Robert Houllahan

Maybe it's mel proselytizing himself O-Dei style :blink:

Seriously in the 5 years now I have been at Cinelab we have never been as busy with 16mm. Not just Negative but zillions of feet of B+W reversal and Tons of 16mm color and B+W print. Film Film Film.

As to the Discovery network If I were shooting Old Man Teuttle squeezing Jr. Teuttle's head I would only use Todd-Ao 70mm as this would be the only way to capture the true essence of the beating.

-Rob-

Could someone point me in the direction of this particular screw?

On my LTR54 it is on the right hand top side of the camera at around the same level as the silver run switch there is a cap you remove and then you use a allen wrench to retract the beam-splitter from the optical path.

-Rob-

Certainly a test should be shot, but the usual exposure for cross processing is a stop faster than factory speed in regular chemistry, sometimes more, so in this case, ei. 200. Negative developer is much more active than reversal. What I like to do is rate it normally and pull one stop to keep the distinct cross-process look, but to just slightly curb some of the runaway contrast. I would imagine that if you rate '85 at ei 50 and cross process, you might have an excessively dense negative - highlights would become irretreivable.

We do a fair bit of X-process and i would agree with the above, if you want a 1 stop push rate it "normal" at 100 but if you are shooting normally a 200 rating seems to be correct from my experience.

-rob-

Will it significantly reduce the brightness at the eyepiece?

Plus, since the VP video tap is only available as b/w, is there a very strong reason why I'd want a color unit instead?

I believe that the beamsplitter in the LTR is a 80/20 split so you would lose 20% of the light going to the viewfinder, the LTR viewfinder is bright so I do not think that it would be too bad, plus you can turn a screw and remove the splitter from the light path restoring the full viewfinder brightness.

-rob-

BB Who? does anyone watch? and the Discov-o-reality network? I suppose if you are in the business of making shows cheaply that for the most part do not go far beyond their first showing cutting corners and costs is just part of the game. Kidding aside both of these networks turn out decent shows from time to time but mostly they fall in the reality camp.

When using a rank cintel transfer facility you can specify a 25.33 or 24.33 transfer speed. Even if the rank speed options may not have that exact number in their system, they will have a number so close to it that the signal could stay in sync for 30 seconds or more.

With a metaspeed servo (digital servo) equipped telecine (cintel MkIII, Ursa, Millenium, Nova,etc.) you can type in any frame rate you want, so if you wanted 22.57 fps the servo and scan system will run at that speed.

-Rob-

I agree. It boils down to finding a gate/device that can see the sprokets; if it can "zoom out" to see those, then I'm sure I can work with the colorist and a little math to get to my anamorphic SD or HD transfer.

 

I was told that a Millennium can do it as it can see the entire film. I thought the Spirit could, but I defer to more experienced people on that.

The Millenium may very well be able to do this as it has a gate which "floats' the film on air somehow and a flying spot machine can change the patch size and shape to give optical zoom effects so it would be worth a try. That machine is in my opinion capable of making better images than the spirit 2K and later models will scan to 4K.

-Rob-

I'm considering having my Scoopic modified for Ultra 16 since it seems to be much easier than doing a true Super 16 mod but I'm concerned that finding a transfer house might be difficult. This will allow me to continue to use it as standard 16, but for future HD transfers I'll have a little more film to work with.

 

I believe a Spirit or Shadow can handle it, but I know that the Y-Front my local house uses can't since it can't see into the sproket area on the left (due to pin registration?).

 

I'm basically looking for two types of transfers, a standard def, anamorphic 16:9 and HD. Can anyone recommend a reasonable transfer houses with good colorists that could handle the Ultra 16 frame?

I think the basic problem with this format is that most film handling gear (Tk.,Printers, etc.) ignores the area between the sprockets on that side of the 16mm frame and furthermore uses it as the primary support and handling of the film. This is, of course, not a problem in process or assembly if you assume Super-16 and do bench assembly with tight-winds.

I was using a Spirit2k with Pogle platinum in NYC some months ago (I was operating) to transfer Super-16 which I had shot. Being familiar with TK/CC operation I tried some standard re-positioning stuff as I wanted to see how a CCD based Tk handled zooms, etc and I am used to Flying Spot. I saw no perf area on the Spirit. I would assume that a re-working of the super16 gate and optics would have to happen with the spirit to get it to do ultra, or at least a re-machining of the skid plate in the gate. A cut skid plate would not do anything to keep other parts of the TK mechanism from scratching the ultra area on the left side i.e. rollers.

A Y-Front does not have a Pin registered 16mm gate or at least I do not know of anyone who ever made one, 35mm pin+ gates were common. I think it would be relatively easier to get a SD rank to at least show the full frame of this format and at one time last year I had someone call to inquire about whether we could handle ultra16 and I was considering a simple modification to one of our 16mm gates to be able to see the area those people decided to shoot Super16 instead. That modification would be a easy thing for our machine shop to do and would involve widening the aperture of the skid plate but again would not be a complete re work of the Tk mechanism from rollers to encoder sprockets to skid plate flats which would be needed to ensure a scratch free movement.

I think scanning might be a more viable option but if you are trying to put your 16mm on a Northlight or Arriscan those costs will dwarf any money saved by shooting Ultra-16. Perhaps Jeff Kreines Kinetta scanner would work for this as I believe it is a continuous movement with a very simple "gate" requiring a optical zoom on the camera you might want to ask him.

I seriously doubt that a facility with a Spirit or DSX, etc would be willing to modify a $60K+ gate for this.

-Rob-

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?

I plan on getting one in the next few months as I need it to do a set of shots for a film, from what I can tell it looks great......

-Rob-

There are ways around that. It is also useful to have some kind of backup, whether the client requests it or not.

I agree, we usually keep the files on our array and wait and see when we send a external disk out, certainly not ideal but it works. I had one educational customer go all disk this year in DV50 for FCP it has been working out well for them but the rigors of time sensitivity and robustness for the pro market do not strictly apply.

The biggest problem with PC based devices is that they are not Macintoshes, and therefore do not support Mac-only codecs, such as DVCProHD and DVCPro50. In the world of do-it-yourselfers, the primary tool of choice seems to be Final Cut - a Mac only product. The most requested direct to disk transfer request we get these days is DVCProHD Quicktime files - a Mac only codec. Personally, I wish someone would do a Drastic/DVS/DPS/RaveHD type product on a Mac. But I'm not holding my breath.

Sure Mac attack FCP is king of this area and it is too bad that AJA or Blackmagic do not make a nice 422 serial control and a setup to receive timecode and deck control, maybe they will. I mentioned DPS because I have had some experience with the SD product and it is a nice DDR which acts reliably as a deck with all of the deck I/O you would expect. I have not seen the HD version but the website says it supports 720P but of course how it does that may not be in the flavor that people want it in or would need to be rendered into that format.

-Rob-

As someone who offers direct to drive service here is my take on it.

Direct to G5 with a Aja or Decklink card has the obvious limitations of no timecode it's just raw video. This seems to work well for people who want high quality but do not need to do any kind of match back to tape or film and want to just edit online with better than D-Beta for virtually no cost, and that is what we are talking about.

Furthermore:

A direct to disk recording will capture whatever quality the telecine suite is producing so if you hook a 444 Decklink HD card up to a Millenium or Spirit you will get what that machine puts out, if you hook it up to a 80's era Digi3 rank you will get that endearing 80's look ;-) Machine maintenence is most important.!!

I am surprised that nobody has mentioned the DPS reality-velocity hardware here these machines can take 422 deck control and timecode input (like from a keylink) I am looking to get one right now do use as a DDR in our telecine 1 in addition to the G5. DPS(now Leitch) makes a HD version with 1080i/p and 720p 4:2:2 capability.

Phhil wrote:

4K is the best part of three quarters of a gigabyte a second; I also don't think there's any practical need for it if we can maintain 2K acquisition to 2K projection without involving any scaling.

Oversampling, when you stuff a higher quality format down into a lower quality format it looks better! a 35mm contact print will look better than a 2K DI because it's a 4K+ being "downconverted" to 2K (or so) I think in a short time all hollywood features will be at least scanned at 4k even if they are for projection on a D-Cine projector for the oversampling

-Rob-

Hi all,

I have about 300m of negs (16mm) to take to telecine. Those are half color half bw. The bw I developed myself, spliced them together with cement and put white leader at the beginning and end of each roll (in thios case, they are simply rolled onto standard projection reels). As I also send some film to the lab (color), they came with a different leader and rolled in a core with an inner diameter (whole) of approx 2cm. Is that OK to take my film as is for telecine (or should I re-roll it in a similar core or get a similar leader)? Many thanks.

 

Richard

Most telecine preped 16mm film will have more leader on it than when it's for projection due to the longer threading path for a telecine and also because there is no "Auto" thread on a Telecine or film scanner. When we get 16mm film that is either set on a reel for projection or a workprint we wind it down on the bench, leader it, and put it on a 2" core to run on the telecine. This is standard lab practice but I would say just call your lab first . If you prep the film for video you may save a fee.

-Rob-

I saw some optically printed s8 to 16mm recently it was really beautiful Original S8 was Kodachrome which went to Colorneg that we printed on 16mm in the wet gate. We also did a master positive print of this film for transfer which gives incredible transfer results (like neg but it's a positive) very nice.

Rob

Hi Will, I called and talkied to the Tk guy, look into uncompressed transfer to hdd!

We do that and I just had the best engineer in the business in to do a tuneup on our 2 telecine suites, everything looks great! We do all 10 bit all SDi transfers to disk and tape for 8mm 16mm and 35mm

Is that a new website? Makes me want to try you guys at CineLab...

We have been in business since 1948 but I have been here for the last five years and put up our current site this year.

-Rob-

The Canon 1014 models (and maybe a few others that have the lap disolve feature) can double expose for a short period, like no more than 10 seconds, by rewinding the cart slack... it's a built in feature on the 1014's. Otherwise you may want to look at reg 8, or DS8 that use spools instead of carts. The Canon Scoopic 8 has unlimited rewind.

I was assuming a complete rewind of the cartridge for double exposures I did not know about the lap dissolve feature, both of my s8 cameras don't have it (a 104xl and a nizo) there is always 16mm...

-Rob-

Hi,

We run reversal daily for $0.16/foot and we have a $50.00 minimum for transfer of B+W (75.00 for color) either send a minidv or buy one from us for $10.00.

-Rob-

I would say the Eyemo, the Eyemo ;-) I happen to have a really nice one all restored like with a Nikon mount on it, does not get much smaller than that. Plus it casn be used in so many different ways. Spring wound, hand cranked or with an external motor..

-rob-

Hi, I was just wondering whether theres a super 8 camera that has a backwind facility for rewinding the film.

As far as I know no super8 camera has this ability, and I think you will find in near impossible to back wind a super8 cartridge without causing problems with it jamming. Maybe it could be done but I have not heard of it.

-Rob-

It seems like shooting anamorphic would be a better way to get 16:9 aspect ratio than filing the gate and having to guess what's in frame while shooting. Can telecine machines unsqueeze the anamorphic image?

 

Yes most can, Mk3 turbo ranks, ursa, Shadow, spirit etc. can all deal with anamorphic footage.

 

-Rob-

I've shot a lot of 16mm stock tests with the K3 and found these common problems usually dealing w/ the pressure plate:

the pressure plate often gets jarred if the camera goes through sudden movements.

Any general fix for this? is it due to the spring loaded little nub that pushes into the holder on the back of the pressure plate which allows for it to move up/down while film is running in the gate?

-Rob-

Hi

Have you guys found there to be problems with image sharpness across the whole film plane with Super-Duper8? When I built the first generation of our skid plate for our Rank gate I had the machine shop make it so there was a cutout for full frame at the aperture.

I did a few transfers for someone at that time which were 16x9 and I though there was a bit of softness at that end of the frame, perhaps that customers camera modification had a problem?

I would love to know more about peoples thoughts about this as I am working on a 4th generation of the skid plate with spring loaded guides and had planned to address widescreen Super8 in this version.

Thanks

-Rob-

Much of the hi-end eng style camera work done in NYC (nad around the US) is shot with D600 and equivalent betacam equipment, the format which will not die. I agree that the color is nicer than DV we mostly use decks for transfer from telecine and I have not ever had any bad problems with our 1800 but it is serviced regularly.

We ship hundreds of DV tapes every month from our 2 telecine suites and I get maybe 1% yearly which have deck incompatibility problems, i.e. someone using a consumer camera to ingest which is probably not quite aligned right and the tape has dropout or timecode issues. This is frustrating in a anoying little way, maybe not a bad price to pay for a cheap quality format (could be Hi8!) I have known a few people who shot allot of XL or DVX footage and everyone I know who shoots allot of DV has run into a camera which made tapes only that camera could play back properly, it's happened to me.....

DVCam or DVCpro do not seem to have these problems but allot of people on a budget do not even have the budget for a DSR11 so DV has to make do.

-Rob-

HI

I first want to thank Chris for the kind words about us.

We have been putting more serious effort into Super-8 over the last year with the addition of a gate for our Cintel Turbo-2 444 telecine suite. This suite makes a good picture and is full 10bit SDI from end to end, and has a 10bit framestore, metaspeed and full digital Copernicus color corrector with 16bit primary and secondary correction. We also go direct SDI into a G5 for disk recording, both of our telecine suites are all digital SDI with no analog conversion.

Plus unlike a transfer only house we are a full service lab with 5 continuous film processors, we currently run every process that kodak makes for MP except E-6. We run color negative in 8mm, 16mm and 35mm we have 2 machines dedicated to this and a special machine we only run 8mm and 16mm ECN on which allows us to process 8mm film very well and very clean. Of course a Ektachrome x-process is a regular run here.

We run B+W reversal every day in 16 and 8 plus we can cross process reversal as negative and negative as reversal, so if a B+W x-process to neg is interesting we can do it.

We also do a large volume of 16mm printing and answer printing for a wide variety of clients. We have been a traditional motion picture lab since 1948.

As to out 8mm bundles we are sticking to kodak original products right now with P+T built in at about our normal rates, I think we are only adding a dollar to the cartridge cost right now so I think it is a good deal as a complete bundle.

Feel free to check us out and give us a call if interested, I think color turnaround time is about a week right now and B+W is about 3 days.

Thanks

-Rob-

The only reason for this is that DV is not subject to a gradual performance falloff as mechanical components wear; it either works or it doesn't.

Unless it half works because of deck to deck (to camera to camera) slight tolerance issues which is all too common with DV and almost never happens with BetaSP. Dvcam and Dvcpro are of course entirely different.

-Rob-

The client went on to shoot something else...

 

But on a personal note, I was actually just about to give you guys a call. I'm going to roll some S8 during my wedding in a few months and intercut it with some S16 and HDCAM.

 

My Fiancee is bemused. I'm more concerned with how the wedding is lit than with who sits where and what they're fed...

 

C'est la vie.

That is funny, I was at abel yesterday picking up parts for my LTR. feel free to give me a call or PM me about whatever you need.

-Rob-