Andrew Means

I definitely am interested in wideangle lenses- if I was going to do it, however, I would have to do a step-down ring from my 67 filter-mount on the end of my Nikon R10 - has anyone done anything like this? What are the pitfalls?

Yeah- if you're shooting on a completely automatic camera then you're definitely missing out on some key aspects of cinematography- especially the ability to make mistakes and learn from them!

If it works and it's cheap then in my book *any* camera is fine to learn cinematography on. I firmly believe that cinematography is (and indeed, most things are) best learned by doing, so to start out on a non-stellar camera (or bike/computer/sailboat/guitar/etc.) doesn't really matter, because your skills aren't going to be all that great either, and you'll at least know for sure what you want in your next camera, because you'll know what it's like without it. The camera you've posted is autofocus, which might interest you or it might not. I've heard mixed reviews of this model. If you want to learn how to do everything manually (as you will with many of the higher end film cameras) then I'd wait for something else. But if it's under 100 and everything works and you don't mind the AF, then great. If it's more than that, I'd hold out- you can get pretty sweet cameras for under 100 if you keep watching (and ask old relatives!).

I'm curious about this as well. I'm going to be shooting in Japan with a pretty guerrilla setup, and I'm trying to decide how precise I should be with my apeture- if I should just stick with the internal light meter on my R10, or if a spot meter might be good for lighting people inside or in weirdly lit places. Although I guess the majority of my filming inside is probably going to be wide open anyway...

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE talking shop, but one thing that's surprised me a great deal about this board is how rarely anybody shows what they've been working on. I engineer and produce music and am on a messageboard for music engineers, and we're constantly sharing clips of our music and dissecting them, asking 'how'd you achive X or Y effect?', 'what mic did you use with that setup?', 'what process did you use during mixdown?', etc. I guess I'm just curious as to why we don't do that more? I just shot some footage of my friends and I jumping off our sailboat and I plan on posting it as soon as I get it telecined, and asking for critiques - watch focus here, see how it's overexposed there, etc. In the pursuit of actually becoming a better filmmaker. I know lots of you are professionals, and it's probably not kosher to be showing the dailies from your latest feature, but I can't be the only one here who's a hobbyist/enthusiast. Or am I? While it's fun to pontificate about pushing Super8 to its max or the differences between Super8 and 16mm, sometimes it seems like we'd all learn more if we talked a bit less and shot more!

Yeah- as a rather recent participant of the board I never had a chance to see anything Santo did save for a screenshot that "proved" that his super8 results were far superior (and maybe that was on filmshooting?), but anytime somebody talks big game without showing his work (and Santo talked his game pretty big), I'm always pretty skeptical. Santo would have a lot more cred (and I'd cut his wide-load ego more slack) if he put his work where his mouth was.

fixed it!

From the sound of it, you're going to have to make a decision between convenience/expense and image quality- You need to decide how badly you want a real film look to your projects. In order to get a true film look you really have to go film- digital video just isn't there yet. There's plugins that do film effects, which I would encourage you to try out, but honestly, if your priority is to get a super8 look, bite the bullet and go with super8. It'll be a more enriching experience, you'll find you're more intentional about what you shoot, you'll find you treat the camera and the film as dynamic partners rather than simply tools that you use to get what you want. However if your priority is convenience and cost, then there's no beating digital. If you can live with the look (and I wouldn't expect to get close to the look of film without putting some major money into a quality digital camera and post production effects) then utilize digital's immediacy to its full potential- shoot constantly and become a better filmmaker because of it- then when the time/money comes along for film, you'll be better prepared. Ultimately though, make a decision and don't second-guess yourself- just start making movies, that's the important part! Some famous photographer once quipped that asking a photographer what kind of camera he uses is akin to asking a writer what kind of typewriter they use. The real question is what you have inside you and what skill you have in getting your vision and ideas out rather than what tools you use.

They were both good analogies- I was saying the Ferarri Dino analogy is a better analogy than my Ford Model T analogy- super 8 isn't a rickety old antique, it's high performance of a different type and feel than today's "high performance".

a better analogy, definitely.

I laughed out loud reading this. Hope springs eternal : ) Monkey, in some ways Super8 is the equivalent of driving across country in a Model T ford- it won't get you there quickly, easily, or conveniently, but it offers a completely unique experience that you can't replicate elsewhere. For some, it's worth it.

Hey Paul- if nobody's emailed you yet, hit me up at junk at velella dot net and I'll send you a pdf copy of the manual.

Dang, guy, you bought three cameras without even shooting any film? Seems like your prescription is simple: Make no plans, just shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot. If you've got money buy three cameras at a time, you've got money to blow through a few rolls to learn first hand about over/underexposing. Other folks here will have more technical answers but man, I say learn by doing, especially if you've got the scratch.

Hey Nick- We shot it on a Nikon R10 that we got for 100 bucks. We used auto exposure for most of it, but some of it we messed with exposing it up or down a stop. Some panning shots we locked the exposure so it didn't go all crazy on us. I'm curious what everybody thinks of the telecine job. Seeing as how this is my first transfer I don't know how well they did. I think they used a sniper setup, as they transfered it to miniDV. We shot it at 18fps (except the 54fps slo-mo parts), and honestly I'm not sure what the framerate is now, heh, if they upped it to 24 or 20 or what. Upon reading the R10 manual more, it seems that the daylight filter always on unles we displace it with this key type thing- but ours doesn't have a key, it just has the slot with a little plastic plug in it. So did we shoot with the filter in after all? It certainly looks rather blue...

Thanks Gianni, these are awesome ideas. How do you say "I'm a movie director, would you like to come back to my hotel with me?" : ) Seriously though, the flash card ideas are great.

Thanks Yolia- though there's no editing, it's the roll start to finish just as we shot it.

http://www.velella.net/~temp/Anacortes_02%20vid.mov This film is one roll of K64, no edits, shot in Anacortes, WA with my friends Philip (mopping guy), Sylvia (arm swinging girl) and Michael (piano guy). My band had played a show the night before and we had an afternoon just chilling and so we shot this film. We kind of wrote it as we went along, I was like "okay, Phil, you start mopping." And we went from there. We shot it on K64 without (I think) the appropriate filter, so it's a little blue. We had it telecine'd at GT Recording, this place on Greenwood to mini DV. Anyway, it was fun, and it makes me super stoked to go to Japan and shoot more. Tomorrow we're going to shoot a roll on my sailboat...

This is basically one of the best message board replies to a question I've ever read. Well done Andy.

This is all great info- I'm really not very well versed in the technical aspects of film photography unfortunately, so the f-stop stuff is slowly digesting, but I'm getting the gist of what you're saying. I totally get what you're talking about with the filter, as we just got our first little super8 short back (K64, shot in daylight) and it's definitely got a blue tinge to it. I'd really like to do color for the majority of this trip, and while I expect the majority of stock will be shot during the day, I'd like to do some night shooting. Are there faster color reversal stocks than the Ektachrome, or might that be a good time to try out some negative film?

You know, at this point in my super8 development, shooting mostly reversal is probably the smarter thing to do- I'll bring one or two negative rolls, a couple b&w, and the rest reversal- especially since the processing and telecining costs would be much larger if I went entirely negative... Anybody disagree?

18fps for poor folks. (like me!)

My good friend is a professional photographer and has travelled a ton- he carries his film in a bag for them to hand-check when he goes through security.

Thanks! I was going to ask about film stock- I was planning on doing 7217 for the majority of the trip, but will Tri-X do low-light better? I'm not married to shooting color the whole time...

You *might* be able to find something in Salt Lake, but why drive 100 miles to save a couple bucks on postage?

So I'm going to Japan in September with my girlfriend and a couple other friends. Since I don't really have a good still camera, nor do I have a good video camera, I figured I'd document the trip with my Nikon R10- what better way to document my first trip to Japan than with a warm, 'memory' feel of super8? Considerations: I'm poor. I can basically afford 120 bucks for film. I'll be there 7 days, so I'll have to be pretty judicious in what I shoot, basically editing myself as I select shots. This isn't a huge issue for me, in fact I love the constrictions of a 3:20 reel, but it's definitely going to be interesting. Anybody have any suggestions for shooting on a budget aside from "try to buy more film"? Mobility: We're going to be doing a lot of walking, and I want to be able to start filming quickly, with minimal setup. I have a frietag messenger bag (large one) and I want to keep my whole shooting rig in that (along with whatever else I need over the course of a given day) so I'll need to bring just the essentials. What would you bring? I'm thinking of making a fleece bag to put the camera in so it doesn't get scratched/banged around. Tripod would probably be too large for me to carry all over the place, so for most shots I'll probably have to go handheld. Shooting in a foreign country. Anybody shoot in Japan before? What are the faux pas? How do I shoot discreetly? Does it matter? Any other tips & tricks? Thanks folks-