Film Camera quality

[naish54]

Im not sure if this is the place for this question, seeing as how all the questions i see are video related, but ill ask anyway.

what makes a film camera good? why do the arri’s cost 10’s of thousands of dollars when i can get a bell and howell for a few hundred. obviously the settings on the camera have to be precise and the lens has to be up to par. isnt film stock…film, if you get the high quailtiy stuff?

[composite1]

Naish,

Having shot with film cameras a while ago, I can say it all comes down to ‘you get what you pay for’. Yeah, more often than not your ‘paying for the name’ but film cameras just like video cameras you’re also paying for the features and quality that comes with the name. How often if ever, does the film jam in transport? How reliable are the seals that keep out dust and light? How durable are the film holders? How heavy is the camera fully loaded? Do you have a VTR feed so you can monitor your shots as you shoot? There are dozens of other questions that could be asked concerning a film camera in question. I can say that the more of those questions a single camera is capable of addressing positively adds to the cost of the unit. Bell and Howell makes some great rigs, but Arri makes the cameras that most films get made with. There’s a big difference between journeyman gear and top of the line gear whether it’s film or video related. The best way to learn the difference is to use both.

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