What is the difference between movie quality and camcorder quality?

Question

How can directors such as Spielberg get such pristine picture quality versus say buying an expensive camcorder? Not a film buff, just curious (; Thanks

Answer 1

There are lots of differences - whether film or digital media is use. Lens size of the camera (bigger is better); imaging chips (if digital media is used (bigger is better); the differences are enormous which results in huge differences in appearance... and cost of the equipment.

http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/cat-broadca...

http://www.arri.com/

IMAX cameras used to film the new Batman movie is a few hundred thousand dollars (the lenses are more) - plus all these cameras have different post production processing requirements... and NONE of them record audio. That is captured separately and added/mixed/sync'd later...

They don't normally buy the cameras (or audio gear or kighting or whatever), but rent or lease them for the project).

Answer 2

Simple answer is - size matters ( for lens ). Any camera you see being used to shoot movies are massive in size,and have huge lenses, to capture more light and having to compress it less, therefore getting more detail. Obviously all the other technical details matter, but this one is the MOST important of all.

- The Gremlin Guy -

Answer 3

short answer, film vs. video.