Varicam vs the CineAlta thinking

Well, so much for 16mm. After running through the budget more closely with Alexis [the DoP], we're considering HD for the next clip.

Problem is that we're no longer students, so the awesome almost 50% discounts for stock+processing+telecine (the spt pipe) that you're used to receiving and budgeting around no longer apply. So either we halve the amount of film stock from 6 reels (2400) to 3 reels (1200 feet), which is a ratio of 10:1. Fine for a drama, harder for a music video cause there's just so many shots! NB: We'd still shoot the band on mini-DV. Its achievable, but it'd be tough. The potential lack of a split budget-wise also means that the whole production slows down cause the designer, DoP, director and operator all need to 'hotswap' the viewfinder.

So, we're thinking now about Cinealta vs Varicam, and getting some Digiprimes* or a Cinestyle zoom.

Advantage of Varicam is I've dealt with it before, so its not an unknown, and I like the Panasonic 'look'. Disadvantage is its only just HD in resolution - it records 960 pixels horizontally and stretches em out to 1280 [well, actually, its do with pixel aspect ratio, so its not really loosing resolution... but whatever]. The codec is also lossy. Sure, its 100megabits/s, but its 100megabits over 60 frame... so its effectively DV50 compression on a single frame, but one that is a third larger (ie 720P not 480P)

Advantage of CineAlta is higher resolution (1440x1080 to 1920x1080 after pixel aspect ratio thingoes taken into consideration) and (theoretically) less compression. IIRC is a 150megabit scheme and it only shoots a maximum of 30P... so get the less compression over the frame. Disadvantage is reduced colour space (3:1:1) and the lack of ability to bring it in at native HD Res. I don't have the money to build an uncompressed 1920x1080 HD setup... but I could capture it via HD-SDI and transcode it to DVCProHD which will be a generation loss (HDCAM compression to DVCPROHD compression).

I'm leaning to the Varicam on this basis... depends on what Lemac can do for me deal wise...

S16mm is start to look attractive again. Its a native 4:4:4 recording, subsampled to 4:2:2 (when it gets transferred to Digibeta) but its 10bit, not 8bit [depending on the telecine]. Of course, well all know film looks better - its just we're in a supertight budget situation, and cause we need lighting, that means other parts of the camera budget have to be decreased...

Update: I should point out that I have heard of people connecting their their Decklink HD Pro cards to the telecine to o get uncompressed 4:4:4 right without touching tape. Pretty genius... but I wonder how much more expensive it is to get scanned?

* Cause they're fast (T1.4 - aka a T2.8 35mm DoF), lightweight - this whole clip is handheld so weight is important - and, frankly, primes look hot.