Sam Wells

Nikon D3 with a few 1980's primes, all manual I don't use auto anything. I shoot with 35 PC-Nikkor or 105/2.5 mostly, I'm a lens minimalist these days. I am actually shooting a movie with this, time lapse and ~ 8 fps bursts retiming in Shake - Insane :D I've said before, I'd love to have 24 fps of what this sensor can do in FF/RAW. It would *smoke* the uh, you know <_<

Better to do the telecine from an IP -Sam

No just the opposite IMO. In a sense the more differentiated color values you have the more greyscale values you can map them to. -Sam

You can do B&W in Color (Color in the FCS 2 suite). There is Red Giant "Looks" as an FCP plugin, tho I haven't used it. http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/products/a...c-bullet-looks/ I do conversions to B&W in Shake which can offer a great degree of control & finesse but that will not be fast. With DSLR's selecting a B&W mode means the camera is doing the conversion for you, (or in RAW mode is using that model of conversion as a picture control setting) based on a kind of typical weighting of converting RGB values; it can look OK but you have far more control if you DIY. -Sam

Phil can find a little piece of England anywhere :lol: -Sam

D3 is UDMA compatible (I use Sandisk "Ducati") so yes. Curious to hear (see ?) your impressions of the D3x David. I need the higher frame rate of the D3 plus I ain't got 8 Grand USD on hand right now ! But I'd also like to test drive one sometime.... -Sam

Hi Paul, I think one challenge would be to avoid making the matte a distraction. (And you'd probably want to know your projection or display could give a really dark or black black). Once you put up a visible matte IT can be a picture element so to speak - whereas in looking at say photos in a book one accepts, in individual photos, the AR of each individually as, well the 'domain' --- I did an installation piece in HD, (16mm film origination) running on an Apple 23" - it started with a vertically matted series of shots, then doubled them (with slightly different variations between L & R) to form like a 1.33, then followed with full shots at 1.33.... it worked but it was a progression; I think shot to shot AR changes would get unwieldy...... -Sam

I'm not sure we can say they "disabled" anything. They let you record the Live View (without pic info) and that 's 30p. Live view on my D3 is 1080i / 15fps on the HDMI out. Maybe Canon will enable 24 fps in firmware upgrade ? IOW I don't think they invented much in order to do this. I do think they're "fishing" to see what the response to this is. -Sam

Give or take $ 1,495,000 :D -Sam

You're not really converting a frame rate if the projector ran at 30 fps - it's 1:1. Put it in a 24/23.976 timeline. -Sam

D70 (and D80 ?) use a mechanical shutter for for clearing the chip in combination with electronic. AFAIK my D3 is mechanical at all speeds; how they use this in conjunction with resets on the CMOS chip I don't know (it would appear to be a global shutter effectively). The 'output live view as HD video' w/ the d90 and the new Canon is something else; obviously the mechanical shutter remains open in live view. I don't think the mirror acts as a shutter in any sense on any DSLR. -Sam

But they typically do not skew in full frame-readout / mechanically shuttered mode. -Sam p.s. what DSLR does _not_ have a mechanical shutter ?

I'm not sure their best sensors can't do 24 fps. They haven't really pursued this seriously yet -- in what they're doing now they are essentially letting you record the 'video tap' Really I think the issues are heat, buffering, DSP horsepower. And using mechanical shutter. -Sam

There's not a fast answer to number 2. What do you accept ? Like film grain, noise betrays itself in large even areas (say in this case a twilight sky......) I'd say for me & the Nikon D3 ASA 200-800 is the optimal range, but I've done some good night stuff @ 2500. Black & White I can do 3200 - it looks like a fast film stock at worst, T Max 400 (but 3 stops faster !) at best. (Chroma noise is always the most problematic). Then again, it's "default ISO" - 200 - is the sweetest; however I can sometimes shoot at 800 with no pain, even 'pushing' a RAW (NEF) file in post from 200 in some cases (with a good converter e.g. Capture NX this can work as well as on board gain boost - which indicates raw converter and post work is of significant importance here). Which, promising as they are makes the 5D Mk II (or D90 to a lesser extent) both very interesting but problematic for major league play, or to put it another way it seems the Canon will make great 'slides' but we need to get great 'negatives'. -Sam

Hi Tom, with the potential of this degree - or more - of modularity (is that a word ? well "functionality" slipped in to the language) FF35 doesn't have to be a 'norm' but a choice, you could shoot your wides, landscapes etc (think your fav filmmaker Malick using 65 in The New World) -Sam ps I would like to have had the Red 645 yesterday, but I am doing weird things with space & reframing lately :blink:

I would say this guy is skilled ! As to high end, I don't know: maybe if we saw Arriscanners doing 8/S8 transfers.... but again this would seem to beat a Spirit (a Spirit"1" in any case). Break it down, a Spirit IS a transport and a video camera, no matter what anyone says. I wonder who will be the first to build a DIY rig with RED Scarlet :D -Sam

I'd love to see them become players but have my doubts they will flat out have a go at our world here; I'd like to be wrong.... And Japanese companies (in video especially) tend to divide turf among them, although there have been exceptions. OTOH we're looking at an area without clear precedents...... I thought RED was positioning itself with the 'DSMP' to shake the Canon & Nikon trees (fine with me !) --- are the trees shaking back ? -Sam

New from the Red House ? I think the 7K Purple Haze. Cast in titanium, designed by Frank Gehry.... hey, better than manic depression or castles made of silicon, er, sand B) -Sam ...sorry....

As far as retaining the specific 'personality' of Kodachrome's colors and tonal scale, it's better than _any_ commercial transfer I've seen, even from 16mm on Spirits etc. Very interesting. -Sam

If they can get a good s/n on the FF sensor that's not crazy either; actually good s/n and you may not need the gain boost (well there seems to be no onboard gain boost done on the current Mysterium) --- I can often shoot @ 200 on my D3 and buy another stop even 2 from a RAW file in post (even if conventional 'ETTR' wisdom says I shouldn't it can work as well as an ISO gain boost). You could also consider a larger format as simply a different type of canvas and design the filmmaking to not require constant focus pulls -- I don't know that FF35 is or need be suited to fast and furious moves, run 'n gun, Bourne Ultimatum...... As to the glass, with Leica going larger than 24 x 36 and Nikon (strictly rumor perhaps) about to venture there also, I'm not sure that past precedent is anything to go on, or should predict what Cooke and Zeiss may or may not do. -Sam Note to Tom: Don't be a two bit Ray Kurzweil wannabe, be a 12 bit Ray Kurzweil (at least 12 !) wannabe :lol:

Yeah it's been downhill since Guttenberg, jeez we can't have the peasants reading - next thing you know they'll be WRITING. :angry: -Sam

Everyone who works hard is a risk taker. IMO. -Sam

A little steep for "FF" I agree. I don't think will put Nikon or Canon out of business. The PJ's don't need 5K, nor want to have that much invested in a camera body (and @ $12 it's not even the body) for travel. Although I'd like it. Closer to my "24 fps D3" dream than anything else to date tho.... $ 7,5 for S35 / "DX" -- problem is I'm spoiled by FF/24x36 :( -Sam

If I interpret right, you'd build it around 5K (S35) or 6K (Full Frame i.e. 36x24) Scarlet or Epic. -Sam

It depends on the kind of film you're making. There are times when intervention with anything other than the minimal (small reflector etc) or even that is not appropriate: if you've changed 'subject' into 'talent' it's a different film. Something more dramatic, then you can use existing light as a starting point; how far you go from there gain depends on a variety of factors, kind of film and intentions, what format you're shooting on etc. What I would try to avoid - as in your examples - is the very bright hot window in that (third ?) shot which distracts from the subject (and reveals the dynamic range limits of your materials). -Sam