Getting Everything I Can Out Of The Canon HV30

[Phil Rhodes]

Don't overlook things other than film stock. Picking a particular Kodak stock number and trying figure out what's special about it probably won't help - obviously it's about lighting and other issues, but grading will help you a lot.

 

I do enjoy it when people decide to get what they can out of older gear, though. Lit properly I'm sure an HV30 can produce perfectly nice stuff.

 

I would certainly look into getting a better recorder for it. This could be fairly cheap.

 

P

[John E Clark]

John is that DaVince Resolve 12? That sounds EXCELLENT if you are able to simply feed in existing 5254 footage and then get even a basic approximation of that texture. Obviously I don't care about render time. I am downloading the free version now but I notice there is another one available for $1000 or so-is the $1000 version the only one that can do what you are describing? Thanks so much for your assistance. JKH

 

I use DaVinci Resolve(*) with the Pocket and RAW... while Premiere will read in the BMPCC RAW format, it seems to want to convert it, and that takes an incredible amount of time. I use Resolve on my laptop and iMac. While the play back is not 'real time' on the laptop, I can live with it for editing and color work. The color tools are far better than what I can get out of Premiere 'out of the box'. I'm sure one can work wonders in Premiere... just the color section of Resolve just worked better for me wanting to get a basic color correction/augmentation/etc.

 

As for matching a specific film stock. Personally I've been underwhelmed with such activities... I have experimented with adding a bit of 'film grain' noise to images to mitigate 'jaggies' which are produced due to the spatial sampling of the sensor array, but that is not so much to mimic a film stock, as bury the jaggies... and in darker areas of the image, bury 'intensity/color noise'.

 

I shot still film for years, but when I switched to digital, I did not really find anything useful in trying to mimic either Tri-X or Neopan 400, my two usual still film B&W stocks, nor Fujifilm or Kodak 'color' films... which I used mostly for 'wedding' work... (then there's ILford B&W HP4 that I use to use in sheet film form...).

 

In my case, I moved into the digital world, and moved into the aesthetic of digital.

 

When I do take my 'color' motion picture media into B&W I use some form of 'channel mixer' where one can 'mix' the components R, G, B, which contribute to the monochrome result. One can simulate classes of stocks, or types of B&W filters on stocks, but not particularly emulate a specific stock.

 

* Resolve now is the 'lite/free' version where as the Resolve Studio is the $$ version. The lite/free version doesn't have many filters or plugins, but then I do have Premiere and After Effects for that sort of thing.

Edited December 2, 2015 by John E Clark

[Kenny N Suleimanagich]

It’s also worth noting that a few of those 70s films shot on 5254 were finished on dye-transfer prints – most of Gordon Willis’ work is known for this. You’ll never get richer blacks than that (granted, I’m not sure how much this would carry over to a SDTV image).

 

That high-key hard lighting style was still very pervasive in Hollywood, partially because many of the cinematographers doing TV at that time were veterans of the studio era working through the last few years of a long career. Add to that the fact that camera departments (basically anything American and not Panavision) were likely using older Baltar and Super Baltar lenses, and you see how many factors came into play to create that look.

Edited December 2, 2015 by Kenny N Suleimanagich

[Freya Black]

Thank you men lots to think about..

This stuff just gets worse and worse! :)

 

Freya

[JosephKHansalik]

This stuff just gets worse and worse! :)

 

Freya

Oops I am sorry Freya! Men and woman also!

It’s also worth noting that a few of those 70s films shot on 5254 were finished on dye-transfer prints – most of Gordon Willis’ work is known for this. You’ll never get richer blacks than that (granted, I’m not sure how much this would carry over to a SDTV image).

 

That high-key hard lighting style was still very pervasive in Hollywood, partially because many of the cinematographers doing TV at that time were veterans of the studio era working through the last few years of a long career. Add to that the fact that camera departments (basically anything American and not Panavision) were likely using older Baltar and Super Baltar lenses, and you see how many factors came into play to create that look.

Well this leads to an interesting conclusion which seems to make sense-in the 70s you had old-school cinematographers used to lighting for extremely slow speed film in the studio era that didn't change their style when it moved to 100T so you get a very distinctive look of everything overlit compared to what is really necessary for that speed film. However I have seen traditional hard-light and over lighting on digital and it looked absolutely TERRIBLE.

 

I am sure that there is a way to "crack" this so to speak so that I can get within the general ballpark of what I am looking for but I don't want to fret over every shot; I want to use what I've got and just get a good system down. I want to do what need to be done shooting (use lots of light, use slow speeds, etc.) which may look ridiculous in camera until I apply a few global settings in post that will make it respond like film.

 

I experimented shooting black and white with the HV30 earlier this year in various locations (no artificial lighting though just pointing and shooting) and got a very good filmic look in the end but that was Vegas which I was very familiar with (Windows) as opposed to Final Cut Pro X which I am just starting to pick up. However, I have the latest version, and I have just downloaded DaVInci Resolve as suggested (free version) and looks like a GREAT piece of software, very powerful...this will give me lots to chew on. JKH