Patrick Cooper

To reduce the chance of fogging of the glass of the housing's port or lens (which is caused by condensation - bringing a warm object like a housing from the surface into the cold water below) tape a pack of silica gel to the inside of the housing. This will absorb moisture. Make sure though that the silica gel is yellow (warmed and dry) and not in the stage of turning orange or pink. I see that you have done some underwater filming before so are you familiar with concepts such as refraction, colour absorption, back scatter etc? If you have never dived before, i recommend doing a course first and becoming a competent scuba diver before doing any underwater photography while scuba diving.

Good to hear from you again, John. How are you these days?

Are print stocks B wind or A wind? I know from common knowledge that films designed to be run through cameras are B wind.

I will likely be shooting some 16mm colour negative film on an island in early January with my K3 and I plan to do at least some time lapse filming there. What I would like to do is conduct a time lapse test with the K3 with some Plus-X or Tri-X beforehand and see what the results are like. However, there could be a possibility that I may not get the film back from processing soon enough - to see if this camera really is suitable for time lapse work - before the main filming commences. So I am wondering what others' experiences have been when using the K3 for single frame shooting. I do know of somebody who experienced light leakage with their K3 with long interval times. However, I have also conversed with someone who has done time lapse with their K3 using long interval times and he experienced no problems at all. I plan on doing some one minute intervals. It is well known that camera performance varies from K3 to K3 so perhaps some of these cameras are able to do time lapse more efficiently than others. With the latest Tri-X film that I had just got back (exposed with my K3) there was a 'flash frame' every time the camera stopped and started when running at 24fps so I guess this is not a good sign for effective time lapse?

Ive just found a list of some other tv shows besides Ally McBeal which originated on Fuji. Some of these include Boston Legal, Ballykissangel, Charmed, Stargate SG-1, Angel and Beverly Hills 90210.

The remake of 'The Thomas Crown Affair' with Pierce Brosnan was shot on Fuji film. I believe the tv show Ally McBeal was as well. There is a new movie currently in production which I worked on as an extra recently (a comedy starring Toni Collette called 'Hey Hey It's Esther Blueburger) which is shot on fuji film and will be released in 2007.

12:1 and 3:1 refer to the zooming ratio of the lenses. For example, with the 12:1 lens, the telephoto setting would be 12 times more powerful than the wide angle setting. Thus, this particular lens would have a much greater zoom range than the 3:1 lens. In other words, the 12:1 lens would be the equivalent of having a whole set of different focal length lenses. Such a lens would give you an almost infinite number of framing possibilities from the same distance without having to change lenses. The 3:1 lens would be the equivalent of having perhaps two or three lenses of different focal lengths.

Yes, I was loading daylight spools. It's been a while since Ive shot 16mm so I must have forgot about those unusual light markings.

Ive just received some 16mm Tri-X back from processing with my K3. I found something quite odd at the beginning of the film. Prior to the exposed footage, there appears to be what looks like white 'representations' of perforations next to the physical perforations. It's as if light was shining through the perforations and made these marks on the film. They disappear when the actual footage starts. Does this indicate that there was something wrong with the loading of the film? What has actually caused these marks to appear?

I know my maths isn't the best but wouldn't rating a 250asa film as 200asa be overexposing by half a stop rather than 2/3 of a stop? It's just that I'll be rating some 250 neg film as 200 for an upcoming project and I wanted to confirm the exposure details. Hope I don't sound too fussy though. Good luck with your shoot.

Hmmm....that is really surprising. Was it blown up to 70mm?

I hope many of you are familiar with a French made film called Microcosmos which focuses on the life of insects. It reminds me very much of Baraka. When I saw it at the cinema, I was blown away by how clear and sharp it looked. The close up photography in particular was incredibly sharp with amazing detail and clarity. I was wondering if this film was shot on 70mm (actually 65mm.) The only information regarding the cinematography I obtained at the time was the fact that years were spent developing the lenses for this film.

"If you do keyword searches for "Ending Soonest", the time until the end of the auction is displayed. When you display a listing there's a line that has the time to go followed by the ending date and time in parenthesis." Ah yes but this only indicates the time remaining from the current time in which you first caught sight of the auction. However, this particular auction may have already been running for several days or perhaps several hours prior to your discovery of it. In other words, we need to know whenabouts the auction started, in addition to when it will end. This will tell us the whole duration of the auction.

Ebay used to indicate if an auction was a three day, 5 day or 7 day auction etc. Not any more. Now, at least to my eyes, there's no way of knowing how long a particular auction has been going on for. As discussed earlier, scammers usually use short duration auctions to run their scams for expensive items. Now their work is made a little easier because of ebay hiding the relevant information.

"When a CCD basd telecine like the Spirit blows out the image, it really does - like a CCD camera." My gosh - uughhh! I was planning to overexpose Fuji Eterna 250D by half a stop the majority of the time - I hope this will create just enough density for a nice looking telecine. Would 2/3 of a stop overexposure be the theoretical limit for telecine before burning out and noise becomes a problem?

"If I have a normal scene but in one corner there is a shadow that is two-stops dark, is that shadow grainy?" No "If the shadow side of a face is two-stops darker than the key side, is that shadow side grainy?" Nope I'm assuming for your moonlight shots, you wanted a dark, moody look so the printing numbers throughout the film would have been consistent so that those particular shots remained dark and moody ? (without any increase in grain) if that was the effect you were going for in that scene? When I underexpose for the sunset silhoutte shots on film that i have rated half a stop slower, I gather it's best not to underexpose too much so that I still retain some density in the negative if my goal is to produce fine grain images. Thankyou for the explanation on compensating in printing for alternatively rated film - of which I could underexpose or overexpose from that rating while still maintaining the same printing numbers when printing. Though I plan to have this film telecined. I assume the same principles apply in telecine?

Thanks David. For the sunset shots, I plan to shoot subjects as silhouettes against a sunset so naturally I would not want to overexpose these particular shots. I would prefer to meter normally from the sunset sky in these instances using the true asa speed of the film. By the way, how did those moonlit shots turn out? Was there an increase in grain from the underexposure?

"I bet the Chinese would love to get their hands on a few Panavision cameras to copy." As would the Russians!

Ah thanks Jacob. That must be the one! I assume that with the critical focussing device, you would see 100% of the lens' field of view just as you would when viewing through the lens on a large format view camera before inserting the sheet film. However, what's it like for accurate focussing as I assume there's no ground glass in there - or is there?

With the older Bolex H16 non-reflex models, I do know that there is some way to accomplish temporary reflex viewing before exposing film. I'm not sure how but I know that something is swung into position that allows you to view directly through any of the lenses on the turret. Is the view that you get through the lens close to 90 or 100% of the image that will be exposed on the film or is this only a partial view? Additionally, using this method of viewing, is it possible to focus accurately through the lens? I assume there would be no ground glass screen. If it is just an ariel image then this would be no good for critical focusing as there would be no proper plane for your eyes to focus on. Also, do most non-reflex H16 models have this reflex viewing feature or only a few of them? Which particular models have this feature?

"No aperture ring??? That's no good! Forget the DX series then. Thanks!" I'm not sure about that. I'm a Canon shooter myself. Though I do know that many modern lenses for slr still cameras (both 35mm and digital) have no aperture ring. However, there might be a possibility that some of these Nikkor DX lenses may have an aperture ring. A small chance but you never know.......

I'll be shooting some Fuji 16mm negative film in the near future for the first time. From reading this forum, it seems highly recommended to overexpose neg film slightly to reduce grain and to guard against accidental underexposure. Thus, I have decided to overexpose the majority of the footage by half a stop. However, is this practise suitable for filming sunsets or should this particular subject matter be exposed normally? It's just that i am used to shooting slide film in still photography and by instinct, I would never normally overexpose a sunset so I can avoid washed out colours. For those of you who have filmed sunsets on negative movie film, how do the colours turn out when overexposed - and by how much? Or do you usually prefer to expose sunsets normally with neg film?

I hope there won't be any issues with the flange focal depth or collimation when mounting digital still lenses on a K100 16mm camera. Also, with the lenses that don't have aperture rings, I don't see any way how you could change the aperture when such lenses are mounted on a 16mm camera.

Thanks Phil. Perfectly understood. Interesting that going from Digibeta to DVCAM introduces quality issues. However, what if you were planning to distribute your film on DVDs. Would burning a DVD from the edited Digibeta tape cause any of the same quality issues that are present when going from Digibeta to DVCAm or MiniDv?

I'm not familiar with the concepts of 'online' and 'offline' in relation to video editing. Additionally, what would be the advantage of returning to Digibeta after editing on MiniDv? And would there be any extra quality gained by going from Digibeta to MiniDv as opposed to going straight to MiniDv?