Floyd Diebel

seemed a little grainy, but lattitude was super. i used it once in a pinch on a tungsten set and was not thrilled with the color reproduction.

yeah, well i guess their machine is uncapable. the problem is that in northern california, we've only got two transfer houses to choose from at the moment. its not like socal. i just wish i actually could get a straight answer as to what the limitations of the machine actually are. well, i still disagree, (definitely about the interface making sense) but that's okay. maybe it's just cause, to my eye, using the level filter for anything more than crushing the blacks just looks like crap, so i don't use it much. i might not know how to use it correctly or something. your attitude makes me curious though, have you ever supervised film transfers with a colorist who you liked or trusted? see, i'm willing to work a little bit with this lab because 1) local options are limited, 2) i have a successful 4 year relationship with them (and this particular colorist) already, 3) i like my colorist - he's a great guy, and 4) they've agreed to let me shoot tests (w/ free lab costs of course) in varying conditions to try and figure out the situation with the aspect ratio conversion. anyways, that's my story. thanks for the diagnostic help! oh - and the mean looking girl in your levels window is cool looking!

hey phil - thanks for all your replies. i talked to the lab yesterday - it appears that my footage is pushing the machine past its limits. they're going to send me a 4:3 full frame transfer of the negative, and i will see if the aspect ratio conversion (ARC, as i learned for you phil) will work better here, from within after effects. i also learned i am this lab's only client that shoots anamorphic. (!!!) the only other times they do anamorphic conversion is for film prints from bollywood. i guess either 1)the ratio conversion hardware likes prints better than negative, or 2) bollywood producers never noticed/complained. hm, i get what you're saying, by i have to disagree with you on this. he's not paid to be an engineer - they have an video engineer on staff. not really, it's alot more than that, but that's a different thread i guess.

its a copernicus desk. i imagine that's what did the scaling too, but my colorist wasn't sure. he's not really a hardware guy, apparently. argh.

the letterboxed image was transferred to 4:3 NTSC. but, the image looked bad in the lab, even before going to tape. i thought that maybe transferring to 16:9 would help, but i dunno. what's ARC? supposedly the engineers at the lab are looking into it today. hopefully they'll find something.

i just had an anamorphic film transfer done by my normal lab in san francisco, and it looks really horrible. it was transferred on a bosch quadra (which does not seem to be people's machine of choice, but it usually serves my purposes okay.) it looks very "digitized" - i think it has something to do with the the compressed image's vertical height being somehow electronically squashed in the machine somewhere to give a normally proportioned, letterboxed image. diagonal lines look absurdly bad, as do most hard edges. i've transferred anamorphic stuff at this lab previously, and it looked "okay", but i did notice this problem before to a lesser degree, in wide shots. closeups with the background kicked out of focus are fine. there are a few differences about this footage - the shoot was entirely exterior, mostly wide shots, mid day, pretty contrasty, deeply focused, and shot on 5248 to boot. other stuff i've transferred was either 5293 or 5277, and was pretty low key. anybody else had weird problems with anamorphic transfers? note that the problems were visible on the monitor at the lab (not routed through a deck), and when we viewed the footage flat (no compression to 2:35), the problem was gone. i know the heinous NTSC signal is gonna be responsible for some of this problem, but shouldn't i be able to get better than this??? help?

i really liked lost in translation, and thought lance acord's work was beautiful, in that it infused the characters' stories with meaning and texture. without his photography, the film would not be nearly so good. i don't think the film was racist at all.

hey matt! i have a cooke 25mm (T2.2 i think) for my 16 kit, and it is a bit soft. not as bad as some other old lenses though. hope your movie's going well.

wow! that's great!

i really liked buffalo '66 alot. the use of the obscure classic rock was funny (crimson, old yes, etc.) and the "sloppy" cinematography is pretty fun.

i've shot a bunch of commercials with the konvas 2M & 8M, and they have never let me down. my 2M has a decent video tap installed as well. the cameras easy to work on, very reliable. if the electronics die, they (along with the motor) can be replaced in about two seconds. they are easy to convert to PL mount, but the LOMO optics are quite good. the cameras is super light (about 16 lbs with film.) it has a nice small form factor, which means you can get it in places other cameras wouldn't fit. good stuff, plus cyrillic is cool.

polaroid did make instant super 8 film. it was called "polavision" "For those who aren't familiar with Polavision (the Edsel of home movie formats), this was Polaroid's attempt at "instant home movies." Basically, it uses a funky additive color process that produces extremely dense, grainy images on polyester-base super 8mm film. The film came in special cartridges, which you loaded into the special camera. After shooting, you popped the cartridge into the "player" (which looks kind of like a small TV set, complete with rear-projection screen) which took a few minutes to rewind and wind the film through the "processing" cycle and then displayed the finished "home movie" on the rear-projection screen."