Sam Wells

Without control of the target (as in a tube camera) you can end up trading longitudinal chromatic aberration for lateral aberration ! -Sam

I think most if not all Kinotons can run at 25 fps -Sam

Wow Carl, Bayer (etc) seem to have proven themselves in the stills marketplace; actually something like Redcode would seem to me to be of great benefit there; a choice beyond the rock & hard place of uncompressed RAW and JPEG. Are you shooting with an F23 in the meantime ? Personally RED can skip *video* formats entirely for my money, I'd be glad to pay less to be without them. But that's "just me" as they say..... -Sam

I'm with you in one sense but in another I see this as a challenge to do new things; as I'm no longer working in an exclusively photochemical world, I mean I'm painting with cloning brushes and layering in ways no optical printing ever could touch; the question for me is - do I continue to let the capture device (film camera) do the steering so to speak ? I have full respect for anyone who wants to work with "film-as-film" but I'm just too intrigued by this stuff - which is, in many ways, in it's infancy (in the sense that it can now break away from "video" / television... -Sam

I'll discuss the film look with Halie Berry any time B) To get back to the original subject, so far the only 4K capture -> 4K projection I've seen is from the Dalsa Origin, and while I have lots (probably too many) thoughts on this, all I could _state_ is that it was technically first rate (including surprisingly good highlight response). But at the same, way too technical, then, in it's nearly textureless image.... like some ideal TV... But I don't think there's any way to quantify this stuff - especially given RAW capture - aside from the "digital developing" i.e. what you do with it in what has been called "Post" (a word I never liked) but really what is your digital film lab so to speak.... ...In that sense, and as sensors will invariably come and go, I wonder if RED's biggest coup isn't in fact Redcode ?? -Sam

Not addressed to me but -- Sure. I can tell. More than usually (so far). But it does not follow from this that the look of (35mm) film as we call it is equivalent to 2K digital plus artificial grain. Frankly it's an offhand statement at best, 10 Oscars not withstanding. -Sam

The color on the prints at the time was a bit softer and more subtle than these frame grabs suggest.... -Sam

Vision 2 has remarkable range. But this is a judgement call. I don't quite understand the last sentence. What is a "subdued" black ? You mean crush the blacks and keep deep shadow detail ? Yes within reason. -Sam

I've done this in supervised telecine, pretty easy - I shouldn't think there's a cost factor. Hopefully all your 180 rotations are on separate rolls if this is an unsupervised dailies transfer. Of course you can do this later in post, although it's a render. -Sam

What John says. I remember seeing this from "Wings Of Desire" (which looked great anyway !) in a theater with a changeover (no platter). A gaffed an Indie feature which mixed some 7222 with ECN. We saw a difference between the B&W which was on the A roll and that on the B roll. Maybe they changed a lamp. (Good argument to either have all the B&W on one or - more safely do as C roll. For those of you still printing from camera originals !) -Sam

I've used a few, most kinda so-so; one really good one which matched Zeiss 10-100 T2. Michael Collier addressed the close focus issue I think. Ang 9.5-57HEC will focus to 2' at all focal lengths. But NG for S16 either. Ken Hale at Whitehouse is the guy who really knows these lenses. A zoom lens off collimation on your camera is a fancy coke bottle in any case, doesn't matter what brand ! -Sam

So should directors and DP's put a statement on elements "Scan or Color Grade this any way you feel like it" ? Or is this just aimed at Soderbergh; if Lubezski or Savides did it, it would be OK ? -Sam

Well at the risk of jumping into THAT fire I do think RED and other (inevitable) 4K cameras are going to have an impact to say the least on S16 indie production. -Sam

I know that some Criterion titles were transferred on a Spirit at Nice Shoes to Thomson/Philips D6 "Voodoo" You could go to HDCamSR instead now.... -Sam

In a certain sense a contact print is better than ANY digital/video transfer. I could qualify that by saying if you are shooting for a digital/video finish that superiority may or may not be relevant (I'm doing 16mm - originated work now that goes through Final Cut, Color, Motion 3 etc). Or maybe if you're doing real scanning as opposed to video transfer, but to see what you can do with your negative & judge your work, why not go with daily prints ?. (As an aside, I'm at the point where I'm really thinking "let film be film" & for the digital 'envirionment' I'm ready to switch to digital capture..... as 4K become viable... I learned filmmaking on reversal stocks, didn't even workprint everything... just wound the film carefully and used a Moviscop viewer or light panel and magnifying glass - very "WYSIWYG" very educational..) -Sam

The times I've read this subforum, I've stayed out of it for the same reasons but I agree. This is supposed to be a serious professional forum and should be committed to scientific and technical accuracy whether S8, 35, HD... . -Sam

It might depend on the camcorder: A friend of mine took a clean 16mm workprint, good projector - and shot it off fine art paper in HDCam with a HDW 700, cut in FCP in 10 bit uncompressed & output to HDV which I saw on a 30' screen projected by a Christie 3 chip DLP. Looked pretty damn good. -Sam

But I think a whole sub-genre of "classical Hollywood narrative cinema" - literary script-oriented oriented (in the sense of a written medium) has already jumped ship and gone to television; which has produced new things - like the extended form we see in "The Sopranos" etc... In the Indie world, theatrical is the advertisement for DVD / cable release and no, I don't see that changing so much as from shooting format to reception format..... But if "300" is as much an example of Hollywood theatrical cinema as "Evening" then I don't think the word classical applies........ and I don't mean that as a value judgement (... I could make one, but.....) -Sam

I'm not sure I agree with you. I think the evolution which started you might say with the Eclair NPR in 16mm and the use of things like hand held Cameflexes in the French New Wave did change things. I think DI has changed things if only as a 'bridge' to something different. Digital Cinema is in it's infancy in most respects, I wouldn't want to assume too much as to where it might go. But I don't think 21st Century cinema will be the same as the cinema of the past 40 years. Shooting in 4K RAW, an NLE is *not* an electronic Steenbeck, it's a film lab, an optical printer and more. I can forsee films that are far more assemblages than montages of fully-realized-in-the shooting frames. For the past 150 years of photography and the past 100 years of cinematography, the photgraphic image was "evidence" and the exceptions were special cases: effects. This is no longer true and I think it might represent a rather profound change, actually. -Sam

One might as well say shooting "Sex, Lies...." at all was fishy but it put Soderberg (and Sundance) on the map.. I don't see anything inconsistent with his methods here. Anyway he shot a feature with an XL-1, right ? Besides, if he doesn't quite like the look from Redcode he can always film out to 5285 and cross process it :) -Sam

Well gee if you meter for the shutter speed at 24 fps then you won't be underexposed ! NB In the past I shot (16mm) Kodachrome 40 (filtered w/ an 85) at all kinds of frame rates from time exposure to 48, 64 fps, looked great. I think the differences between this and Daylight balanced Kodachrome were / are negated in printing (Never easy from Kodachrome anyway). At one time I shot portfolio slides for a few painters; I used the Tungsten balanced Kodachrome 35mm still film - great stuff - (I rember shooting 6 of each painting for one artist so she wouldn't have to make dupes). -Sam ps what Douglas Hunter says.

Where do you get this stuff besides making it up ? Way back when - when I shot S8 I shot lots of silent carts at 24 fps, sometimes faster - Leicina & Nizo cameras with no problems. -Sam

Go with the reflex for sure, why would you not want to ? http://www.tobincinemasystems.com/page74.html Probably JK could put a larger finder on it. (Those 6x are llike looking at a postage stamp) -Sam

You need to copy the Quicktime DVCProHD components (an of course you need Quicktime Pro) from the machine you have FCP on to your iMac. (Or from your producer's MBP). They live in root/library/quicktime. They need to be Universal Binary versions - but as long as you have FCP 5.1x they will be. I've played DVCProHD on an Intel mini no problem (it wouldn't loop backward @ 1080i though !) -Sam

I agree with Dominic - it's not "wrong" -- some labs will give you workprint in "projection wind" heads out, some make you do it yourself. If you're cutting w/p you should have a pair of rewinds anyway. Good excercise for mouse users ;) -Sam (enjoying a Workprint thread, it's been awhile) p.s. Some timers will often go for bright happy snappy if not informed to do otherwise.