Digital Stills Cameras

[benjamin_oxford]

Hi,

I'm a complete novice, so sorry if this post is on the wrong board. It is a camera question, though:

I'm hoping to shoot some short films in the not too distant future. I want to get a digital stills camera to help with auditions, scouting locations, storyboarding, etc. Also, simply from a cost point of view, I want to get experience behind a camera, no matter whether moving or still.

So, my question is, is there any particular spec of digital stills camera that will produce images that look comparable to a frame of High Def video, and/or to 35mm film? It would be good if I framed a shot with a certain lens, zoom, aperture, shutter speed, etc. etc., on a stills camera, that I could then know what settings I needed to reproduce the same effect on a cinema camera. Maybe there is a chart or set of calculations that can be used to work out equivalences?

Thanks in advance for your help,
Ben

 

[Henrique]

Matching a still camera to a videocamera, probably very tricky. Im not saying it cant be done.

2 ways to go?

1 - shoot 35mm slides.
- about 6 stops of dynamic range
- nice filmlook to aim for

2 - get a camera and photoshop the heck out of things.
Resolution and cleannes could be an issue.


My guess, experiment. Shooting slides would be very cheap on the short term. 35mm slide slr`s are very cheap these digital days. Slides take time to
process though, but after u scan them, you`ll have the perfect material to study for a nice film look.

Im aproaching this from a still camera experience. Im not very familiar with videocameras, yet.

 

[laurent.a]

1) an SLR camera is a good starting point for anyone who's interested into image. A 35 mm SLR would be very close to a 35 mm movie camera for what is about angel of view/focal lengths. Shooting negative film instead of shooting reversal (slides) would allow you to have very good quality paper prints for reasonable costs, give you more lighting abilities since you can correct when printing, as slides don't handle so well over and underexposition.

Scanning from a slide is possible only with scanners that offer that option, not any scanner can do the job.

2) Digital still cameras are very usefull too... You can edit your image on your computer straight away, print them at home, or give a digital file to a lab, even thru the web, as to get cheap and good quality paper prints (printing at home costs a lot considering the cost of ink).

Main digital still cameras have focal length that are closer to 16 mm movie cameras but on basic ones, you can't see them as they are not engraved... Consider an higher cost as to have good lenses with focal length engraved.

If I were you, I'd get a basic (no computer automatic stuff - a second hand can be just fine) still camera as to learn exposure, focal length etc. and a basic digital one for the ability of working the image on your computer.

Consider there is a ratio of about 1:2 beetween 16 mm and 35 mm for the focal length : a 25 mm in 16 mm would give you something close to what a 50 mm woukld give you in 35.

It's usually considered that this focal legths are the ones that give an angle of view close to the human eyes one. (in average, some people would say it's the 40 mm not the 50mm but the human eyes are not really the same as an optic, is it...)