Aapo Lettinen

I think the biggest issue with that lens is that it is not wide enough for general shooting and you would need another lens to cover the wide angles. If wanting to shoot without constant lens changes you will have almost instant need to upgrade to something which is from 10 to 12mm or wider on the wide end. So if wanting to manage with one lens I would look for some Angenieux or Zeiss which starts from 10mm or 9.5mm or something like that. Even 12mm is a bit narrow for general use but 10mm is perfectly fine especially if you have wide angle attachment available for it for special cases

I would use wide shot and stunt double with no face shown. If the face is shown then face replacement in post. I don't think you will ever get the plates match if shot separately, the ripples and waves are too complex and unique. So shooting both at the same time with actor and stunt double swimming and wide shots to sell it better, then fixing with face replacement if needed

example on work-in-progress project. Will see the final fake grain level but generally it is pretty useful way to smooth out overly sharp digital footage with slightly imperfect matte edges and crazy sharp vfx elements

Real messed up film looks really different from cheap-ass post effects. One example from last year's shoot on ACL, I left the gate intentionally dirty and used expired N75 which had pumping base grain. The tiny base scratches on the fresh foma are real too

I often use fake film grain on digitally shot and composited vfx scenes to make them look less artificial and to blend matte edge details nicely. But it is just grain, never adding scratches or dust or edge flashing or fake gate hair or fake gate mask edges to pretend it is a real film frame. I think they are 4th wall breaking cheap video effects if used for decoration like that and they don't even look anywhere near real, it is like throwing the contents of one's garbage bin over the image and pretend it is artsy😂

Wrong polarity or very faulty cable could cause damage but if you are careful when making your own cables then should not happen. The crystal sync board made by me is pretty durable and has limited overvoltage and polarity protection too. There is a factory made simple bldc board in the motor too which is easier to fry but those cost 5 to 8 bucks a piece (chose the cheap one so that spares are affordable) so you can just buy 10 spares from ebay if you want. The spare crystal board with the motor is somewhere around 200, I think. No one has ever wanted a spare one but can surely sell spares if needed as I sell those boards separately too. You would only need one spare but can sell the other one for profit later so could be useful to have two of them

I have sold dozens of motors since about 2022 and none of them has come back for repairs so I guess they are pretty reliable. With these software-based crystal sync designs the standard way is to replace the whole main board if there is an issue other than cracked solder joint or burnt power regulator. If the microcontroller burns you can't do anything about it because you don't have the software. Thus the best way to prepare for issues is to purchase a spare circuit board though they are only available for cp16r and universal4speedV1 and it may be a bit unnecessary as the boards are made for approx 15 years expected lifetime in normal use. The boards have conformal coating nowadays which would make repairs difficult anyway and on universal/acl motora almost all repairable components are resistors and ceramic capacitors which very rarely fail. I don't use tantalums at all and electrolytics are usually on auxiliary board so there is really nothing repairable on the newer style boards, I don't ever repair them by myself if having manufacturing error, just throwing it away and making another one. I could sell you a 4speedV1 with acl mounting parts and replacement boards if you want. Though one could probably source NOS boards years from now because I will try to make tons of extras and sell them to someone when stopping making crystal boards. (Can make you 10 or 50 or 100 or 1000 if you want to stock them😂 )

I decided to go with fully external design because the original base electronics of ACLs can be faulty and there is different versions of them and the connector is a bit rare and fragile. Wanted to avoid situations where people would buy the new motor and then turns out the base electronics were faulty too and need additional repairs. There is some plans for a built-into-newly-made-base crystal motor but may take lots of time and don't know the specs yet. I think the key with all new designs is to get completely rid of the old original electronics including the base electronics with failing capacitors and rare connectors. The entire reason why people have bought my acl motors is because they bypass the base entirely so they are fast and easy to install and work on every camera without troublesome repairs

Still working on the outer casing of the magazine, some tiny details to finesse. Waiting for money from other projects to get forward with the machining of the final outer casing but thankfully can confirm most details using cheap 3d printing when waiting for the money to get the final metal parts done. Most of the magazine is already fully finished in metal, I just need the outer casings machined too to finish the project

If you happen to need a crystal motor for your camera and it would be installed here, one would get some basic overhaul/cla for the installation price. The camera needs to be fully disassembled for the installation anyway so I am just checking and managing the gears and bearings exposed during the installation to make it run smoothly for testing. If there is loop guides you want to be taken off I can do it at the same time, takes couple of minutes and makes testing the crystal mod easier so included in price too. Next available times are in November though so it will take time and if you like to use the camera with clockwork mechanism then keep it just as is, you will lose the spring capability if the motor is installed. It is possible to buy readily converted K3's as I have an extra one at the moment. Normally the motors are black or dark grey. Just an example of how they look like when attached to the camera. All models have 6 crystal speeds or more and one can typically shoot at least two shooting days with a 50Wh mini-vlock battery on typical indie productions. It is not overly complicated to DIY open a K3 for CLA. The main thing is that you have to be comfortable doing it by yourself and take the small risk. If you fear breaking your camera it is difficult to service it... I treat K3's as expendables as they are affordable cameras and I have other ones so if accidentally breaking something I just take similar replacement part from one of my own cameras and problem solved. If you are interested in doing diy cla then I would encourage trying it without fear, in 99% cases it will work fine and if having bad luck then you can get replacement parts cheaply so would not consider it a risk at all

Yes if you need 120fps then it may not be good to get the FX5 yet when it does not have that update yet. Used Canon C300 Mk3 can record 4k 120fps raw and it is a little over half the price of the FX5kit if you have compatible lenses and if the used canon kit has enough batteries and you can get cheap memory cards. Used RED cameras can almost all do 4k 120fps in good quality raw, even the very old ones, but they have poor light sensitivity and consume tons of power and are much heavier than modern newly bought cameras. If the light sensitivity is not an issue then you could try a used Raven or Scarlet-W which can be got for cheap but you would still need pretty fast lenses which cost. You would crank up the compression to keep the material amount manageable even when shooting everything in raw. The Raven and Scarlet-W both would be affordable enough that you could probably get one now instead of needing to wait for FX5 to get proper features or saving for more light sensitive camera. Could shoot most of the stuff with Sony mirrorless you have and the slow mo shots with RED when needed. Ursa Mini G2 can do good quality slow mo in raw but they have poor reliability record now after about 6 years of use. And light sensitivity very poor. Most new mirrorless-style cameras from 2k upwards can do internal raw of some kind up to about 60fps. If that is enough then you could try multiple Canon models or for example Panasonic S1IIE which is half the price of the FX5 but can be got now and should be really light sensitive. Lots of other options too from most manufacturers in that 2k to 4k price range like used C70 or newly bought C50, etc. There is tons of options if does not need to go over 60fps in raw and you can shoot the 120fps in 10bit compressed 422 codec. All mirrorless cameras are light sensitive enough for your use and most have good enough dynamic range (NOT NIKONS, NOT EVEN THE ZR). I would maybe look the C300Mk3 first and check if it is something you could have use for or if it is too bulky camera for that use. They are specifically made as documentary cameras and tend to be pretty light sensitive so could be just what you are looking for with internal nd's and everything. Kinefinity Vista could be another option, shoots Prores which grades a little better for shadow areas than xavc and is much more light sensitive than RED, probably about similar range than the C300mk3 I have understood. It should be available this Fall, consumes very little power and is relatively cheap still so you would have possibility to buy tons of cards or ssd's. You could use your current E-mount lenses on it which is a huge plus. But you would shoot exclusively prores then. Should be enough for your use though if exposed right. Z-cams are pretty good for multi-purpose docu stuff but they may not have enough framerate for your needs on all models and usually are best bought new because limited processing power + passive cooling hot running sensor cause possible hot pixels being difficult to map out on them. Thus if it is a used camera it may develop some annoying dead pixel after some years of use which you need to handle in post because the camera can't map it out by itself. They are handy cameras and affordable if bought used though. Most models use similar sensor than Panasonic mirrorless cameras so the look is about the same with same kind of "panasonic blue" etc and have pretty good light sensitivity on larger sensor models

cheaper cob led fixtures may have noisy cooling fans so it is good to test them out first if possible or at least order them long before the shooting day to have time to replace if they are too noisy to be used close to the mics. another thing is that led lights tend to age at some point causing horrible color shifts usually towards green or magenta and intensity drops as well. So purchasing super expensive lights or used lights may not be a good move either. Something mid range bought new wold be a safe choice. A combination of cob fixtures and mat lights is useful for documentary projects, you get the necessary power but they are small-ish and easy-ish to transport and can be managed with lightweight stands. I am not a fan of those close-to-20kg led panels, you'll just break your back hauling them and heavy combo stands around the whole day by yourself when a lighter weight fixture could have done basically the same on tiny stand

have not shot with the newest Sonys but usually raw has main difference in sharpness and when shooting in extreme lighting conditions, if shooting in good light carefully exposed then the difference is mainly the small bit of added sharpness. If shooting in very difficult lighting conditions it starts to show clearly though. When I used to process tons and tons of nature footage and shot my own stuff too on various cameras, the biggest difference between raw and all-i formats is in the lowest 1 to 1.5 stops of shadows where one sees tons of difference especially if cranking up the ISO due to low light. If your intention is to crush the shadows instead of trying to recover them upwards like 1 to 2 stops or more then you may not "need" raw at all. but if the intention is to shoot underexposed stuff in low light levels and then lift the shadow areas a lot in post then you will get lots of advantage from raw. In documentary style shooting the storage and workflow often prevent shooting exclusively super high bitrate raw so I would plan for shooting mainly xavc and shoot select shots on raw which need more post work and are high iso contrasty stuff. xavc has traditionally behaved poorly when underexposed and post lifted so it is not good for that kind of shooting style anyway, recovering very dark shadow areas usually looks bad on xavc at least on older cameras. In this specific case of yours I would probably shoot the most important games in raw and the "normal" ones in xavc with only specific select shots in raw. thus you would get great marketing material from best moments of the season but can keep the material amounts manageable in the long run.

here the national film archive usually does a full aperture slight overscan to dpx and then forwards it to a post prod company for further processing and grading if there is budget to hire them for the work. Or at least did this way when I worked with them on couple of those restoration projects at post company or production company finding and processing materials like soundtracks and preview versions and such. Restorations were 4k final format both dcp and tv masters done and dpx scanning with overscan was whatever Scanity could maximally output at full aperture, something between 5k and 6k I think. But the process was always to make a full aperture scan with enough edges to know it is everything to get out of the negative, then crop in post production to the original aspect ratio using previous existing versions of the movie as reference. Scans were done of the original negative if in any way possible so cropping to final ratio needed anyway. And manual cropping work is usually moved to the post company to have the scanner running dpx scans uninterrupted, there is only sense to crop in scanning stage if the output resolution is too small for post cropping and handling the scans so that one gets maximum amount of information to the later professional color grading stage. No sense to try to grade anything during the scanning, one just runs a fast but high quality scan to dpx with the scratches and dust removed during scanning if possible, then everything else done in post company afterwards so that the expensive scanner can do what it does best, runs more scans to dpx uninterrupted instead of trying to fix easy things in scanning which are cheaper and faster to fix in post and trying to do that in scanning would just be waste of time if the resolution is enough to get clean 4k output after post cropping

if the shore background needs to be heavily manipulated in post to hide buildings etc structures and those cannot be hidden behind the miniature, I would probably shoot the shore plate separately on digital to make compositing easier and shooting miniature in front of greenscreen but outside to light it with natural light and being able to turn the miniature freely to match light angles and camera angles if not able to shoot it at the same time with the background plate. Then adding film grain over the final image when finished. If background does not need much manipulating it can be on film but you can still shoot the miniature separately in front of greenscreen on digital to allow making it separately and having free shooting schedule and easy compositing. This would allow real film look on background and lots of control on how the miniature would look and would save on costs if needing to reshoot the miniature plates afterwards or add details to them