thomas-english

I am shooting some fashion vignettes next week on super8 and 200t . Going to TK at widescreens "Flashscan". Have any of you had any success doing multiple passes brighter and dimmer than optimum and recombinding the image in after effects. For more detail from the highlights and dark bits? Any hints of how much brighter and darker? Any tricks on after effects? thanks

I am shooting some fashion vignettes next week on 200t . Going to TK at widescreens Flashscan. Have any of you had any success doing multiple passes brighter and dimmer than optimum and recombinding the image in after effects. For more detail from the highlights and dark bits? Any hints of how much brighter and darker? Any tricks on after effects? thanks

Daniel, I thought some of the frame grabs from your promo where stunning! can really show what is possible on super8 (albeit monitoring on a tiny TFT instance) Wendell, your resources have been invaluable as references for my chat with the commisioner on this upcoming promo. Thankyou very much. There is a pint on the table whenever you would like it. I appreciate that super8 shooting seems to have taken on an aesthetic of its own, I am whilst trawling around looking at various bits, starting to wonder if that HAS to include "forgetting how to operate". I understand it is a lot harder with a tiny handheld thing the weight of half a bottle of vodka. By this statement i am not including the intentional misframes and moves that my mentors would have considered bad operating but I consider good promo style. I do however feel often a lack of production values used when chasing the "super8 aesthetic" seems almost mandatory. I thought the Jewel job was awfull! waste of time watching it. put me off using s8. Paper Hanger is very nice with very nice uses of s8. "Am I dead" was really nicely lit with incredible moments and looked great. I would have like a little more establishers and smoother framerate but I thought it "looked" great. Well done. Please keep 'em coming, I am so glad this thread is continuing.

I would love to re- open this thread. Any other promo s out there shot on s8? cheers thomas

have u tried using any of this stuff?

your right .. it clearly does not do 24p . I also got confused too when it arrived and thought it was just 1080i ... i think the 400 could be a good choice of camera. Like a dsr570 of the HD world.. but its not sony which means a lot in making money back on kit in england anyway. The Thompson infinity is what I am really holding out for now. A lot of times a camera cannot penetrate the market because of the lack of availability of decks. This would not have this problem. I will be keeping an eye on this forum carefully to see what the likes of phil rhodes have to say about this. I am looking forward to it. I have used many thompson cameras in the past and they have always seemed good.

Phil... are you sure the pana hdx400 is progressive only? I lit a job a little ago , varicam and hdx400 as the second camera. I asked for it to go 25p and the assistant did it. It looked 25p and I am sure it was 25p......

I am unfortunately not having much luck finding any resources on the interweb vis a vis the rules of copying money. I have heard various things in the past.... different size... single sided etc etc. Does anyone know the actuall rules? can I for example simply photoshop a note so it looks different (bearded man instead of the queen, or santa) but keeps the same size of note and essence of design? can anyone point me towards some resources for this. Thankyou very much for your time. Thomas English

Its always difficult to tell transmission loss underwater. You probably loose a stop per meter of red. probably an average of 1/2 a stop to 3/4 a stop per meter. This is how I have always calculated it. Don t confuse yourself too much though... part of them being far away is them fading away in underwater visability loss. Make your calculation 2 meters away at 1 stop loss if using an incident meter. Use a wider lens and keep close to your subject. always underwater... it s very difficult to hold longer lenses underwater. The light loss from surface to 1 inch below can be anything from 1 stop to 4 stop depending on the angle the light hits the water and off course how choppy it is. Keep your lights pointing straight down into the water from as higher an angle as possible and let them diffuse underwater.

The main reason to use correctly rated kit, apart from the obvious safety issue... is insurance as phil said. I think filling in a risk assesment would be a little tricky to say the least! basically unless you know exactly what your doing, don t do it. Keep all your lights well sandbagged topside and instruct everyone on set to be careful knocking bags over. Obviously the field of electrocution is only for a few meters in fresh water. This is something I have pondered many times whilst rigging up underwater blondes... How far will this plasma actually go if I break this thing! ? Do you know any figures? "unless you pour a fifty pound sack of salt into it".... so how far does it go off shore?..... argh.. this is when your so much more likely to break a light!!! For your nightshoot, your pool lights are tungsten. So I would rent a 1.2HMI for the day put possibly a 1/4 blue and point it straight into the pool backlighting your character and not lighting up the back wall. I would then use your pool inbuilt lights as fill. plenty of ND and flag/block the ones in shot. Light becomes very diffused very quickly underwater. Your tungsten balanced on your film so you should get a nice blue moonlight coming into the pool. Balance out the HMI (shutting barn doors) so its not overpowering the shot. If your still lacking in light (fill) get a couple of blondes and point them into the pool behind the camera. Try and flag lights so they are not hitting the walls or back of the pool. (this lighting setup is totally a matter of opinion based on the fact that you don t have many resources, I would light this differently to a proper budget). Light acts differently underwater... bouncing everywhere as it travels anywhere, its great. Plastic bags/zip lock bags are fine for a lightmeter but test out how many stops you have lost by putting it in a bag. I used a cheap soft photographic camera underwater housing last time to put the light meter in and it cost me a tenner. Get the lowest profile mask you can find, a freediving mask is good, or regular good goggles and a nose clip otherwise your eye will be so far from the viewfinder you won t see what your doing, play about until your comfortable. You can rent underwater Kinoflos nowadays and they look great! and have fun! I would come and give you a hand if you were in the UK thomas

Mitch, have you ever steadicamed with one of the ringlights from http://litepanels.com/ The gekko ringlight is very different smaller and more compact. The http://litepanels.com/ is a lot larger. It s not flexible and all over the place like the arri LED ringlight is it?

I use the gekko kisslight often, I find the colour balance is great on film or tape. I think it s such a great light I am buying one (at $8000 it s no small feat). The new lumileds out of silicon valey are great. They come as tungsten or daylight and are very very bright. the spectral graphs and the like are here. http://www.lumileds.com/pdfs/DS25.pdf

I have a job tomorrow. using the J11 HD lens and the J21 . We have a fisheye adaptor http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller...de=cii_13736960 But I just got a call from the AC and he can t work out how it fits on the end of the lens! How does it work? I have never used one like this. Thanks Thomas

Can u still right it off against your tax though with an american receipt?

first of all i would like to apologies for doing another comparison thingy- for my own "projects" and a few lower end fashion spots i can afford about 8 grand- so im thinking of keeping my money for a Z1 with a pstechniks (leica lenses). downgrading the video to DV in post. (i appreciate neither of these has yet been released). or should i get a dsr570 and keep my budget for hiring in pro35 and lenses----- what i am mostly concerned about is the highlights and dynamic range (stops of latitude either side of exposed). make it look nicer and all that. the other advantages of the z1 setup would be splitting the fields to have (downgraded) progressive scan... as well as possibly 50fps progressive scan?! hmmmmmm---- pondering thanx thomas

i am really really interested in what the lowres 60p slow mo looks like on this camera. this seems to me to be the major advantage of this camera!

i want to put a video tap on my beaulieu 4008 , but really cant justify the 800 pounds (1300 dollars) on an xc-999. seeing as its only for framing on my steadicam rig, im not worrying about quality of image, but i assume its going to have to have a real good low lux any experience with cheaper cameras , pcb or otherwise that anyone could recomend. thankyou thomas

what lenses did you use phil on the front end?

often... looks great! with digiprimes.. on the zooms i reckon its a bit neglible really. i also think its a bit neglible using the SD lenses on the HD cameras... but i stand to be corrected...

and is the 16:9 on the 500 "proper" or is it a signal reprossesd ver. and not proper till the 570? these are things that ive heard whilst hiring them quite often. I really want to get the 500.

Do any of these DVcam DVCpro cameras that take 1/2in or 2/3in lenses shoot in progressive scan?

i heard that sometimes they dont cut together that well on multicamera shoots... any experience? im thinking of getting a 500 but worried

very gratefull for your help. gotta source one now on way to job|! thanx

Help! got a steadicam job with a japanese camera team don t speak a word of english............. do i need downconverter on - Sony HDW-700/A can t find info on net and leaving tomorrow morning! does it put out an SD signal (ntsc or pal) or only HD