Low depth of field, high frame rate, high resolution. These are the technical hurdles which have traditionally separated consumers from creating film-quality video. HD video has been within consumer reach for quite a while now. 2008 has already seen high frame rates fall to Casio, and in the last couple of weeks, both Canon and Nikon have announced Digital SLRs that will be able to shoot HD video. Obviously real digital cinema cameras have some technical advantages, and there’s that truck full of matteboxes, focus pullers, dollys, cranes and best boys helping the cinema crowd out. But as far as image quality quality goes, the field is just about level.

The larger sensor size and interchangeable lenses of digital SLRs make their image output vastly superior to compact cameras and what we used to call “camcorders”. DSLRs have allowed us to produce stop-motion and time-lapse video with filmic colour, depth of field and resolution, but full motion video of this type was only available by using 35mm adapters (which are bulky and lose light and resolution), or spending tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on a digital cinema camera.

Canon EOS 5D MKII - $2500

The above video - Reverie by Vincent Laforet (View original in high resolution on Canon’s site) - was shot entirely on the Canon EOS 5D MkII. Apart from resizing the 1080i footage to a resolution reasonable for playing online, there is no colour correction or post-processing trickery involved. To prove this to sceptics, from Friday Canon will be hosting some of the raw clips from the shoot. Without going too overboard: This is completely bananas.

There is also a behind the scenes video, shot with a Canon XH-A1, and it’s frightening to see the output of this current-gen $3300 prosumer HD camera up against the $2700 5D MKII.

Nikon D90 - $1000

Last month, pro shooter Chase Jarvis released a promo video for Nikon, documenting as he and his team tested out their new video-capable prosumer DSLR.

Cranford Rose Garden Time-lapse at Brooklyn Botanic Garden from Brooklyn Botanic Garden on Vimeo.

Whether at the scale of a frame, a tiny sample, or a period of days, digital is all about the manipulation of time. So it’s fitting that our friend Chris Jordan focuses in his work on the expressive potential of timelapse, and that he runs New York’s T-Minus, a festival devoted to timelapse. You’ve got some time to get in your submissions for this year’s T-Minus – the call for works follows – but I wanted to press Chris a bit on why manipulations of time are important to him, and what works he finds inspiring.

Among his picks, above from just over the river at the wonderful Brooklyn Botanic Garden (and yes, there are idyllic places like this within the five boroughs):

This time-lapse shows three days in the life of the Cranford Rose Garden at Brooklyn Botanic Garden as thousands of roses bloom in early June.
To create the unique perspective, each still frame of the video was treated with a tilt-shift lens effect in Photoshop.
For more information on the Cranford Rose Garden, visit bbg.org/roses
The music is by Jon Solo. His website is myspace.com/jonsolomusic.

Chris explains how he became a video Time Lord – and how even raindrops can take on new meaning when time is compressed. I got him thinking out loud in email:

It’s a jumble of things that draw me to time manipulated work, some personal, some societal, all technological.

One theme that inspires T-Minus is how boring the majority of documentation video is, yet the market sells more and more video cameras, and the entire industry around video is thriving. For what? Think how many times you’ve sat and watched a documented event.  I think of the massive amount of energy and resources that go into consumer video. Wedding videos are a great example. Sure there may be something compelling to you if you’re the one at the alter. But we’re recording too much, saving it, calling it precious, and never actually seeing it again. Instead, if people captured timelapse, they would have the best of both worlds, and save petabytes of data.

The primary creative theme in time-based artwork that inspires me is the idea of the unexplored relationships surrounding us, just waiting to be unearthed. Video editors and VJ’s know some of the excitement around these relationships. But there’s generally in those contexts the studio mindset that comes into play, instilling classic ideas of composition, color, line, movement. I use the analogy of baking a cake to the capturing of time. You put the ingredients together,  put it in the oven, and see what you get. The result always brings out a pattern you wouldn’t have seen or thought existed. I put a camera six feet out off my fire escape on East Broadway once, pointing up the street. When I compiled the footage, I was perplexed to see the frame shift significantly, yet very slowly, over the course of 12 hours. What I realized was when it rained during the recording, the water accumulation and then drying caused the board to warp and twist, shifting the camera’s view. Or how city lights appear through drying raindrops in front of the lens. Or how the shadow of a church slides across the buildings during certain times of the year out my studio window. All these things are incredibly intriguing to me.

Quite a few of you raised an eyebrow when we topped our gift guide with the Canon HV20, an affordable (as little as us$700) HDV camcorder. Like the New England Patriots (that’s American football for the rest of the world), the Canon HV20 appears to be largely unbeaten as the best-available visualist-friendly camera. It’s small, it’s light, it’s cheap, it does HDV, ’nuff said. It’s also eminently upgrade-friendly, with indie producers adding 35mm lenses and nifty accessories. And even those of you with larger, more powerful cameras occasionally want something you can toss in a backpack or use as a backup.

But that got me wondering — is the HV20 really One Camera to Rule Them All?

I have a couple of candidates I think could be interesting.

The big rival as far as HDV appears to be Sony. The HDR-HC7, for instance, has more sophisticated manual controls than the HV20, and I like Sony’s night-shot mode for extreme infrared applications. It’s also a little heftier than the Canon, in a good way — it’s a camera I find comfortable to hold. cnet even likes the Sony better than the HV20. (camcorderinfo.com begs to differ; see their link below) Like many things in life, it looks even cooler in Japanese.

Unfortunately, "manual control" on a consumer-level Sony means navigating the horrible touch screen interface, and worse yet the HDR-HC7 introduces a bizarre new manual focus multi-function control. (Translation: some strange add-on bit of plastic that’s utterly useless for controlling anything.) All that said, I do like Sony’s cameras, despite their quirks.

Here’s the problem: the HDR-HC7 is running a street of over $1100, while the HV20 is well below $800. Is the Sony $300 better than the Canon? (Heck, is the Sony better than the Canon, period?) Tough to justify, I think.

The folks over at CHDK have been implementing custom firmware for the Canon Digic II and Digic III PowerShot cameras for some time - allowing for some awesome features for these small cameras. Previous added abilities such as shooting raw mode, USB tethered triggering, in camera motion detection and increased video recording options (compression options and no file size restrictions per clip).

But recently a new fimeware build by firmware hacker Allbest has allowed some very impressive high shutter speeds and high speed flash unit timings. CHDK folks have done tests measuring ccd timing vs flash timing, as well as capturing high speed subjects in controlled environments to find real world numbers. At the smallest aperture, the fastest timing available is around 1/64,000. Compared to high end professional cameras which costs one to two orders of magnitude more, this is quite the feat!

Check out the High Speed Shutter wiki page at the CHDK wiki for more information on high speed photography with the CHDK firmware.

Also be sure to check out the Video Plus options for extended recording and compression settings.

You can find a list of supported cameras on the CHDK wiki front page.

Impressive works. Thanks Yair for the heads up.

Hello Internets! I’ve returned from gallivanting around the country and have a couple of weeks while we refuel and plan the next leg of the tour. One of the first tasks I’ve set myself is to get a better video camera, and was all set to pick up a Canon XH-A1 when I found out that it doesn’t have S-Video in or out. That cuts down my options a little for live visuals, as I wouldn’t be able to mix in this camera’s output without an expensive scan converter or going via Firewire, which introduces latency and creates cabling issues.

So now I’m in a quandry, and with that seed of doubt sewn, I’ve opened up to many possibilities: Sony’s HDR-FX1, Panasonic’s HVX series, or perhaps something compact and tapeless, like JVC’s Everio series.

I had a chat to Peter, who suggested that I ask you, dear reader. What are you using for your video capturing needs? Have you gone HD? Compact? Cheap? Expensive? Tapeless? What are you liking and disliking in today’s video cameras?

HD4Indies’ Mike points out the Canon HV20 “Compact HDV Camcorder”. It’s has an HD (1920×1080p) CMOS sensor, records HDV to DV tapes, and sports an HDMI out for uncompressed capture.

Mike likes the look of it for a “learner camera”, to me this looks like an ideal unit for tethered shooting of visuals, studio shoots and time lapse requiring frame rates faster than an SLR can deliver. I’m starting to spec out a tour rig at the moment, this looks ideal for throwing in a backpack - I’ll let the film crews lug around the big heavy cameras.