The Camera Assessment Series was done to provide a reference library to help professional cinematographers figure out what camera they want to use for their particular project’s needs. For CAS we only shot cameras readily supported and available that were reasonable candidates for studio feature-grade production. We required all camera to feed into a 10-bit DPX post pipeline, which is most widely used in the industry at this time.

The only “controversy” about the Blu-ray was that cinema productions will be at least 10-bit DPX and P3 color space (film and better/newer cameras more in both cases). Those results can only be adequately seen in a digital cinema presentation in a theater. Compared to digital cinema, Blu-ray is limited in bit depth (8 bit), color gamut (Rec. 709), and compression. Additionally, most often Blu-rays will be seen on poorly set-up monitors in poor viewing environments.

The Blu-ray should be thought of as a good sketch of the CAS results, and as an indication of what each camera might provide when shot for cinema and fed into a high quality Blu-ray pipeline.

A production’s cinematographer and post supervisor are the best people to evaluate camera selection and are ideally brought onto the production at the earliest possible point. Or if a production needs information/assistance beyond what is contained on the Blu-ray, I can help producers or directors at earlier stages of their planning process.

-David Reisner
Secretary, ASC Technology Committee and ASC-PGA Camera Assessment Series subcommittee
Test Design, ASC-DCI Standard Evaluation Material (StEM)
Consultant, Image Quality and Digital Cinema

After that, the white papers and the full documentary will likely be kept at the libraries of AMPAS, PGA, and ASC by the end of this year.

Since it’s an all-volunteer effort, putting all the data together is a very, very slow process.