David Bradley

Its quite grainy, what ISO did you shoot at? As this is a cinematography forum some moving image wouldn't hurt, perhaps you could post your film somewhere online and provide a link. Its hard to say anything constructive based on these stills.

As far as my understanding goes colour temperature doesn't account for green / magenta spikes. Colour temperature refers to the light emitted by a black radiator which when heated to incandescence emits a fairly consistent colour of light (emitting relatively similar amounts of energy throughout the visible spectrum (see Plancks Law)). Light emitted from sources other than black bodies (such as flourescent lamps) may feature 'spikes' of magenta or green. The spike is visible if we plot a graph showing energy on the Y axis represented by KJ/nm against visible spectrum on the X axis represented by nm. A Black body creates a smooth curve on the graph where as a flourescent lamp shows a smooth curve with a spike. Flourescents have a 'correlated colour temperature' which is also read in kelvin. Correlated colour temperatures are based more on human perception in that they are measured relative to our perception of the colour of the light a black body emits when heated to incandescence. 3 channel colour temp meters can be used to measure the green channel to figure out how much you will need to compensate. Best bet is just to eliminate flourescent fixtures from your lighting kit - they look horrible anyway. Thankfully kino flos were invented! PS has anyone had problems with their kino flos? I bring at least 2 x 3200K 4ft 4 banks when I shoot and I find that if I use a CTB to bring me up to 5500K I get a magenta cast to the light? I've started using a 1/8 plus green to compensate but I was under the impression that this wouldn't be necessary?

what stock / format are you using? If your medium is fast enough then you could get away with using anything as small as a 650W fresnel on spot. Remember the smaller the source and the further you place it from the subject the harder the light.

Apologies but I have to agree. If you are paying for the TK demand a reprint and ask to sit in on the grade. If you did shoot a grey scale it seems that the colourist has completely ignored your instructions. Properly exposed 100 ISO/ASA 16mm neg should not be nearly as grainy (or as noisy) as the screens you have posted. Quick tip for using greyscale. If you want a slight blue cast its perfectly acceptable to shoot uncorrected tungsten stock under daylight. Assuming the daylight has a colour temperature somewhere between 5000K - 6000K your looking at a difference of about 131 mireds, this will give a fairly heavy blue cast as expressed by the pics below. For a more subtle effect I would tend to shoot a grey scale with an 81EF infront of the lens, then remove the 81EF. The lab will use the grey scale to determine true white and once the 81EF has been removed you will have your subtle blue cast. This way you don't have to put more glass infront of the lens, your not really pushing the stock that hard and the blue cast won't be so overbearing. There are probably hundreds of methods for acheiving that sort of look and many seem to have their own preferences but I like to avoid filtration on the camera. It may be worth noting that by shooting uncorrected daylight with a tungsten stock your are effectively overexposing the blue layer of the negative. Its subtle but I find that bluey hot spots tend to burn out quicker and look a little dirtier but I like the effect. Good luck. Dave

I don't think Mr Jannard will be shaking in his boots too much. Still, these images are pretty impressive.

HOW?! For an upcoming production I had considered a technical transfer to HDCAM-SR as a master from the lab but deck hire, lab costs and storage devices capable of keeping up with insane bit rates scared off the producer. Even editing offline and conforming was going to cost an arm and a leg. It seems HD is cost effective if you shoot HD in the first place but going from 16mm/35mm invariably costs more. If you have a cheap solution please share Cheers Dave

Stick with digibeta. Its cheap robust and and works in a 4:2:2 RGB colour space - this means you can tweak the grade in post without running in to too many compression artifacts. HD is great but at the lab end it still costs about about three times as much as SD. Festivals are tricky because they often require 35mm for projection. Even if they didn't projected SD looks very mucky. This is why I suggested holding on the EDL. With it you can return to the lab who will re-scan selected portions of the neg at 2k or 1080 HD and print it to 35mm. This costs alot (relative to your initial processing and SD dailies route) but if you want your film to be screened it may be a necessary evil. It doesn't make sense to best light to DPX and then get the lab to master to digibeta. Why not have your dailies delivered on digibeta and just edit the lot online. The workflow you are suggesting will just cost more.

A 2K will cost a fortune and nothing short of an Avid DS will be able to handle it in real time. You would definately need to make a low res copy to edit offline. You would be better off getting a technical transfer to HDCAM-SR (if your looking for high-res). Most labs can transfer to .DPX files for you so you may be able to whack it straight on to a raid array. HDCAM-SR runs at either 440mbps or 880mbps so you will need a firewire 800 or fibre optic raid that can push data at that rate. I don't understand why you would do a 2K and then print to digibeta. Stick with SD. I would do this - Best light or tech transfer to Digibeta or .DPX files if you don't have a deck - Edit / grade / conform SD online - Print to Digibeta If you want to blow up to 35mm later then export an EDL from avid and take it to the lab - they will be able to scan the relevant portions of the neg at 2K, grade it and then print to 35mm (digital intermediate). Digi Beta runs at 90mbps so a decent firewire sata should handle it. Don't scan at 2K and then print to digibeta. Its a waste of money and quite frankly - its a sin.

I bought a KCM-3100 about 2 weeks ago and its great. Its basically a minolta colour meter 3 (exactly the same in fact) just a different casing.

Gaffair by airstar. Very cool light.

Glad to know that the KCM is held in such high esteem. I was slightly worried about the build quality but it seems to be a carbon copy of the Minolta 3 - I loved the Minolta 2 so this should do nicely. I got mine for £400 from http://www.robertwhite.co.uk/ (no I am not a sales rep but this is cheap and I thought I would pass it on.) Remi, fantastic job on Elizabeth - it looked fantastic! Dave

Thanks Tim, much appreciated.

Hello All. Work have an old minolta colour meter 2 gathering dust in the store so I thought I'd take a peek before asking the boss to write it off. I fired it up but every time I attempt to take a reading with it I get a reading of 400K and it just sits there flashing. I've looked around to see if anyone else has had this problem as I think it might be an indication of a specific problem. Has anyone here had much experience with these meters and if so have you encountered this problem. I'd love to get this vintage gadget running again. Also just purchased a kenco KCM-3100 - anyone used one / how do you rate it?

Thank you all for the advice. After discussing our options with Matt Adams (technicolor UK) I've decided to go for a telecine straight to HDCAM-SR. As a Emmanuel suggests it may be the safest option for such a low budget project and I've been told that many have had pleasing results transferring HDCAM-SR to 35mm should we wish to print to film at a later date. Just one more question: When the lab have performed the telecine and provide us with the HDCAM-SR rushes would it be best to use their VTR and dump DPX or 10 Bit Cineon files to hard drive or hire a deck later and capture into media composer. I realise this is reaching into the editors domain but I want to know for my own piece of mind and I need to get an idea of the sort of costs involved. Thanks again Dave

Arri sr2, just keep on going - will sync sound, pl mount etc etc. Pick one up on ebay for under $9000 US. I would.

If you want to make some decisions regarding the amount of light you need to throw on the subject you might need to consider - What stock you are using - The sort of fstop you will be shooting at - do you want a hard light (larger fixtures further from the subject) - do you want a soft light (smaller output fixtures closer to the subject) Considering you are using I ballon I will assume that you want to use a soft wrapping light. A Lunix 200 will give you about 260 lux at 7m distance and anything as small as an arri 1K fres will give you 250 lux at 9m (flood) so that would be sufficient for your back light. Once you've decided on stock or at least the relative speed of your entire camera system (i.e. after filters, shutter angle etc has been decided upon) I'd set some of these fixtures up and get a reading at various distances to see how they compare. The arri site is great for getting photometric data on their fixtures so hit that if you don't have time to test. Good luck David

Ah. thanks Scott. Best Dave

Any idea on how this was done. How did they track back?

Hey I want to DI my next s16mm project but I'm a little confused as to how the workflow goes. I assume that: - film is telecined into an SD cutting copy - EDL is exported from NLE for A & B Roll cut - film is scanned at 2K - DI is Graded / Tweaked etc - Printed for theatrical release Please correct me if any of this is wrong as I really am guessing. I want to print the DI to 35mm so I can take it to festivals, local theatres etc but I will also need HD/SD copies. Can HD/SD copies come straight from the DI or do I need to fork out for another telecine from the final print? Basically I was hoping someone could outline the entire workflow. Cheers Dave

Hello Just wondering if anyone knows a UK supplier of colour corrected light bulbs suitable for use in practicals - preferably 60 watt? I've found a few but they are all in the 275W-300W range which wouldn't be any good for me. Thanks Dave

Anyone know of any alternatives to Minolta color meters? I can't find one anywhere, surely there is an alternative. Dave

I can't find one anywhere. Anyone happen to be selling? If not could you advise on an alternative to Minolta? Regards Dave

Slight confusion today when discussing the pros of using HMIs. I had always been of the opinion that an HMI would have a greater output per watt than a tungsten fixture. i.e. a 2.5K HMI at 10ft distance = 800fc a 2.5K Tungsten at 10ft distance = 600fc assuming that the lens and dimensions of the fixture are identical. Can anyone shed any light (pun intended) on this. David

Just wondering if anyone could point me to some materials that would be appropriate for diffusing. It will need to be about 6mx6m. I'll be punching a pair of 2.5K HMIs through it and shooting using daylight stock. I would like it to be a white light, I had thought of using muslin but I've heard it can have a slightly blue hue to it. Any ideas? Best Dave

Hello All Thinking about investing in one of these but I just wanted to know if the 16mm kelly calculator will be suitable for shooting super 16mm? Best David