"Biggest" DOF w/RED1, Scarlet, GH1, Canon ??

[Stephen Matthews]

I would say that you should just look at 2/3" cams as cropping on the red one or others cam's doesn't makes sense or work. I would say the 2/3" scarlet but as others have said you can achieve a large DOF as long as you have enough light, though indoors (but how deep do you really need an indoor shot) might require a large amount of lights to achieve deep focus and end up turning your set into a packed sauna.

the thing is two of the camera's you mentioned do not exist so no one can tell what would look like what, the 5d as Mr Mullen said should not be cropped, so for now that leaves the red one. More realistically you should look at 2/3" broadcast camera's that are available now, perhaps an iconoscope(sp) or a si2k.

good luck and happy filming.

[Rob Ruffo]

Thanks for the question, George ( I hope you ask a few more ) and thank you David for yet another great answer. I agree with you Terry about David. Like many here, if he printed a book on this stuff, I would be one of the first to get a copy. This new fast changing digital media means there is lots to learn for many of us. For me, there can't really be an answer without someone first asking a question. I learn so much by both the range of questions asked on this forum and the wonderful and well thought out answers by patient kind experts like David. I can't thank you all too much.

I would gladly pay $100 for that book, maybe more (hint)

[Joel Kaye]

\The point IS; which one of these would produce the highest quality image WITH ALL THINGS BEING EQUAL while capturing the video? I believe it would be the RED-One.

Tough to know without test. In theory the camera with the most pixels crammed into the final sensor size would probably look sharpest.

As David says, DOF should be about the same so that's irrelevant.

I don't believe 2k RED looks as good as 1080P EX1. 2K RED is pretty soft... so I'm kinda skeptical it would win a cropped test vs. a Sony for instance. But I don't know. Lenses may play a key role in a comparison like this.

I'd probably put my money on 2/3" Scarlet. 3K at 2/3" I believe. But if you're talking about a 1/3" sensor size for deeper DOF it might be another camera.

[David Mullen ASC]

I'm sorry, but everyone seems to be missing the point, except maybe for David who is close. And, there is no such thing as a "pointless" question. We all learn through asking questions. That has always been how man progresses. And, I said it was "hypothetical".

The point is NOT which camera to use, or if it would be a good idea to crop a DSLR image, or if it's practical to change something, etc, etc. The point IS; which one of these would produce the highest quality image WITH ALL THINGS BEING EQUAL while capturing the video? I believe it would be the RED-One.

That's like asking that if we ignore how these cameras actually capture and record an image... which camera captures and records a better image? You can't separate the real-world problems of how these cameras work and create some hypothetical situation that cannot ever exist and then ask for some sort of definitive answer about image characteristics.

I mean, exactly HOW were you planning on getting a 2/3" image area off of the Canon FF35 sensor after all? Your hypothetical question requires that somehow we can capture only the 2/3" area of the sensor for recording at its theoretical highest resolution, which would be RAW... basically similar to how the Red One can crop its sensor to a 2K area and record that as RAW. Since the Canon can't do that, what's the point of the question? Is this a hypothetical Canon 5D or the real Canon 5D? If this is an imaginary Canon that allows sensor cropping and RAW recording, then why call it a 5D?

I'm all for hypothetical questions that have some sort of logical basis, apples to apples sort of comparisons... but this one is a bit random in terms of its parameters, making any conclusions practically useless.

The DOF part of your question can be answered, and has been (they'd all be similar if using the same size target area, same lens, etc.), but the "what gives the highest quality video" part cannot be answered because that gets into real-world performance issues.