Nigel Smith

Great. Look forward to it :)

Hi Florence That's what I'm planning to do Florence, until I can afford Red lenses. I tested mine out [Zeis T1.3 Primes, Canon 8-64mm] on a red last week and they seemed fine, so have ordered a Red one. Some folk think the images might turn out a bit soft/low res - see here: http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?showtopic=36770 and here: http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?showtopic=37284

Mike Figgis [and 3 other operators] managed it for Timecode. Not sure if they were using actual steadicam rigs, but all 4 cameras are handheld and shoot the entire film in one take. Although Figgis later created the "Fig rig" for smaller DV cameras, Timecode was shot on shoulder cams - DSR130 and digibeta.

If the mag is loaded correctly, you should have little problem at that distance with a directional mic. Problems can occur with close-ups shot on wide angle lenses for sync dialogue. We have a barney - padded jacket - for these ocassions and sometimes pile coats on top as well. Using a good shotgun mic, you can help by ensuring that not only is the actor 'on axis', but that the camera is 'off axis'. To put it another way, try and ensure the back of the mic is pointing at the camera ;)

:huh: Well mine does. It has a vertical white line either side of a screw head on the 'feed' side of the body. Regards the OP, a student hired some 35mm lenses to use with our SR2 and did indeed find that most of them wouldn't fit on the camera, because of the viewfinder. It's worth checking because there are different viewfinder types available. Ours was been adapted for a Sony video tap, and is really a SR2.5 - a Van Demon S16mm conversion.

Thanks for the response guys. Point taken.

I only recently realised that our old UVW100P cameras used 1/2 inch CCDs, not 2/3 inch. since I'm weighing up the pros and cons of buying a couple of EX3s, I wondered if the lenses from the betacams - Canon YH13 x 7.5KRS 7.5-97.5mm F1.4 - would work ok with the EX3. Would I need to get adapters? Any advice or info appreciated.

Would the fact that HDCAM is 8 bit be another limitation in chroma keying work?

I have one [albeit without the square bit in your photo - filter holder?] that works well with our S16mm ARRI SR2. Anything beyond 30 inches or so is perfectly sharp, and it covers S16mm no problem. A nice lens, which is used a fair bit for comical/geeky close ups. :) HTH

So this is only open to people using the RED ONE?

Hi Matthew I was planning to purchase a RED ONE to work with our lenses and accessories from an ARRI S16mm SR2. I have Zeiss High speed 9.5, 12, 16 & 25mm primes, a Canon 8-64mm zoom, Canon 150mm [with doubler], Kinoptik 5.7mm wide, and Zoomar 90mm macro. All use PL mount adapters. Do you think I will have issues with back focus? I'm also slightly worried by the suggestion of noise and soft images at this resolution. :(

I generally use them for S16mm neg processing, sync sound [from DAT] and one light TK to Beta SP. Since moving the price I pay has gone down by 1p per foot! However the 'free' DVD BITC copies seem to have dried up. Also DVCAM now has a 6p per foot premium, like Digibeta, although mini-dv is still the same price as Beta SP. You are right that the new smaller minimum order value is good news though :)

Hi Ian Todd AO was owned by Ascent Media, as was Soho images, Rushes, and St Anne's. They merged Todd AO with Soho Images when the Camden lease came up, and Soho Film Lab was born. Most of the Todd AO TK staff are now at Soho, so the service is as good. The old Soho Images Student deals are also still going strong. They have also rebranded Saint Anne's as Ascent 142. iLab seem ok and do good deals for my students. However they made a dangerous cock-up on one job last October. 6 rolls of S16mm TKed to Digibeta with Beta SP clones for offline. Only they just copied the Digibetas picture and sound to beta SP without cloning the timecode. Lucky we spotted the mistake before the offline assembly edit got very far so not to big a job to fix. Otherwise the online would have been a disaster. TBF they were very apologetic and redid the tapes pronto. Back in the day I used Bucks, and Filmatic in Notting Hill for B&W. Now I believe Soho Film Lab are the only people doing B&W, and that is only once a week. Sigh.

I want one to use with all our ARRI S16mm accessories, Canon zoom lens and Super Speed Primes. I've been following it on their website since last October, but haven't been here in a while. The only problem is it's looking like a wait until the summer at least to get hold of one, and the possibility of it being in beta when it's released [like RED]. This could cause me problems, and I might end up having to go with RED ONE just because it's available. Of course I would much rather work with the SI-2K and optical viewfinder, but my budget won't reach that far :(

I've got one of those in our film school kit and there is barely 1mm play.

I seriously doubt it. You can't realistically price the thing up because the major costs - R&D - will be spread over the sales for Scarlet and Epic too. Having seen the pricing, he must be making very good money on the accessories, and of course will make even more with the other cameras, and red mattbox new lenses etc. None of which is to knock the guy, just to inject a note of realism. Isn't that exactly what you were saying, with phrases like "film slayer" and "already...all but dead"? BTW it's "Nostradamus". :P Nigel Smith

So how did it go?

Yes.

Thanks for the tip Jean-Louis, I'll make sure not to do that. :) At least this thread has made me realise that I'm not the only one who has had a bad conversion done. Wish I was in Canada [in more ways than one].

Really? :( I have been told that a tape to tape grade of 10 bit digibeta would be acceptable and was planning on pursuing this route when there are no funds for a full attended grade on the telecine. Maybe that is just compared to beta SP?

I have a Philips 35" CRT that gives beautiful pictures, and regularly shows up the poor quality and heavy compression that all digital broadcasting uses - it's like jpeg artifacts around moving objects and pixelation. Did you know that in the UK the digital channels are not only limited to around 5Mbps data rates, but the data rates are variable? So if the adverts start on channel 4, the picture quality dips on E4? I watched the football the other night on BBC SD [i'm still getting over that experience!] and since it was available on BBC HD, I'm assuming that they were using progressive cameras. I say that because I experience bad motion artifacts on players, particularly on wide shots, where movement was strobey and almost slow-mo looking.

Cheers Don. PM me if you want Simon's contact details - he is based in Uxbridge.

The edit post function won't work for me on this forum :( I forgot to mention - the cameras are RX4s.

Thanks a lot for the info and link Nick. This forum certainly is an excellent resource :) Unfortunately the cameras are not currently here for me to examine but I am starting to suspect that your fear may be proved right. :(

Thanks for the info Jean-Louis :) Nigel