nd depending on film size and framing. Early uses in military applications were picked up by the creative community for dramatic effect.
Electronic imaging systems do not have the issues of moving a mass of film past the lens and once the problems of high speed digitization and storage were solved it allowed imaging up to 1,000,000 frames a second at low resolution. Most modern cameras are capable of some over-cranking to a few hundred frames per second and from there specialist cameras are available to cover high resolution and speeds of several thousand frames/second.
Latitude is the capacity of a camera to capture information over a wider brightness range than is needed for the final print. This provides a degree of freedom in post production for adjustment to match other shots, or for creating keys or adding digital effects.
See also: HDR
Data that has not been processed for use. It is often written as ‘RAW’, which may make you think it is an acronym. It is not.
Raw data usually applies to the output of digital cinematography cameras that can generally deliver images that include the full brightness range that its imager can extract from a scene. The data has not been tampered with, not processed for color or to suit any target viewing conditions, such as cinema or gamma corrected for home TV viewing. The raw data is as the imager saw it with debayering applied where needed.
Device for converting film images into video in realtime. The main operational activity here is color grading which is executed on a shot-by-shot basis and absorbs considerable telecine time. This includes the time needed for making grading decisions and involves significant handling of the film, spooling and cueing which risks film wear and damage, besides the actual transfer time. The output of a telecine is digital video (rather than data files).
Digital technology has moved the transfer process on. Now, adding a disk store or server can create a virtual telecine enabling the film-to-digital media transfer to run as one continuous operation. Whole film spools can be scanned in one pass, with useful footage selected by an EDL. In this case the telecine may be termed a Film Scanner – creating image files (rather than digital video) that contain sufficient latitude for downstream grading.
See: Digitizing Time
Variable Frame Rate shooting used to be only possible with film cameras; all electronic cameras worked at fixed frame rates. Panasonic’s HD Varicam was the first to offer variable speeds, originally with frame rates from 4 to 60 f/s in one-frame increments. Sony’s XDCAM HD offered the same range. There are also specialized digital cameras and solid-state recorders able to capture video at frame rates up to 1000 f/s, or more. Instant replay shows an otherwise unseen world of extreme slow motion.
Launched in 2003, Sony’s XDCAM professional camcorder products have evolved with technology. The first model was for SD television and made use of its Professional Disc (PD), an application of Blu-ray Disc, as the on-board recording medium. The product range included camcorders, mobile and studio decks which are designed to take advantage of the size, weight, data speed and re-record features of the PD technology. It used the DVCAM codec and record SD 4:1:1 (480-line) and 4:2:0 (576-line) video at 25 Mb/s onto the PD.
XDCAM HD camcorder images were native 1440 x 1080 and recorded as HDV: 1080/59.94I, 50I, 29.97P, 25P, and native 23.98P video using MPEG-2 MP@HL with compression and 4:2:0 sampling. Users could select 35 (HQ), 25 (SP), or 18 (LP) Mb/s bit rates according to picture quality and recording length requirements, ranging from 60 to 120 minutes. There were four channels of 16-bit, 48 kHz audio.
XDCAM EX takes the same ideas but records to solid-state storage in place of Blu-ray disc.
XDCAM HD422 is a family that includes a selection of cameras, recorders again including solid-state, and accessories.
See also: Professional Disc