Carl Brighton, Jim Murdoch? What is this about?

[Guest Glen Alexander]

hello,

relative newbie to the forum and i've been grepping through threads for hints on HD cameras and keep coming across this verbal jousting, people getting banned. i've tried reading through the posts but it's all a bit vague to follow since it's happened quite a while ago.

 

thanks!

[Ruairi Robinson]

hello,

relative newbie to the forum and i've been grepping through threads for hints on HD cameras and keep coming across this verbal jousting, people getting banned. i've tried reading through the posts but it's all a bit vague to follow since it's happened quite a while ago.

 

thanks!

 

Who gives a flying felch at this point...?

[Guest]

Who gives a flying felch at this point...?

 

Yeah. But it was damn good entertainment!!

 

R,

[Guest Glen Alexander]

Who gives a flying felch at this point...?

well mr. robinson, please READ the heading under the thread title. it says "Newbie needs history lesson." it does not say stop by to start a flame war or throw in a verbal grenade just to be negative. just because someone is a relative newbie to forum, don't assume anything.

 

if you bothered to look i also posted a thread, that the Murdoch thread was some of funniest material i've read in a long, long time. :)

[Guest Glen Alexander]

Yeah. But it was damn good entertainment!!

 

R,

 

R.,

 

i couldn't stop laughing... just curious what happened that's all. it had everything, "lens", kilts, etc. ran nearly the entire encyclopedia of subjects :)

Edited January 17, 2008 by Glen Alexander

[David Mullen ASC]

There really isn't a "story" to be told -- a quick scan through their posts gives you a sense of their typical posting trends.

 

Jim Murdoch had some major bug up his a-- about Panavision, and the Genesis in particular. Theories were that he was this Australian guy with the anti-Panavision site who was an ex-employee. Now that so many projects have been shot on the Genesis, his whole paranoia over the Genesis release is more senseless than ever. Carl Brighton was a camera assistant who had some major attitude problem with digital camera technology and RED in particular, if I remember their posts correctly...

[Ruairi Robinson]

well mr. robinson, please READ the heading under the thread title. it says "Newbie needs history lesson." it does not say stop by to start a flame war or throw in a verbal grenade just to be negative. just because someone is a relative newbie to forum, don't assume anything.

 

if you bothered to look i also posted a thread, that the Murdoch thread was some of funniest material i've read in a long, long time. :)

 

So... you give a flying felch then...?

[Stephen Williams]

So... you give a flying felch then...?

 

Hi Ruairi,

 

Thanks for that, I could quote a post you made in the Red forum but I won't bother.

 

Stephen

[Ruairi Robinson]

Hi Ruairi,

 

Thanks for that, I could quote a post you made in the Red forum but I won't bother.

 

Stephen

 

Then why bother bringing it up?

 

Quote away! Especially if it makes me look like a hypocrite. I can take it. I'm well 'ard :)

[Matthew Buick]

I didn't know Brighton was banned, he was one of the funniest people we've ever had. He certainly cracked a funny joke about Richard Boddington once. :)

[A. Whitehouse]

I think part of the fun of Jim Murdoch was his picture, which turned out was of a Scottish landscape painter and stolen from his website (I believe the painter was genuinely called Jim Murdoch). It seems every once in awhile a new persona crops up in these forums who is obviously posting under a false name and generally starts with some very inflammatory remarks designed to get a response. Whatever happened to that guy who ran a digital rental house in Germany? Jan Van Kroph?

[Stephen Williams]

Whatever happened to that guy who ran a digital rental house in Germany? Jan Van Kroph?

 

He did get banned for 6 months.

 

Stephen

[Stephen Williams]

Quote away! Especially if it makes me look like a hypocrite. I can take it. I'm well 'ard :)

 

Hi Ruairi,

 

You wrote "It's strange to me how forums like this are such a magnet for crackpots.

 

Yours sincerely,

The Messiah."

[Charlie Peich]

Murdoch's site is still up Aw give it a rest guys!

[Ruairi Robinson]

Hi Ruairi,

 

You wrote "It's strange to me how forums like this are such a magnet for crackpots.

 

Yours sincerely,

The Messiah."

 

 

and...?

[Guest Glen Alexander]

So... you give a flying felch then...?

 

 

Personally no i don't but if i wanted to start as a stand up comic or worked as a writer (well if there wasn't a strike) you could gets lots of so much funny, gut busting, piss yourself laughing material. That kilt photo is classic. Is the material people post on this website copyrighted? As long as you reference this site, does fair public use apply?

Edited January 18, 2008 by Glen Alexander

[Guest Glen Alexander]

Whatever happened to that guy who ran a digital rental house in Germany? Jan Van Kroph?

 

 

Thanks! some more reading material.

[Carl Brighton]

I didn't know Brighton was banned, he was one of the funniest people we've ever had. He certainly cracked a funny joke about Richard Boddington once. :)

 

Not banned, just bored!

 

I originally came here looking for hard technical information on the RED, which in the early days was like pulling teeth. Well, the teeth kept coming out, but they were mostly false :rolleyes::-)

 

I now have most of the information I require, so I've cleaned my dental pliers and put them away:-)

 

Personally I couldn't give a fourpenny f*ck about the Post Production workflow considerations that seem to dominate the forums now. Nor am I interested in delivery schedules. All I ever cared about is the image quality that goes into the chain, you know: "garbage in - garbage out" and all that.

 

The RED is a good camera, well, a fantastic camera for the price, but I seriously doubt it will revolutionize anything much.

 

My 0.02c worth:

People who already have real jobs using real video cameras will be able to do their jobs better, for less money. When the RED gets a proven track record, it will probably be commonplace for a single job to pay for a small fleet of REDs.

 

People who don't yet have real jobs are unlikely to ever get them just because they've bought a RED. It's more likely that they will eventually wind up selling their camera packages for considerably less than they paid for them, to people who have the contacts and experience to get gainful employment from them, but need more cameras in hurry.

 

Unpalatable, but the reality of the industry. Look at the fantastically diverse inventory Panavision now have, mostly acquired from takeovers of smaller companies that went belly-up becasue they overcapitalized on new technology.

[Carl Brighton]

He certainly cracked a funny joke about Richard Boddington once. :)

Kind of youi to remember.

 

I may have give Richard the impression that I was "on his case" for some reason. It was just a coincidence that there were two separate posts of his that reminded me of similar postings on another forum, (completely unrelated to this one), and I basically adapted the responses. I'm not always original with my replies, I just have a good memory for funny ones :rolleyes:

[Guest Glen Alexander]

Hi Carl,

 

Good to read you posts again, I've really enjoyed your previous entertaining posts.

 

Let's see if we can have some more entertainment and maybe some enlightenment.

 

Those monikers you used are classic one of my favorites is something like, I'm paraphrasing

 

Carl (if you don't agree with me, you don't know your ass from a hole in the ground) Brighton

 

I'm interested to get your opinions entertaining and otherwise on a little system I'm building.

 

Basically I have a 1" CCD sensor operates at 1920x1080@32fps, RGB, so you run it through the deBayer/demosaic, suffer some effective pixel loss. The sensor can also be operated in mono mode but the sensitivity drops by about 1/3 but I get more effective pixels on target (the scene).

 

I can order the sensor strictly in mono so the sensitivity won't be lost.

 

Also I'm in a quandry about lenses (I did use "lenses" properly ha ha think I remember from Born&Wolfe or somewhere) There is another post with lots of more questions.

 

The standard mount is C-mount but I can get an F-mount adapter. Most C-mount lenses are designed for 2/3" not 1". Are there good C-mount lenses for 2/3" that won't distort where I would have to severely crop the resulting image?

 

If I go with an F-mount this introduces a magnification effect, so to get a original shot calling for a 35mm lens would need ~24mm?

 

Then add in the effect of switching between mono and RGB with the sensitivity degradation.. uggh

 

Need help, a few laughs would go a long way as well :)

 

cheers

 

glen "extracting useful and funny material from Carl Brighton" alexander

[Carl Brighton]

Hi Carl,

 

 

 

I'm interested to get your opinions entertaining and otherwise on a little system I'm building.

 

Basically I have a 1" CCD sensor operates at 1920x1080@32fps, RGB, so you run it through the deBayer/demosaic, suffer some effective pixel loss. The sensor can also be operated in mono mode but the sensitivity drops by about 1/3 but I get more effective pixels on target (the scene).

 

I can order the sensor strictly in mono so the sensitivity won't be lost.

 

Also I'm in a quandry about lenses (I did use "lenses" properly ha ha think I remember from Born&Wolfe or somewhere) There is another post with lots of more questions.

 

The standard mount is C-mount but I can get an F-mount adapter. Most C-mount lenses are designed for 2/3" not 1". Are there good C-mount lenses for 2/3" that won't distort where I would have to severely crop the resulting image?

 

If I go with an F-mount this introduces a magnification effect, so to get a original shot calling for a 35mm lens would need ~24mm?

 

Then add in the effect of switching between mono and RGB with the sensitivity degradation.. uggh

 

 

cheers

Hi Glen,

 

 

Regarding your camera I'll try to be as helpful as possible, but I'm no engineer.

I don't really understand what you mean by " a 1" CCD sensor operates at 1920x1080@32fps, RGB" because you then talk about Bayer demosiac-ing.

 

You can't use a Bayer algorithm on an RGB filtered chip, (assuming you understand "RGB" to mean alternately Red-, Green- and Blue-filtered photosites)

 

Aside from that, are you talking about a chip with a native resolution of 1920 x 1080 or one with three times that (5760 x 1080)?

 

Regarding lenses, your question is the reverse of what people usually ask.

 

Mostly it's people trying to use lenses designed for film cameras on video cameras. It's quite rare for someone to want to use a video lens on a film camera (or single-sensor video camera).

 

In general, lenses tend to be designed to just cover the image area they are designed for and no more. Modifying a 16 or 35mm film camera for super 16 or super 35 operation only requires a slightly wider image area, but many lenses have no provision for even this small increase, and so you get "vignetting".

 

I doubt that any standard 2/3" HDTV lens would have enough coverage for a 1" sensor, for no other reason than it doen't need to have it, and providing it would cost more to no useful purpose.

 

Personally I think you may have underestimated the potential cost of building what sounds to me a pretty ordinary HD camera. What exactly do you plan to do with this? If you really want a cheap high resolution video camera, why not start saving now and buy a RED?

 

There's something you perhaps need to understand about cinematography cameras: for the average hire,

you're lucky if the cost of the actual camera body makes up more than 25% of the package. It's all the other bits and pieces where the money is. That doesn't change if you change the camera. To make a proper film, you need a good range of good lenses, and it's really hard to do a good job with cheap lenses not designed for the task.

 

At the moment, with <500 shippings the RED project is still in its infancy. Everyone is going goo-goo and gaa-gaa over the new baby, but like a baby, it'll start to run round and make a nuisance of itself by and by, and people will become less tolerant of its misbehaviour. I reckon by the time they get up to #3,000 or so, it'll start going everywhere with iPod earphones in its ears, a sulky look on its face, and start talking liike a Valley girl and you'll be no longer able to understand it.

 

By #5,000 it'll be sporting various bits of ironmongery in its ears, lips, tongue, navel and god knows where else

By #8,000 it'll have tattoos above its arse and a criminal record.

By #10,000 it'll have two feral children and be living in a commune with a bunch of 50-year-old hippies who can't look you in the eye without twitching.

By #12,000 it'll be living in Jakarta with a Chinese lesbian who used to be a male Beijing politician before having a cheap sex change in Manila.

 

Yeah, I'd say by about #15,000 it'll be settling down enough for you to buy one :lol:

 

No, I'm sure they'll all be sorted long before then, but I do believe the waiting list is very long! :lol:

[Guest Glen Alexander]

Hi Carl,

 

Thanks for the post.

 

Ah, I can finally type again, my side hurts from laughing...

 

I have dug through the mfg specs in detail about their array got down to the nitty gritty.

 

The 1" CCD is a marketing term, as the sensor is bigger than 2/3" but less than a 1" but "close" enough.

 

Detail the size of the array are 14.208 mm H x 7.992 mm V, 1920x1080 pixels per frame @30fps, so the diagonal is 16.3015 mm. The distance from the CCD array to the lens mount is 17.526mm.

 

Most of the C-mount lenses I've seen so far only go out to ~16mm and am a bit concerned about garbage on the edges, I don't want to spend the time running every frame through a post-processing algorithm to correct for distortions when the proper choice of glass up front is the easiest solution.

 

I've found some good 1" glass

http://www.schneiderkreuznach.com/industri...strieoptik.htm#

http://www.pentax.de/_de/cctv/products/ind...=1&ebene2=8

 

In my humble background of shooting some 35mm b&w on an old Arri IIC, is that it is the glass that makes all of the difference. Shot some brilliant stuff on old 9.8mm lens and mediocre on a modern glass of 35 to 120mm (I think those were specs). 35mm film is huge optically and you need really good quality glass that doesn't vignette or have other strange distortions is why you pay the big bucks... IMHO and why Zeiss is making an absolute killing.

 

With bigger CCD/CMOS arrays the glass just gets too expensive, especially when you're going to eventually chop it down HD, 1920x1080, and then if it gets broadcast over airwaves, non-satellite, they'll water it down to 720p or 1080i.

 

So I'm looking for really good glass for this array size. Nikon F-mount, Nikon glass seems good, very easily available.

 

These are probably the basic lenses that I want to get started.

 

1. widest prime without any fisheye or distortions.

2. good 35 to 120

3. prime 200mm

 

Paraphrasing Dylan, three lenses and the truth.

 

It may be ordinary HD camera sure, will grant you that, it's no Red. :) but then again with the right glass, I can be out shooting and testing in 4 weeks. I know what components are inside and there's nothing "mysterious" about it, ha ha. I know the software inside and out, it's not just some black box with a S/N stamped. I didn't go into this project to compete with anything or to be a bad-ass 4k/2k film replacement, but a good, stable, known platform to make films.

 

When I go out into the bush, I want damn near 100% reliability. Ask any poor bastard that has driven on the canning stock track, had problems and survived. ha ha

 

If I have concerns or problems, the CCD mfg has beenready to help out with SDK issues, camera. I have hammered their SDK programmer on the banging bits level and I get solid answers every time, I don't always agree but solid answers. I don't think their employees have ever heard of "CCDs for Dummies." ha ha ha ha

 

The films and what I will do with the system will be much more unique than

"people shooting themselves in the head with BB guns"

or

"some 100 million dollar bloatfest" ha ha ha

 

There some algorithms I want to try and the usual way of shooting a film, I'm going to absolutely junk. Everyway a film is shot, all the things you're supposed to do, no more. This average and mediocre HD system ok, fair enough. You give one person a paintbrush and they can't even paint a garage door, give it to someone else and you get "Wheatfields with Crows." It's about bringing creativity and expressionism to film both what is on film and how it is filmed. You can say, I'm ignorant and don't have a clue but I'm willing get out there and film something I find meaningful.

 

Agree, I just need the good glass. :) either F or C mount please.

 

I think you've hit the issues exactly, if someone had a good business plan it might be buying, fixing, and reselling your favorite colored camera on the secondary market.

 

Cheers

glen

[David Mullen ASC]

As people at Phanton (Vision Research), Dalsa, Silicon Imaging, and RED have discovered, there's a lot more to a digital cine camera that simply sticking a lens onto a sensor and recording the output. Simply getting it to run at 24 fps without overheating and then recording at that data rate uncompressed is hard enough. Then if you expect to get color out of the image, you're into a whole other challenge.

 

As a science project, this all sounds like fun... but don't mistake this as somehow being more creative as a cinematographer anymore than building your own motion picture film processor or film stock makes you a better artist.

[Brian Dzyak]

And from a business point of view, there was someone advertising (on this site I believe) their RED and themselves as a DIT for $600/day!!

:blink: http://www.cinematography.com/forum2004/in...showtopic=28319

 

Not sure what kind of production generous folks like that are expecting to work on/for, but in the freelance world, $600 is barely a Cameraman rate. Even if one assumed a rate of $300/10hrs for the labor, that's still giving the camera away for $300 (ncluding accessories, I assume). I sort of had a feeling that we'd see eager investors buy in and then have nothing to shoot with their equipment (no matter how good it is), so they'll be willing to undercut the going rates for labor and equipment which ultimately hurts everyone. Of course, that's assuming that there are non-spec film clients out there who are ready to deal with the RED workflow...so far I haven't personally heard of any.

 

Who knows what will happen. The technology and the business model around it will shake out in time.

[Guest Glen Alexander]

As people at Phanton (Vision Research), Dalsa, Silicon Imaging, and RED have discovered, there's a lot more to a digital cine camera that simply sticking a lens onto a sensor and recording the output. Simply getting it to run at 24 fps without overheating and then recording at that data rate uncompressed is hard enough. Then if you expect to get color out of the image, you're into a whole other challenge.

 

As a science project, this all sounds like fun... but don't mistake this as somehow being more creative as a cinematographer anymore than building your own motion picture film processor or film stock makes you a better artist.

 

 

No don't expect to get color out of the CCD, there are other better ways to get color then chopping up and subspace sampling the spectrum with Bayer.

 

Of course it makes one an artist, terms like better are not applicable to art. Art is emotional content and by somone able and willing to think and do something outside the box into a new space that no one has been.

 

If want to get interested in film stock, shoot a whole movie with IR stock if you can find enough of it.