Patrick Neary

Hi- Here's a great, free star chart I use (courtesy Ron Dexter) :) http://www.rondexter.com/intermediate/equi...cus_pattern.htm I'm still dragging around an old Fotokem folding color chart, but must admit, the Chroma Dumondes are very nice. I assume they add expirations to account for color fading, in which case my fotokem would be the equivalent of 12 year old cottage cheese.

Hi- There is no 9 and 16 equivalent, you would need to own a 9mm and a 16mm (or whatever focal length you wanted). I'm sure others will point this out too- a 9mm is a 9mm is a 9mm...

Hi Matthew- I got this one- http://www.cinematography.com/forum2004/in...showtopic=21205 for a hundred bucks. best eyemo ever. but kind of heavy. :)

Hi- That's not a S-16 lens- If I can, here's a quote from Bruce from an earlier post: "The BLs that we convert to super 16 come with either this lens or the 10-100 Zeiss. The Angenieux beats the Zeiss hands down for coverage. From 14mm the Angenieux covers the frame but the Zeiss covers from 13mm, then crops from about 15 to 20mm. The lens circle moves in and out. Of course I am talking about the lens focused on infinity. Start focusing forward and you get serious vignetting." Seems kind of limiting!

-then make sure your wife has a good job :) I remember when I was in high school and went to one of the big (well, maybe one of the only) production houses in Seattle and asked a guy there about opportunities in film production, and he just buried his head in his hands and made some noise that sounded like defeat itself. Having scrapped away at freelancing for the last ten years, now I know what he meant!

HA! Thanks for the link- those folks must be having insane fun!

Oh I'd love to see that- any recollection of which disc that was on (the model shop)?

Hello All- Does anyone know which of the 16 or so discs actually has any "making-of featurettes" of this series? I've been getting them one at a time from netflix and so far no-dice. And just out of curiosity, does anyone know what happened to Brian Johnson (one of the fx guys) ? His imdb listings end around 1996 or so; retired? Nick Allder seems to still be busy with big films. thanks for indulging my nerdiness.

Ahhhhh- got it! I completely missed the "pin registered" part of the subject line. But still having a hard time trying to envision that little s-8 cart spinning away at 250fps!

Hi- I've used them for 16 and 35 and they're a great lab!

>I would never pick the camera up by it's mag. < I would think that could be a great way to get fired, or at least announce your incompetence to the rest of the crew. I can't really think of any camera, 16 or 35 where it's a good idea to hoist it up or carry it around by the mag.

Because in motion pictures you can't vary the processing of each shot to control contrast....

Did they rewrite some of the scripts too? :rolleyes:

Good God, a super-8 cart at 250fps.... the registration must be fantastic. Is the footage even usable?

Ha- you said it! With the exception of a couple lightning strikes units and a 2k baby, I lit this entire piece with par cans and nsp/vnsp lamps: http://www.mtoproductions.com/mainTitles/toughman.html

I've had several shoots where we got our gear (HD, video and film packages) from B&S and they were fine. Same goes for their grip-side.

If I can jump in on this side-note, that's a very good point- It seems like lately cinematography.com could use a full-time "damage control" person. It's one thing to post an answer in a hurry and end up sounding like an idiot (God knows I've done it) but over the last year or two the forum seems to have attracted a cadre of folks who obviously have no real-world experience, but are compelled to post authoritative comments that range from flat-out wrong to extremely bizarre. The RED forum in particular has been like a car wreck. I understand the idea of the open forum here, but I'd hate to see it slide into a kind of newsgroup oblivion. Anyway, sorry for sidetracking.

But how many other movies have a scene with carnage at the hootenany!

Hi- that may be so, but you can see stair-stepping in other NTSC/PAL-originated stuff, including digi-beta (the feature "The Fast Runner" comes to mind) despite the better anti-aliasing those cameras have. It's not hard to find in any video-originated material if you really start to look for it. It's very pronounced on digital-to-film projects. I think it's like dust specks on film, you kind of tune it out normally, but if you start to look for it, it will drive you nuts!

It's very easy if you shoot a lot of reversal!

I'm guessing this is what you're talking about (random google hit): http://www.donferrario.com/ruether/vid_pic...m#stairstepping

Hi- it's an artifact of scan lines and low resolution. welcome to standard-def TV!

They're of paramount importance to some and not to others. I'm sure there are plenty of cinematographers and photographers who produce stunning work without ever having glanced at a characteristic curve. But it doesn't hurt to know what it is and understand what it can and can't tell you. Shooting tests is more fun than looking at graphs anyway... :) It would be interesting to hear from anybody else about how they use (or ignore) camera negative data...

I hope I didn't give the impression that I'm advocating ignorance of characteristic curves. I think it's a given that a working dp should know what they are looking at. Often times it's the first point of reference for a new stock, especially now that both Kodak and Fuji offer "camera-stop" curves, which are a far more useful reference (at least for the math-impaired, like me) than the older ones. Basic testing of any filmstock isn't about "trying every possibility under the sun." I think that's obvious enough I don't really need to elaborate. What I was trying to point out, and what for me is important to understand about (camera negative) curves, is that unless your finished exhibition is a strip of original camera negative held up to the window, the characteristic curves aren't all that useful (again, only speaking for myself) in making artistic or creative decisions, any more than the RMS granularity or spectral density graphs. And quite honestly, lining up the curves of our currently available stocks, I'm hard pressed to see glaring differences among any of them. If one suddenly showed up with a curve that looked like the slopes of the Matterhorn, or the floor of the Gobi Desert, I might sit up take notice. The problem is that if a shooter relies on curves alone, that person is ignoring the rest of the cinematographic process, namely printing or telecine/scanning and whatever other post-production variables await the camera neg. Not to mention the variations in processing time and temperature, shooting, storage, etc. that might throw the manufacturer's curves off even a little bit. or a lot. Especially when you start playing around in the nether regions of the stock's toe, you can't expose by curves alone, you have to know (again, by testing, or have a pretty good guess based on experience) where things are going to fall off in the final print or at telecine/scanning, because that's what we're shooting for, what Steven Poster (ripped from the Emulsion Testing chapter of the ASC manual) calls the "chain of events that result in the presentation of images that we create during production." Hope that's clear, I realize my first post was pretty abrupt.

Hi- I don't think it's just me, but I find that curves have little to no practical value when it comes to actual shooting. Load up a camera, shoot some stock, have your lab process and print it, then look at it, that's practical.