Zachary Vex

Has anyone tried using the Nikon DX lenses with a Super 16 camera?

I'm considering getting one of these: http://www.intervalometers.com/rev/eyemo/index.stm It doesn't seem to include a strobe trigger, however I've written to them to find out if it can be included or is a feature they forgot to mention. Has anyone used one with an Eyemo and are there issues I should be aware of?

But at least you tried. Okay, here goes: at the Panastore there on the film loading door Elaine waits for us

It's been at a steady 70 degrees F.

There's a bunch of info here: http://www.cinematography.net/Pages%20DW/P...isionElaine.htm on edit: sorry, I'm not very good with haikus.

Most definitely a light-gobbling monster! My Angenieux 15-150 looks much like my 12-120 and is f 2.8/T 3.1. I have lens envy!

perhaps a friend placed the winning bid?

When you take it out of the fridge, quickly put it in a large plastic bag, suck the air out, and seal it up. that should help keep moisture from condensing on the magazine. a garbage bag will do if you and you can seal it by twisting up the opening and wrapping it tight with a rubber band. Don't take it out after you've been cooking or using the dishwasher (or dishpan), or taking a shower, as the humidity will be very high. If it's cold outside, you might want to open a door or some windows to let in cold outside air which will be drier than that inside your house.

Wow. The seller is definitely crying in his beer tonight. What a blunder!

the easiest way to experiment with it is to use a regular 8mm camera and shoot the first half with the camera right side up, then the second half with the camera upside down, keeping in mind that it will be running backwards in the projector (or transfer.) when developing, specify "DO NOT SPLIT, RETURN AS 16MM" on the instructions and packaging. now you can project it and see four windows on the screen, the ones on the left going forward and the ones on the right going backward. it's not exactly what you were looking for but it does get you 4 images on the screen very quickly and cheaply. you could also animate every other frame with a different image... but we're talking a lot of work. if you didn't care about flicker, you could project 4 different movies onto one flat white surface and shoot that again on film or video.

Well, I went and shot on a helicopter in Vegas and I have a few things to report. 1] The helicopter was loaded down with 6 passengers. The pilot told me the only seat where I'd get a direct view of the whole strip was on the left in back because of the flight plan. He was right, but I was sandwiched in with 3 really big guys so my mobility was basically zero. I had my own window but couldn't use it because I couldn't move my head far enough away from it to put the camera in front of me! A vertically arranged camera like a Bolex would have been much better for that reason, but I wanted to shoot super 16mm so my two choices were my Aaton (huge) and the K100 that I took. 2] The thing shook at about 4 Hz, sometimes viciously, sometimes not so bad. I had to hold the camera in very peculiar ways to diminish the movement, and I chose 64 f/s (fastest on that camera) to reduce the vibration down to 1.5 Hz so it wasn't so nauseating. I opened up to 1.4... my reflected meter readings told me that should work... I did multiple measurements on the street in preparation for the shoot. There was still some post-sunset sky light that helped out. 3] Helicopters are extremely fast. I thought the pilot might hover a bit when approaching some of the big buildings but just as I would raise the camera to begin shooting, we cruised right past a lot of the best shots. Also, I was busy winding my brains out (64 frames really chews up the spring) a lot of the time. I got lots of nice shots but I wished I had a small electric camera like a super 16 modified Scoopic instead.

Thanks, Jeff.

I'm familiar with using an 18% grey card and can get very repeatable results taking measurements with the photosphere vs the incident meter and grey card combo using my Sekonic flashmate. If I take an incident reading of the city while in the air, what zone would you suggest that I assume?

Given the chance to capture some Vegas downtown views on super 16mm during a helicopter ride over downtown at night, I'd like to shoot 100 feet of 7218, but I don't yet have a spotmeter. Any suggestions for how I should set exposure? I have a Sekonic flashmate and can take some measurements on the street first... should I just set it for a stop or two lower than ambient street levels to keep the neon from blowing out? Or should I shoot for more details and let the neon blow out? Or is there even more to consider?

Okay, my scrims are on the way, but I still need barndoors (4-way or better) for my baby solarspots... 3 of them. Any ideas? I'm not finding them on eBay or any of the online stores that I've researched.

Thanks! I did, and they're on their way. Got some gel frames too.

Thanks so much, Tim. Luckily, my wires have a weaved cover, totally unlike the asbestos covered-type. So any ideas for buying baby scrims?

I have an old prime that I got with a Bolex, and I'm going to stick it on a Kodak K100 this weekend while in Vegas in a helicopter... the camera is modified for super 16. Will the lens cover super 16mm? Cooke Telekinic 3" f/4 Anastigmat Taylor/Hobson England is what it says. Anybody?

I recently acquired a few Babys and need sets of scrims and barn doors for them. I've been watching eBay but nothing seems to be quite the right size... mine look to have 6-5/8" holders. Any suggestions? I'm in Minneapolis, and we have Cinequipt and LightsOn here, but their websites don't seem to indicate that they carry them (although they probably do)... and I've found that their prices can be a bit steep on accessories. Also, I've heard that older lights can have asbestos wiring. Can someone kindly post a picture of what asbestos wiring looks like so I can compare it to what I've got? Thanks in advance!

I recently shot in a very small club and got excellent results with really limited light. In front of the band there were three par cans that held the most ridiculous combination of lights... 60 watt practicals on the outsides aimed at the bass/keyboardist on one side and the lead guitarist/singer on the other, and in the center was a 150 watt flood that was 3 stops brighter at the singer's mic. To solve that, I aimed the flood down at his guitar to take the hot spot off the singer's face and bring him to just a half-stop over the other two mics. I had taken all of the gels off of the front cans and left the red and blue gels on the rest of the cans behind and around the band, and had those dialed down to about 50% on the dimmers. I don't know what the bulbs were in those... I just balanced by eye. The front bulbs were at 100%. I was shooting with Vision 500T (7218) which I shot as ASA 4000. I was able to manage f4 because the stage was so small and the lights were so close... I really needed those extra inches of depth of field because of all the movement. It all looked pretty exciting through the lens as I shot it. Contrary to how many Aaton users complain about the flickering mirror view I found it very arresting, reminding me constantly that each of those flashes of light was an individual photograph and had to be composed in an exciting and sexy way. I pushed it 3 stops and although it has some grain visible in the HD transfer, I find that grain in rock and roll images is adds a sense of history to the texture, a reminder of so many very important rock concerts from years ago caught on 16mm film with a grainy result. Focusing under such limited light conditions was quite a challenge so whenever I changed positions I zoomed in quickly and focused on the mic's grille and then pushed it just beyond to be ready for a face. The Aaton LTR-7 is so heavy and long (although quite comfortable on the shoulder) that it tends to steady itself very well, unable to turn quickly or jitter much, so the shots were very fluid even though I was having to weave through the crowd and step around obstacles. The size also caused people in the audience to have some respect for wherever I was headed and make room for me when I got there, and duck out of the way, unlike shooting with my HD camera, which people treat like a camcorder being handled by a tourist, standing directly in the shot or jostling me. Literally every shot I got was useful, luckily because of the gelled pars surrounding the stage which turned everyone's hair a saturated red, blue, or purple as they moved around, and provided eerie rim lighting and back lighting. The transfer turned out really nice. The colorist managed to straighten out the white balance pretty quickly and we just ran it straight through with hardly any adjustments. A quick note about capturing live sound: I recently acquired an inexpensive MicroTrack (by M-Audio) stereo recorder. It records at 96K or 48K sample rates and 24 or 16 bit resolution, and contains its own set of mic preamps (TRS inputs) which even have phantom power if you need it. The mic pre's are pretty good, lots of headroom for a loud show. I used a pair of Beyer M160 mics in an x/y pattern that were a little too close to the ceiling so they got a bit tubby, but they should unkink and compress nicely in ProTools. I didn't worry about slating anything, but shot as wild and since I'm so familiar with the songs (having documented this band for months) I can literally lip-read what they're singing to sync up each shot. The Aaton's crystal sync should perfectly lock to the Microtrack's crystal control when I begin editing. I think I'm going to pick up an x/y stereo condenser mic for future club work to avoid having to run two cables and get the Beyers all set up. Often, people documenting shows take a feed directly off the board, but in a small club, this is usually a terrible idea! Guitar and Bass amplifiers are often so loud on stage that the soundman leaves them out of the mix, and when you get home, there's no guitars or bass on your recording! It's much safer to capture your own stereo mic mix if you have equipment that can be placed at a reasonable position in the audience, and this will capture applause at a nice level as well. Make sure you aren't distorting the recording by doing a test recording of sound check or recording a bit of the warmup band.

Does anyone have familiarity with these adapters?

I shot 4 rolls of documentary footage (local rock band on the rise) with the lens that came with my Aaton LTR-7 (Angenieux 15-150) and felt that all of it was a bit soft, even when very carefully focused. I hope that primes make a difference... does anyone know of any issues with the adaptors I should be aware of? BTW, for anyone interested, here are Les' current prices including shipping: Aaton - Arri Bayonet ( lever lock ) GBP180.00 Aaton - Nikon GBP150.00 Thanks in advance! Zack

The one I bought has a single lens, not a turret. It most definitely was not re-centered. The seller was very vague about this in the listing and in the answers to my questions. I purchased mine on ebay and right now, that seller doesn't have any up that I can find. It didn't exactly live up to my expectations, but if it can shoot film without scratching the emulsion, and the coverage is complete without noticable distortion, I'll be happy to use it for it's intended purpose... a crash camera. 8^)

on mine, the 25mm viewfinder's yellow frameline was modified to open it up to the left, indicating the new aspect ratio (approximately).

Sorry to hear about the condition. I have one a CM-72 as well, with the recording amplifier. It's quite interesting! There's a wooden battery box under the vacuum-tube recording amp that I loaded up with 6V lantern batteries and a string of 9V batteries to power the tubes up. The camera itself came with a "vibrator-type" 12VDC-to-120VAC inverter, which I discarded immediately since there are such inexpensive and lightweight inverters available at even Target now. The camera has a clock motor which runs on 120VAC, so presumably with some electronics knowledge one could operate it at a multitude of speeds by varying the frequency! I have no idea how much the mechanics would tolerate high or ultra-low speeds, but it sounds like an inexpensive way to experiment. 8^) At any rate, it's my guess that this type of camera was used by the Saturday Night Live crew when making their extremely humorous old "talkie"-style black and white movie segments years ago. The edits on those were quite deliberately cut directly on the sound track so that voices would disappear for a second or appear too early during scene changes as a result of the displaced optical track which appears on the film a certain number of frames before the image.