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Zachary Vex

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Everything posted by Zachary Vex

  1. I've got one of each with some fun accessories and every project I've shot lately has been done on DSLR (and will continue to be shot on DSLR for the foreseeable future). eBay has no recent auctions. Searching on google turns up stuff from 2008. Is everyone just sitting on their Aatons until there's some sort of nostalgic resurgence in shooting on film?
  2. Well, it's not about the experiment once it reaches 100000 feet! It's about production. A 3'20" minute loop of film would be 50 feet. 1000 finished units would be 50,000 feet. One has to plan for double the expected sales, or more. Hence 100,000 feet. BTW, this is not about the film. The film is a byproduct. I'm a sound-based guy. Google me.
  3. I need some mag striped film for an experiment. Film quality or speed or type unimportant, as long as an image can be created on it.
  4. Thanks. If you look carefully, you'll see that I dropped a couple of stingers down to the rotational center of the crane. In the end, we dropped 5 stingers because there were 6 lights mounted on the crane's end with the talent, his chair, a table, and the camera setup. After each take, we unwound by backing the entire rig up several turns. It took 1000 pounds of lead in the bucket to offset the load. Also, we couldn't locate a Red on such short notice, but we managed to shoot it anyway. Before post, rough cut, showing the 3 edits. Lots of green screen post to come. Melismatics are a popular local band who played Lollapalooza this year as well as 6 shows during SXSW. This was shot at two locations. In the studio as shown above, and at a small theater for the closing segment. The crane was phenomenal to use... the track and dolly/jib arm were comparatively limited later in the theater. VERY rough cut: http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?acti...kOW4wMEhIRGc9PQ
  5. Non-standard HDMI? Ack! So it won't work with a consumer tv?
  6. Zachary Vex

    Monitoring Red

    I discovered damage to my 2-perf Techniscope Cameflex this week and have a shoot scheduled for Sunday. I had a flat-screen 1080p monitor set up for an HD video tap system on that camera and I'm hoping to use it with Red, but being unfamiliar... what are my options for monitoring using this screen, which has HDMI and composite inputs? Here's my setup... it's a crane that flys the talent around inside a circular set (seen partially assembled here) where the camera operator can easily sit and watch a large screen in what amounts to a very static shot.
  7. Update on this Cameflex issue: Ack! Some of you may remember when I snagged that Techniscope camera from eBay a couple of years ago. I received more than one PM requesting to purchase it if it was for sale again. It turns out my worst fear is true... the turret was damaged, bent, so that two of the three mounts are out of spec. That's probably why the seller was so anxious to get rid of it. It appears that the turret was open when the camera was dropped onto a very hard surface. I have a spare turret from another Cameflex, but it has focus problems too because it's set for a different depth (they were all hand-made, and like snowflakes, are all different.) Sigh. So now Bob at Optical Electro House is getting an estimate for having it machined back into tolerance. What a bummer! Looks like we're shooting on a Red instead. Trying to scare one up (someone who owns one owes the producer a favor.) Drat. I really wanted to shoot this on 2-perf. We built a circular set (not yet complete) for 360 degree shooting using an old 50's crane from Paramount Pictures. We're going to wallpaper the set and hang pictures with green screen inserts for later animation, and rotate the talent 360 degrees while he's sitting on that chair (it will be dyed to a subdued color), probably for a total of 6 full rotations during the song. Grips will run behind where he's just been and update the set so the next time around it looks different... things will also drift into frame from the ceiling (falling leaves, snow) and there's a window in one spot around the circle that will have different things appear behind it (fireflies, moonbeams) until the talent eventually exits out the window and enters a live performance segment. The whole circular room shot will have no edits. There's a counterweight at the back of the crane that balances the whole thing perfectly. It will ultimately have about 750 pounds of lead and fine-tuning 20 lb shot bags in it to balance two people (camera operator and talent) plus the chair, table, 32" HD monitor and lights at the other end. The crane can effortlessly be lifted up and down about 8 feet (we'll only be moving around 4) in addition to spinning endlessly on its axis. It's a magnificent old machine that's been obviated by modern jibs with x-y controllers, but you can't fly talent on a jib arm! The operator can turn that crank on the left side of his seat to rotate the talent (and himself) around the camera risers, which are fixed to the crane. This way he can change the perspective and look straight out the window as he passes it. A wheeled couch will carry the rest of the band along, dragged by the crane next to the singer for a portion of the video.
  8. I'll do that with my next test. Perfect use for my 35mm projector. Some of the problems with using a microscope are that you can't see the whole frame at once and you can't see what happens frame-to-frame.
  9. Like I said, he made assumptions. He assumed that I didn't examine the film before the arriscan. I did, under a 100 power microscope, and the camera operator, director and myself could not decide whether the focus was soft or not, based on the 35mm lens test. After we did the scan, it was apparent that the focus was not quite even across the frame. I then went back and started looking through the camera with shorter lenses (although we did not intend to use shorter lenses on the project) and discovered the more serious focus problems I posted about. The reason the scan was done was to determine if the transfer facility could do standard transfers of 2-perf for dailies and the scan test came up when we began to question what was going on with the focus. The whole thing was a test. There was no "master quality" negative involved... there was nothing but footage to be examined for a work-flow test. The test had many purposes... to determine if the camera was working properly, the magazines were working properly, the dailies could be generated at a reasonable cost, and if we could keep track of frame numbers in a manageable way. It's insulting to suggest that anyone is "springing" for something without being responsible. I've never suggested any such thing in any post. That was another assumption on his part. I find this forum to have a number of posters who are quick to confrontation, usually as a result of bad assumptions. As a result, I generally avoid it. I posted about this issue because it was rapidly becoming an emergency, and I thank those that helped me out.
  10. I contacted Visual Products, and Paul is headed out on vacation for the next week, so now the camera is headed to George at Optical Electro House.
  11. With these symptoms, will the mount likely need to be moved away from or toward the film?
  12. Mind if I scream? We did a test using a couple of Nikon primes and a zoom, and everything seemed a bit soft. The film was scanned on an Arriscan and I wasn't sure if it was operator error, so I went back to the studio and started studying through the eyepiece. What I noticed is that using the Nikon mount and a 14mm lens, objects 1 foot away had to be adjusted to .5 meters in order to appear in focus. As a second test, I stuck a piece of vellum over the gate and taped it tight, observing the focus at the gate using a 12X loupe, and sure ehough, exactly the same problem. The camera simply won't focus properly on anything distant, and objects nearby require a much more distant setting than should be required. I have a spare Cameflex body I've scavenged for parts and I tried the turret from that one (quite an ordeal to remove the original and replace it, but I did it, and I had exactly the same results, even though the other body worked great with its own turret, rolling easily through focus on far to near objects. I know that George at Optical Electro House works on Cameflex cameras, but I'm wondering if anyone can point me to someone who specializes in solving problems of this kind? I'm really under the gun, unfortunately.
  13. Scoopics are threaded and ready for tripod mount.
  14. I'd suggest an incident light meter. The type you need for accurate measurement without spending too much money will have a hemispherical plastic globe attached to it. You'll place it near the face or other subject position with the hemisphere facing the camera's lens, being careful not to shadow the meter with your head or body, and take a reading. Follow the meter's instructions to set ASA (film speed, from the film's carton, and be sure to check daylight versus tungsten), and frame rate (typically 24f/s, but set it on the camera first), or if you can't set the meter for frame rate, set it to 1/50 sec exposure for 24 frame/sec. The meter will tell you how to set the aperture's f-stop on the lens. When I started shooting 16mm in 1984 I had a Kodak Model K and I found a cheap Sekonic Studio Deluxe meter that gave me great exposures.
  15. I've shot Vision 2 500T stock as 4000T, which is 3 stops underexposed, and then pushed it 3 stops at Delden Film Labs in the Minneapolis area with good results. I was shooting a music video at 7th Street entry where the par cans in front had been re-lamped with 60W standard bulbs. The footage was slightly grainy but looked great.
  16. You'll need to post with a full name.
  17. It's already mounted in the handle. It's definitely NTSC... it works with a standard US monitor. I'm just looking for a monitor that will deliver 1:1 pixel-for-pixel resolution, if such a thing is possible.
  18. Here it is, with all of its specs: http://www.aegis-elec.com/products/sonyxcst30.html I don't know what type of monitor to get so I have the best 1:1 pixel relationship between the camera and monitor. Any suggestions?
  19. Video cameras don't historically burn out because their CCDs are exposed continuously to light. Closed circuit security cameras run for years without failure.
  20. That's the one, thanks. On the front page of the site, however, is the bad news. http://www.jkcamera.com/ Note: For this item no new orders are accepted at current time
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