American Cinematographer - June 2006 - 120

pleased with what we saw on the
big screen. Our reaction was echoed by
Maurice Schechter, chief engineer at

very

DuArt Film and Video in New York, who

the footage on

DuArt's new
Sony 4K projector and will transfer it to
has

seen

35mm film.
As far

as

the look of the XL H1's

images, our very subjective reaction was
that at its default settings, they have a
somewhat cold, video-like appearance,
albeit one of very high quality and high

(Rosenberg's footage, particu¬
larly some exterior portrait shots,
seemed to be quite a bit warmer.) Canon
also offers image-control software called
Console, a $599 program that allows the
user to adjust camera settings remotely
resolution.

from

a

felt the

had

tendency to
highlights relatively
quickly. For example, a light-colored wall

we

camera

behind Perkins seemed to lose detail. But
moved outdoors, we re-evalu¬

once we

ated

opinion, because the XL H1
bright sunlight very
well. As night fell, we were even more
impressed with its range. Our last tests
pushed quite far to explore how dark the
camera could go, and we found that
although it did pick up some electronic
noise, especially in the candlelight tests,
that noise was relatively soft and mono¬
our

seemed to handle

chromatic.
We found

importing and working

with FHDV in Final Cut Pro to be
what

some¬

unpleasant; using the camera with

the CineForm workflow is smoother. We

do have
with

some concerns

a camera

about working
a recorder or

tethered to

workstation because of the loss of mobil¬

ity, but it's no worse than having a hard¬
wire audio output going to a sound
recordist. And depending on the produc¬

Enter New York native Jason

make 3-D comic books

using red and
and that didn't work so
well," he notes with a smile. After grad¬
uating from New York University with a
degree in film, Goodman founded 21st
Century 3D with the intention of making
3-D imagery a reality on a much more
practical scale. He first tried to manu¬
blue crayons,

a

3-D camcorder from scratch,

soon

abandoned the idea because

facture
of the

we

believe the XL H1 offers

possibilities - far more than

we were

able to explore in one day of

your

complex R&D. Around the time
getting ready to go back to the
drawing board, Panasonic released its
AG-DVX100 progressive-scan MiniDV
camcorder. This opened new doors for
he

was

Goodman.

testing.
For

popularity

Goodman, who has been a 3-D fan all
of his life. "When I was a kid, I tried to

that

numerous

streak of

quite taken off as a form of mainstream
entertainment, partly because the tech¬
nology necessary to produce threedimensional motion-picture images is
daunting to work with. Although entre¬
preneurial individuals have recently
explored 3-D imagery in the digital
realm, their solutions, though more
compact than a traditional motionpicture camera 3-D rig, were still a bit
unwieldy.

tion, shooting in FHDV and then importing

Overall,

a

in the 1950s, 3-D movies have never

but

footage as a CineForm-encoded file
would work well as a mobile alternative.

more

information, contact

local Canon dealer

www.canonusa.com.

116 June 2006

Aside from

a

blow out in the

released the DVX, I saw a whole new

Seeing Double
by Jay Holben

Windows XP-based computer.
When we began our indoor tests,

or

visit

"I had

already figured if we were
going video, progressive was the way
to go," he asserts. "When Panasonic

opportunity for the 3-D camcorder."
Goodman bought a couple of DVX
cameras and started experimenting
with how close he could rig them to
each other to form a single stereoscopic
camcorder. The first few versions

were

clunky, with overly large interocular
distances and no method of precisely
synchronizing the many features of each
camera, even
zoom

down to the basics of

and focus. Not too far into his

experimental modifications, Goodman
learned that Indiana-based company

ReelStream

trying to modify the
so the signal could
be intercepted from the analog to digital
CCD converters before it went through
the considerable compression and
was

Panasonic DVX100
American Cinematographer - June 2006

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