[Charles Lorch]

The key is your set-up as the last post said. Literally it’s the setting titled “set-up”. Don’t know exactly what deck, etc. you’re working with, but check out this article.
https://www.bobhudson.com/Setup/

[Charles Lorch]

The real problem I see isn’t getting away from beta, but rather the idea of getting away from the D50 head. That’s an excellent camera, and with the kind of money you’re talking it’s not a reality to talk about anything better, ie. digibeta,dvcpro50, or HD. Those are all better as far as the camera itself and the format as a whole, but the price shows it. One way to “go digital” might be to change format without changing cameras. The D50 with a DSR1 DVCam back might be a nice way to go. If you got rid of the beta back (I’m guessing a BVV3)you could, money wise, go lateraly to a DSR1, and then get the new camera mated with a DSR1, and have two matching cameras without putting $ into beta. The same lateral $ move could be made into a quality DVCam deck with a component or perhaps SDI card to work in uncompressed. A reluctance to put $ into beta is what helped us make the decision to spend more and get an SDX900 and a 930 deck. Of course if you’re working in broadcast you’ll still need a beta deck in house. You could even get a DVCPro50 deck to play back your DVCam footage and be able to master to 50. I don’t know if that would be worth the extra $ for the deck for you, but it would be nice.

[Charles Lorch]

I looked long and hard at all of the flourescent options I could find at NAB this year after having only worked with Kinos. I didn’t see anything that made me think there was a better option based on price and features. I particularly lean towards the Kino VE systems with the seperate ballast from the lamp. The light weight makes it great for flying the lamp where needed. No need for a dimmer since you can simply turn off single bulbs to bring things down. If you’re not in a huge rush I say keep your eye on E-bay for fresnels and open faces. I picked up an ArriLite kit at a steal of a price. 3 Arrilite 1K open face, barn doors, 3 single and 3 half scrims, 3 Arri stands, Case, 5 600w lamps, 7 1K lamps and some gels and diffusion for $700 with shipping. In excellent shape! I already put together an Arri kit with 650, 300, and 150/200’s so it added nicely to my “arsenal”. I did have a bad experience with a 4 foot single Kino I got via E-Bay though. The ballast has issues and isn’t worth the fix. Also check B&H’s used lighting. I got my 650 and two 300’s at a greatly reduced rate. Once again it’s about having the time and keeping looking.
Good luck.
Anyone want to buy a 4 foot single Kino?

[Charles Lorch]

I think that there’s alot of good info in all of these threads for your original questions, and here’s my breakdown of them.
If you’re dropping frames at three layers, then get drives. We have a dual 2gig G5 running FCP5 with 1 terabite of internal SATA drives and works great with uncompressed via an AJA IO.
You say “D50 betacam in a studio” but since that’s a two piece camera I’m going to make the assumption that you have an SP back on the camera and are capturing from tape (based on your posts correct me if I’m wrong). That being the case I think the only cameras that I would consider going with are another D50, a BVW series head like the BVW550, or the D50’s predecessor the D35. You could even stretch back to the D30, but I’ve seen it in the studio next to a D35 and a BVW550 and there is a noticable decline.
If you’re not already working with all of your footage in an uncompressed workflo then get the drives and start. Unless you’re just doing cuts you’ll see a huge difference.
Any change in format (firestore aside, and IMHO not really a consideration anyways) would require purchasing another deck and drive the costs right back up.
Someone commented that DigiBeta was the only digital format for consideration, but DVCPro50 is nose to nose from my knowledge and experience. 50meg and 4:2:2 color. I shoot with an SDX900 and love it. We also have a Media100 844x and have had great success with keying and compositing, but once again uncompressed and a 2.5 terabite X-Serve to fit it all.
It isn’t cheap to do things right but it is worth it!