Matthew Rogers

Hey guys, I am looking at selling my set of Schneider Xenon FF lenses with imperial markings and Pl mount. I've had them since June 2014 and love them, but need to liquidate because my lens needs have changed. There are some small scuffs here and there from being used in a production environment, but otherwise look practically new. Asking $10,000 ($12,000 new). Will throw in ground shipping in the US.

Hey guys, looking for suggestions for Grip Trucks (needing a 3-ton) in the Orange County CA area for a two day shoot this October. I found some online, but wanted to see if anyone had worked with a certain company before and had an opinion on liked or should avoid. Thanks, Matthew

The problem is not getting the people to look good, especially if you are going for "Golden Hour" but to have enough light to get the background to match what you've got on the people. Honestly, a 1.8k is great on a cloudy day for some stuff, but outside with the sun it's worthless unless you are fairly close and don't you diffusion-which then normally looks bad.

Hey guys, I have a like new Schneider 4 x 5.65" MPTV Platinum IRND 1.2 Filter for sale. Asking $275 plus actual cost for USPS Priority mail flat rate ($5.25) + insurance (if you want insurance) matthew the-at-symbol macvilleproductions.com

I've owned a set for almost 5 years now and for the price they were impossible to beat-It's a different story now (but everything changes with time, right?) I would agree that the flare is not all that great. I don't think they are bland, just very neutral. The witness marks are dead on if the camera is backfocused correctly, but on digital, witness marks are less useful since it doesn't have the leeway that film has. No, the 18mm doesn't clear anything with a physical shutter. It sticks out quite a bit.

That's what I would rather do, but I think I would somehow have to clean out all the grease that is left and I am not sure how to do it well without a crap load of tear down of the lights.

Hey, does anyone know what kind of grease to use on a Fresnel's worm gear? I have some Desisti's and a Baby that could use a little grease for smoother focusing, but wasn't sure if I can use something like a Lithium grease or what. Thanks, Matthew

Hey guys, I am looking for either a gaffer or key grip for a lower budget shoot (series of short films) that I am doing in Atlanta from Feb 26 to March 5/6 (7 or 8 days total). Really am looking for either position as my current gaffer is talented and happy to be in either department. It is lower budget, so the rate is $350/12 hours with no overtime (we hardly have ever gone into overtime as neither the director or I like working longer than that.) Yeah, the rate isn't that great, but it's work if someone is not busy. It's also a reoccurring job as I have shot 20 of these short films over the past 3 years and there is plans to shoot another 7-8 days at least, later this year. Really would love to find someone that I can connect with down there and use for all the shoots I do in Atlanta. The shoot will be done on the Epic with a 2-ton grip and lighting package. If you are local to Atlanta and interested, or know someone who might be a good fit, please email me at m at mrdop dot com or call me at 865-207-9704. I can also send a trailer to the last one of these I shot (which this project is actually a sequel to) if you'd like to see the production quality we've been doing. Thanks, Matthew

So I bought a used HMI off ebay and noticed that on the used lamp that came with it, all the clay/cement/whatever it's called that packs in around the top of the ceramic part where the glass meets the ceramic is gone. Therefore, the lamp is wiggling and, I would guess, could cause the lamp to fail prematurely (lamp doesn't look like it's been run more than 20 hours otherwise that I can tell.) Does anyone know what that stuff is? Where I can buy it? Or a good substitute if it's not reasonably inexpensive/easy to get? Thanks, Matthew

Hey guys, I did a shoot a couple of weeks ago that was on white cyc that when I got the footage into post, the image was quite washed out from what looks like flare. All I can guess is that white cyc was either so bright it flared the lens, or another light hit the lens (which I am pretty sure didn't happen due to my key and fill placement.) It was shot on an Epic-X with 2 Kino Image 80's lighting the wall part of the cyc and 2 650 fresnel's lighting up the floor. Does anyone know any way to light a cyc so you can get nice bright white without bouncing so much into the lens that it flares? Is it just the matter of putting flags on the edge of frame to try and cut some of the light that might be hitting the lens? Or is it more about evening out lighting levels between the cyc and the talent?

I am looking to buy 2, 4 bank Kino Flo Divas. Looking for units that are in decent condition and have not been abused. Matthew

For some reason I was under the impression you could also use water with a couple of drops of soap in it (soap helps with the surface tension.) Does anyone know how well flat, clear soda sticks gel? Would it be strong enough to keep gel on a car that's on a process trailer? And are there anythings to worry about if the gel is close (like a side car window) to an actor's face...such as imperfections in the gel, how well you applied it, residue from the soda, etc.

Umm I may have written my question poorly if I understand your response. I was wondering more about the quality difference between, let's say full grid and 216, or 1/2 grid and 250. I know the differences between 216, 250, and 251, just not sure how they compare when you match the gel's diffusion quality to the grid's diffusion quality.

So I was wondering if anyone knew the quality difference, if any, between gels like 216, 250, & 251 and "cloth" full grid, 1/2 grid, and 1/4 grid? Instead of spending a fortune on gels, I was thinking of getting 4x4 grid cloth which would be far more flexible in use than gels considering how I normally use diffusion. Just was wondering if there was a noticeable visual quality difference in the softness it produces.

Whoever told you that either hadn't used them or was actually referring to the original 18-50 zoom. The RPP's are extremely well made. The feel of the lenses in general are top notch and so are the mechanics-very smooth and with the right amount of dampening in the focus. Optically in sharpness they are somewhere between Ultra and Master primes according to resolution tests. They are much faster than anything else in their price range (the CP2's 18mm is a T3.6 and the 28 in that set is the first lens going up that starts at T2.1.) The bad things about them are... They are huge lenses. The 50, 85, & 100 aren't so bad, but the 18, 25, & 35 are rather big lenses (if you are used to lenses like Standard or Super speeds.) Of course, often I like that because the mattebox and follow focus aren't jammed within microns of each other (or don't simply fit with some lenses.) But because they are big, they are heavy. The 50-10 range is 4.25-4.5 lbs and the 18-35 is 6-6.5 lbs a piece. So yeah, handheld kinda sucks because a rig can get very front heavy with the lens, matte box, follow focus, etc (can we say easy rig???) And lastly, the focus marks suck. There aren't that many of them, they can be slightly off, and the marks themselves are kinda wide. But if that's an issue Duclos lenses offers a service to remark the lenses with more, accurate marks. So really the only advantage I see in the Cp2's is size. Otherwise if you are buying a set, you are paying for 2 odd MM lenses (21 and 28), not getting a 100mm (which I find to be useful), and getting 3 lenses that are slower T-Stops. Let's put it this way. I've had a set of RPP's since Septemeber 2009 and I haven't one client complain about them. Yes, they have all said, "wow those are big" when I pulled them out. But once they play with them, seeing how smooth they feel and great they look, they are sold.

Looks good to me. So thankful that corporate clients are wanting video that have much more art in them these days. Nothing sucks worse than a crappy 1990's looking corporate video.

I've never had a situation where a lens could have gotten damaged if I hadn't had a cap on, but I've decided to not take chances. None of the sets I've worked on are void of cables/stands/idiot extras, so crap happens. I've seen stuff get broken, not really because of carelessness, but because it's a working set. To me it's the same reason we keep lenses and other gear in cases, to protect them. I don't plan on dropping a lens or having a grip who's flying in a stand sideswipe me while carrying a lens, but crap happens. I am just coming from the view of protecting the lenses the best I can. Maybe that is because I normally shooting with my lenses and don't want anything to happen to them.

PC&E, Cine-Photo-Tech. I would come and operate, but I am already busy this week. Don't know who to suggest, but there are plenty of camera ops in ATL. Matthew

I should have probably mentioned that the lenses we were using on that set, and the set I own, are the RED Primes. So they are much much larger and heavier than the super or standard speeds. It makes far more sense to me to have two hands on a lens at all times if at all possible. Someone else mentioned having the lens case next to the camera. This shoot, and many of my shoots, tend to be in tight quarters. This shoot was also while we were doing controlled burns inside a house that was being torn down. Having the lens case next to the camera is not always possible, though I would love to always have it no more than 10' away. When you are moving into the bigger lenses like the RRP's, you also have to deal with a MUCH larger case. My RRP case is over 50 lbs and is almost the size of a mini fridge!

Saying "got it" most certainly. The caps, the way I do it aren't confusing at all. You have the AC the cap for the lens to be taken off, he puts it on and takes off the lens. You then take the back cap off the new lens and hand it to the AC who puts it on the old lens. From there you can either switch lenses, which I don't like because you really only have one hand to switch with, or you can have the 2d AC just put the lens on, which seems safer to me. With this method, I can switch lenses (once the new lens is at the camera) in about 5-6 seconds. I do this method only because I feel like it's by far the best way to protect the lenses due to minimizing the time the back and front elements aren't being protected.

So I was working on a shoot recently as the 2d AC because I had nothing better to do. The AC, when changing lenses, wanted me to uncap the front and back of the lens I was getting before I brought it to the camera. After owning a RED for three years and AC'ing a decent budget indie, I've come to believe that it's a very bad idea to uncap lenses before they are at the camera or on the camera (minus the back cap!) My method is that the incoming lens have both caps left on when brought to camera and also grab the front cap for the lens outgoing lens. Then, when the new lens get to the camera, the person that brought the lens hands the front cap of the lens coming off to the other person, who puts the cap on, takes the lens off, is handed the back cap from the new lens, and the other person puts the new lens on. From there the new lens is front uncapped, and the old lens along with the extra cap is handed over to be taken back to the lens case. The only time I might do it any different is when I am using small lenses like the ziess super or standard speeds, and then I may hand swap lenses with the 2d AC who brought the lens. Am I crazy by doing it this way? This seems far safer for the lenses as they aren't being walked around set with no caps, and there is far less handling of the lenses, not to mention no juggling two lens in one set of hands. Is there a union way for changing lenses? I understand that some AC's may want lenses on the camera a certain way, but I have never had any issues with telling someone where to put the witness marks if a lens needs to go on a certain way. Matthew

Hey gang, I am possibly going to do a job where you will see a bullet entering an object. I haven't found out how slow they want it yet, but am going ahead and getting some ideas so I can be ready to tell them what we will have to do to capture what they want. All I've been told is they want to see objects being hit by a bullet. I am thinking I should be aiming for 6000 to 10000 frames per second. Am I anywhere close or crazy off? Matthew

Hey gang, got hired last minute on a picture as a camera op, but got bumped down to 1st AC since I knew more about AC'ing than the other AC's hired (still a great team though!) But that's not the point of my post. I have two MB-20's that we are using which were sent with 5.65x5.65 trays (4x5.65 vertical), but we were sent 4x5.65 filters for the MB's. So my problem is that there is a huge gap between the top and bottom of the filter when I put it in the tray and turn the tray sideways so it's properly in front of the lens. My temp fix was to use paper tape on the gaps, but that's not really ideal for keeping light from bouncing between the filters and lens when you need to switch filters often. Am I crazy to think we should have been given 4x5.65 trays when we were getting 4x5.65 filters? Any suggestions over using paper tape? We have hard mattes, but I don't fully trust them to not give us ghosting on the images. Matthew

Deinterlace? Do people not understand the difference between interlaced and progressive? What prores are you using? Have you tried ProRes 444? If it doesn't happen in ProRes 444, then it's the ProRes format compressing down to 8 bit, which doesn't surprise me because I've seen banding in prores before that's not in the RAW file.

Well, the article is current, so I am guessing it's a current quote. Even if it were 3 years old it still wouldn't be accurate. I got my RED almost 2 1/2 years ago and it's never taken longer than 2 minutes to start up. And if that's such an issue, why did he not use a hot swap plate, or a battery through the d-tap to swap, or any other number of solutions. Sounds more like a director who doesn't know what's talking about when it comes to tech running his mouth. Yeah, it's not like film where you can hand crank if you have to. But you also don't have to swap out film mags, or pray nothing is in the gate, or something happens to the film while being developed.