Originally posted by petercrane A few weeks back we decided to shoot part of a corporate documentary with a panasonic GH1 and Canon 5Dii. People who were paying us actually approached us and questioned our ability. We decided to switch back to video cameras and finish it off not causing a stir. At a meeting 2 weeks later we screened a draft edit, and they admitted that they liked the look of the slr footage, and that they wished they hadn't said anything.
Anyway. It's marketed as a bonus on the K7. Not a professional feature. Get something like the 5Dii if you want quality and are selling a product. If you dislike video on the K7 either don't use it or go get a job making decisions at Pentax.
That is a whole 'nother discussion - perception vs. reality. The customer is always right except when they aren't. There is a funny story about Chuck Rainey playing on the Steely Dan "Aja" album. They were tracking "Peg" and Chuck wanted to do a slap bass bit in the chorus. Becker and Fagan both said, "no," as slap was somewhat trendy at the moment and they had something else in mind. So Rainey played the part, but as they did take after take he started turning his chair slowly so that Becker and Fagan couldn't see what he was doing. And he started slapping. The track you hear to this day has that slapping part on it.
On our last project we shot everything in HD mostly with Panny HX-200. Of course since I was writer and producer I wasn't going to be a luddite about things, and in fact we ended up running some of the footage through rounds of VHS transfers to get "the look" we were looking for. My boss questioned why we bothered to shoot HD if we were going to go that treatment. My answer was that if it didn't work in post I wanted other options.
Another way that digital has changed everything is that "post" has taken on far more meaning for the typical user. In the past what you shot was what you got unless you were highly skilled in post production techniques. Now you can do a few clicks and get ridiculous amounts of tweaks done. Then click "undo" if you don't like it.
I don't see any of this as "bad" or "good." It just is change - the real constant.