Bruce Taylor

Olex must be on vacation! Normally he would have commented here. To the best of my knowledge 12v was the highest voltage used by the standard Konvas motors. If you hook 12v up to an earlier 15EPSS motor you will probably fry it. Olex has an excellent website with all the information you need to identify the motor and its voltage and amperage requirements: https://sites.google.com/site/olexserviceskonvas/ There is a tutorial on the www.Konvas.org site on adapting a 4 pin xlr power cable to a Kinor that has the battery wiring orientation on the Kinor/Konvas power plug. Enjoy!

The Goko was also quite good, back in the day. I have a very nice one, bright, non flicker prism, motorized, sound capable. I think it may also have some recording features, but I always used my Elmo projector for that.

Yes.

But Karl, they don't work in below-the-line departments like camera! They're writers, directors, producers, composers. :) Brian, I recently took some refresher classes in the film department of my local community college. No false advertising there. The first meeting of the cinematography class started with the professor asking us what we thought we were doing, as "none of you sitting before me will likely work in the industry." He suggested anyone interested in having an actual paid job after graduation transfer to the local culinary school, where graduates had a 100% job placement rate! They can't say that at USC, not after sucking down $200k... Though in fact, the local community college film school grads went on to many positions in the industry, both above and below the line.

"What's poor Jimmy going to do getting out of school with $50,000 in debt not knowing how to load a camera or use a light meter? Richard, I couldn 't confirm the rumor, though I tried. It came from a film commission, though" I suspect it's true. A year or two ago I was speaking to a a prof who teaches there. One interesting story: one or two sets of new Christie film projectors were delivered for the theater in the new Lucas building and they were returned. The facility was to be all digital as per Mr. Lucas' donation conditions. A few months before that I met USC's film camera service person, a lonely guy. A few scattered Arri S and K3's that no one used. I'm sure he's gone now. If students wanted a film camera they would rent a modern well maintained one from a reputable rental house. You can get your degree without having anything to do with actual film; that has been the case there for some time. Of course you can shoot film. They shoot anything they want-- RED, 35mm, whatever. They rent Chapman cranes, truckloads of G&E, Panavision, book orchestral scoring sessions at Paramount, you name it. I know a DP who made pretty good money shooting their student films. They have real budgets! Why learn how to load a mag and use a light meter? Hire an expert who knows how! $50,000 in debt? I guess that would be true... if you started with $150,000 in cash. Estimated annual cost of attendance: $50,000-- a USC undergrad degree is $200,000 today. I think the grad program is 2 years (maybe 3?), so $100 to $150k. Lousy neighborhood, lovely grounds though. I hear the campus annual flower budget is over 100k.

There are lots of other systems out there. Do some research on this forum as well as google searches and you'll find plenty of information. A lot of them are being dumped cheap now as people migrate over the the HD DLSR thing to get the shallow DoF.

Sounds like you need to get comfortable using a lightmeter and visualizing your lighting set-ups. Using a light meter in a basic way is not a big deal. I'm sure you can find great reference material on the web or in old photo technique books. With the incredibly wide exposure latitude of modern motion picture film you don't have much to worry about as long as you are close. I would suggest using an incident meter which reads the light falling on your subject rather than reflected from it. However, if you only have a reflected meter you can read off an 18% gray card and get the same result as an incident meter. Be sure your meter is accurate! They need calibration periodically. Quick and dirty checks: If you have another meter to compare it to and they both give you the same reading they are likely to be accurate. Also there is the "sunny 16" rule: a reading at noon outdoors on a sunny day should give you f 16 when the shutter speed matches the film speed, i.e. 50 speed film at 1/50 sec shutter should yield an f 16 stop. An easy and cheap way to see what your results will look like would be to shoot some stills using a manual still camera (like an old 35mm slr) and negative stills film that matches (pretty close anyway) the film speed and color temperature of your motion picture stock. You'll get a good idea of how it will handle contrast ratios, color and exposure. If you really want to dial it in shoot slide film, it has much less latitude. Be mindful of what you're doing, shoot some tests to confirm your readings and you should be fine.

I am not suggesting the deanamorphic viewfinder is broken, but that the way it is set up may not be right for your particular camera. Yes, the prism in the viewfinder block could be a problem. It is an odd design, the prism is held in by nothing but tension from 2 pieces of cork. I had a tech fiddle with one for some time to get it right on one of my cameras, he locked it down with nail polish.

I applaud your cutting it to 22 minutes. I'm sure it made the film much better. So it sounds like you were shooting something like a 6-1 ratio in the end. I have happy memories of my wife-to-be managing an art house theater (having started at the refreshment stand) and the quirky and interesting characters she hired that staffed the refreshment counter and the ticket and projection booth. A great setting for a story amongst great films! I have only dim memories of "Billy Liar" (though I am a Schlesinger fan), I'm putting it in my netflix que. Pulling selects from reels or cutting a selects reel with handles seem to be the economical way to go toward a DI. Or what about cutting the neg and contact printing? I guess the other question is whether you want to end up with a projectable print. If not, HD telecine would probably be cheapest?

Yes, something that one usually tries to avoid! But it is an interesting look, too. I'm not sure which cameras can be used to create the effect. I know an out of time Kinor will do it, it's belt driven.

I'm sure they would. Many people have been very happy with the work of Paul Duclos in Canoga Park as well.

I don't know about a specific pad for your Arri SR2, but I bought a shoulder pad from filmtools some time ago that works well and was cheap. Rather than attaching to the camera, it straps on to the operator. Does the job pretty well. http://www.filmtools.com/camera-comfort-cushion-com.html

I agree with Olex, I think you have a problem with your deanamorphic viewfinder. I have found that I need to rely on a camera tech to sort out many of the alignment issues with the Kinor 35H. Parts that should be interchangeable from one camera to another often are not, they require a "massage" to set them up on another camera that appears identical. I would take the camera/viewfinder/lens to a tech and have everything set up correctly, then you should be good to go. It's not an Arri or Panaflex, but it can make great pictures cheap once it's all set up right.

I think you were successful in getting the look you were after. I liked the look of the trailer, but I would like to get more of a sense of the story-- I like the plot idea, and having it take place in a theater. Please tell us more. Did you record all the sound in post? There are a number of ways people have handled sound while shooting with their Konvas. Did you shoot short ends/recans? Shooting ratio? Post path-- workprint or telecine? Any challenges with the Lomos? I'd love to see the film, how is it going to be released? From what I saw in the trailer the lighting and grain looked good. I share your lack of feeling for digital. Nothing against it, I just personally prefer the way film looks, including the physical artifacts (like you used in the trailer). Best of luck!

A note on converting your Kinor 35H to PL mount, as I am sure you're aware the FFD of a PL mount is 9mm shorter than OCT19. I have only heard of one successful conversion and he said he would never do it again.

Exactly. Modern spherical lenses are going to be sharper and flare less. There are film area advantages when shooting anamorphic 35mm that do not exist when shooting on RED. The reason for shooting anamorphic on RED is to get anamorphic artifacts like the flares and eliptical bokeh mentioned above, or the shallower depth of field. Also, the newer anamorphic lenses are going to flare much less as you'll see in the tests. That's why a lot of RED shoots like the Lomo roundfront anamorphics from the '80's-- they are reasonably sharp, moderately fast (T2.4) and flare enough to get interesting results if that's what you're after.

Speaking of the rubber wheel idea, there was a vendor at Cinegear last year that was making just such a device. His booth was full of HDSLR goodies. I'll see if I can find the name tonight, but you could look under the Cinegear vendors list.

Steve, did you buy T2's McAlister that he had for sale?

I had a McAlister until recently, and it WAS loud when pumping up-- so it may be normal. I mean the thing runs at something like 3000psi, right? As long as it was quiet while operating (which it was) I didn't have a problem. I wish I still had it, but there were drawbacks. First the weight-- makes for very steady moves, but it is hell to move. Though if I were wrestling 150lb camera packages it wouldn't have seemed so bad. The other thing is that it is 40 or 42" wide, so it will never go through a standard 36" doorway! I read a post somewhere where a fellow had narrowed the chassis to something like 34". If I had the wherewithall to do that I would have kept it.

What Richard said: Beg forgiveness if you get caught... and move on to your next location. I find that there is so much production going on all the time that people mostly ignore it, especially if it involves only a small crew and limited equipment. Be super polite, keep a low profile and be considerate of others (as I think all location production people should be!) and you probably won't have any problems. If you're a student, a letter from your department head stating you are working on a student film may be helpful too.

Generally, you adjust the eyepiece dioper setting so the marks or delineations on the focusing screen are in focus to your eye with no eyestrain. It is not as clear cut as with an actual groundglass. Once that's done you can get to the business of focusing the lens. It's easiest to put some sort of edge or line across the center of the split at your intended focus distance, when it is an unbroken line again you're in focus (provided the rest of the camera is properly set up, of course). Also, always zoom in to full telephoto to focus and then zoom back out to your intended frame. Makes focus easier to see.

By "Photo-Lenses" do you mean still camera lenses? From my experience Kowa made a couple of still cameras series with lenses. There was a low priced 35mm slr (priced below the higher end Minolta/Pentax/Olympus/Nikons of the day) that was not particularly mechanically or optically great, but it was inexpensive. They also made the Kowa 6, a medium format 6x6cm camera for the semi-pro/pro market, dubbed the "poor man's Hasselblad." The camera body had some reliability issues, but it had lenses that rivaled the best medium format cameras of the day. Kowa's cine lenses were competitive with the other professional lenses of their day in build quality and optical performance. IIRC, Cinema Products rebadged them for their XR35 and CP16R camera lines.

I don't think Lomo and Kowa have any association. Lomos were manufactured in the former Soviet Union, Kowa was made in Japan. Kowa optics and build quality are excellent. Lomo made generally good to excellent optics, but the mechanical components were not well made.

Okay, I have gotten some more information. The Arri running at 2fps post was not correct, I believe that is a project for a refinement of the system that is not complete. Currently he is shooting straight off the HD screen at 24fps. Density and color correction are done before the screen is photographed, so he says he gets a one light print from the neg that is ready to project. Here is the text from his email, it is a little difficult with the language issues, but I think he gets the points across. "use emulsion in photo 35mm cans" I think he means load MP film stock in 35mm still cartridges. Enjoy. "One first is economical one (in time of work) ... when stuff are SD or HD at 29.97 or 25fps or 60i .... I film a SONY HD screen with HDSDI connexion , this screen have 1200x2300 pixels ... i run at 24 fps the camera , and thats it , OF course , before this i have to prepare the transfer with levels of video i know they are full sync with emulsion i use ... so i have calibratioj of the screen with VISION3 500T and 85 filter , OR i use fuji 250 Daylight .... to make thoses tests, it is easy , simply use emulsion in photo 35mm cans ..... so you can make a lot of tests, without running camera .... i call tham sensitometric tests, you have to place all info digital inside the range of the gamma of the film you use .... for this i use a 5 to 5% of grey chart first .... this give me a 21 grey zone .... I play with settings of monitor to can obtain this result on FILM with decent lights close 25,25,25 in printer ..... this can take few tests, And obviously parrallle qith this test i run colorimetric test to see than neutral is neutral and not have crossing density in my chart ..... So after few tests, and have your monitor calibrated with your emulsion .... you can see changes possibles , so what happend if over expose or under expose 1/3 , 1/2, 2/3 .... playing around ... when you are OK , BINGO ..... so you need a powerfull computer able to run HD full quality without problem , but a good mac is OK .... with AJA IO card for uncompress HDSDI signal . Now i am using a 2K monitor , the best is MAC 1600x2560 pixels 30 inch (not the new one!) use the discontinued one .... All the work after is HOW to recapture in base at original material the images ..... this is another story , will tell you later . NEXT : color correction and density , make material look better than original blow up SD material to HD ! how to get DVCAM to 35mm good , and HD full 35mm look . all DI work but now i make all ecuadorians featrures films with this process, and have made blow up of 7D to scope anamorph 35mm with soooo beautiful results, it is a must for a DP do all the image work from begining to 35mm final copy , lab don t do nothing more than process and print, my final prints go to ONE LIGHT !!!! labs don t believe it ! "

Amazing what these little HDSLRs can do in the right hands. I could use that omelet right about now.