Nigel Smith

Can anyone tell me the properties of this particular diffusion filter, compared to spun or standard diffusion? Thanks on advance nigel

Thanks for the tips Stephen. The college has been using Deluxe 142, since Chrysalis/Todd AO/Ascent Media/Soho Images and iLab went out of business. Glad to hear of some alternatives :) Nigel

I disagree. Prime Suspect, London's Burning and Spooks are just a few examples of TV drama shot on S16mm. And some of it looked great :-p

Hi My name is Nigel Smith and I'm the technical supervisor for the MA Filmmaking course at Goldsmiths. Students shoot their first films on S16mm and normally use our Arri SR2 camera kit. However our SR2 [1/2] camera body is old and worn out. So I am looking for a S16mm SR2/3 to hire or lease for a period of 7 weeks, from 16 January until 10 March. This period covers several workshops, both with myself and cinematographer Witold Stok, 2 test shoots in the studio, and 4 one day on-campus supervised shoots. Total footage will be 4,000FT. Specifically we will a camera body with 3 or more batteries and charger, two magazines, and video tap. We have Zeiss and Canon lenses, RB support system, Arri matte box & FF, and SD video monitor. If you can help in any way, or know of someone who can, please get in touch. Thank you Nigel

I came across this today on the Digital Bolex webpage, which got me thinking: "For instance, a 25mm in S16 has a very similar field of view as a 50mm in S35. Even though they have a similar field of view they do have a different look. The look difference between S35mm and S16mm: S16 gives you roughly twice the depth of field for any particular field of view and has none of the critical focus issues. Along with this greater depth of field you also get greater spatial distortion, meaning things in the background look further away from the things in the foreground. So basically, when you are shooting S16 compared to shooting S35 you are trading the illusion of depth created by an in focus / out of focus relationship, for the illusion of depth created by the size and shape difference of foreground and background." I have always considered a S35mm 50mm lens pretty much identical to a S16mm 25mm lens when shooting S16. Is it true that it's distortion of perspective would be different? Thanks for any opinions or advice Nigel

Hi I don't know what has shifted, but the view in the viewfinder of my SR2 is now crooked - you have to tilt your head about 15 degrees clockwise to see the image straight. The camera has a t bar and B&W Sony video tap fitted. Rotating the t bar slightly only moves the image in the video tap. Any ideas on how to correct the viewfinder image would be appreciated. BTW, the camera had a S16 Daemon conversion many years ago.

The 1:1 HD was in this case 8 bit - I phoned to check as it is a different Avid import option for 10 bit - 1:1x. We are finishing to Digibeta as the only affordable option for festival screenings. We screen the finished films at BAFTA every year for example, and can't afford to hire HDCAM decks for mastering and then again every time we screen the films. BAFTA's screening theatre, almost all festivals and many other cinemas [eg Curzon chain] have Digibeta decks installed. To be honest the films look great at BAFTA, so long as you are not inthe front 4 rows, but then that's true of most cinemas for me! One more point - TBH I feel that RED 2K makes excellent SD, but slightly soft HD. I wish we could afford DCP, but I think it is too expensive still at the moment. I do however make a DNxHD185x digital file for archiving - so that rich students can pay to have this put on to HDCAM or DCP'ed. Thanks for the comments :)

Hi A post house recently did a grade on a project I am involved with, shot on Red One MX at 2K 16:9 25fps. The project will be finished at 1080/25P, and then downconverted onto Digibeta. The graded footage came back as uncompressed HD, rather than DNxHD185x as requested. Do you think we have lost anything getting an 8 bit rather than 10 bit file of the master? 1024 - 256 seems like a big step down, but I was assured that the difference wouldn't be noticeable on Digibeta. Any opinions or advice appreciated - I'm still learning about post workflows. Nigel

Well it's already happening in London with neg processing. Deluxe has done a deal with Technicolour that involves shutting their lab in Soho [soho Film Lab, was Soho Images]. So now all neg goes to Technicolour at Pinewood for processing, then comes back to Soho for TK. iLab has been taken over by Reliance Mediaworks, whose website still offers film processing in Soho, but they don't respond to enquiries. So it appears that Pinewood studio are the only lab serving central London now?

Aranovsky. "Requiem for a Dream" [dvd extra]

You want the mic as close as possible to the talent, and a room that is acoustically as dead as possible. A room with maximum soft furnishings and minimum large hard surfaces. You can add room tone and you can add reverb, but you can't take it away.

I strongly agree with both points. I look after a Red One MX and had been waiting 2 years to buy the Scarlet that was advertised. Very disappointed that it turned out to be Epic Lite, rather than all you need to shoot for under £10,000.

Hi I have some students about to shoot in a public indoor swimming pool in London. In my experience pool rooms are very warm and humid nowadays, and I'm worrying about the humidity. Does anyone have any experience of this and/or advice? Thanks in advance...

See earlier thread for other opinions: http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?showtopic=26873&st=0

Added in the important word you forgot in your post ;) The AC article specifically states "For wider shots we could just use her dance double". It also talks about how to do a "Texas switch" with Natalie and her double. I don't see any dishonest information there.

the book sounds great! Just did a search on amazon and they only have some used copies [in average condition] starting at £176.18 :(

My camera doesn't have the M-X sensor, only build 30. one day, maybe... So I followed this advice - "It's an easy test, just light a face and switch between RAW and RedColor, adjusting ASA, until they look the same, exposure-wise." - only I used a grey card instead of a face. that's what gave me an ISO of 320. I take your point that a RAW image should look underexposed on the camera to capture most data. But I made the choice of correctly exposed image in Redcine-x, looking at the files in REDcolor and REDgamma. The one that looked best was the one based on my Sekonic's incident reading, which was exposed a stop under what false colour suggested. Thanks to you both for your responses and advice :)

Thanks Graeme. I see your point. I have done some more tests and I am still finding differences. Green in false colour mode gives a reading 1 + 1/3 stop open from my lightmeter reading. On the other hand: I use the grey scale side strip option in EVF and LCD to warn me when my angle of view is off for the LCD. I found that if I matched the 18% grey card up with that, I DO get the same exposure as my light meter suggests! Looking at the tests in Redcine X, using REDcolor and REDGamma, the light meter exposed shots look correct, and the false colour metered shots look overexposed. So I guess I'm going to trust my meter rather than the false colour display, and use the RAW tool to avoid clipping in the highlights. BTW testing as per David's advice, the camera does seem to rate at 320 ASA.

? Ok so you will likely get less detail in shadows and highlights that you can see with your eye, dependent on recording medium and dynamic range. But surely an incident reading gives you an aperture setting at which mid tones will be exposed correctly, and what you see is what you will get?

Thanks a lot for the reply Graeme, and David too. I know you must both be very busy. I metered in both modes, as mentioned above. I was reacting to the comment that your Sekonic meter was 20% out, which really surprised me. I don't really understand the point you and David make about light meters not matching up with RAW. i'm confused by the fact that the RAW exposure meter is measured in stops, according to the manual, and also by RAW viewing mode - surely that is an RGB path? I suppose I don't have a good enough grasp of the science. Thanks to david for the suggestion re ISO. Perhaps rating the camera differently will help. I'll try some more tests, including false colour this morning.

Thanks for the reply Jon. Build 30 is for both sensors. Mr Jannard himself suggested I try it, and he will know that there are very few mysterium x sensors out there ATM. I have just come across Mr Natress effectively rubbishing Sekonic meters [particularly ones that do incident and reflected light readings] on the Arri Alexa thread, so perhaps he has a point and it's my meter? Mind you it matches my studio Deluxe Mk2 :lol:

I just came across this quote from Jim on a now closed thread. I was struck by it's relevance to a problem I'm having with our film school Red. I cannot get the camera's metering tools to match up with readings from my Sekonic L608 meter. I posted on Reduser regarding this and was advised by Jim that I should try build 30 as the problem had been fixed. David Mullen also assured me that the new Mysterium-X sensor and build 30 were matching his lightmeter. So I duly loaded the new firmware, but the problem has not gone away. I posted this earlier on Reduser: "I just carried out a similar test on Build v30.4.1, and I'm still getting around a stop difference between my L608 and the RAW level meter. To get the green bar lit up when filling the frame with an 18% grey card I need T4, while my light meter tells me I need T5.6. Both incident and reflected readings on the Sekonic agree. This test was using Arri studio cools with daylight tubes, camera set to 5600k and EI 320. Red was in 2K 16:9 mode, using a Canon T2.4 8-64mm lens. I'm really hoping there's something I'm missing or doing wrong, so any advice is appreciated. " Just to be clear - I bought a Red one, and have great respect for what Jim and his team are doing. Many things in build 30 are terrific, including the fact that almost all exposure tools now show clipping and exposure levels at the sensor. But that's of limited use if it doesn't match my meter. Which should I trust? Apologies for the long post - I'm posting here in the hope of advice, because I find that sometimes reduser kind of ignores 'problem' posts. So does anyone have suggestions as to what I'm doing wrong?

Glad I found this thread - I thought I was going mad! I saw Avatar 3D [and enjoyed it] last week at an "Odeon imax" in Greenwich, which cost £15. The screen was 15.5m x 7.7m. I kept staring at it before the film started thinking 'that doesn't look as big as I remember imax to be'. Looking at the projection window, it appeared to be 2 digital projectors. I now realise that I could have watched it at the BFI imax in Waterloo, which has a screen size of 26m x 20m and shows true imax film prints. A ticket for that cinema would have cost.....£15. I definitely feel I have been ripped off by Odeon's misnomer :angry:

Yes you can control the brightness of the EVF, with 5 steps up or down from the default. Here's how. Enable the EVF menu: System>Setup>Preferences>Display>EVF menu and you will find it at the top of the list that appears on the left of the VF: INT adjusts EVF backlight display intensity. The rotary encoder / switch may be used to adjust a variety of parameters. These include the EVF Intensity. To activate this control, push the switch once. Rotate the switch until the white selection box overlays the parameter you wish to adjust. Then press the switch to lock that selection in. Rotating clockwise increases the parameter value, counterclockwise decreases the parameter value. Push the switch once more to lock the parameter and exit the parameter adjust mode. As pointed out above, it would be well worth downloading the manual and checking it out. HTH

Isn't that what he called a "a double battery mount"? I guess you still have to boot up at the start of the day/after lunch etc. I can't really afford one of them for our red :(