aapo lettinen

great, he seems to have some of the color neg available in 2x8mm in the US. http://www.toeppenfilm.com/ordernow.html there seems to be prices in usd. Maybe we could arrange an European order to get our own batch perforated and save shipping costs if it seems there is lots of interested persons?

Simon had an idea of fitting old Leicina 2x8mm cameras with custom made crystal sync electronics if my crystal sync projects will advance enough so that I could build the electronics part. We'll see how it goes but if there would be negative film available then it would make the camera project much easier

the main problem with the original 2.5k BMCC is the aliasing/moire it creates. That is the main reason I never purchased one and always used the 4K model even when the 2.5k was available. When you have lots and lots of textures and straight lines in the image the moire starts to matter... it would have destroyed pretty much all of my shots if I had used the 2.5k but the 4K model was fine for most uses. The 4K is totally OK for the money as long as you don't underexpose it and as long as your SSD's can hold up the speed without dropping frames. I had lots of drop frame issues with the Kingston drives I used when shooting DNG and thus I shot most of the stuff in Prores instead of CinemaDNG ( prores made sense storage wise as well and was much easier to use in post)

I sent email about this to Filmotec (ORWO), we'll see what they answer. I imagine it could be an issue if the stock already has perforations on it but we'll see. I checked the years old emails about the last conversation I had with them and the minimum order for perforating 35mm was smaller than I though it was so it COULD be possible to do Dual8 vision3 stocks in smaller batches I believe. But we'll see when they answer. I think the best approach could be to order the perforating in 400ft rolls and the seller or the end user respools it to camera spools. If the perforating is possible then I imagine the spooling would be easy for Filmotec but we'll see :) If re-perforating the stock is not possible, then it could be possible to slit larger film format to get unperforated Dual8. Probably this would need to be done to 65mm negative to get usable amount of stock out of it...

would the sync sound Leicina camera project help with the situation? how large of a customer base they would need to be interested in offering new stocks in the D8 format? the availability of stock is very critical for the D8 format I think. As I know the only easily available emulsion at the moment is the Fomapan b/w reversal. But maybe someone else could do the perforating work to standard 16mm color negative stock even if Kodak is not interested? could ORWO or FOMA do this type of work? I asked from ORWO about their perforating services a couple of years ago and the minimum orders were pretty reasonable sounding. I think it was couple of thousand euros minimum which would be pretty reasonable if one would get for example 7203 in Dual8 format, there would be lots of people purchasing it I'm sure 🙂 I'm not sure if ORWO has perforating tools for D8 but at least the Foma has because they are doing their own D8 stock as well. The D8 color negative could be developed in standard 16mm lab machine in any lab. one could slit the film at home with one of those Lomo tools, even I have one of them even when I don't shoot D8 at the moment. So the perforating work is the only challenge there is. Maybe if the Leicina project materializes this year, then a batch of stock could be arranged as well to support the camera?

it has a bit "harsh" color rendition especially on blues and yellows (not as bad as the original Red One has but something similar style I think). and the fixed pattern noise makes it pretty unusable at over 400ISO gain or otherwise underexposed. The fan also makes a little bit of noise though it hasn't been a problem for me. They are pretty affordable now so they could be very useful for lower end stuff if you already have suitable EF lenses for it and can live without high frame rates, a bit lower dynamic range than more modern cameras, and the need to use external batteries to be able to shoot anything serious with it. The Pocket4k could be very useful option as well if you already have the lenses or have possibility to get affordable lenses for it.

OR there may be enough space inside the box to add your own separate regulator just for the XLR. depending on how much current you are going to draw from it.

that would be one good possibility, will have to look it next month when I have more time :) I will need the basic logic IC:s and the oscillators for other purposes as well so it makes sense to make some of the prototypes with them

Learning to use binary counters (right side chip) and decade counters (left side chip) by running the Attiny85 as an oscillator (center microchip). I will probably use these simple logic circuits on the first "real crystal" setups where the oscillator frequency is divided in stages to get the desired reference speed for 12.5fps, 25fps and 50fps. When doing harder-to-divide frame rates like 24.00fps I will probably use programmable counters to get the reference close enough to the target (1/1000fps or so would be nice) . That will be later. I will do the 25fps version first because it is just so much simpler to do. So a single speed prototype first and then can add speeds to it later. This work is for the "B"-style system.

I think it would be much easier to transfer the negative. Even professional scanners have lots of trouble handling the contrast of reversal film and the results from mid range machines lack all the quality of the reversal which one sees if the image is seen in projector. Colour grading is pretty easy to do but one will get much better in it the more one does it. The good colorists have done it daily for 20 years or more so they have incredible amount of experience and that's why they are so much better in it than the average edit guy. A beginner starts to see usable results in couple of weeks and it gets better and better all the time, you should start learning Resolve to get better in it :) A single 100ft roll would be couple of thousand frames and you would probably first run the raw settings in single batch to them in a program most practical to you. Then you could do a prores file out of them and edit and grade that. Working with long raw stills sequences is PITA and programs like Resolve don't like them at all so it would be easiest to get the basic raw adjustments done and then convert to a video format which can be edited and finished more easily. A diy scanner would be mostly a mechanical device with just a little bit of electronics to drive the camera's image capture and film transport. Some kind of sensor which triggers the shutter via the camera's standard remote connector. The biggest problem when doing these is that one needs machining tools because the axles and some of the rollers need to be custom made. I am doing this type of project by myself at the moment but it is not sure if a DIY scanner would be a suitable solution for you unless you are actually interested in the scanning part and manufacturing mechanical stuff and not just want to shoot and edit material. For me the motivation is that I want to be able to do the whole process by myself from start to finish so that it is much easier to shoot camera tests and documentary shorts. Developing and transferring a single 100ft b/w roll in pro lab would be prohibitively expensive compared to developing and transferring it by yourself. It is also much quicker, a couple of hours compared to couple of days. I am also interested in doing mechanical stuff and have the tools needed so it is much more for me than just shooting and editing material.

Overseas scanning is an option but always try to get the film developed near you so that you are only shipping developed stock overseas. That way no one can ruin you footage with x-ray scans and heat and such. Dust is much easier to handle in DIY scanning than excessively contrasty image like the one Ektachrome produces. I would advise making some kind of positive pressure filter system for the DIY scanner instead of trying to handle the more contrasty stock with it. Some kind of blower system which first filters the air and then directs the filtered air to the scanner enclosure so that the air flows outwards from it and no dust can dust get inside. I am currently making a prototype DIY scanner for 35mm, it uses still camera as a pickup and transfers the films slowly through at about 1fps or a little lower speed. This is for doing film test scans for 100ft rolls and the color negative I will still send for proper scanning if it is longer rolls

Slowly adapting my motor control code to AtTiny85 microcontroller. The code needs to be rewritten completely but these small controllers are useful in small systems. This current prototype uses a slot type optical sensor and a small test motor with a quickly made encoder made out of tape. It uses the "A" type code so it measures the frequency and compares the frequency numbers. Seems to work pretty great already and the multi slot encoder enhances the stability a lot. Output circuit updated to mosfet btw. Programming the Attiny85's using Arduino Uno as a programmer. These fingernail sized Attiny processors are quite handy for prototypes and will probably use them in the final boards as well

the cost of the leftover roll is insignificant for a movie production, but the TIME COSTS A LOT to shoot it. So it is cheaper to just cut the roll from the middle instead of using lots of time to shoot the rest of it. It is much cheaper to even throw it away than to shoot it. It is just a bonus for them is someone pays even SOMETHING for the short ends so that they don't need to go to waste. Big productions like to use full rolls as often as possible so they would not use the short ends much by themselves

they are cutting the film so that only the amount that they shot is sent to the lab. The unexposed film is put back in the film can and either used later OR sold to a broker as a short end. That is exactly how short ends are made in the first place and that is why they are much cheaper than factory sealed film. They are leftovers from film productions when they only shot part of the roll and then did not need the rest. Recan is a film which is put into the magazine and threaded but was not needed so it was put back in the can again. So it is ALMOST full roll but was opened and the first couple of feet were exposed. Clearance film is factory sealed full cans which were bought for a production and stored properly and never opened, then sold back to the broker when the shooting was done. So they are leftovers which are just stored by the production but not used at all. One can get factory new film cheaper by purchasing these so I recommend clearance as the first option when considering film stock for indie productions

it depends on the scanner. some of them can do optical cropping and some of them crop on the sensor or need to be cropped in post. You would generally want a optical zoom capable system to be able to crop to the Regular16 frame efficiently because most of the sensor cropping systems are setup for S16 so you would lose more resolution than what you calculated from the dimensions. Regular 16 is generally fine when cropped to 16:9 frame especially if the lenses are good and you are shooting slow film like the 50D. I shoot most of my stuff with similar settings and cropping the end result to 2:1 ratio. S16 becomes very important if you are shooting 2.39:1 image and intending to use it for cinema release. That would mean lots of cropping + magnification if doing similar framing with regular16. The resolving power of the regular16 does not quite match the UHD format but the audience won't complain so it is more of a logistical question I think. If the UHD is your delivery resolution then it makes sense to stick with that. Upscaling is not that big of a deal if you end up with less than UHD resolution after cropping. You just need to get it scaled up right to get to the desired resolution. Upscaling is used all the time with for example all the Alexa originated material and it works fine so no reason to abandon a workflow just because the resolution numbers don't seem to match at first 🙂