Shooting SLOG/444 on the PMW-F3 puts the per day cost within spitting distance of an Alexa or Epic rental, what’s an indie filmmaker to do?

As a recovering technoholic-cameraphile, I am desperately trying to make my way out of the addiction cycle of endless camera tests and back toward the rest of humanity. I want to be a part of the species that just wants to viscerally respond to a beautiful, spirit-moving image of light, shadow and color. I want to be thrilled by beauty, not sourly deconstructing the failings of this week’s latest offering from the constellation of video camera vendors.

But it’s hard not to do that. Video cameras, SD, HD, Ultra-whatever, tend to fail by some metric. By and large they hit the wall (or ceiling, or floor…) in the image capture and storage process. By their cold, calculating logical nature they sample, reduce and approximate what we see, or what we we’re used to seeing, on photochemical film.

Fortunately for us, we live in an era where the digital is quickly approaching the chemical in terms of image fidelity and soul. The cameras I have been most impressed and inspired by, image-wise, are the Arri Alexa and the RED Epic system. These are brilliantly engineered digital camera systems that produce stunning images that pleasantly distract me from criticizing any failings they may have. Such precision and grace is not cheap, they cost a lot of money to own and to rent (in relative indie filmmaking terms, not actual professional commercial filmmaking terms). When I have the budget, these are my cameras of choice.

Continue reading the original article from ProVideo Coalition