"Excuse me, coming through!" - iPhone reportage charges to the front

I saw a news item the other day that got me to thinking. It was entitled, "BBC to give reporters custom iPhone app to broadcast live news". I then went on to read a posting by good friend in the PR industry, Jon Newman of Richmond's Hodges Partnership, saying that this technology's time had come.

I have the UTMOST of respect for Jon. He's a visionary, a deep thinker, and one of the best people I know in the PR industry. But I don't think we're there yet. Maybe it's inevitable. But not now.

First off, there's the logistics of editing video, voice-over, and graphics on a phone interface. Anyone who's bought iMovie for their iPhone is aware of the limitations that the limited screen real estate and current audio capabilities put on the edit timeline. Add to that the fact that the onboard camera, while nice for a consumer device, has no real optical zoom feature (the digital zoom makes things look like they're in a very jerky witness protection program). This creates a scenario where the phone-based correspondent will be rushing the stage to be within 3 - 5 feet of anything needing a close-up. There's also the "rolling shutter" issue, a common problem with inexpensive CMOS sensors shooting video that leads to objects in motion (or fast camera moves) having the appearance of being made out of jello -- essentially the image lower in frame is scanned perceptibly later than the top of the image, and so moving objects become warped.

The temptation to use these devices handheld will lead to a plethora of "Blair Witch" style stories -- and the more intrepid who try to use better mountings will find that the lack of heft will lead to a lack of stability in the shots. Yes, electronic stability controls will develop and no doubt improve as time goes on, but as the state of the smart phone motion video camera exists right now, they're outperformed by any number of reasonably priced point-and-shoots.

There ARE technical solutions for almost all of these problems, but will it be a priority for smart phone manufacturers to pursue those remedies? They're making a consumer level product.

Thirdly, if you want your news (or PR) product to stand out, you're going to have to find a way to differentiate yourself from the millions of consumer-level videos competing for your online attention. Yes, great and compelling content can help you to overcome lesser visual quality -- we've watched camera phone images of global events many times and been happy to have the first person perspective. But not every news item, or every product demo, or every on-the-scene interview is going to be of earth-shaking proportions. That's where good, old-fashioned production values can refocus viewer attention on a message that may be more subtle and complex than a Benghazi firefight or a Vancouver riot. Can we agree that camera phones are still a "court of last resort" for image gathering on the professional level for now?

A partisan Sony F3 review

I know it’s unusual for an editor to be writing about camera technology as an industry game changer, but so many affordable high end solutions have come along that every responsible post-producer needs to know a little about the competing cameras out there. The RED One was the first to make its mark as a cinema quality file-based digital camera, but has recently been losing some ground to ARRI’s Alexa and Sony’s new PMW-F3. It’s the F3 that I want to concentrate on for a moment.

I took a trip to NAB headquarters in Washington DC back in April to take a look at this little gem. Though it doesn’t have the imposing bulk of a traditional pro rig, it features a Super 35, 1920x1080, Exmor CMOS sensor, and with so much surface area per pixel it has amazing sensitivity in low light. Don’t let the compact nature of the camera fool you!

At the demo I went to, the blinds were closed and the room lights were turned off. Then the camera’s switch was turned to +18 dB gain. I viewed the picture on a high end Sony HD CRT monitor and it looked like a well-lit available light shot, full of detail and contrast with subtlety and no clipping, and more importantly, no noise. Andy Shipsides of AbelCine reports that this equates roughly to a 6400 ISO setting in the traditional film world. Simply amazing.

Firmware S-Log upgrades have improved the performance, with a detailed 3 day “real-world” performance test posted here. In addition to shooting on Sony XDCAM’s SxS cards with the native XD codec at 35 and 25 Mb/s, the camera head gives you a full 4:4:4 HD-SDI output that you can record on to Nanoflash or other solid state media. It shoots 1080 HD, 720HD at framerates of 23.98P, 25P, 29.97P, and 59.94i, and PAL and NTSC. You can over/undercrank from 1 to 30 fps at 1080, and 1 to 60 at 720. Besides the HD-SDI port, there’s also HDMI, Firewire and USB ports onboard.

My complaints are few. The rear viewfinder is awkwardly placed, dead center on the top rear, and the flip out VF is smallish. Still, add a follow focus, rails, and matte box, and this rig stays fairly portable and versatile. Plus, with an MTF lens adapter you can use a variety of traditional film lenses, adding to the versatility - and the stock Sony PL lens is no slouch, integrating nicely with the camera’s onboard electronic signal processing.

When comparing it to other recent options, like the Canon 5D MkII DSLRs, well, there’s really no comparison. The range, the noise, the signal processing, real SMPTE timecode, all these things lead to a better product downstream for the editor. Panasonic’s AF100 is nice (and worth a look itself soon), the ARRI Alexa is fantastic but way more expensive, and RED has become just a bit too fiddly at the post-production end to be as comfortable a shooting choice. If you have around $15K for the base acquisition, and maybe another 10K for supporting gear, you can have a good start on a rig that has true cinematic potential. Start saving those shekels.