Why you should run your own tests

[jonpais]

Matt Scott has been kind of an inspiration to me, even though I don’t shoot Red or Blackmagic and I don’t know my way around Davinci Resolve or Edius. A little while back, Matt uploaded files comparing the BMMCC to the Red Scarlet-X as part of a blog post of his entitled Red’s Dead, Baby... Red’s Dead. Small little problem...

 

[Bozzie]

I've always enjoyed Matt's work and he's always come across as a genuine guy who loves what he does. I find it hard to think of another person who's shared so much usable information  about cameras, lighting and techniques with downloadable files for FREE. He doesn't need to do that. It sounds like a genuine mistake on his behalf. It's just a shame that there are so many people/creatives out there who are ready to be Judge & Executioner at a drop of a hat. Maybe they should concentrate on working on their own issues rather than projecting it onto someone like Matt. - B.

[IronFilm]

Yes, I think he just made a small error, yet it doesn't change the rightness of his conclusions for himself. 

[Bioskop.Inc]

His last comment, on the above video & the title of this post, is the truth - you have to test cameras yourself, do not rely on other people's tests/opinions. However, nowadays people don't/won't just blindly go out & buy a camera. So we look around at uploaded footage & try our hardest to make a decision, which is a minefield in itself. The guy seems to have made a mistake, but what an error, especially if you're blogging - hey, but shit happens. Personally, I loath comparison videos & would rather compare independent clips, but that's just me.

BM cameras get a lot of negative comments & mostly from people who've come from a DSLR background - they simply don't understand that most high end cameras have loads of problems (RED send out technicians to movie sets, enough said). We all now know that BM cameras can produce lovely images, on a par to some of these high end cameras & most importantly, for a decent price. 

Do you remember the marketing lies when FCPX came out? Premiere suddenly became this NLE that everyone was holding a torch to, when the reality of the situation was that no high end company was even using it to edit - the NLE of choice was AVID and then FCP7. It now turns out that the decision to rebuild FCP from scratch was a great idea, because it is now so much better than Premiere could ever hope to be. In fact Premiere now feels like a bad copy of the old FCP7 & brings nothing to the party - on top of this, you have to rent it from Adobe for a monthly fee. The NLE market now has loads of choices available, Lightworks & Resolve both have free editions or you pay a one off fee like FCPX - admittedly, Resolve is still developing, but it's nice to see Lightworks fully staking a claim again. 

So, who do you believe?

[jonpais]

What’s really bewildering to me is filmmakers who already own the gear asking others to do comparisons for them.