Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Thinking Out Loud About Cameras

Our thinking nowadays is to rent the Blackmagic Production 4k camera.

We can rent the camera body for just under $900 for the shoot.
The Alphatron EVF is about another $325 for the month.
Add a shoulder-mount and an EVF thingy and we're staring down the throat of somewhere around $1500 for a month.
But that doesn't include lenses or batteries. I think we're okay with EF lenses, but our power needs are great. Perhaps two of the Switronix PowerBase batteries.  So think somewhere in the $1700 range for 30 days of 4K with global shutter.
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Remember folks, we'll be shooting at about a 200 ISO for the entire shoot.
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We'll need a decent SSD drive for the camera though. Adorama seems to have the best price. Although Ha! They don't have them in stock. So B&H it is. Think $500.
We will also need a reader. Think another hundred bucks.
So $2300 for a month with the Production 4k.
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But wait a minute.
If we were to go with a Blackmagic Ursa, two cards and a reader, and a couple batteries, it would be about $2,000. Now we wouldn't have an EVF with that, but we'd have a variety of taps onboard. The camera is about 20lbs but we don't need a shoulder mount (but for about a hundred bucks we could rent one).
Just to make life more difficult the AJA CION is another camera which is interesting. Although all I can find are PL-mount versions and we don't have access to PL-mount lenses. So there.

4 comments:

Kangas said...

Filmmaking ain't cheap. Why you shooting at 200iso? Choice, or something else?

And hell, for that money you can buy a GH4, and some extra batteries...(camera's under $1500 now)

Andrew Bellware said...

Yeah, I could get a GH4, but it isn't global shutter. And it doesn't have as many stops of latitude. But more than that, my sales rep would complain. ;-)
Seems like 400ISO is the fastest these cameras can go before they start having noise problems.

Kangas said...

I honestly don't think your sales rep would be able to tell the difference if you just told 'em you shot on a blackmagic. (as long as you were careful, and if you got an jello--for which the gh4 isn't bad at all--you just use that handy jello fix from that dude's video)

Andrew Bellware said...

I'm gonna wait for the GH5. I only buy odd-numbered Panasonic cameras. ;-)