The Case for a "Throwaway" Camera
Optura 20 DV Camcorder Review

And so began about an hour discussion that I will extract here for both your professional and avocational benefit.

What Is the Optura 20?

Before we can discuss the mixing of consumer and professional cameras in a professional environment, let's first examine the parameters of a good, consumer camera - and I would consider the Canon Optura 20 quite good.

Working from the source light, through the lens to the CCD chips and finally to the tape deck, let me give you a brief run down of what's required for a consumer camera to make the grade. First, the lens has to offer at least an f2 physical low light exposure capability (The Optura's is 1.8) and, for me, an old timer, it has to offer physical focusing capability. The Optura offers both manual and auto focus, with a 16x power zoom. Many consumer cameras offer only electronic auto focusing, which makes professional grade photography near impossible.

Next, the camera has to offer a variable shutter (the Optura goes to 1/8,000 of a second) which is essential in obtaining quality exterior action shots and shots of computer screens (remember, we're using this for industrial videos, right - lots of computer screens).

Moving to the CCD chip, I'd like to see more than one, but you rarely find a consumer camcorder with three chips - this is almost a definition of prosumer if not professional - so the CCD should produce at least a half a megabyte of video per frame (720 pixels X 480 pixels = 345,600). Keep in mind that many of the pixels available to a camcorder will not become part of the picture area - those that do are counted as the "effective pixels." For instance the Optura20 has 1.33 million pixels on its ¼" CCD, but only 690,000 are effective.

The light sensitivity of the CCD is also important. Don't be fooled by gimmicks that boost the light sensitivity at the expense of quality, such as a gain booster. The Optura20 has a recommended illumination of 100 lux. Using the camera's "Night Program" you can get a picture at .5 lux, but it isn't the kind of picture you'd use outside a police station.

From the CCD, the video signal passes through a digital signal processor and then to both the tape, the viewfinder and possibly an LCD screen. Consumer cameras are famous for providing color viewfinders and LCD screens. Consumers are like dogs. They're dumb enough to chase their own tails.

Color viewfinders and LCD screens, even the nice .33" viewfinder and 3.5" LCD on the Optura 20 are nearly useless when trying to check focus or contrast - two of the most important aspects of videography. When it comes to checking color, they aren't much better, because you really need at least a 13" broadcast quality monitor to check color in the field - and then you have to have a pretty good eye. So my suggestion is to patch the video output of the Optura 20 to a real monitor, capable of switching from color to B&W.

The last consideration when using a consumer camera for professional work is the microphone on the camera. Don't use it. Buy a small box called a CleanBox by ART (ARSC) for $49 which converts a professional microphone's output, coming from a 3-pin XLR cable, into the non-professional 2-connector "mini" jack on the camera. This box will have a dial to adjust the gain and a jack to monitor the sound from the microphone and perhaps from the camera. Now you can place that microphone out where the sound is originating (not on the camera) and, exploiting the Optura 20's, 16-bit sound (48kHz on 2 channels) or 12-bit sound (32 kHz on 4 channels), obtain really professional results.

Uses of a Consumer Camcorder in Professional Applications

While a consumer camera lacks many of the tools of a professional camera, one of the things that a professional camera lacks is the ability to take snapshots. True, you can freeze a frame from a pro camera, but not a frame with 1,200 pixels square. The Optura 20 can knock out snaps that exceed HD frame size, and, when so many videographers are using Adobe After Effects (ADAEPPSBW) and eyeon's Digital Fusion (DPDFC), it's nice to have photos from the field which can be scanned on the X-Y plane larger than one frame's size.

So there's reason number one to have a camera like the Optura 20 on the set. Here are some more.

As I'm shooting with my high end JVC camera, I can have an assistant shooting our crew at work, another angle of the interviewee, B-roll footage that adds another perspective to principal photography, or - home video footage of the clients having a great time on the shoot.

Here's where my brother's big question comes into play, how do you match this footage into a scene shot with a camera costing 20 times more?

First - and this is an arguable point - under optimum shooting conditions, in a wide shot, and with perfect focus, I don't have any trouble matching a shot from a consumer camcorder with a professional camcorder.

My brother would then challenge me with, "But then how can you justify spending that kind of money on a professional camcorder?" The answer is that the professional camcorder will produce the same optimal results in a shooting conditions which are not optimal, it will do far superior close-ups, the footage will not lose quality when dubbed, the tape is more robust, the digital density of the recorded image is several magnitudes greater, etc., etc.

So keep in mind, you can match only under optimum conditions. But why bother to match at all?

How about those MTV style documentaries where the main, color camera, is switched with a grainy, black & white camera, or the lesser quality image is inset, smaller than full screen, as second image - again that After Effects influence. If you take a consumer camera shot and reduce it to a quarter screen, you can easily use the result as a "mortise" shot within a DigiBeta sequence.

Imagine a limited-budget documentary about a really beautiful vacation resort. We can't afford two days on location, but we need both beauty shots and interviews to make the client happy. I send Robbie Anderson, my premium-priced camera dude, out to shoot all the really beautiful scenery; splashing waterfalls, crystal clear lagoons, native gals doing the wakka kula. Me? I go with the crack assistant cameraman, Joe Anthony and do customer interviews with the Optura 20.

Later, in the editing room, we shrink the interviews down to quarter screen size, add a tropical flower border and lay it over the Robbie's beauty shots which are running full screen - maybe even 16 x 9.

Of course, you have to get the client to buy into this strategy from the beginning. You don't want her to ask for a full screen shot of the interview and then complain when the shot doesn't intercut with the wakka kula.

Now that we have the matching issue safely to bed, let's think of creative ways to employ the consumer camcorder.

In the land of video camera design, it is a well known fact that size has some relation to cost. This may seem odd. In an era when doctors are shoving high resolution cameras into your small intestine, why should a broadcast camera weigh 20 pounds and lay on your shoulder like a led parrot? The reason is marketing. Professional cameramen (yes, men) want to demonstrate impressive iron when they earn the big bucks.

Show up at a White House press event with a hand-held camera and see how far down the kill tunnel you get. Show up for a $5,000-a-day shoot at any Fortune 100 company with a XL1-S and it's be the last $5,000-a-day shoot you ever get. Maybe things are a-changin' you say, indicating the Time Magazine photos of embedded journalists carrying the Sony DSR-PD150 while dodging insurgent bullets. Good point. But if a guy is going to dodge bullets to get my footage, he can use whatever camera he wants.

Which is how you can really decide how far to carry the Optura 20. It's really small, runs on one battery all day, isn't so expensive you wouldn't sacrifice it for a career-making shot, and it produces a pretty fine picture - considering.

Considering what? Considering if you couldn't get the shot any other way. For instance, what if the client wanted you to shoot the inside of a sewer pipe? Don't laugh. I just answered a bid request to do just that for a construction company in Westchester County. "Not with my DY-90W, I won't. But Mikey'll go." Mikey is my Optura 20.

Here's another fun thing to try. Give the camera to your client and let them shoot stuff for you as a lark. This is also great to try on camera scouting days. You do scout locations don't you? This is when the director and cameraman go out and look over the scenes to be shot a day or so before the actual shoot. It's one of those upper class benefits that better clients can afford. For scouting, I take the Optura and shoot every angle we might shoot in the real production. Then I hand it to the client and ask the client to visualize for herself, what she'd like to see - and I ask her to speak while shooting, so I have a running commentary on the tape. Nice, eh? Makes it harder to misinterpret a client's desires.

Then there's the very last suggestion anyone ever needs for a small, inexpensive video camera. This one comes from the late Stanley Kubrick, who wanted a really cool point-of-view shot when Malcolm McDowell, in "A Clockwork Orange," is thrown out of a second story window.

Kubrick had an old Newman Sinclair 35mm movie camera (the kind, perhaps even the very model, that Flaherty used to shoot "Nanook of the North." Sacrificing it's antique value, Kubrick packed it in a styrene box, cut a hole for the lens, and threw it (six times) out the second story window attempting to get the camera to land right on the lens face. The camera (but not the lens) actually survived the event (read about this at http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0070.html). Now, I'm not suggesting you take the Optura 20 to the top of the Empire State Building (from the top of which, by the way, there is no clear drop to the street), but by 2009, the Freedom Tower will have one spectacular drop and you should, by then - well, let's say there's gotta be an Optura 30.