Notes On Video

Over on Gizmodo , Frank Beacham tells a charming story about Orson Welles, the early days of Sony Betacam, and dreams that might have been. Whenever I see a tiny new camcorder introduced, or see Apple upgrade a revolutionary application like iMovie, I think of Orson. Oh, how excited he'd be. The pure magic of it all! If he were alive today, he'd be making his movies without regard to raising huge amounts of money. That, for both Orson and his audience, would be an achievement that we'll never be able to enjoy. It’s really worth reading: Orson Welles and His Brief Passionate Betacam Love Affair ...and connects nicely with the story of Fede Alvarez, who made a $300 video and landed himself a $30 million contract with Ghost House Pictures .

Tonklemoose [ really?! -Ed] the Twitter account for UK video equipment retailer creativevideo.co.uk reports that the Sony NXCAM model will be called the HXR-NX5, and that it will be available in January (probably after CES ?)

Camcorderinfo.com takes a bash at reviewing the Canon 7D’s video performance . They don’t do a full review, but then you can find that at Digitalcamerainfo.com ; the two sites have actually created a combined review with Camorderinfo doing the video aspects, and Digitalcamerainfo.com doing the still camera functionality. The Camcorderinfo page sums up most aspects of video performance. They found that color accuracy was no better than the competition, they were “fairly impressed” by the motion performance, and it did better than the others in low light, but for sharpness it was found to be weaker than the Panasonic GH1 and Canon 5D Mark II. Make sure you go to the linked pages at Digitalcamerainfo.com that go into more details, as they  also compare the performance relative to some video camcorders as well. While the Canon 7D's sharpness numbers aren't that bad, they definitely are lower than some consumer HD camcorders are capable—specifically in bright light. The Canon HF...

Overheating continues to be an issue for some users of the Canon 7D, with lots of theories about what is causing it, or how to avoid it. There are some things we know for certain, and many things that are the subject of wild speculation. Here’s what’s known: Reports of the 7D overheating seem to be more prevalent than they were/are for the 5D, though there have been reports of the 5D overheating, so it's not entirely unique to the 7D. The camera continues to operate (most of the time) with the thermal warning on, and most people don’t really notice a degradation in the image quality, though one user reported a glowing pixel in the dark areas of later footage. Most people are encountering the problem after an extended period of operation (i.e. into the second hour of non-stop usage.) Some cameras seem to display the warning earlier than others (though it’s unclear whether this is due to differences in operation, or actual differences in the way cameras are calibrated.) Here’s some c...