[col-sect][column]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.[/column]
[column]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.....[/column][/col-sect]
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.[/column]
[column]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.....[/column][/col-sect]