Camera Tests
Wednesday, December 2, 2009 at 1:08PM 
A friend of mine shot this with his 7D. Right after a hundred other friends of mine shot the exact same thing with theirs.
A friend was starting in on a project that he thought he might shoot on the RED One. Understandably, he shot some tests. He was concerned about shooting in low levels of tungsten-balanced light, which is understood to be a situation that does not play to the RED One’s advantages. He was going to test against some other digital cinema cameras, and invited me to come play.
I think he was rather surprised when I told him that I would rather not. I explained myself thusly:
I’m glad people test cameras, in the same way I’m glad people test condoms. But a condom-testing event doesn’t sound fun to me at all. At some point, you just want to pick a condom that you have reason to believe will do its job satisfactorily, and get busy.
Cinematographer Geoff Boyle just posted this dutiful comparison of three 50mm cinema primes; Cooke S4, Zeiss Master Prime, and RED. I highly recommend that you download the full-res DPX files and compare them at the pixel level, because it will cure you of ever wanting to do such a test on your own. The differences are so infinitesimal that they could be accounted for by light bouncing into the scene off the operator’s cargo shorts.
Are camera tests useless? Not at all. I’m grateful that so many people want to do them. It frees me up to grab a camera that I think is going to be pretty much right for the job, and get busy.
Reader Comments (19)
Without camera tests, what else am I supposed to read on the internet late in the evening, when I'm bored and don't have the energy do anything constructive like testing condoms? ;-)
True.
“I’m glad people test cameras, in the same way I’m glad people test condoms. But a condom-testing event doesn’t sound fun to me at all. At some point, you just want to pick a condom that you have reason to believe will do it’s job satisfactorily, and get busy.”
That's genius. hahahahahahaha
Have I told you lately that I love you?
(In a purely hetero way.)
Brilliant, as usual. I've never shot a chart, and never will. It's the end result that counts, and if a camera's output looks good enough to satisfy my needs, then I use it. Right now, that's the 7D.
Story is king.
Couldn't have said it better myself!
But if can't read about camera tests till the small hours... I may have to got and make a film!!!!
I'm kinda hoping that nothing untoward ever happens to a camera you haven't tested thoroughly before I high budget shoot....I guess you'll have people for that then? Yes you can get obsessive but there is a place for testing caution to also know where the boundary of your tool resides.
I wonder if the camera operator was wearing a condom while testing...
in case one of the lenses was so great he couldn't take it.
Thus killing 2 birds with one stone...
Yes, yes & yes.
to bad he didn't use some old nikon or olympus primes, the 50mm is such a simple lens that a t2 its difficult to make it wrong. Testing should only be useful to prove to yourself that you don't need a 10k lens to get rolling.
I fully agree. But out of curiosity is there a solid resolution test for the 7D and 5D? How many actual lines do each of them put out? Anybody know? The consensus seems to be the 5D puts out a higher resolution(?)
Henri-Georges Clouzot , "the French Hitchcock" shot 3 months of camera tests for the Columbia Pictures thriller "'L'enfer". One of the leads walked off the picture and Clouzot had a heart attack. He survived, but learned a valuable lesson:
Keep your camera tests down to two and a half months!
Thanks for such a dose of sense and feet-on-the-earth words. I very much agree! Thank you to all the people who test gear, so that we can just skip to the fun part and actually enjoy it!
The MP are sharper than all of those and render skintones in a magical way.
RPPs are sharper than the Cookes but Cooke's bokeh is awesome.
I wouldn't call this infinitesimal differences.
Isn't the devil in the details? :)
If I'm out on a job with rented equipment that I "believe will do a satisfactory job" but they didn't, I think I would be "getting busy" trying to explain myself to the producer.
And I don't think the producer would be any happier to hear me say,"But I read the test results from the internet by this so-and-so and the camera should not have this problem..."
:D
Hi DeeRick — I think you're helping to make my point — checking gear you know you'll be using is worthwhile, but staging a "shootout" between a dozen cameras is more what I'm objecting to.
Funny but a condom has one simple function - that function in itself is not that interesting.
A camera is more like a racing car, some go fast and some just go. In my opinion some of the best top level race car drivers are also mechanics, not because they need to be engineers but simply because in order to use the machine to its fullest, he must first understand what goes on under the hood. In fact its the passion for the mechanics that drive them to race. Having a deep understanding of the technical doesn't take away your creative edge, it makes you a better artist.
This rule is not 100% but for the 98.98% of us who are not born geniuses, working hard is a good way around it, otherwise you will never step out of go-carts.
I do take your point, I simply offer another one.