A couple of interviews on HD DSLRs at Cinema 5D

Jared Abrams at the Cinema5D blog has posted a couple of interviews. The first is with Philip Bloom and was shot just before his Master Class in LA. It starts out as a discussion of the workshop, though it does include some comments about how “bloody amazing” footage out of HD DSLRs is, and what he’d like to see companies do. He also thinks the T2i is another “game changer.”

I still shoot I would say, half the time on “full-size” cameras. It’s just that, most people aren’t interested when you’re shooting on full-size cameras, they’re interested in the budget stuff and the HD SLRS.

Philip Bloom Interview Before His Master Class With Hdi RAW Works


There’s also an interview with “24” DOP Rodney Charters. He just bought a T2i and talks about that. The also talks about how DSLRs have been adopted in film and TV, and it’s interesting that he said they never used the Canon 5D partly because Fox didn’t want to be seen endorsing a camera, and also because it didn’t do the right frame rate, but that when the 7D came out they jumped on it.
His discussion of the shortcomings of the HD DSLRs, and particularly still lenses vs. “film/video” lenses is particularly interesting. He also notes:

The lenses that we really really wanted to use, the Panavision lenses, have all been pulled from us because of the legal entanglements between Canon and Panavision.

The interview was shot - I inferred from Philip Bloom’s comment - on a Canon 7D, and one thing that stood out to me was that the footage of Charters seems noticeably shaky. They should have run it through Smoothcam on Final Cut!

Cinema5D Interview with DOP Rodney Charters


You can see more about how DSLRs are used to shoot driving plates for "24" with additional comments from Rodney Charters and Sam Nicholson here: 5 Camera driving plate rig

[UPDATE] Here's some more information about the suit Panavision has against Canon, which seems unrelated to lenses: Panavision Sues Canon and Others