Aapo Lettinen

by my experience, one of the differences is that people who have certain type of film background can be lots more effective on set, mainly because they are used to light and plan the shots by eye without using monitors and only taking couple of quick measurements. they can pre plan the ligthing setups too much more easily because they know how certain lights behave and how much exposure they will approximately get from this and that fixture. there is tons of these "I know what I want when I see it" digital people who are very slow to work with because they need to test every one of their ideas separately with the full camera + lighting setup and can't pre plan much anything for always been relied on a calibrated monitor they can use for testing ideas on set

the digital cameras tend to be the "bread and butter" solutions nowadays and film equipment is mainly for passion projects with not much commercial value for anybody. Of course someone could pay you to shoot something on film but that it extremely rare here and I assume in most other parts of the World too... for low budget shoots I basically need to choose if I will want to charge something for my digital gear + lighting kit and get a tiny amount of money back, OR if I want to try to get even a part of it shot on film but then the price difference is used on film stock and processing and I get nothing back from the project. So it is very tempting to shoot on digital because I often have the possibility to keep the price difference, even if small amount ? I have lots of expired stock in fridge from the days I was able to shoot lots more film a year (between about 2015 and 2018) and basically can't purchase new stock until the previous ones are used. This limits working a bit and I try to arrange these short film projects where I would just give away the stock if I get to shoot it on film and the director pays the processing. This is one way to try to lobby film usage on projects because buying fresh stock would add a lot to the costs but I can just offer these "fridge clearance" deals where stock is "free" and thus it is a bit easier for them to decide whether their passion for film origination is strong enough that they want to invest money on it ? the biggest issue is finding a director who would both have a good script AND the tiny amount of money to process the film stock and pay for the rest of the costs of the short so that it can be made. indie directors here tent to be broke and those who have money may not have any good movie ideas and time so it takes time to find the ones who would actually pay for making their own short film. Financing short films from other sources is pretty impossible here so it is mostly about finding someone who both has money AND has good ideas what kind of film they want to make. rarely people have both ? I buy relatively low priced digital gear and try to select ones which can be used for documentary style shooting too, not just short films. That said, all of them have earned their price back in less than a year when selected right from the beginning. so digital gear can earn you money back quite easily if you can charge anything from shooting with it but film gear is pretty much charity work where you have to donate the gear to the project to be able to shoot it in the first place

yes blimping would be possible if making a special project which would allow that kind of shooting style, should be perfectly doable for couple of short films if they are planned right and then having saved enough money to purchase a better camera. there is the issue though of getting ANY 16mm crystal sync camera systems in the first place, whether noisy or silent ... often the ones available are the sought-after self-blimped ones which are expensive and often electrically unreliable and the "mos" cameras only have wild motors because the crystal ones were sold out years ago. Of the "affordable-ish" ones I think some Bolexes and such can still be got but a blimped Bolex would be really awkward to use for any kind of filming... Oh there is Auricons too if using mains power or inverter with it. the best candidate could be the Arri16S because they can be still get, crystal motors on the other hand are not. If having more money then the next step could be either the Eclair NPR or CP16R (if getting one repaired for cheap for it to be usable)

yes it would be better to borrow or rent if one already knows how to use the camera and has used it before, but for new filmmakers trying to get a grasp the basics how to use film cameras it would be needed to have lots more time to just get used to the camera and workflow in which case it would be better to own so that there is time to run tests and learn well enough how to use it and how to build the kit for different shooting scenarios. With rental it is just grab the camera, shoot shoot shoot, return it asap, no time for learning

another matter is that if the camera kit is lacking in some way and is too expensive for the filmmaker, then it is pretty challenging to plan and execute any actual projects with it and one may end up making just some single roll "camera test short films" which are not actually even movies, just something one scrapes together to get an excuse to shoot at least SOMETHING with the camera. but yes, if a poor-ish indie filmmaker can manage get hands on a working 16mm sync sound camera after saving and hunting one down for years, it is likely still lacking in some way (bad ergonomics / unreliable / poor viewfinder / noisy / missing important accessories / weird lens mount so one cannot use the lenses one wants / etc) and that limits its usability so much that the said filmmaker will still not have much use for it even when using so much time and money and effort to get that camera kit. ------ Personally I think that mixing film and digital on the same projects is the only way the film can survive in low budget world and it can actually make extremely good use of both mediums

I think the issue with most today's camera offerings is that they are either overly expensive known-to-work ones (pay from 4 to 5 times what the camera is actually worth), OR they are scraping-bottom-of-the-barrel unknown condition or known-to-be-broken-in-some-way ones (pay only two or three times what the camera is worth). So one either needs to pay 4 or 5 times the money the camera is worth to get a good one + still spend some money to a checkup, OR take a huge risk on still overpriced even when in unknown condition ebay camera which is certainly broken in some way and the question just being if it can be repaired or not. In most cases the ebay cameras are in so bad condition that one would do some very serious restoration work and have a spare body to take parts from to get the mechanics in good condition.... and this is considering that the electronics would work. if the electronics are NOT working then it is shooting in the dark, one never knows if ever getting the camera actually running to shoot with it even if it is mechanically perfect. the old electronics are just a huge PITA and even if managing to getting them repaired they may fail you again next week so one can't plan any expensive serious shoots with the camera unless having a fully working spare body available. This combination of overpriced cameras which are also in very bad condition at the same time hurts the whole film shooting community I think and is one of the biggest reasons why "young people" may not want to take the risk of trying to get a working 16mm sync sound capable camera setup and instead either go to digital or try to manage with some very simple entry level camera like K3 to be able to shoot even SOMETHING, anything, on film. Maybe some co-op could restore couple of dozen basic sync sound cameras like NPR or 16BL or similar, maybe as a kickstarter project, to get ACTUALLY WORKING 16mm cameras to the new shooters for relatively affordable price and have some kind of guarantee and warranty that they indeed work and are serviced and tested. I mean, no one wants to spend his/her years savings to a camera kit which has been in storage for 30 years and needs a month of work and another camera body worth of spare parts to get working well enough to shoot anything with it? If not being able to repair it by yourself the risk is just too huge and it may become very expensive lesson without any guarantee that you would even have a working camera in the end, it can all go to waste too ? personally I like to try to repair my own camera by myself and can make new electronics for them so it is not necessarily a huge financial risk to purchase a unknown camera body but it is still a serious undertaking and I will still need to purchase two or three cameras to get a single working one mashed up from them.

I need to light relatively large spaces with limited lighting budget and electric power. the electricity is usually the biggest limitation as for example tungsten lights are pretty cheap nowadays. Sometimes diffusion or bouncing eats up light but in most cases it is just that I need to use a 575 hmi instead of a 4k and light 150m of river background at night with that single 575 , using battery leds and something like one 150w cob led for everything else to cover an 150m times 150m set with only that small kit, etc. Another issue is extremely small crews which seriously limits how much gear I can haul to difficult to access locations, on the river example I could also have one genny because of that and could only use one 575 hmi when I could otherwise had take 3 of them.The latest project is not ready yet so cannot post images of all the scenes, this is the only one released of it at the moment but you can see what kind of style I am often after for night ints: There is a 2k blondie outside with a small piece of 1/2 diffusion to control the spread and softness and the room has a small bounced tungsten unit on key side ( I think it was a 650 or 800 on this one) and a bounced 575 is for cold ambience/fill on the right side (tuned down by only partially bouncing to get to the correct low-ish level and could get the same fill effect with a 100w led instead). But this is basically what I can get with at iso 4000 and around T2.8 with a 2k outside the window. It is not that much of light in the end, the room eats it all when you try to get it nice looking instead of just using a pointy light without any alteration and very close like would be needed with 200 iso film I could shoot this on... additionally I could not see anything through the viewfinder then ?

that said, if your average easy-to-use-and-cheap-to-buy prosumer setup can shoot good enough material for cinema release and actually make better use of the budget to save critical resources which can be used to make other aspects of the movie better, why an indie filmmaker would even want to bother with a very old, cumbersome and power hungry "ancient top notch digital cinema camera setup" if the audience would not even notice it unless they are shown the making of footage which there surely is available to promote the filmmakers? Purchase a 10k tripod+head kit for starters and then use couple of k's for batteries and 20k for lenses and bazillion bucks to lights etc. just to make it working for some very simple use like shooting a 2 person dialogue. meaning, is the cool looking old camera mainly used for getting interesting making of footage for promotional purposes instead of making the actual movie better? that sounds like a "camera test short film project" for sure, they are specifically made for showing that "look at us, we shot something stuff with the Alexa / RED / Venice / other cool camera which is currently trending" and no one could care less about the story and if the film is even watchable ?

the main thing is that camera technology has advanced in very big leaps for the past 15 years or so, but the movie theater screen sizes have not changed much at all in the meantime and even the size of average "better" tv sets has stayed about the same for almost 10 years now. If wanting to use bigger screen you would need to build a new movie theater to house it, and if wanting a larger TV set than certain size limit you would need to make the living room bigger which is not happening because you would need to tear down and rebuild the whole freakin house for that. So the screen sizes don't change much at all anymore and thus the treshold limit for resolution has long been surpassed for both cinema and home movie / streaming. Thus the better and better cameras make smaller and smaller difference in the end result, because the audience can't see the difference clearly anymore if the screens are not getting substantially bigger than they are now. Most of the persons here who have newer TV have either 65" or 75" or 80-something inches but not more. the 65" is normally pretty optimal for the average living rooms here and my 75" is just barely watchable at maximum distance the room allows. If wanting to take full advantage of the modern camera technology I would need to fit, like, a 250 or 300 inch TV here? It would fill the whole freaking wall of the room and watching it would be like sitting on the front row just next to the cinema screen in theatre... would be just horrible to try to watch it. So there is strict screen size limitations in both average person's homes and in movie theaters and they pretty much cannot change so any new camera technology can pretty much only compete in colour reproduction, dynamic range and framerates. I think the "camera technology treshold limit" was surpassed in about 2014 or 2015 and pretty much ANY camera made after that which costs more than 2k or 3k has perfectly good image for cinema release. Doesn't mean that a "better camera" would not be "better" but meaning that even an older and lower quality camera would work without issues because they don't make bad enough cameras anymore that the difference would really show clearly enough for the audience to care ?

filmmakers get used to and learn to love workflows and user interfaces which explains why it is so common to stick to a certain camera model until it is mandatory to switch to a newer one. For example there has been lots of talks over time about Sony menus being difficult and complicated. In real life one does not usually need to manipulate camera menus very often, normally only at the start of the project and maybe if making some radical setup changes mid shoot. But for most stuff it is "adjust once and forget about it" which makes it pretty trivial how "complicated" the menus actually are if you only need to set it ONCE during the entire project. Still people see "complicated menus" as a huge issue even if actually needing to use them once a month or so ? to me it just tells that people want to always do everything the same way, being too conservative to try anything new (and on the other hand, it is safer for them to stick to the old habits than to allow any uncertainty even if such uncertainty would make their life better in the end) I personally like to think that camera bodies come and go. They are just something temporary which was the best choice for now but can change anytime if something more suitable is found. As long as I can use the lenses I want and certain performance (and maybe look) requirements are met, I don't care much what the camera is and I am willing to change it in the blink of an eye if there is even the slightest reason to do so ?

rather than wine, I think digital cameras are more like cheap beer... they don't age well and at certain point people just want to get rid of them unless they want to collect them for some reason ? we are seeing lots of +10 year old "digital cinematography" cameras sold for peanuts on ebay and no one seems to buy them because newer technology has too many advantages in most uses such a old camera could be used for. I have processed enough thousands hours of F5 and F55 footage that I can say pretty certainly that at least the F55 would look way way better to most users and audiences than the F35 in most shooting situations. But if there is something in the F35 image that pleases a certain filmmaker, then why not use it for a certain project, sure. One could get a used F55 with a raw recorder and accessories for much less than the F35 current prices and like said it would be a much better camera for most shooting situations and projects, but some certain projects could ask for a different look and one might actually WANT TO USE older gritty technology like the F900 or Red One M for them to get weird artifacts and funny colour reproduction, interesting noise patterns and funny dynamic range and highlight issues. I fully understand "camera test short film projects" too, I am personally making those every now and then and they can be fun to make. In most cases it is just not reasonable to expect such projects to become "fully self supporting movies" because, well, their sole purpose is to test a certain camera model and show off its qualities to fellow filmmakers and fanboys. Wanted to mention because I think most older video equipment (and also film equipment too) is used mainly for making these "camera test simple story shorts" than to make "actual real movies where storytelling is more important than technology". If really just wanting to make narrative stuff and tell great stories one could use almost any modern-ish camera and would not be that interested in technology... but it is much easier to be obsessed about technology and tell oneself it is impossible to shoot because not having this or that camera, than to actually just make the darn movie ? It was a real eye opener to work many years on nature films / documentaries where there could be 20 different cameras used on a single project and everything was managed to get working well on the big screen in the end

indie productions have the biggest issues with film I think because the logistics and higher lighting budgets are not possible to arrange and the performance benefits of digital greatly outweight the artistic advantages of film origination. there it the thing though that if using most of the budget for securing true film origination, then there is less money to use for all the other aspects and thus the movie is likely to be lower quality in the end (for not having balanced the budget correctly and thus for example has less shooting days than needed, less lighting budget and crew than needed, etc.) for ultra low budgets the current camera availability is very problematic, it is just so tough to get a good enough quality sync sounc camera body on a budget. really limits what low budget indie filmmakers can do. Availability of the film stock itself can be an issue as well but much less so than the camera body issue. On the last low budget shoot I did the lighting budget only allowed shooting at ISO 2000 or more. My regular iso for lit scenes was 4000 and for most indie persons it would be tough to get enough lighting gear and crew to shoot lower than 640 or 800 ISO. if one needs from 3 to 10 times more lighting gear to shoot on film it really limits what one can do in low budget levels, especially because more gear needs lots more crew as well and there is serious limitations in available electric power one can have on these budget levels (usually one is limited to from 2kw to 6kw maximum in most situations by my experience. If on gennies the maximum power I could have is usually from 1.5 to 4kw and if having 3 phase wall power it can be possible to have from 6 to 9kw. I have about 15kw worth of lights but never have enough power to run them all at the same time). So I would say, if it is true film and cannot be lit at under 4kw to 6kw then it likely won't happen in low budget shoots and one needs to switch to digital on that scene, questioning if the other scenes make sense to shoot on film then anymore... I like to shoot multi format so love to use film for day ext and digital for everything else if necessary but it very easily leads to the whole project to be shot in digital if digital is needed for half of it anyway

Most indie and student films have too much dialogue because it is cheaper to assemble the movie from couple of super long pointless dialogue scenes than to shoot meaningful short 'action scenes' where the story is actually shown instead of referred to in the dialogue. For example insteaf of showing a flashback scene the chacter tells it by words so that no extra scene needs to be shot. This is very common in sub 2M budget range and especially for in low to no budget stuff

It is a pretty good camera for its time and still perfectly good for indie stuff. there is some drawbacks too - not as good colour reproduction as the some modern cameras in the same price range have but still pretty ok - sensitivity is not anywhere near modern cameras. if you always shoot at 800 ISO you would not notice but you need to have a proper lighting budget for it. In comparison, I regularly shoot indoors indie stuff at ISO 4000 and ISO 12800 without issue with more modern pretty basic camera setup - higher framerates very lacking compared to modern options in similar price range. if you always shoot 24/25fps then no problem - proprietary media, may be difficult and "expensive" to get if you need extra ones - very power hungry compared to modern cameras. one could get similar image quality with 1/4 of the power the Scarlet consumes - very slow booting compared to any modern camera - slower reacting menus than modern cameras have - heavier than most modern cameras because most modern cameras use composites/magnesium alloys instead of plain heavy cast aluminium - no internal ND filters and considerable IR pollution so needs IRNDs - very old camera design in digital camera terms. The original Scarlet is from 2009 or 2010 I think and is almost 14 years old! This means that the camera bodies are so old that they can fail anytime for being so old (most digital cameras don't last even this long) and there is a risk of losing value of the investment if you don't get shoot enough material with it before it WILL break up. There is pros too of course: + pretty sturdy for a prosume camera body and compared to some more modern cameras in the same price range + if wanting a PL mount camera with compressed raw, there is very little options in this price range so it can be relatively cost effective if the camera body just lasts long enough to get your money back from it One's main alternative would be a used Ursa Mini Pro 4.6k, either gen1 or gen2 . OR a new Z-cam e2s6 . They both have pros and cons too. The ursas are more well know so will list only them for z-cams: Z-cam pros: + small, lightweight, uses very cheap batteries and affordable media, consumes very little power ( I think about 1/6th of what the Scarlet consumes) , most models pretty light sensitive, have pretty good dynamic range z-cam cons: - all models I have used or seen material from have just a little bit of DSLR look to them. they use same sensors than Panasonic mirrorless cameras so understandable the look is pretty comparable - limited monitoring options especially if LUT needed - limited bad pixel masking - may overheat more easily because of passive cooling so can develop shaded pixels more easily - bad raw format for post production. Is much more usable either if shooting prores or if recording externally to proresraw of blackmagic raw

linear regulators are only good for low currents, typically something like less than 100mA in most useful applications. Higher current applications would typically overheat the regulator (it needing a large heatsink and a heatsink may not be enough if the voltage drop and thus the wasted thermal energy in Watts is high) either shutting it down automatically or damaging it. That is because the idea of a linear regulator is to drop down voltage by "converting all the voltage difference to heat". They are perfect for generating stable input voltage for sensitive electronics like microcontrollers and such but for motors I would always use a switching mode voltage converter which does not waste as much energy and does not have overheating problems with large current. you could look for Pololu step down converters (the switching mode ones), most of them are relatively compact and might be one of the easiest ones to build into device and are pretty easy to find. Don't know if they fit inside the camera body but some of the might as they are more compact than cheap Chinese converters

I am normally using what is available because not having service manuals for the things. Any oil would help the camera compared to no oil and I am shooting so small amounts of film with them that it would not matter much as long as there is SOME oil in all the critical places

I am just working in a technical position on a show which is shooting on the Alexa35 and have possibility to watch materials. Yes the image differs visually from the previous Alexa versions and there is "something different in the image" compared to older Alexas. Traditionally Alexas have had a certain way they handle colours and saturation compared to brightness levels but that has changed on this version and to me there is something "just a tiny bit newest-sony-ish but dialed down and more creamy" in the image which makes it pop up a bit more. Different colour science and Looks of course change it in addition to the new sensor itself. -- If you don't have budget for it, then it is not the right camera for your project and should instead consider something which does not destroy the projects financially.... that would be just making bad movies shot with a "cool" camera, like being just camera tests instead of real movies ? Anyway... a friendly rental house would surely let you test one for couple of hours and you could get test material from it no problem. No need to buy a camera for testing one and it might be cheaper to rent one for occasional projects than to burn tons of money and loans to try to purchase one for oneself. I mean, how many projects it would be used in, in a month and in a year? If it would pay itself back immediately you would already have financing for it, so owning one is more of a theoretical question I think ? Comparing entry level Blackmagics to this camera is a joke though... even my Panasonic S5 + Atomos combo can wipe the floor with those Blackmagics and they are comparing pockets to something which is more of a hybrid between Alexa Mini and Venice2

The deadline for final orders of this motor type is June 25, 2023 and I will need the payment for them before June 30. After that, no motors of this type are possible to order and I will concentrate on other more urgent projects (there is about 10 other projects waiting), in which case I will just store the remaining two unfinished motors as spare parts in the garage and forget about them. I may still be able to build another type of motor for your ACL sometime later if needed, but it will be of very different model, have less features and is much more expensive (costing from 1500 to 2000usd) than this one because this type of equipment is not economical to build one by one and making a series of only one or two drives the costs up unnecessarily and should be avoided (the reason why I wanted to make a large-ish batch of these and sell the whole batch at once to be able to build and sell them for cheaper).

I think some Mitchell type cameras could work for this use

Hi! I am updating my kit, likely to a newer computer with Apple M2 chip. I will need to use Silverstack with it but can't find information if the software is supposed to work on M2 chips (it is mentioned that M1 should be fine but pretty much all the available stuff is already M2 so that is likely what I will need to use). Has anyone tested / used Silverstack XT on M2 and can confirm how well the current version of the software works on M2 and what exact setup did you use?

simulated filter array by taking a existing b/w sensor and stacking some filter materials in front of it to simulate how they could behave colour-wise. Just something to show the filtering technology before actually making a test sensor using it. Funding is always an issue so any crude physical prototype at all would help raise some money for making actual test sensors to be able to build a test camera sometime later. So just making a crude technology demo so that people would believe it is something worth investigating and testing further

1 stop is useful for low light /no lights shooting if it does not have any drawbacks but it does not make that big of an difference in the end. There is lots of modern cameras which have way better low light capabilities than most cinematographers even want to regularly use if there is any possibility to use any lighting at all so it only makes a small difference for low budget / no budget indie and documentary/factual content and sometimes a feature film can shoot one or two shots at such a high ISO that one needs the extra stop if it's available. For cellphones and reality stuff should be useful though as people want to shoot those in total darkness if there is something "interesting" they could see with their bare eyes. I am regularly shooting material for "very low budget cinema release" type of end result at 12800 ISO, sometimes using only couple of led tubes dimmed down to few % and that is with a lower end camera + recorder combo... most people hesitate to use over 2000 or 3200 ISO with any video/"cinematography" camera for "cinematography use" if there is lights available so I think a small sensitivity boost would not make any difference at all in "cinematography use" when most of the modern cameras, even lower end ones, are either sensitive enough or even too sensitive for "normal cinematography applications" and people would not actually use the features in the end

taking a good quality b/w sensor, using some pixel binning to get "larger virtual pixels" and making a larger add-on colour filter on top of it should work as a demonstration without costing too much

basically meaning that if Sony is not interested in it, then there is not much market for the technology as they make almost all of the sensors suitable for such applications and quite a big share of the camera bodies too

high end cinema cameras are such a niche market that they would likely only generate losses and take way too much developing time compared to other markets. And people tend to post grade the image so much that I am very sceptical if there would be any real benefit of using a more colour accurate sensor. One market where colour accuracy MIGHT actually be usable is markets where images are meant to look as "natural" as possible at least to a point, especially if the image would be easy to grade to save post time. So for example nature documentary programming and other types of factual programming, higher end video shoots, commercials and so on. Photographers could have lots of use for more accurate colours as well. So I would not bother with high end cinema cameras but instead concentrate on the mid level market where there is lots more value and practical applications for such a technology. Sensitivity is very important though and no one would buy if dynamic range and sensitivity is not on par or better than with current bayer technology as most of these markets are all about limited lighting budgets or natural light