D-20 at Cine Gear Master Class

The Master Class "The High End of Digital Capturing", held on the Sunday after Cine Gear, provided an exciting and unique opportunity to observe the current 35 format digital cameras side by side: The ARRIFLEX D-20, DALSA Origin, Panavision Genesis and, as a base reference, an ARRIFLEX 435 Xtreme which shot film.

A similar class with high end HD cameras had been offered last year, studying the images of various 2/3" HD video cameras, and this year's class build on that experience. The goal was to "explore the different palettes we have at our disposal", as one of the organizers put it.

This year's Master Class was organized by Kees van Ostrum, ASC and Bill Bennett, ASC, and was moderated by Bennett and Russell Carpenter, ASC. While Carpenter set the lighting, cinematographer Thom Cox operated the cameras, cinematographer David Darby supervised the film processing and scanning, and focus puller Paul Guglielmo made sure everyone stayed sharp. The class was attended by about 80 people.

Russell also created some back edges and bounces off the table in front of the seated model using two Source 4’s with half CTB. A Kino 4 bank with graduated layers of ND gel was placed in the background for a highlight tolerance tests.

This setup was shot by each camera with key light on and off, followed by a blue screen setup, a green screen setup and then the same scene lit exclusively by candles. The exposure for the first setup at EI 400 was T2.8 and for the candle setup T1.3. Even though the light level coming from the candles was so low that it did not register on any lightmeter, Carpenter joked that "this must be six footcandles, since there are six candles at a one foot distance from the girl."

The ARRIFLEX 435 Xtreme, ARRIFLEX D-20 and the DALSA Origin were outfitted with a 40 mm and a 100mm Master Prime lens, as they all accept lenses with a PL mount. The Panavision Genesis used Panavision mount lenses, including a 35 mm Super Speed Mark II prime lens (T1.6), a Primo Macro Zoom "PMZ" 14.5 to 50 mm (T2.2) and a 100 mm Primo prime lens (T1.9).

Both the ARRIFLEX D-20 and the Panavision Genesis recorded onto HDCAM SR tape at 23.976 fps, in 4:4:4 mode, while the DALSA origin recorded raw Bayer data onto a hard disk array provided by DALSA. The 435 Xtreme captured images onto three different film stocks: Eastman Kodak 5218 and 5229 for the dramatic tungsten lit scene and for the candlelit scene, and 5217 for the blue and green screen setups.

Bill Lovell, ARRI's Product Manager for Digital Cameras, summarizes ARRI's impression of the test as follows: "We are very pleased with the way the D-20 performed in front of a very critical audience. While we recognize that there is still more work to do, we feel we are on course for a successful product."

Bennett will now grade the footage and create a film out, which will be screened at a number of later dates to allow all class participants the chance to see the final results.

We have posted some of the images taken by the D-20 on the D-20 web page.

A couple of weeks after the Master Class we had a chance
to interview Bill Bennett, ASC:

?: First, thank you for providing such a timely and excellent opportunity to test these cameras. Has anyone tested these cameras together before?

Bill Bennett: "No, to my knowledge this is the first time these cameras have been in a studio together to be tested. It is a testament to the trust the manufacturers have in us and in their product that this could happen at all. A great thank you to all three manufacturers. I would also like to thank Laser Pacific who have spent countless unpaid hours getting ready for this."

?: Why did you keep the lighting the same for all cameras? Could you not have gotten better results if you had lit specifically for the digital cameras?

Bill Bennett: "The lighting ratio stayed the same for all cameras since we wanted to explore the limits of the cameras. Our goal was not to make pretty pictures, but to explore the limits of these different imaging systems. This is the same as we do when we test new film stocks: we push them to the extremes to discover their limits, so when we are working on a 'real' job, we can create pretty pictures within those limits. "

?: We have to ask: how did the film perform in contrast to the digital cameras?

Bill Bennett: "It certainly had a bigger latitude than the digital cameras in terms of the contrast range captured, and in post production we were able to adjust the 5218 film negative scan into a beautiful rendered scene within 60 seconds, in no time at all. There was so much information in the scan of the film negative that we were able to easily make a gorgeous image of the model with luscious, creamy skin tones.

I also learned that film rendered the colored lighting more subtly. I found that electronic cameras tend to exaggerate colored lighting. And that is what these tests are all about, learning the strengths and weaknesses of the different imaging systems. Having learned that the electronic cameras tend to exaggerate colored lighting, I now know to reduce the intensity of the colored gel applied to each lamp to compensate, when shooting with them on an actual project. It’s all about learning the characteristics of each type of imaging system through testing, and then utilizing what you have learned when shooting.

In addition to the other film tests, we shot an exposure compensated speed ramp from 0.2 to 150 fps with the 435 Xtreme, an interesting look, and something the electronic cameras were not capable of at all.

We also found an interesting difference between the 5229 and the 5218 film stocks: while the 5229 had more latitude than the 5218, the 5218 seemed to do a little better on easily creating those luscious creamy skin tones. "

?: And how did the digital cameras compare?

Bill Bennett: "Thom Cox, our camera operator who had never worked with the D-20 before, found the D-20 so film camera like, that he was instantly familiar with it. Switching from the 435 Xtreme to the D-20 was a seamless transition, and the optical viewfinder of both the D-20 and the Origin allowed the camera crew to work at the same fast pace they are used to from the 435 Xtreme.

In terms of the image quality, I felt that the D-20 rendered the candle flames more accurately than the other electronic cameras.

Of course, we looked at a recorded HD video signal from the D-20 and the Genesis, and they are limited by the video signal encoding and color space specifications. I have a feeling that once we have access to the raw data from these cameras, as we can with the DALSA Origin, we might be able to expand what we can do with the image. I also think it is important to be able to record a flat video signal from the camera with the most information contained, i.e. a very flat gamma curve, an image that might not look good on a monitor on the set but that gives me maximum possibilities later in post. "

?: Thank you.