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

hello.

I recently shot some colour negative with a bolex H16 reflex, this is the first time i've shot any at all, most of it came out fine except for a bit that seems to be totally overexposed along the right hand side.

I read in the cinematography third edition afterwards that this could be due to the filter slit thing on the bolex not being shut? If anyone could have a look at the image attached and suggest what they think it is i'd be very grateful. The camera belongs to my university who seem happy to have it sitting on a shelf gathering dust, apparantly it hasn't been used for years.

Thanks.

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.

An analytical projector can step a single frame at a time or other frame rates, depending on model.

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

That would be 960x720, not 540. The HDX also uses pixel shift technology to get up to the 1080 resolution. As for 720/23.98p being "wacky," I guess it's all in the eye of the beholder. It is a very established workfow.

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.

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

It was an SD transfer on a DaVinci machine, not exactly sure what model...don't know too much about that stuff. Interestingly, on the same project, the 7217 200t I shot (1/2 stop overexposed) came out excellent in the transfer. When I get off work, I'll post some grabs.

The DaVinci was probably the colour corrector, not the telecine.

Do post some grabs.

Hey Frank, that footage looks spectacular! I shot about 800' of 7201 (overexposed 1/2 stop) for a student project recently and it really didn't come out anywhere close to what you got, lots of noise in the sky. I assume it was the telecine. I sent the film to be processed at Cinelab and I got it transfered (supervised to 720x480) at Finish lab in Boston. I had heard good things about Finish, but when comparing my footage to yours, i am very disappointed in hindsight. Was your transfer a 2k? Does anyone have any ideas as to what I should do differently next time? Just to clarify, all of my footage was shot and exposed properly - I'll try to post some full rez screen grabs later so you can see the noise I'm referring to.

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.

Some clips from a test reel I shot on a recently acquired Super 16mm modified K3.

 

Kodak Vision stock... telecined with Spirit Datacine.

 

Go to http://www.frozenflameweb.com/k3s16 to download the footage :)

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

So would the transfer be supplied to you on DVCProHD from the transfer company? From what I know they use a Canon XL-H1 as a camera head, I would assume they are going from the HD-SDI out to a Blackmagic or AJA card into their computer's hard drives. I guess they could have the software set to capture using the DVC codec and then record that out to tape. Although they may have it set a different way.

 

The issue with negative is the orange mask. It is tied so much to the make-up of the image that you can't just "filter" it out. It's not like white balancing a piece of clear neg and that cancels out the orange mask. The film is more dense and lower in contrast. It takes a lot of post color and gamma correction sometimes tied to filtration and/or white balancing on the front end of the transfer. However even with this I haven't seen results that I thought were equal or on par with conventional negative transfers using BTS Quadras, Ranks, etc.

 

As for b&w negative, b&w reversal, and color reversal these issues are irrelevant. The one thing about negative film though is that the dust is more noticeable and apparent because it turns from black to white when the negative is inverted to positive. The black dust seen in reversal is better hidden because it is more common to have darker tones and colors in an image. White stands out because of it's intensity and stark contrast to the image.

 

These are pretty much technical issues that may not have an impact on your film. With all this said you may look at your transfer and say, "that's fine with me I don't really notice it and I'm sure my audience won't." The thing I don't know is whether the money saved is going to be worth the gain in additional resolution. In my humble opinion, I really see the only thing you'd be getting here is "numbers."

 

Is it realistic and practical to have this extra resolution if most of the time it will be screened on DVD players, etc? I don't know what your end use is, but if it's for anything other than say screening it on an HD projector all the time, it might be more practical and economical to just to an SD transfer. It's still a long ways off that HD DVD players really hit the average home. But I digress.

 

I really have no clue about your project or it's final intent and use. However if HD is what you need to do then you might need to spend the money on a more "professional" transfer unless you feel the results from the workprinter will work for your needs. I've been able to master SD transfers on mine that can compete to that coming off a BTS Quadra. But it's taken three years on perfecting a complete system, a closed loop system if you will. I'm not saying others couldn't or don't offer competitive transfers to that of "professional" telecine machines, as a matter of fact I'm sure there must be. All I can speak of is from my experiences and opinions as a filmmaker and having a business that does just that.

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

I do film transfers as a business using the workprinter. My question to you would be, do you know for sure that your computer or the one you will be editing on will be able to handle the load from HD video? Also what codec are they using? I've seen their examples and what I noticed seemed alright, however they did appear to be quite contrasty. I work very hard to preserve both the shadows and highlights in my transfers. I've been working in film for 11 years so I take the approach of matching to the professional transfers I've had done for my 16mm work in the past.

 

One other thing to think about is color and exposure correction. Do they do it automatically via the camera or some device hooked up? Or is it done later in post? If so, how good and of what experience does the technician have who will be doing the corrections? My hunch is that they probably don't do any post color/exposure correction. However I could be wrong. The tools available for post corrections are superior to that available at the front end of a workprinter transfer.

 

If you are going to do the correction, you'll want to make sure there is enough information there to work with. Additionally, you'll want to ask yourself how well do you understand color and exposure correction and how good are you at getting the results you'll need. I do enormous amounts of color and exposure correction on the transfers that I perform, all in post. That's why I worked hard to develop a system that captures as much of the film's information as possible, i.e. retaining the highlights and the shadows.

 

One last thing, are you shooting negative or reversal? I ask as these machines are designed for reversal. It is a big challenge to get a good transfer of negative film even with heavy amounts of correction done at the time of transfer and in post.

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

My computer's packed up so not at the moment, but I'll try and get one up in the future. I'm off to Prague tomorrow for six months so I'll have to figure out a new solution. Right now I've got a drive with my 1080p DVCPRO HD selects (and a backup) and my new MacBook Pro. I've played back and made a few edits on my laptop and it seems to be running fine. Could I just make a cut on this that I could then open on a more powerful machine for exporting to DVD? Is running the 1080p on my Macbook going to be too taxing or harmful in any way? I haven't tried anything beyond a few edits, but it seems to be working perfectly alright with realtime playback.

 

I also have never traveled with harddrives (Two Lacies, 160GB and 200GB), but I will be bringing them in my carry-on and nursing them like children. Is there anything regarding packing or airline security, i.e. x-rays, that I need to know about?

 

Thanks in advanced.

 

PS Just in case, anyone know any labs in Prague?

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!

Russian 16 SP,

Russian Kinor-16 SX-1M

 

If you will need Kinor-16 SX-2M with variable angle of shitter disk, You can order to replace of transport mechanism and setup mechanism from Kinor-16 -1M version.

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