adam berk

I could see the A-Cam definitely being super useful for things like skate videos, ski video, snowboarding, etc etc.... other than that though, hmmmmm.

did this at school yesterday with my bolex EBM super16.... Much thanks to Brian Woods, the man who saves the day. I'm in telecine on Monday... I'll post some grabs then. Hopefully the look will be very similar to these digital stills from the set. here are some pics

One of the things I learned very quickly when I started film school was that since I had an extremely strong background in video and also still photography, learning the technicals involved with motion picture film shooting was like nothing. You've got the film, the motor, the gate, pressure plate, and lens. If you're lucky, you may have an adjustable shutter which allows you to do the same thing as adjusting the "shutter speed" on your video camera. There's really not much to get the hang of in terms of the physical workings of your basic motion picture camera, and even better is that once you learn one, you can pretty much jump into any camera and find your way around. Maybe treat yourself to a bolex, and a meter. Make every possible mistake you can think of on the first roll or two, that way you'll have a good chance of never making them again in the future when it counts ;)

I got the follow focus and rods today. Tim over at indifocus.com was extremely helpful in custom building this sytem for me. Only thing left now is a decent mattebox. Here is a pic of my camera with a nikkor 24mm ?2 with the rods and FF.

Has anyone ever used this place? 3516 If so, how were the transfers? thanks, adam

Do you get to transfer on one of the new spirits there at school? I'm up here at Academy of Art and very jealous since we're still stuck in the stoneage with an FDL-90 and davinci 8:8:8 :(

Happy to say that I will soon be the proud owner of a custom follow focus system with 18" carbon fibre rods for my super16 EBM bolex. I use nikon slr lenses 99% of the time and this system will be built for that. As soon as I take delivery next week, I'll post back here with some pics for yallz to droolz on. If anyone else has an FF rig on their bolex, please do post pics in this thread. thanks so much! adam berk

That, without a doubt, looks like you're missing the filter holder. And just like has been mentioned, using black tape over the slot will solve your problem in the future. The slot is right behind the lens turrent on the front of the camera.

Any specific models come to mind? thanks again, adam

Does anyone know of a 16mm projector than can be slowed down to 8fps or lower? thanks, adam

Mitch, thanks for the correction on the resolution of the 720p recorded to tape. In reference to the 720p23.98 being wacky. I was referring mostly to it's compatibility with the discreet online systems, which our company, and many many many other high end post facilities depend on. Smoke and Flame are the absolute heart of our workflow. In order to work in a native 23.98 project, the clips must be captured and then pulldown is removed clip by clip, by hand, with timewarps. This can become extremely cumbersome. On the other hand, if the material has been shot 1080p23.98, pulldown removal is completely automatic when the first AA frame is located by the artist or the assistant responsible to EDL captures for each tape, just like the workflow with a normal telecine tape. I believe this has to do with the capabilities of HD-SDI, and please do correct me if I'm wrong here. I think the only way for the NLE to capture and remove unwanted frames automatically from Varicam or HDX 720p material is to capture via firewire where the metadata that includes the "i'm a real frame" flags can be communicated. The discreet systems can only I/O through SDI or HD-SDI. You know it's funny. I just jumped over to the discreet website and noticed that the latest version of smoke DOES support varicam framerate conversions. I'm not totally sure how this is accomplished. We have yet to upgrade to this latest installment of the software for reasons of bugginess. Lot's of people havn't upgraded yet. I'll be sure to find out more though, on how they are able to do this. As soon as I find out more, I will post back here onto this thread for anyone interested.

We just got a new HDX with the 1400 deck. I havn't shot any specific tests but from the few short things I have worked on, I'd say the HDX may have a bit more dynamic range than the Varicam. It employs a new DSP. Also, with the HDX you can record the full resolution of the CCD's to the internal dvcpro recorder. Using the 1080p mode, the full 1280x720 goes into creating the 1280x1080 that gets recorded to the tape. This makes for a much higher resolution source picture than the Varicam's puny 960x540 tape recording (someone correct me if I'm wrong here). The 1080 recording mode also makes this camera much more compatible with discreet finishing systems (I work on both a smoke and flame). I can go into any version of the software that supports HD 24p and be able to work with native 23.98 since the 1080p23.98 mode on the camera actually records a normal 23.98p with pulldown instead of the whacky 720p23.98 format that can be cumbersome to work with in some systems. hope this helps

Funny, I just ran into the EXACT same problem. I was all pumped to get myself a mint f1.4 25mm switar for only $35 for my EBM, yet found it has that deep thread once it arrived.

thanks peoples!

Could anyone recommend a method for shoulder mounting a bolex? thanks, adam

The DaVinci was probably the colour corrector, not the telecine. Do post some grabs.

Which machine did you transfer on? I've had SD Spirit/Shadow transfers of underexposed vision2 500t and 200t come back less grainy (possibly noisy) than properly exposed 7201 transferred on a rank. I'm also totally convinced that the quality of your lenses makes a difference in perceived grain as well.

awesome.... is there anyway you could post here or on that site some full res stills? I'd be most interested in seeing some full res grabs from the CU of the boy towards the end...the same shot as the pic on the right on your page

I would get an uncompressed transfer from them on hard disk and then give the editor dvcpro that I would create from the master transfer. This is how I've worked before with HD spirit transfers. I just import the uncompressed HD transfer masters into the flame or smoke and make sure the metadeta/timecode lines up with the dvcpro I give to the editor...then take the editor's edl and do an auto-conform from the files already inside the flame or smoke. Thanks for your input on the technical/optical side of things. The final product will mostly be used during presentations on laptops and projectors, so HD would definitely be a good thing. It seems that the workprinter is fairly out of the question at this point for me, for color negative...which is 99.999% of what I shoot. thanks again for your help, adam

The material would be cut from dvcprohd downconverts on a media composer. After the edit, whether it's HD or not, I will be doing the online conform, grade and graphics myself on a flame (notice my sig...) The negative/reversal issues poses a gigantic problem. Could you elaborate a bit more on how you would run negative with a workprinter?

All the examples I've seen from filmtransfer.com's xl-h1/workprinter-xp have been old home movie type stuff. Does anyone have any experience with their HD transfer service and higher quality 16 or super16 material? I am shooting an extremely short super16 thing for a local non-profit and I'm planning on transferring with cinelab. They asked me about an HD master, but the budget is just far too low. So naturally, I'm just curious. I emailed filmtransfer and they invited me to send 100' for a free transfer, but I don't have time now. The thing's coming up this week. thanks, adam

A new macbook pro is more than capable of working with dvcprohd. The only place you may start to see some issues with playback is if you develop an intensly dense edit where the hard drive has to skip around a lot to play everything back in realtime. If you're working on an external 3.5" fullsize hard drive, you shouldn't have any issues. About moving to a more powerful machine for dvd encoding.... I just got a new core2duo 2.33ghz 17" and I can say that without a doubt this machine equals and probably in most cases surpases the performace of my dual 2.7ghz g5 when it comes to cpu intensive stuff. I'm basing this observation on my experience with some pretty intense shake scripts I've worked with on both machines. But yeah, when you get a chance, please try to post some frame grabs and note next to each the film stock, lens used, lens aperture, and remind us again which machine it was transferred on (if it was post works im assuming it was either a spirit or shadow). DVCProHD is usually pretty difficult to confuse...what I mean by that is it's pretty difficult to feed material to a dvcprohd encoder that will make the compression puke and look nasty. Noise wouldn't usually be introduced by this compression...in video (like on a varicam) the noise comes from the imaging system.

happy new year to all!

ahhh, the kinor, forgot about that one- thanks olex

So other than an NPR, or a spring driven bolex....are really any 16mm cameras available for under $5k with variable shutter? thanks, adam