ljoski johnsen

Troy, Incidentaly, I'm trying to get rid of letterbox black from 4x3 letterboxed project. Could you explain a bit more on the procedure? I'm working with Avid Media Composer. Unfortunately, Avid doesn't seem to do this without softening the image. Or at least as far as I tried. If I resize the image area to fit to 4x3 and de-resize it when I export or in the other application such as DVDstudioPro, it'll soften the image quite a bit. My original is Super16 telecined to Betasp in 1.66:1 letterbox. So I inheritedly have letterbox in the image which I wanna to get rid of for multiple reasons such as DVD export, HD upgrade, etc. Christopher, Computer monitor cannot be a reference for color correction. Make sure you have a properly calibrated NTSC standard monitor for that matter. If you don't have one, you should rather watch the waveform than the actual footage. And my computer is Macintosh as well, just in case you're thinking difference btw PC and Mac is the problem. I don't think it's only that. Also, I think you're confused about the stock number.

Christopher, Thanks for letting me know that my monitor is messed up. I'm pretty sure that my computer isn't NTSC standard monitor but I tried to set the black level properly with SMPTE color bars although it's still wrong since computer monitor is RGB color space anyways. I wonder how many people will be able to check this film in the properly calibrated NTSC monitor. Do you have such monitor used for your computer? It's pretty obvious that a lot of people don't have nice minitors as you do. I thought I gave you a constructive criticism for your improving the website, but you told me that my computer is messed up? Oh well... :( Here is what you or your editor should do in case you haven't figure it out. Set your black level at 7.5 IRE (of course I imagine you have properly calibrated monitor and waveform monitor to set this.) and chop off whatever below the level that way your black level is consistent. Also it's good idea to chop off the white level at 100 IRE. The black level that I'm talking about here is within the image. Now set your letterbox however you like (1.66:1, 1.78:1, 1.85:1 etc) and it shouldn't have any more problem like this. By the way, I think it's a very nice piece with beautiful cinematography. Ljoski

You may want to set the black level consistent. Or at least set the letterbox black level consistent. It drew my attention away from the story whenever black level shifts cut to cut, and especially it's bad when black level on the letterbox changes. Ljoski

Michael, thank you for your advice. I'll most likely keep the marcury halide on and try to match other lights with it. Ljoski

hi, I'm shooting a short film taking place at an indoor swimming pool. It's quite a big space and there are a bunch of lights from the top. I'm not quite sure what kind of light they are, but they look like the typical light for indoor pools. They are definitely cooler than tungsten lamps. I'm wondering if those lights have interrupted spectrum because just by looking at from naked eyes each has slightly different colors. I'm guessing it's the color inaccuracy over the age. Does anybody know this kind of light and the charactristics of it? I am now thinking to keep those lights on and have HMI backlightings, and chinese lanterns with daylight bulbs in for close-ups to keep things simple. It is all day interior scenes. Or, should I turn the overhead lights off and light the scene from scratch? I'm shooting on Super16 and the director wants the scene to be high-key. Thanks in advance! Ljorski Austin TX

Hi, I did 7217 and 7279 bleach bypass and I felt 79 came out more desaturated and 17. Maybe it has something to do with the amounts of silver in those two films. I actually liked the way 79 bleach-bypassed looked more. I rated my meter to 500 for 17 and 1000 for 79 for compensating the increased density. High light gets really crashed easily. So be careful. Ljoski J

Hi, Since the regular fluorescent has an interrupted spectrum, the color temp meter isn't very useful in this situation. A half or quarter minus green gel would get rid of the green spike somehow. But usually cool white fluorescent light is much cooler than tungsten so half or quarter CTO will bring down the kelvin temperature to tungsten level, or half/quarter CTB to match with the daylight. Then again, you loose quite a lot of light by all these filterations, so as Mr. Barrera suggested, your best bet is simply turning it off and augment with other type of lights if needed. You didn't really specified the scene so I have no idea what kind of light would be appropriate, but I would play with big bounce card, reflector, or bounced HMI that could match with the daylight. Ljoski J

Wow, that really looks amazing. Which lenses did you use? Did you use any filters? Where did you process and transferred at? Great stuff, man. Ljoski Austin TX

Oh, I see. So, XL2's exposure ring attached to the side of the camera body actually change the size of the aperture in the lens? So, it does affect the Depth of field. I remeber that when I attached Mini35 onto XL2 the aperture ring was useless as the camera body didn't recognize the mini35 adaptor as a lens. That makes a lot of sense now. Thank you, David. Ljoski Johnsen Austin, TX

Hi, This is my first post here. I have a question. The other day, someone told me that when he was shooting something last month, he kept aperture wild open to gain less of the DOF using 3CCD camera (XL2). And I was thinking that cannot be possible because XL2's lens doesn't even have the aperture ring. Rather it changes its f-stop inside the camera body electronically, I suppose. If the DOF is relevant to the size of the circle of confusion, it is impossible to gain less of DOF by stopping down electronically in the camera body. I told him that but he never got what I said and still believing that wide open aperture will give him less of DOF. He rented a bunch of ND filters just for that matter. Am I crazy? Or my pal is just ignorant? Ljoski Johnsen Austin, TX