I am shooting live theater with and EX1, and find that I need better low light sensitivity and a higher dynamic range. I am willing to move up considerably in price, but I want to be sure that it is an obvious improvement in quality. I am scared of the FS-100 and FS-700 because of the reviews of rather mediocre build quality. I don't need the super slo-mo. I DO need to constantly zoom, pan, and ride the iris to keep the wildly varying stage lighting under some sort of control. All spotlit actors burn to a crisp without fast iris control. I am considering the Scarlet, but don't know what lenses would fit my needs. It seems that all my recent Canon 35mm lenses might not work due to no manual iris control, and apparently they only move in 1/3 - 1/2 stop increments, rather than smoothly. So, does that mean only high-grade PL mount lenses in order to have a manual iris and sharpness good enought for 4K? Its looking like $30,000 in order to really make a big step up from the EX1 for long-form live theatre. Thoughts on camera/lens combos? ... Thanks
Hello Joseph I'm filming 2-3 Musicals every year. So I know excactly where you are comming from. In my case I usually use a Canon C300 EF version. Great lowlight sensitivity, great range with C-Log, dual recording on internal and cheap CF cards for instant backup (82min, 1080P/25fps C-Log on a 32GB card) and over 2h from a single internal battery, if there's no external power supply. The only drawback is is the missing manual iris option, as most EF lenses don't offer it. So I have to change it electronicaly on cam. Works most of the time (fine increments), but is not as fluid as a real manual iris control. Depending on budget you could get either moded EF lenses (seen them once) or get some real EF cine lenses from Zeiss, Canon etc. So you would have manual iris control on lense. Something I will look into in the future when my budget is back up ^^ On the other side you got the option of very good priced EF glass which will allow a lot of options, even with less budget. I thought about the Scarlet prior buying the c300. But its far of as good in low light, eats tons of batteries in no time, SSD's cost a lot and fill up fast, heavier, needs a lot of extras that come with the c300, fan is louder then the one of the c300. No support/dealer in my area that is able to help etc. So for my needs I decided for the c300 even i thought its a bad joke from Canon when they first released it ^^ Sure its nice to have a raw format from a Red. But it cost a lot in different regions. The questions is do you really need it? In my opinion today Red makes sense if you reach Epic level. At that level they offer a great camera. But others are getting into the Epic playground (F5, F55, c500, 1DC). So it will be pretty interesting to see whats happening in the next 2 years.
Wow! I've been shooting live theatre for a long time. I've never had your kind of budget. I have two Sony Fx1000 (three 1/3" chips) and a Panasonic AF100 (my master shot). I did, however, talk to someone at B & H who uses the Sony PMW 350s and apparently they do super jobs on concerts and live theatre. If I won the lottery, I'd be taking a serious look at those.
There's always the PMW200 to check out - EX1 with an updated specification. Can't beat this class of camera for this kind of work. Canon C100 has auto iris, can vary gain, shutter and iris in baby steps, has the C-Log in a space-efficient AVCHD (on a par with XDCam), but although continuous AF is coming, not sure I'd trust it. I'd check out the 200s.
