Patrick Neary

whups. I see where I misread Marc Shipman-Mueller's explanation over on CML, he does mention the Preston Speed/Aperture unit for more precise speed control with the 35-3, but the whole operation still sounds a bit clumsy. Not quite as clumsy as the circus you describe though! And yes, it would be on a dolly... :) Thanks for the very good info!

Howdy howdy howdy- Has anyone here done speed ramps with the 35-3/RCU/ICU combo, and if so, how well did it work? I've done ramps with the 435, but budget may not allow on an upcoming project, so I'm curious if we can get the same kind of seamless ramping with the old Battle-Axe 35-3. :) I realize we opt out of using HMIs with the 35-3 combo, and post ramps aren't really an option for us. thanks!

Hi- try these guys: http://www.cinemagear.com/index_files/Page2443.htm

Hi- What a great read! Did you ever pin down the focus problem with the moviecam?

Hi- Get yourself a cheap 3-tube camera and betacam deck, and I think you'll get the look you're after. Fawlty Towers was video in the studio, and 16mm when they went on location (as I remember it), kind of like Monty Python and many of the other British series.

Hi- Before the digital era there were still opticals :) I think it would be next to impossible to expose stars in the same shot (without very slow frame rates, very fast lenses and very fast film!), unless it was Venus straight ahead on a really good night, but even then.... I just shot some stills of a pre-dawn street scene, and the exposure was something like 1/4 sec at f2.0 (iso 200 or 400), and there was one star (probably venus, I know, technically not a star...) that did expose, the rest disappeared. The beauty is that we ARE in the digital era now, so that shot is very possible, and probably not very difficult to pull off!

Hey, at least his joke had a great punchline! :)

oh come on, isn't someone going to fifthded this?

And all those people shooting kodachrome with a "light meter" that consisted of little drawings of a sun, a cloud and a shady spot!

Fourthded (pretty sure the 1000-footers are too much for the 2C though!)

I've wondered about these too- especially while sitting on an apple box on a doorway dolly....

Hi- Very nice work! How did your day-for-night shot go? Also, I just completed a series pilot shoot with 2 HVX cameras, and I'm curious how you handled your P2 cards throughout the day, did you have someone dedicated to just dumping and formatting cards? And how were your cameras set-up? Matteboxes, Follow Focus, etc., Did you have any particular piece of gear that made your shoot easier or more difficult? Anything you'd change on the next shoot? Thanks for any insight!

Hi Tim- our shoot is scheduled to start beginning of Nov down in Medford/Ashland area, so if you think you'll be down that way, contact me directly and I can give you more specifics. Are you guys getting your gear from Koerner? (note I edited my earlier post for clarity- for some reason i had the word "optical" stuck in my head...)

Hi Tim- For my money I'd shoot academy 1.85 and follow a photochemical-post path to your final release print. We did this on a short not too long ago and believe me, when you see your print projected for the first time in a theater it will bring tears of happiness :) What the producers determined also was that it is still the cheapest route. We're getting ready to do the same thing on a feature this fall. If you frame 1.85 within academy, making prints is straightforward as it gets. Your extra image area from the full frame gets masked at the lab for the soundtrack area. If you compose for 1.85 within the "super" frame, then you're stuck going through a DI for a 35 show print which can be quite spendy, and still won't look as good as a contact print. The other option would be an optical reduction print to academy 1.85 which makes no sense and is also spendy. (By the way, I highly recommend Alpha Cine, they're an easy drive away and great folks to work with!)

ahhh, nothing warms my heart more than orphan mitchell mags finding a good home!

Hi- I think you can find that kind of attitude in any creative field. Usually the people who feel like they need to guard some "secret technique" don't really have anything worth stealing (but they want everyone to think that they do!)

hi- the other thing that works pretty good in a pinch are those tennis wrist/sweat bands, they're even more comfy than chamois, and you can keep a bag of them with your other camera stuff. and you can wear them around the set with your nylon shorts and leg warmers too.

wow, $600! :blink: I also had a "chop top" a long time ago and traded it for a baloney sandwich or something...

Hi there- Auricons are funny old cameras, and as you probably already know, their guts are the same as the CP-16. The Pan Cinor lens is poop, and your other lens choices are severely limited. The Angenieux 17-68 with a finder might be slightly better, if the finder doesn't bump into the camera. It may partly cover S16, but I don't know. Good luck trying to find extra mags! But if you want to cut an Andy Warhol-ish figure while shooting, go for the auricon. :)

Hi- I have a very secret technique where I light a shot (or not) until it looks good, then I shoot it. I'm very careful not to share that method with others in case they might steal it and use it themselves.

FOV is something entirely seperate, but you have to include format when you're talking about DOF, because CoC numbers are different for each...

Howdy all- It seems to simplify things, Christian asked about slapping a 50mm onto a 16mm camera, in which case comparing fields of view doesn't really enter the equation, it's just a 50mm at f4 focussed at 12' (or whatever). If you look at the DOF tables (in the AC manual) you get slightly less depth of field than the same lens set at the same distance at the same stop but on a 35mm camera, so you wouldn't want to use the 35mm DOF table. The only change is the size of the recording format. aside, who came up with those CoC numbers anyway (kodak)? Are they universal or can they vary depending on which DOF table or wheel you're looking at?

Hi there- I don't think a pellicle or prism can vary in the amount of light it robs, but zoom lenses on those cameras will drop a stop or more from the wide angle to telephoto ends. On the issue of Plus-X, I used to shoot it with the 85 (just outdoors) 'cause I thought it looked better. Panchromatic films like that are extra sensitive to blues, and you can keep your pretty blue skies from going white with the 85 in place (compensating for the 2/3 stop loss) or even better add a 25 red :)

Howdy- Something I notice with anamorphic is the same kind of smoothness of tonality that you get in stills, jumping from 35mm to medium format. I can hear our much missed friend John Pytlak jumping in with "Bigger is Better!" :)

hi- you should be using the depth of field tables for 16mm, for the 50mm. The lens stays the same, but because 16mm and 35mm have different circles of confusion (.001" for 35 and .0006" for 16) your DOF will be different for each format (slightly less forgiving in 16mm).