Two weeks ago Vincent Laforet gave the VJ world permission to shoot on traditional rigs again. He did it during an interview with Dan Chung of DSLR Shooter at the NAB conference and ever since the VJ/PJ blog world has been a’tizzy about how excited they are to get away from DSLRs and back to ENG kits like before. Cliff Etzel of Solo Video Journalist said “I’m calling it as I see it. DSLR video is a fad – at least in solo video journalism it is.”
For his part, Mr. Laforet made the remarks to Chung while hanging out at the Canon Video booth at the NAB trade show in Las Vegas. Vincent, in his reluctant-poster-boy sort of way, said he felt that DLSR video has a ways to go before it can match “something like one of these.” pointing to one of Canon’s new solid state MPEG-2 ENG cameras, the XF300. He made points about DSLR work flow not being ironed out, no XLR, the general problems with sound sync, and the complications of form factor.
And He’s right about all of that, but I feel like we forgot how we got here. Does everyone remember three years ago when there was no DSLR video?.
I was shooting on Panasonic HVX200s and Canon HF20s when I needed something really small. Do we all remember that? If you guys want to leave the DLSR Video Journalism sandbox, that’s cool, but I’m staying.
I can’t wait for everyone to leave and go back to shooting on $7-12K rigs that push up overhead on production and insurance, weigh roughly twice as much, have blindingly inferior low light performance, poor wide angle options, and expensive propriety storage mediums; all on chipsets smaller than a nickel. I’m sure it will be a party.
Snark aside, Vincent Lauforei isn’t an idiot and he’s not a jerk, I hear he’s a really nice guy. I think he was being honest when he said that he would rather shoot a documentary with an XF300, but if I had another $7,000 to drop into a second camera, I would probably get a 1D mark4. Vincent wouldn’t because he already has two 1Dmark4s. He already has a XF300 as well I’m sure. He’s sponsored by Canon. So he get’s to choose the best camera for the situation as he perceives it.
But what I’m still hung up on is why you can’t have both? More on this to come…..
3 Comments
I like the way he was quick to say DSLR shooting is a fad but we all forget that before the REVOLUTION of DSLRs, sweet imagery with shallow DOF only belonged to those with high end HD cameras, digital film cameras, and traditional film cameras. Yeah you could say the film lens adapters are a cheap way to achieve such imagery but if you add the extra lighting required by those light-hungry demons, you really don’t save that much.
I say it again, “DSLR VIDEO IS A REVOLUTION!!!” Whether you admit it or not. My Canon 7D paid off its cost on its first job in the field and I’m in Nigeria. We are creative people but we are also businessmen. If my 7D purchase wasn’t a wise business decision, I wonder what is.
I have to go now. I’m off to go and shoot another TV ad with my 7D. Ciao!
Soji, as a journalist and documentary film maker, I can totally understand where he’s coming from but I agree with you, my 5D paid off in my first shoot as well. That’s here in America, but it was for a non-proffit so it wasn’t hat much
Running around with out a crew means that you are very limited in what you can give your attention to. But in your line of work: Cinema/Commercial/Music Video side, it is the best choice right now I think. Thanks for the comment man. I hope to be in Abuja this summer/fall, I might try to get down to Lagos afterwords. I’ve never been.
We’re definitely not done with DSLR video – I think Canon, Sony and Panasonic are all just freaking out a little that you can get such amazing IQ out of these DSLRs at a fraction of the price of what they were selling before. The DSLR movement has got to be crushing the pro video divisions of all these companies.