betacam is compressed at a 2:1 level, IMX is compressed at a 3:1 level, hence the data rate difference.
Bruce Schultz
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Also, DVCPRO50 and IMX are absolutely identical compression codecs. Only the wrappers are different.
Bruce Schultz
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Bruce:
Actually, no. IMX is an I frame MPEG 4:2:2 profile@ML CODEC running SD at up to 50Mb/s.
DVCPRO 50 is a 4:2:2 sampled CODEC based upon DV’s feedforward quantization.
Although they share the same bit rate at one particular IMX implementation, they are
actually very different in the way they work.Steve Mahrer (Panasonic)
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