Saul Rodgar

"Switar lenses are very nice, and I have seen some that were very sharp, but sharpness is not the only characteristic of a motion picture lens that you need to be concerned about. -Tim Color and contrast, two of the most important characteristics a good lens should have besides sharpness and speed, can be corrected to a very large degree in post production by either optical or digital means. Sharpness, however, cannot. Once the image is dull and soft, that's it, it's only getting worse. If I should choose a lens, I rather it be sharp than rendering the very best colors and contrast, for color and contrast can be tweaked later unless serious blunders or limitaions of film stock prevent this. Of course, seriously color-and-contrast aberrating lenses should be discarded, no question there. However, even overly sharp lenses can be softened later. Hence my preference for sharp fast-er lenses.

"You can try reading a gray card with your camera built in light meter ON AUTO IRIS, and then comparing/ matching it to your hand held spot meter under the same light at 60 shutter speed for 30i. That would give you the correct ASA for your camera. Sorry I forgot the Auto Iris part, as Jonathan pointed out

The only thing I would say about the Bolex, is their prism based reflex, when they have reflex at all. Maybe the newer ones are better, but I was never into having to compensate my f stop for the light that was "stolen" by the viewfiender. On the lens debate, I love my Zeiss Vario Sonar (Super Speed era) 10:1 zoom, but I have an Angenieux 15-150mm C mount zoom that is as sharp as the Zeiss. Switars are pretty fuzzy and low on the desireability scale, though . . . But again, you can get some kick ass, razor sharp C-mount lenses as well . . .

"What should I set the asa on the spot meter to and what do I do about my shutter speeds. " 320 ASA at 60 shutter speed is what most people use at 30i, 48 shutter speed for 24p as well. Try experimenting with different shutter speeds for look, as one would with film, over and under exposing. You can rate your video a little lower if you prefer the underexposed look. 320 ASA for video seems to be the general preference, though. You can try reading a gray card with your camera built in light meter, and then comparing/ matching it to your hand held spot meter under the same light at 60 shutter speed for 30i. That would give you the correct ASA for your camera.

Maybe he does, maybe not. The ACL takes C mount lenses AND CA adaptors. Les Bosher can make adaptors, but I don't think he sells lenses. Still, I am unsure what you need, can you be more clear?

For the record, the Fisher 11 reference was a joke. And I was being a little too sarcastic and cynical about producing rather dying than using wheelchair dollies. Honestly, though, I guess David is lucky to work for the people he does. In my experience -not thirty, but about 14 movies that I have worked on, and not as a DP- the definite trend is to push it as far as it'll go, budget-wise. I could mention some ASC members I have worked with that have used technocranes and the like on everything, apparently whether it serves the story or not . . . I will refrain from "naming names." And there are some other ASC members who are down to earth and bring their own older lenses, or accesories sometimes crudely adapted to be used on newer cameras, especially on the lower budget ones. This I respect, for I am all for simplicity. As Einstein said, the best solution to a problem is the simplest one that works. But, on some other $50+ million productions, if the producers hear some other movie is using such and such piece of equipment they don't have or can't afford, they get envious- going as far as proposing to the production team if they should "borrow" the equipment from the other production. No joke. This one time, the DP- anonymous ASC member- had to step in saying that they really didn't have to borrow anything, since what they were using would do. It was rather embarrasing to witness. There are good movies to work on and not, I guess. I am in the unlucky crews most of the time . . .

Still, one has to love the image and what it represents. Here in the US, the trend is to get the highest quality, top-dollar, latest equipment or else. On most self-respecting US feature productions the sight of a wheelchair dolly would be near-death embarrasment for the producers. Producers who would do anything to prevent such a picture to be disseminated, in the event that it was even used, over their dead bodies. And most of the same productions, albeit techincally perfect, amount to a big pile of steaming poop. With very few exceptions, of course. Hence our amusement. Any movie that uses a wheelchair dolly and gets in to Cannes, let alone manages to win the tech prize -for whatever "technical" reasons- wins our low budget, real-world hearts! Who needs a Fisher 11, then? If a wheelchair dolly is good enough for Janusz Kaminski, it's certainly good enough for me!

Hi. Sounds like you could use an Eclair ACL. You can read about them here: http://members.aol.com/Super16ACL/menu.htm I agree with Tim that Arri 16 s cameras are cool, and tough as nails. But bang for the buck, the ACL's got it beat. The ACL is sync sound ready, not the quietest, but certainly a LOT quieter than the Arri 16 s. And if you get the right motor you can run 400' from 8fps up to 75 fps, sync only at 24/25 fps though. ACL's only run sync at 24/ 25 fps without a lot of modification, but possible with a miliframe motor. Not to mention that ACL's are easy to convert to S-16. However, you will need to send it to a pro shop. Also, Les Bosher makes and carries all kinds of adaptors for different lenses, in addition to the A and the C- mounts that come stock on it. Hell, you could get a Cooke S 4 lens on it with the PL mount adaptor! Try doing that with an Arri S. Literally you have thousands of lenses to choose from. Even M42 lenses can be adapted to go on the thing. You can choose between 200' and 400' mags on ACL's. There are video taps made for ACL's as well. And on and on . . . ACL's are cameras you can grow with as a cameraman! How much better can it possibly get? All in all, ACL's are just beautiful cameras, but you have to be careful with the one you get. The english style mags are no good and the original motor is not very strong. But, again, if you get a good ACL, with the right motor, it can last you forever. AND when you are ready to do sync sound, the ACL is ready to go, whereas an Arri 16 s would have to be blimped and so on. The ACL is a lot better investment. I would rather buy one camera than two down the line, one to replace the other . . . Which is what I did. I own two ACL's and one Aaton LTR, it's bigger, badder, super quiet brother. AND I LOVE THEM! You will have to pay a little more for the ACL than the Arri S, though. In its right configuration you can find one already converted to super 16, with the heavy duty motor for about 3 grand on ebay. But, that camera will last you for a lifetime, if properly kept. Man, even the new Arri 416 is at least partially based on the Aaton paradigm, which is based on the ACL camera. Imitation being the biggest form of flattery, to coin a frase. Don't get the NPR, though. Not the same camera. Not at all . . . 'Nuff said!

That is pretty bad ass! If you ever decide to make some for sale, let me know! I totally could use one . . .

After reading the fine responses you have gotten, I would like to add that even though it will be hard, if your heart is in it, then damn the challenges ahead. It's about finding meaninful (challenging) activities what really makes human beings live at their best. I much rather struggle financially being able to do something I truly love than being better off financially but soul-crushed at whatever other job I couldn't care less about. That said, breaking in could be hard of it could be easy. This industry is all about who you know and will recommend you. If nobody does, you will have a pretty hard time finding people that will give you a chance to shoot their project, especially if you don't have a demo reel. BUT NO ONE WILL HIRE YOU IF YOU DON'T HAVE SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE. To break in the bussiness and keep getting calls, it really is a combination of lots of hard work, good eye, good luck and good connections, as far as I am concerned. If you have a good part-time paying job or money put aside, you can get your name out there by working for free until you get to that elusive reputation as a good cameraman. If not, you can still shoot for a demo reel during weekends. Find good looking people, locations, etc. Then just go at it and learn as much as you can. THINK OF IT MORE AS JOURNEY THAN A DESTINATION. Learn as much as you can, mostly from errors or could-have-been's. Once you have a demo reel, you can send it to local independent film makers groups, to promote yourself as a cameraman. If someone in the industry sees it and thinks it's good enough, you could send it to talent agencies and small production co's. Not everyone starts by (or ever gets to) shooting multi-million feature projects. There are music video, commercial, TV, industrial and documentary cameramen that are just happy doing their job. Good luck to you, and the rest of us trying to make it. S

It could work. It's going to make it really hard on the actors, not to mention you. Unless they are very well rehearsed and blocked, it could just push things over the edge. But if you filmed it on a separate video camera for immediate playback and re-recording purposes, it could, with good luck, work. BUT . . . Why not just make it silent? Or why not embracing the limitations of your camera and making it in a way that albeit not orthodox, may just make it its own. The probervial "thinking outside the box" applies here. Try watching early films by Fritz Lang, Stan Brakhage, Guy Maddin, Kenneth Anger, Norman McLaren, Maya Deren, et al. "I am Cuba" may be a good one to watch, or "Viva Mexico" which had their sound added later and trascended their limitations to attain immortality. I am not saying you should make films such as the ones made by the people I listed, but they may give you ideas as to how to embrace your sync sound issues . . . Or they may just enrich your avant-garde filmmakers cultural knowledge.

You got it! That is the one thing that I got really annoyed at: All these people just saying how better than film cam a RED camera would be. The antagonism, the film is "soo gone" attitude. And this mostly by folks who couldn't light their way out of a paper bag, at least in my neck of the woods. People who would think that digital means no more film experience is needed to be a good cinematographer. People who think buying a RED camera automatically buys them a ticket in to the big leagues: THE BRAVE NEW WORLD OF DIGITAL CINEMA, where film is a thing of the past and damn if they are not going to prove everyone else who disagrees wrong. It is just like DJ'ing was hailed some years back: who needs to learn to play an instrument when here is the very best thing, a couple of turnatables and a mixer. You are a rock star, dude! Duh! A tool, that is what the RED camera is, like a turntable, or an allen wrench. To be used when the job at hand requires it. Not the "end all be all" as some folks would like us to believe!

Does a plumber get a royalty every time someone uses a fixture which he installed? Does an auto worker get a royalty every time someone uses a car which he built? Of course not. As has been mentioned previously in this thread, business is business, and like it or not, someone or some business is always going to get a bigger slice of the pie than everyone else -- that's Capitalism 101. Maybe I'm comparing apples to oranges here, but in my opinion, the unions are the greedy ones in this scenario. Whoa! Plumbing and motorcar-making are not ART. You truly are comparing oranges and apples. It sounds you have never worked 14-16 hrs a day on a movie, months on end, giving your all and utmost so that producers can get freaking rich. All this while your girlfriend leaves you for not hanging out with her, your health declines sharply your friends and family wonder if this time you are really dead and then someone has the nerve to say that asking for a fair deal is greedy . . . Capitalism is not suppossed to be cut-throat! :angry: But that's OK, what you don't know can't be used against you.

I have an m42 /pentax universal screw-on mount 35mm slide copier that rocks! The sharpest looking macros short of using a microscope! With a super fast (f1.2) single Pentax 50mm lens I can have beautifully selective focus AND zoom in and out to achieve the right macro without moving the camera/ tripod. I use it direrctly on a K3 or on an ACL with a specially made adaptor- Les Bosher makes them. I am sure you can find fairly cheap slide copiers in a variety of different mounts (and/ or adaptors) on ebay or your local photo equipment shop- if those still exist- depending on what camera you are using. It may be a little expensive for a one time deal, though. It depends what lens mount is on your camera, really. I would start from there . . .

Max Jacobi worte: "Scanning 2 perf is not a problem on modern scanners as far as I know, although Keycode matching might be a bit harder. But it's been done and with both Arri and Panavision releasing 2 perf movements for their cameras you can bet that more post houses will start to offer it as well. " Yeah, if you are doing the 2 perf thing you need to do a DI for there is no optical process available last time I checked. Key code should stay consistent, though . . . Aaton has the Penelope camera that is user switchable between 3 and 2 perf. Should one not be sure which aspect ratio to use . . . Shooting 35mm at 2.31 to 1 with the spherical (faster, lighter, cheaper) lenses at the same shooting ratio as if shooting 16mm is a dream come true. Even if Keycode needs to be tweaked to make it work 100%, it is a small price to pay for the overwhelming advantages of the system.

Thanks guys!

Has anyone found a type of light that casts nice shadows without any reflector/ lens aberration/ distortion that is daylight balanced at a relatively short distance from light to shadow-casting object? I have been trying arri suns/ jocker/ jocker bug HMI's (up to 1.2 kw) with limited success after much fiddling with. The best results I have had have been with a 5k junior mole tungsten fresnel geled blue with full CTB -placed 100 ft from the subject- but the light temperature is not true 5500k as an HMI's and it gives a green/blue tone. I don't have access to 12k/16k HMI senior lights yet, so you know. Thanks!

"I must admit though that I'm not thrilled with the footage. Here the Red stuff feels very video, we suffer from some undexposure meant to indicate the sexiness of a dimly lit club, and for many of the shots it seems like everything is in focus from 2 inches in front of the lens to the wall 30 feet away... :(" Well, IT IS video. And not very well lit and shot. Personaly, the only times I have been fooled by video as film is when it is properly shot and colored, then goes to film out and it is projected using a film projector. And then, maybe, it can look like film originated. Perhaps someone should finally set out to define the HD aesthetic in its own right once and for all, as opposed to always trying to make it look like film . . . And being bummed out when it doesn't. I am thinking Julien Donkey Boy, which is one of the best (and most beautiful) examples of Lo-Fi video in its own right one can ever see. And even that one was printed on film, and then, from that print, to video distribution. But then again, one's got to see the film print version though, otherwise it looses a lot of it charm. Ultimately, I guess the jury is still out on ithe film vs video issue. Perhaps just using the best of each format as dictated by the script or thematic content of the film, as oppossed to simple economics of not being able to afford shooting on film. Not very realistic in the day to day, I know . . . Still I think a lot of cash-challenged filmmakers could make the best of the video format -embracing it for what it is, warts and all- instead of always pursuing the ever-elusive, never yet fully attained, "film look" on low budget video.

I'm sure we are going to see video from total garbage to extraordinary with the Red just as we see with any other camera. Sooner or later, more and more people will realize it is not the camera, it's the people shooting with the camera that makes the difference. ;) Words to live by, man. I am constantly mystified when I hear all these people talk like getting the highest definition camera is going to suddenly turn them (and their projects) into cinematography award winners. That's the truth about the leveling of the playing field: While most cameras are still out of most of us's price range, some, like the HVX200, give most people the opportunity to get their feet wet with moviemaking. At the end of the day, though, the ones with experience, skill and talent will outshine the rest of them no matter what the format chosen to film on is . . .

I would use a handheld spot or incident light meter and be done with it. Never really liked the averaging metering on most non-spot in-camera light meters on older/ cheaper cameras myself anyway. Cons, you are going to have to buy a somewhat decent handheld spot or incident light meter. But (Pros), you can meter for the part of the picture you want to get rightly exposed without wondering how the in-camera meter is averaging out your light reading. It is all about control ultimately . . .

Tim: Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Earlier this year I was shooting in REALLY cold conditions (in the mountains in Feb, with a couple of feet of snow on the ground) with the same battery, different camera, but the batteries weren't on the ground. And everything was perfect, until we put the batteries down on the snow! Then the camera went out of synch, briefly though. Now I remember! That's got to be it, as we suspected. Thanks a lot for your feedback! S

I wonder if any of you guys can help with this issue. I was shooting in the wee hours of the AM in the mountains (38 degrees F + wind chill, about 25 degrees F, I sould say) with a Super 16 ACL WITH the heavy duty motor at 24 fps, Kodak 7217. The camera was on the ground resting on the last charged battery (even the high hat was too high and I decided to rest it on the battery {hint?}, which is not insulated, instead of a sand bag). I was lying alongside it (freezing my ass) shooting a long scene, over one minute long easily. The camera would start fine and then completely go out of synch, I could see the light on the motor start to flicker slowly and get gradually worse to where I could hear it bog down. I would take the 400' mag off and the camera would run synch, put it on, out of synch again and back and forth. Suffice to say that we had to wrap right there and then. Now, with this heavy duty motor, the ACL should run crystal synch with 400' mags on as far I know. I thought the battery was draining, but it was the last one charged and when I came home (the next day) I ran a test on the same battery (not the same mag, though), 250' of test film went fine, no out of synch issues. Of course the camera and the battery were warm then and weren't on the ground and I only had about 250' of scratch-test film (ran it twice) If I had had 400' of test film I would have used it, but I am not going to spoil $150 worth of perfectly fine film to test it now, am I? I am thinking a combination of cold weather exposure/ battery being on the ground might have done it. I have never had any problems with that motor before that night or after. I remember at the end of the previous mag, the out-of-synch light flashed a couple of times during a take, but it stopped and the camera was on a tripod then . . . I am wondering If you guys have any clues. If only my Aaton LTR were back from the shop or we could afford to rent a 416 . . . Thanks!

Yale Film and Video is pretty good. Their telecine is a bit pricey and I haven't tried it. They may have a student dicount. I have been using Colorlab in Maryland. They do a great job and are more affordable. They don't process reversal, though. I think they do student discount.

Don't think you have to be an American citizen. Storaro isn't (I don't think). Being an American citizen is definitely not a requirement. There are a rather big number of non-American cinematographers in the ASC. Emmanuel Luzbeki, Rodrigo Prieto and Guillermo Navarro are three Mexicans in the ASC, among many other nationalities. Those are the names that came to mind . . . It generally is the case that anybody who's got the $10k fee, the recomendation of ASC members and/or the backing of a major studio who can't wait to get the soon-to-be-member on one of their shows AND the SKILL, could become a member. And while it is a most honorable and desireable thing to be accepted in their ranks, some of the members are less well-known and recognized (read talented) than others, including non-members. Having worked in this industry enough to be cynical I would also add that sometimes enrollment is more of an administratve issue more than a merit one. For example, if one is a cinematographer with all the experience and skill needed for the job, a union show WILL NOT, under any circumstance hire one if not a member of ASC or comparable, ellegible union. They can petition the ASC to accept the cinematographer in if they want him or her bad enough. I have worked on shows as location scout where we go on tech scouts with the DP and my pictures sometimes have been better than the DP's, with the director and production designer liking them better. One time the DP's stills were too underexposed and with no contrast, which was a source of embarrasment for him . . . I am not trying to say that I am better than the DP in question, or that the ASC and its rules and members are no good, only that one can be just as talented than the ASC member and still not get a comparable job unless one is in the union. Also, some big time DP's get used to their million dollar budgets and large crews and are simply unable to work under more realistic circumstances . . . Just like everything, I guess, there are good and bad things about it.