When Sharlto Copley and Simon Hansen of Atomic Visual Effects set out to shoot thier first feature "Spoon" they were ready to accept the inevitable limitations of thier budget and shoot DV. However, being an innovative bunch, not quick to give up without a fight, they fought hard for alternatives."Sharlto and I have always tried to do innovative things and to make our work look better than the budget would conventionally allow. The idea of making a commercial style popular film on an indie budget is the holy grail of every endeavour we have embarked on in the past 12 years.""In that spirit we just couldn’t resist the temptation to use low end prosumer gear to produce a truly high end product. So much so that we took a document we found on the web detailing the aspects of a film to avoid when trying to make a low budget indie film (I say “low budget” indie film because Star Wars was essentially funded by one man.) and commited to include almost every one. Many of these obstacles can be solved with CGI and we have strategically been preparing ourselves for that eventuality for the past 7 years through our company Atomic Visual Effects.""We needed 10bit High detail pictures which we could grade, key and composite with, but we refused to use film or established high end HD cameras because we wanted the money we had for the film on other aspects of the production" - Simon Hansen - Atomic VFX 'Spoon' blog - http://indiefilmlive.blogspot.com/2005_10_01_archive.html.When HDV hit the market, they thought they had found the answer, specifically with the JVC GYHD100 featuring true 24p record, interchangeable lenses and most of the uncompressed component output. The idea was to combine the uncompressed component output from the GYHD100 with the Cineform compression codec, a groundbreaking wavelet compression algorithm bringing the uncompressed data stream to 1/5th of its uncompressed bandwidth pretty near lossless.Add a P&S Technic Mini35 adapter and some Zeiss Ultraprimes and you've just stepped into a territory otherwise reserved for much larger budgets. However, the depth of field and image produced by the tiny 1/3" sensor of the HD100 left a lot to be desired when trying to achieve true "filmic" cinematography.Then came the launch of the SI1920 to the market, and this changed everything (well from the JVC HD100's perspective). The "EVE" camera system developed by Silicon Imaging combines the best features from a lot of well known prosumer High Definition digital aquisition solutions such as the HD100 and the Sony Z1E without the compromises. EVE delivers uncompressed RGB 4:4:4 1920 x 1080 imaging at a price point that leaves budget constraints litteraly a non-issue. The camera head is smaller and lighter than anything else on the market and when combined with the cineform codec to record straight to disk, it's an obvious step into the tapeless world of pure digital production with truely uncompromised image quality."No more having to waste money on digitizing film stock or having to shoot less footage due to budget constraints. Now you can shoot clean full raster uncompressed footage on set with immediate access for editing, animation or grade. Imagine the amount of time saved, shooting a film with the same depth as film stock and all of the benefits of a digital environment""What does one gain from a digital environment? More control on what you shoot, changing the color matrix and comparing footage before you even shoot the scene! Exposure meter, color meter, digital zoom, element zoom, element spotter, focus assist...all of these tools are available to make for a less painful shoot, spending less time having to calculate things which can be done in the comfort of your VT workstation. All this while the footage shot is still RAW!""EVE is really easy to set up. A PC attached to the CMOS camera head with a PL mount for the prime lenses, 16mm or 35mm. Think of having a bigger monitor to watch your footage and compare sharpness, contrast, etc? It can be done. Want to edit your footage immediately while on set? It can be done" - Simon Hansen - Atomic VFX 'Spoon' blog - http://indiefilmlive.blogspot.com/.