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Mark Kenfield

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Posts posted by Mark Kenfield

  1. Hi guys,

    We're prepping a Mini for a scope shoot at the moment, and we'll have one day of shooting where we're filming everything at 200fps. However the Mini doesn't seem to want to give us any kind of desqueeze options in the HD/2k (200fps-capable modes). The downsampled and desqueezed HD/2k recording modes top out at 120fps, so they're no good to us. And the 16:9 modes that can do 200fps just grey the desqueeze option out.

    Is there any way to get around this and have the camera desqueeze for us while shooting at 200fps? Or do we have to switch out to 3rd-party monitors in order to get the desqueeze?

    Would appreciate any wisdom on the topic anyone could throw at me.

    Cheers,

    Mark

  2. Interesting, I've never actually encountered an F5(5) with the Prores upgrade before, so haven't been able to put it to use personally (the lack of 2k and 50p/60p in 4:4:4 made it difficult to justify the cost).

    I always found SR444 extremely clean (rated at my usual 1000 ISO - which was were my F5 actually exposed SLOG2/3 properly).

    Probably worth comparing the internal Prores4444 to SR444 output and see if there's a difference.
     

  3. 1.Without the expansion box, what is the highest possible quality of recording? ProRes 10 bit? Something comparable?

    There's several options:
    - 4k XAVC Class480 (the best non-raw 4k codec on the camera - this is a solid option)
    - 4k XAVC Class300 (too thin for my tastes, you need to drop down to this to record 4k @ 50/60p)
    - 1080p SR444 (my favourite internal codec on the camera - PERFECT supersampled 4:4:4 HD, tops out at 30p though)


    2. Is the dynamic range really 14 stops?

    Close-enough. The highlight latitude is very good, you get 6-stops of overexposure headroom, which is excellent.

    3. How are the skin tones?


    Fine IF you know how to grade the footage well. Always shoot SLOG3/Sgamut3.cine for the best results, the more limited colour gamut is much easier to wrangle nice results out of in post (and works okay, with a bit of tweaking, with the S709 colour science from the Venice).

    4. Does it chew through batteries?


    No, it sips them. Power is a non-issue on the F5/F55 (compared to other cameras)

    5. Is it good at around $6000 or will the camera go lower?


    $6000 is a BARGAIN. The prices of all digital cameras will always be falling (as they're superceded), but the F5(5) as still so relevant, that I don't think they drop much lower than this for quite some time to come.

    6. What is the sensor size? I know "Super35" leaves a bit of variation in millimeters.

    It's pretty close to standard S35mm 24 x 12.7mm you won't notice any real difference between it and a 16:9 Alexa or Canon C300 (they're all in the same ballpark).


    Here are some links to framegrabs from narrative pieces I shot on the F5:

    At Last (shot in SR444): 
    http://dreamsmiths.com.au/#/atlast/

    Untitled_1.159.1.jpg?format=2500w

    Max (shot in 4k Raw) http://dreamsmiths.com.au/#/max/
    Max_2.15.3.jpg?format=1500w

    Splendor Solis (shot in 4k Raw): http://dreamsmiths.com.au/#/splendor-solis/
    Splendor-Solis-Grade_1.80.1_1.jpg?format

    Walk the Earth (I think shot in 4k XAVC): http://dreamsmiths.com.au/#/walk-the-earth/
    WTE+Grab_8.jpg?format=1500w

     

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  4. 24 minutes ago, David Mullen ASC said:

    I just set the fill by eye and by taking digital stills. Since the key on the faces was fairly frontal, only a minimal amount of fill was needed since the key lit both eyes.

    Just using nets/scrims to control the level?

    4 minutes ago, Satsuki Murashige said:

    Beautiful images, Mark! Love the stylized use of color. What lens diffusion were you using? It works really well with your hard light approach. 

    Thanks Sat ? it was all shot day-for-night, so a bit of gripping required(!) but having the precision of the Dedolights for keying was just a delight. Diffusion-wise I'm pretty sure I went extra light on that one, probably 1/8 BPM. 

    • Like 1
  5. 9 hours ago, David Mullen ASC said:

    The thing to keep in mind that practical lighting inside a room, or outside at night -- in reality -- is not always soft, so the fact that we tend to opt for a soft key light is often no more realistic than if we opted for a hard light. But softer lighting tends not to call attention as much as to where it is coming from, especially if it is very soft and rather dim, then it feels like ambient bounce in the space.

    There are many sources of light in a room at night that can be hard -- a bare light bulb, track lighting, a stage spot light, a distant streetlamp coming through a window, etc.  Even a candle produces a hard light.

    I think what makes a hard light look more stylized is that is often is just hitting the actor's face, in reality we move through hard sources and might end up partly in and out of one.

    That's a good point David. And it's perhaps one of the things that bugs me - the number of situations we shoot where a soft-key is (logically) kind of ridiculous. But we bend over backwards to force one in there anyway. 

    I feel like if I could really nail down a nice, smooth approach to hard-keys in those situations, I'd feel a lot better about not shoe-horning in soft light (at the expense of considerable rigging/gripping time)  just "because".

    Did you have a go-to ratio for your key:fill in The Love Witch?

  6. Because I'm bored of everyone lighting everything the same way? Because it could look great and be seamless anyway? Because I'm an inherently contrarian person with an overriding compulsion to feel special and unique? Because wrangling soft light is a goddamned nightmare (unless your wardrobe and set dressers make EVERYTHING else dark for you)?

    I don't know.

    But I feel like it could work (IF you could pull it off as well as Méheux does) and now I really want to try.

    There's so many situations I could light SO much faster, if I could simply key them with flaggable/cuttable/controllable hard lights.

    There's only one thing I've shot with purely hard keys, which was a short satire I did last year, and I thought it worked okay. I don't think the results look particularly old-fashioned:


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  7. 1 hour ago, Robin R Probyn said:

    .  if I saw that lighting in a gas station store scene, TBH I would really wonder why ,assuming its was done on purpose ,or wonder who they had got out of retirement to shoot it .. cant see how this lighting would not draw alot of attention to itself in fluorescent lit store scene .. non ?  

    Obviously everything depends on context, and if you were seeing a whole bunch of overhead fluorescents before moving into your closer coverage, I'd agree, it's unlikely to look right.

    However if you were out at the petrol pump, or in the car, then just cut into a scene over the counter. Without a broader context of the space I don't think (if you did it as smoothly as Méheux does it) that anyone would question it.

  8. On 7/5/2020 at 1:30 AM, Phil Rhodes said:

    Isn't it? I was looking where the shadow goes under the chin.

    _109522049_edwards1_bodybbc.jpg

    I think it's a very fair comparison. I'd call it the same look. It's so smooth, that you could slot it into any narrative context and it would look just fine.

    I'd love to know the recipe. Is it really just a single hard key and a single hard fill source (I assume it must be to get such a clean result)?
     

    On 7/5/2020 at 3:06 AM, David Mullen ASC said:

    Classic glamour lighting in a glamorous space -- but it can be motivated by the fact that she's sitting under an overhead lampshade, and a casino is a somewhat theatrically-lit space. And she is a somewhat theatrical character.  If he had met her in a gas station convenience store, this sort of lighting would seem out of place.

    I feel like the 'glamour' aspect is more-so a function of the setting, and the higher exposure levels on Bond and Onatopp (relative to the background actors around them).

    I guess my initial point/question is moreso that I think you could take that exact same key lighting, use it in that gas station convenience store, and (assuming you had your exposure and colour at a level that suited the ambient environment, I think you'd get away with it just fine (because it's so smooth/unobtrusive).

  9. Hi guys,

    Just had this clip pop up in my feed, and I was struck by the key lights in the first section around the card table:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oz8TYyn-k40

    Straight-up hard keys.

    And they look great, almost seamless. I had to actually pause the clip at first to confirm that it was actually hard lighting. I feel like you could use this lighting in any contemporary film and "get away with it" without spoiling the look or feeling incongruous with the soft-lit keys that (these days) shape the vast majority of shots. Indeed, most of Goldeneye is very much soft-lit.

    Now I know this is Phil "F**king" Méheux's work, and I'm not worthy to smell the ground he cinematographically walks on. But I'd love to hear how people would approach a situation like this.

    I feel like it's reasonably obvious that the hard lights were simply the only practical way to pick out Bond and Onatopp from the crowd is such a large, and crowded environment (they look about a stop hotter than everyone else, which serves that purpose really nicely. Also, with such a large table, and a lot of top-light providing the general ambience, booming in softer keys for the close-ups would have been obviously time-consuming and a bit problematic.

    But why do these keys look so smooth and seamless (when others so rarely do)? Is it just a really precise key-to-fill ratio?

    I'd love to hear people's thoughts.

    I feel like mastering this kind of hard-lighting would make a lot of nightmare lighting situations (like this one) a great deal easier. Trying to wrangle big soft sources all the time can be a real pain.



     

  10. One big consideration would be - do you plan to use other zooms? 
     

    If so, the Aluras have a comprehensive line-up of matching zooms, covering pretty much any range you could want. They’re also easy to find at rental houses just about everywhere.

    The Zeiss is a rarer beast, and outside of Zeiss primes, isn’t an easy match for other glass.

    If you’re not fussed about the compatibility  issues though, I personally prefer the Zeiss coatings, they just yield such pretty contrast and colours.

    • Like 1
  11. I assume this is predominantly in backlit situations Max? Generally, a scene front-lit by the sun will have a pretty moderate contrast. Backlit situations are a whole different ballgame, and you have to decide where (and how much) you're going to compromise on the exposure.

    I find that for most situations, you can generally get away with simply splitting the exposure - take a reading of the direct sun that's backlighting your subject, and a reading of the indirect exposure filling their shadow side, and then literally split your exposure halfway between those two extremes.

    This was how I exposed with film, and it still works a treat with digital.

    If you want to get more granular with the exposure, you need to decide how many stops of underexposure you're willing to tolerate on the subject. One-stop is pretty subtle, but 1.5-2.5 stops is about as dark as you can go before you'll start losing detail. At five stops under you're pretty much in silhouette.

    So you have to balance that decision on exposure with whatever lighting you'll be doing (if any) to control the contrast ratio.

  12. I'm not sure I'll ever quite understand the original Bladerunner. I must have watched it at least seven or eight times by now, but I've never once enjoyed it.

    It's a film that (to me) suffers from the worst problem a film can have - it doesn't have any characters I could relate to or sympathise with. Deckard is too clinical, Rachael is too robotic, Roy Batty at the climax is about as close as the film ever comes, but he's such a relentlessly vicious figure throughout, that it feels like too little too late to redeem him.

    However in spite of not liking a single character in the film, the sheer exquisiteness of the production - the cinematography, set design and FX. Keeps drawing me back to it. I think it's one of the most beautiful pieces of cinema ever created (on a purely visual level).

    So it's a film I've never liked, but have always admired.

    2049 is a very different film. I enjoyed it much more than I've ever enjoyed the original. I suspect because K is a vastly more sympathetic figure than Deckard ever was, and the relationship between him and Joi actually felt tangible (in a way the Deckard/Rachael dynamic never came close to) so that imbued the film with vastly greater stakes than the original - because there was actually something there to care about.

    Visually though, it's 180 degrees from the original. Certainly beautiful in its own way. The colour, depth and texture were all handled with Deakin's usual aplomb. But it felt so outrageously 'clean' compared to the original, that I found it nigh on impossible to consider it part of the same world. Even in the dense orange smog, it felt somehow "clearer" than original ever got.

    And that atmosphere and texture in the original is a HUGE part of what makes the original so exquisite. Every environment felt dangerous, felt intimidating. Like anything could happen at any moment to any character. And I can think of few films before or since, that have managed to craft a world as fully realised as Scott, Cronenweth and Paull managed to pull off.

  13. 22 hours ago, Robin R Probyn said:

    You have seen rolling shutter effect in the Venice camera too .. ? 

    The Venice is amazing. There’s zero perceptible skew, I haven’t seen how it handles flash banding though. Would be good to know. 

  14. 4 hours ago, Robin Phillips said:

    yup. hell even just a rotary shutter version without the optical viewfinder would be nice, but is probably not to be

    Sony's F65 has a (non-mirrored) rotary shutter. Works great. It's a shame that manufacturers have decided that it's just not that big of a deal.

    I think I might be a global shutter snob though. I've had an F35, Alexa Studio and F55.

    I don't think I'm ready for that jelly. ?‍♂️

    • Like 2
  15. 3 hours ago, Phil Rhodes said:

    Bear in mind a lot of sensors now have dual gain designs;

    Really? As far as I knew, the new C300iii was the first camera outside of Arri to incorporate it.
     

    3 hours ago, Phil Rhodes said:

    My biggest request would be true global shutter, but that's really tricky to do.

    The F55 I've got sitting in my gear lockers has a true global shutter. It's marvellous. And even today still doesn't lack much to the more recent cameras. Push it through Sony's updated colour science for the Venice and you get even prettier pictures.

    • Upvote 1
  16. The jump from a 2.8k sensor to a 4k sensor (assuming they don't maintain the downsampling ratios that work so well for Alev III - i.e. 6k sensor for a 4k image) is only 30%. I don't think they'll struggle too much to make that work whilst incorporating the dual-gain architecture that's given them the edge in dynamic range for so long.

    What will be very interesting though, is whether they're able to actually extend the dynamic range further, or whether it comes out essentially the same as Alev III but with a slightly tighter pixel pitch to meet 4k requirements.

    To be fair I don't really consider MORE dynamic range than Arri already offer all that big of a deal (since what we already have is so easy to work with) but I'm very interested to see if they can do it.  

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