[John Young]

Aaron,
What are you hoping to achieve by adding a third camera to your setup? What needs are not being met by the 1DX and 5DII?

That will help us give you better advice?

John

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[John Young]

Tim,
I was in pretty much the same situation myself about a year and a half ago. Same budget, same history with Macs. I was starting to think Windows because of the versatility of options along with the bang for the buck factor. I mostly use Adobe Premiere Pro, with a little bit of After Effects. I ultimately purchased a beefy mobile workstation type laptop through Sager.

You will get a lot of opinions on this. Here is mine.

After a year in a half using my Windows laptop, I frankly wish I would have went with a Mac instead. My main issues with my Windows laptop is not when working inside PP or AE. Editing multiple streams of H.264 footage works pretty smooth. But there is just an annoying amount of little things that I don’t remember dealing with on Macs. I really miss that ‘it just works’ factor that Apple has. For example, I have USB3 ports that only transfer at USB2 speeds, my desktop background image gets confused when I go back and forth between using a 2nd monitor and using it unplugged, slow start up/wake up processes, the fan seems to always be humming on my PC even when just checking email, short batter life, really heavy AC adapter, gets very warm on your thighs when you use it on your lap, etc.

I made my purchase in January 2012. It is Windows 7 not 8. I am running PP CS5.5 not CS6. But in any case, I wanted to share my experience.
John

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[John Young]

[walter biscardi] “And like you just said in your own post, you can literally pay $30 for one month of service to access and export your project and then let the subscription lapse.”

My point was that it is doable but it is far from ideal. Right now I can pay $0 to access old Sony Vegas projects (the software we used before switching to PP). For a small company like us, if you have to access old projects 4 or 5 times throughout the year, that becomes an issue. You are talking about paying a yearly expense of $150 just to access your own files.

[walter biscardi] “You mean like when Apple dropped FCP 7 to X and we could no longer access our project files if we moved forward? Apple never did address this, took a third party to do that.”

Exactly, for me that was kind of a dealbreaker for FCPX. So I am looking at the subscription service the same way. And I doubt there will be third party options for a lapse Creative Cloud membership.

All this being said, I have a good amount of confidence in Adobe’s relationship with the professional community and their ability to listen to our concerns and take those into account.

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[John Young]

Mixed feelings on this.

Two years ago, we upgraded from CS3 to CS5.5. The Production Premium Suite cost $1032.99. For the same time period, on a $29.99 per month subscription basis, the cost would have been $719.76.Also, I would have automatically (and with no increased cost) be upgraded CS6, so I would be using that right now instead of 5.5. Better products for less money = GOOD

But, if the subscription model is the only option, and we chose to not use Adobe, we would lose access to any project files. Not having control over your own projects = BAD .

I guess in theory, you could have xml or EDL options for accessing old projects, or you could buy a short term Cloud subscription for $30 if you needed it for one time use. But those options don’t make me feel too safe about a subscription-only service.

I will be at the Adobe Max conference in two weeks and I will be asking questions about this.

John Young
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[John Young]

I have the Canon 17-55 lens and it is solid. Low light is good with a 2.8 throughout the focal range. I use it a lot. With that being said, it is pretty expensive for a S-Series lens. If I had to do the purchase over again, I would go with the 16-35 L series (on a cropped sensor would be ~26-56).

If you can get away with not having a zoom lens, I also highly recommend getting used Nikon Nikkor primes. The Nikkor’s that I paid $150-250 are better and sharper than the Canon 17-55 I paid $1,300 for.

[JonRoss Maddox] “something that has a fast auto focus that will stay on it’s target”

Here is the thing about auto focus, its a great feature that in most cases should never be used. Especially in your case where there will be a lot of movement, the camera just has a hard time knowing what the ‘target’ is that it should be focusing on.
Those of us that have shot on traditional video cameras with auto-focus features know that in almost all situations, that feature is turned off.

John

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[John Young]

[lori harfenist] “Will that make the picture blurry, though? I need the subject to look nice and high-def crisp.”

No, not all all. Keep in mind that DSLRs are built for still images with a resolutions of 5000 x 3000 or higher. When you take the sensor and imaging features built for high resolution images and subsample that down to 1920 x 1080 (through line skipping), that is when you can big problems moire and aliasing. And like Steve said, if you need a little more sharpness later on, you can add it in the finishing phase.

[lori harfenist] “I’ve never had this issue with any other video camera, so it’s weird!” These problems exist with other cameras to a much smaller degree than they do with DSLRs. You really have to be cognizant of it.

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[John Young]

Is this a frame grab from video or a still image?

Judging from the image, it looks like moire/aliasing. This is a problem for most video cameras, but it is especially exaggerated in DSLRs. What are your picture style settings?
Do some research into suggested picture style settings. Your sharpness should probably be turned all the way down.

John

John Young
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[John Young]

The EX-1 is a bit of dated technology. They are a great workhorse camera, but if you are going for a brand new camera I might instead look at something like this.

Sony FS100
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/761580-REG/Sony_NEX_FS100UK_NEX_FS100U_Super_35mm_Sensor.html

I just now realized that your budget isn’t so bad. (didn’t do the conversion to $ that I am familiar with). So you might be able to get your beauty shots with a camera like this as well.

John Young
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[John Young]

For people on a tight budget like yourself. There is not really a solution that will do everything for you. I would suggest prioritizing your needs.

If your priority is long record times, and no-hassle audio recording, then go for the traditional video camera. If your priority is beauty shots with a nice depth of field, and great low light capability, go for the DSLR.

We have a EX-1 (similar sensors to the PMW-200) along with a Canon 7D and 60D DSLRs. I will tell you this: when I need beauty shots, I go for the DSLR. When I need audio and recording options of a standard form factor video camera, I go for the EX-1. Frankly I use the DSLRs a lot more, because I want the beauty look most of the time. The only times I am using the EX-1 recently has been for greenscreen shots, and long events and interviews (where audio and long record times are a must).

I have not previewed my DSLR footage on a a full theater screen (I will shortly), but on our 70 inch tradeshow monitor it looks great. If you shoot DSLR right, it will look darn close to the technical quality of a 4:2:2 Sony video camera.

John Young
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[John Young]

I would definitely set the unmanned cameras to manual. If there is an opening band, use that time to check how they look and adjust accordingly. You don’t want a camera on auto. If a camera is on ‘Auto’, the camera tries to adjust itself, and they usually don’t do a very good job.

Next time you do this I would highly recommend getting some people to man those cameras. I have a feeling that when you edit this you will want more variation in your shots. Maybe you can get some camera ops to shoot for you as long as you buy them a beer or two.

Shoot this one and see what happens. Learn from your mistakes for the next time.

If it helps, I just released the first in a music series that I am producing. This three camera ops on three DSLRs and a Zoom H4N picking up audio from the sound board. We shot 5 or 6 songs and an interview, then condensed it down to this.

https://vimeo.com/60578160

John Young
Surrounding Media

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