Sean Lambrecht

You could throw her in a mini cab and say, “Take her where nobody goes!” My only visit to London was in '99 with a group of 15 people on what was billed as a Pub Crawl. On day 2 we toured The Queen's doll collection, or something, at which point 3 of us had had enough and split from the group, hopped in a mini cab, and said, “Take us where nobody goes!” I have no idea where we ended up exactly, it was a small pub surrounded by factories, and there was a cat walking on the bar. Perfect! After that we only occasionally bumped into the tour group at breakfast in the hotel. Our small group of Musketeers kept finding the little places away from the tourist locations and enjoying the company of the natives. That's what made it a vacation, relaxing with no obligations. What is the nature of her trip? Is there anything she wants to see? If there's an attraction in London that you would loathe going to, chances are there's an equivalent in LA that she would loathe going to just to "show someone the town." And chances are it won't create a memorable experience for her. We had a wonderful time in London (and apparently Paris, which I missed due to a drinking contest with a local bus driver, which I lost) because we enjoyed it as a relaxing romp, not a schedule.

Ooops, my bad. I originally installed Stealthy to watch "The Camera That Changed the World" on BBC, and "Odyssey" wound up under my BBC bookmarks. So let me get this straight, you have two channels that offer interesting fare? Then you've definitely got us beat...

For everyone outside the UK unable to watch this, try the Stealthy Firefox plugin. It seems it may have slowed down my connection some when it's running (hard to tell with my very poor ISP), so make sure you're not running it unless you're hacking into the BBC's fine programming. Ah, I do love the BBC. A shame it's so hard to watch elsewhere.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/stealthy/

You might try here http://iaug.freeforums.org/. One of the moderators there, Matthew Bennett, is in Toronto. He doesn't own an Ikonoskop, but he's also on the lookout for one in the area.

It's very difficult to find someone in your own department, I've found. Perhaps we need cinepersonals.com? I'll start it out:

The Cantankerous Gayffer

Male

5'9"

140#

Seeking same to share lighting packages. Wardrobe, Makeup, and especially Actors need not apply. Must like cheap beer.

Vimeo is good quality-wise, but limited to 1280x720 and a single HD upload up to 500MB per week unless you pay annually for a pro account ($60 USD.) No limit on the length of videos. You can also download the original file that was uploaded, again only with a pro account, otherwise the download is the re-compressed version. The conversion process can be extremely lengthy for the cheap folks like myself, my last upload of a 40 second video took over ten hours to convert. And of course with the pro account your upload will get bumped to the head of the line. Aside from all that, the uploads are simple with just a few clicks. Probably the best option for non-techies.

Exposure Room is far less restrictive, and in fact doesn't seem to have any sort of size or time limit although they recommend keeping clips under 10 minutes: http://exposureroom.com/newsgroups/view.aspx?t=210. Very fast conversions and all the extras you get with a paid Vimeo account. Only been fooling around with it for a couple days, so far I like. Maybe a bit to technical for some folks.

It's going to be difficult for anyone without some degree of technical knowledge to get a decent looking video anywhere online I suspect. The x264 encoder has exceptional quality and alleviates those damned Quicktime gamma issues for the most part, but I wouldn't even suggest that to your friend unless you plan on doing all of their encoding. :)

Chances are it won't cost most folks a penny to make one of these with material they already have at their disposal. Certainly less than $150... Any shape you cut into a black material and place over the lens will create bokeh in the same shape. A star, happy face, words, subliminal sexual imagery... there's your bokeh. Fun project, inexpensive too. :)

Google a bit, I think there was a post here on cine.com not too long ago also. My internet service is deplorably slow at the moment...

Interesting, thanks David. Wow, those Harrison filters are really something. I want a set!

Seconded! Years ago I got a great deal on a case for 4x5 filters which happened to include a full set of Tiffen low con filters. My first thought was, "Excalibur... sweet..."

Errr, did Thomson use low cons on Excalibur?

There is already an example floating around of people being tricked into thinking F3 footage was red footage, which was done just to see how a trained eye might perceive it.

Oh come on, the F3 doesn't look that bad, does it? :P I'm joking of course, but do you have a link? Curious to see this...

Already answered, but that director's direction bothered me so much... The subject is the subject, not the hat. As for being part of the persona, would framing for Dolly Parton's breasts be appropriate for a business news program? Viewers probably have a fairly good idea of what lies beyond the frame from the obvious bits they can see, and, unless the hat is the subject of the interview at some point, making accommodations for it is aesthetically disruptive and makes the guest look silly. Not that I know anything about hats...

Even scarier if they're not related. Could LUTs somehow be in our DNA? Hmmm...

"...I'm gonna come down to your office and burn it to the ground!" Fantastic. :D

Ever hear the story of Doyle running into a flaming building naked after oversleeping...?

Haha no I haven't! You said "running into", correct? Almost don't even need to hear the whole story there... :D Where could we hear it though?

I wouldn't recommend alcohol and 35mm cinematography as a winning combination...

Well, they broke the mold after Chris Doyle. Or he may have inadvertently knocked it over himself...

The fish tank is a superb tool for gaining experience on a geared head. The effects of alcohol and smoke wafting into the eyes present additional strength and endurance building techniques to aid in operating the wheels in extreme conditions. If only I wasn't swamped with so much high paying work at the moment... :P

Actually, the latest patent from RED has a good portion of it devoted to discussing several noise reduction techniques, both in-camera and at various stages down the image processing pipeline. It is possible a blue filter could cause denoising to be less aggressive. See the second half of page 42 here.

I think "shuttered" is being confused with "stuttered"... Whereas as object moving across the screen will not appear stuttered if it take 7 seconds or longer to pass from one edge to the other. The ASC manual has charts on panning speeds in relation to focal length and frame rate. I would guess that some VFX shots could require a higher shutter speed to get very clean, sharp edges, and the effect of shutter blur would be added later.

Oooo... Think of the time that can be saved in post by adding grain practically!

And another vote here...

Yeah, "Audience..." is really something to marvel at. Not sure where you saw it, but the DVD has the 2 completed 65mm clips in full. About two minutes in total, and appearing in slo-mo due to the standard, secular telecine... Very nice looking footage though, the DP was certainly good. Check out the Pastor singing on the special features too, he seems to be doing a very good Eric Burdon impression...

Not yet mentioned, the documentary "Audience of One". Church donations, 65mm intended for projection @ 60fps, a nearly decapitated DP, space travel... I could go on but it really needs to be seen to be believed.

Since we're (sadly) back on topic... how exactly is Redcode going to handle 18 stops? 16-bit tiffs in post for the combined streams?

Ah, back when visual effects meant getting your hands dirty... sigh... Very nice work! What was the medium?

That was a year or two ago when I contacted O'Connor, and they weren't servicing or overhauling their older heads anymore. I have a 50 that I believe predates the 50-D, still working great, no leaks. Whatever that head is it certainly is an old one...