Patrick Neary

Actually, it would work just fine. I probably just didn't explain it well. You use regular 16mm film, double perf. By masking the bottom half of the gate, you only expose the top half of the frame on the first pass. When you pull your take-up reel (now exposed) and move it to the feed position, the full frame is flipped upside down, so to speak, so now you are exposing what was the bottom (unexposed) half of the frame, but through the top half of the gate. When you look at the processed film, you would see two widescreen frames "upside down" to each other in the place of where the regular 4:3 full frame would normally be. The offset occurs when you flip the take-up reel to the feed position. And yes, it would be a very small frame, but larger than Super-8, if you wanted 16:9 or wider. And you'd be shooting with a better camera, better movement, and should be able to use any modern telecine. My only question is whether you could convince the telecine op to play along. I think I smell a music video, shot in revolutionary new whatever-scope!

oh, no question, this is a mayfly! (thanks for the very entertaining link!) Probably invoking Super-16 into this equation is a mistake. As Mr. Pytlak points out, S-16 was striving for a better quality than regular 16, where it seems like someone would be interested in pursuing "Tiny-O-Vision" (I'm still trying) for reasons either aesthetic, economic (maybe it would be cheaper than shooting super8, maybe not) or just for the DIY fun of playing with an odd format.

that would be the beauty of "floppy-16" tm (i'll keep trying) You're using all of the well-established 16mm infrastructure. You just need to mask your gate (or have a new one milled) and add a frameline to the viewfinder. And remember to flop the roll of film after running it through once. And you'll have to bear the giggles of your telecine colorist. and yes, when Rune Ericson invented super-16, there was no infrastructure to deal with it. correct me though if I'm wrong on that.

and as further proof of how easily distracted I am today, Kodak does still sell double perf 16mm, and your new frame size would be .404x.147 (with an .0005 allowance for frame line between the two new frames.) call it "mini-scope" and please send all royalty checks to my PO box. :)

>As far as telecine goes, since the film would advance precisely half as far with each frame as with standard 16, this doesn't seem like it would be an insurmountable engineering challenge.< It's not an engineering challenge, it's an economic challenge. Probably everything about this scheme would have to be home-brewed (except processing, but you could do that too, while you're at it.) It's kind of a fun idea though. What if you just masked the gate of a regular-16 double perf (oops, does kodak even make double perf anymore?) and ran the film through twice, flop the roll just like regular-8? That would be easy to crop in telecine, you just re-mount the roll after "side-1" and run it through again, same crop...i think... hmmmmmmm. maybe worth trying out... heyyyyyy, that just might work....somebody else go give it a shot! ;)

Hi All- I had a chance to shoot with an older Cooke 20-60 this past Friday on a commercial shoot. Previously we had used a 17.5-75 Primo, but I was asked to "trim down" the camera package (a G-II) for this spot. I think it's my new favorite lens. It's very small and had surprisingly little flare even with the sun or an HMI shooting down the barrel. Not ultra clean like a Primo, but still pretty good. Just eyeballing it through the viewfinder, it seemed a good match with the UltraSpeed primes we also had. Sooooo, in a roundabout way my question is, has anyone used this lens extensively, really putting it through the ringer on a feature or extended shoot? Any comments or issues? I had a hard time finding any info at all on it before our shoot, is it some kind of well-kept secret?

i would think that digiprimes wouldn't cover a full 35mm frame, as they are designed for a much smaller target.

well, sort of. If you're getting a 16mm print and not telecine, a one light is usually printed at some set printer lights (each lab usually has it's own numbers). Those are great for seeing how your exposures and filtration, etc are sitting on the neg because they haven't been corrected out by the timer. With a best light, the timer will either set lights for your color/gray chart, or scroll through the neg a bit and set lights for what they think will look the best, but usually they won't change the lights through the printing. unless they're bored... When i have the rare, lucky occasion to order up actual workprints, I like getting one-lights, and usually ask that they be actual one-lights, with no fiddling by a well-meaning timer. It gives you a great sense of how your negatives are shaping up!

a gaffer I know had a funny story about a DP he worked with who insisted on creating "negative fill" by setting up a 5k or 10k and then stacking scrims, silks and singles and doubles in front of it until no light was making out the other end- :blink:

I think the general idea is that the connections are sealed (with silicone or hot glue) But would anyone bet their life on the hot-glue-gun talents of the gaffer? Suppose there's some compromise in the wiring insulation, that there's no GFCI, that the non-GFCI breaker doesn't trip, that there's no breaker at all, etc, etc. then yes you could very easily fry your actors, and anyone that comes in contact with them or the pool. I suppose you could use real weapons and live ammo on a film set too, (i'm sure someone out there has) it's the same kind of insanely stupid idea!

you might have better luck finding an MS and a 400' adaptor plate to take mitchell/CP mags.

If your 2c has an academy gate (it probably does) then just set up your 2.40 markings on your groundglass and shoot a framing chart, lined up with those markings, at the head of your first roll (you only need to shoot it once) and your telecine wiz will frame everything for that. It won't change roll-to-roll. As long as your groundglass is also academy (but with your 2.40 markings) it will work great.

If someone has a copy of Blain Brown's lighting book handy, I remember a short bit where he described plopping tungsten units into water like that. Maybe I'm just an alarmist. I still can't believe anyone would actually do that, I mean, one or two things go wrong and you really could kill a person! ...here's a little tidbit: From the Consumer Products Safety Commision: Following are the causes of electrical deaths in the United States associated with pools in the years 1990-2002: 28 Plugged-in radios or stereos, extension cords or power tools 13 Underwater pool lights 10 Pool pumps 9 Sump pumps, pool vacuums or pressure washers

that is truly, truly insane! Do they also throw the toaster-oven from craft services in there too?

I don't know if this is what you're aiming for, but here is a small frame grab from a promo I shot for Ultimate Fighting Championship, we used HMI's (no correction) with 7218, and in telecine the director said "how about a cold-steel-" and before he finished his sentence the colorist had dialed this in. I think most telecine colorists have done a LOT of "bleach bypass" looks!

If you are shooting 2.39 (which I obviously didn't account for in my first post) you also have a couple options for groundglass/framing- either pulling from the center or using a common top. The last S-35 package I used (a G-II, although we were shooting just 4:3) had the standard TV markings but with a little tick mark off to the side for 1.78 (with a common top frame.)

bigger neg! I switched over to "Super TV" for tv spots and haven't looked back. In addition to all the post ramifications for a feature (which others will undoubtedly share) I found you have to be careful in lens selection, not all 35 optics cover the extra negative area.

If your personal projects don't involve ACs and/or a follow focus mounted to your camera, then still lenses aren't so bad to use. Their main shortcoming (other than color matching issues) are their incompatibility with follow focus gears, and their somewhat short focus-throws.

It's video voodoo. And you're talking about two different recording formats as well. And lenses of vastly different quality. And on and on and on! Go shoot with a 900, you'll see why product brochures aren't really a viable way to compare cameras.

I'd match the field of view of your zoom to the prime lens you are testing it against, so don't move the camera. In filmdom you measure from the focal plane mark on the camera, where the film travels through the gate.

good, an end to this ridiculous thread. You might want to also just shoot a resolution chart, and compare both lenses at different stops, especially wide open, and at different distances. Maybe take your PL lens and see if the measured distances match up to the actual lens markings. I'd also drag it out to the parking lot and see if you can get an infinity focus with the adaptor. Do post the results!

If you can find one from the 70's they have great ads in the front and back!

http://www.cinematography.com/forum2004/in...?showtopic=3095 scroll down to the bottom of this (linked) thread...a few more comments about the same company's adaptors, or more to the point, their weird claims about their adaptors... why does this feel like one of those "the hunt for bigfoot" shows?

Yes, this is absolutely true when you are talking about physically pulling the lens farther away from it's intended target (the film plane or CCD imager), but the by-product of that is that you are turning the lens into an extreme macro, incapable of focusing more than a few inches from the front of the lens. And it doesn't take much of an extension to do this. If you have an SLR at home, loosen the lens mount, set the lens at infinity and then slowly pull the lens away from the camera, you'll see that in only a few millimeters, you can't focus any farther out than a few inches. And you do lose light as soon as you begin pulling the lens also, a standard close-focus chart (as well as hands-on practice) shows this. The goofy thing about this particular adaptor is that it is not an extension tube, apparently it's intended for normal-distance filming. Their frame-grab examples clearly show "normal" shots and not macros of insects. And unlike a tele-extender, which is made up of a small grouping of optics, this thing has no optics. I honestly don't know why this thing has me so worked up. I just want some video/optical engineer to chime in and say "oh yes, it's the Narshompsky Theorem" and be done with it... The other solution is for Laurent to go buy one and try it out and report back! :)

yes, these folks had some timing "issues" with their print! (and no, their previous DP wasn't Mr. Slocombe!)