Aapo Lettinen

you can also use one of those easily opened reusable cartridges used with bulk loaders. If you have a photographer friend who uses film he can surely lend you one. they are also cheap to buy if your local photo store has them. Then you have to tape the film head to the spool in dark, close the cartridge and attach it to the camera in the dark, close the camera, and then you can rewind the film normally. You have to also copy the barcode to the cartridge afterwards before sending it to the lab. Or if you're not comfortable with this much manual work you can also take it to a lab which can process manually as Mark suggested. Sometimes it may also be possible to insert the film back to the original factory made cartridge without scratching it too much but it is much easier to use the bulk loader ones which are specifically meant to be easily opened multiple times ^_^

one thing I've never understood btw is why the heck it is so difficult to reach Lab people with email, almost all labs seem to skip most email questions about their services. this is not a single lab but almost ALL the labs I have ever tried to contact with even with different email accounts so it should not even be a spam filter issue and if you call them they have always read your emails even though not answered to them :blink:

I think it means very short or moderate processing times, good communication, excellent quality, possibility to negotiate price and delivery options and custom processing, etc. for example Andecfilm has usually quite long processing times by my experience, at least when sent from Finland. may be 1-2 weeks for developing plus shipping time and sometimes may be up to 2 MONTHS for developing+scanning which is incredibly long time. They seem to use leftover time from other companies for scanning services which adds considerably to the processing times. The quality is good overall but from time standpoint it is more suitable for amateur and semi pro customers. ------ As a reference, last time I processed 16 and 35mm film in STOPP they developed them in ONE DAY and with shipping the films from Finland to Sweden and back to me it took 4 days total :lol:

There is the former Stockholm Post Production (STOPP) lab in Sweden, now working under MediaMonks brand

Honestly saying, if you don't already know the pros and cons of every of the forementioned options you're not ready to buy one. I would be especially critical about buying more expensive digital cinema cameras because their normal working life in the industry is quite short (they outdate very quikcly). A good lens set plus other accessories is a great advice and good quality lower cost cameras (not a single camera body but for example an Ursa Mini 4.6k pl combined with used Moviecam Compact for example) work very well for low and mid budget work. The Red cameras are quite good image quality wise nowadays but they still have reliability problems sometimes and the raw workflow is a bit clumsy, although not as awkward as the Blackmagic dng workflow. If you want to go with Red, I would suggest Scarlet Dragon or the Raven when it comes out

I guess it works fine as long as you use spot meter and not incident meter for the coloured parts of the frame. I've understood that it was common practice to paint over stuff at b/w era with specific unconventional colors to get a certain effect on film (they painted even actors in some films :lol: )

Yeah build quality may be a serious issue and may also cause safety concerns. I bought some as arri tungsten fresnels last year for testing them out and for personal projects and had to repair them all at first to be able to use them. The materials may not necessarily be an issue but the quality control and quality of workmanship is. There was faulty bulb bases, loose strain reliefs, scratches on completely new lights, bad quality bulbs (may be very dangerouas with hmi lights!) , bad quality power cords (the rubber is starting to degrade after one year of very light use and I have to replace them soon). They saved some serious money compared to arri yes but they would have been very dangerous to use out of the box and actually only one of the three lighta even worked out of the box, had to repair them all

I got the first tests back from lab and will shoot some more material this week. I got the old Cameflex working quite easily, just had to open the body and mag to replace the lubricants and clean it thoroughly. It has steadier image than my Konvas cameras so it's more ideal for landscape and other tripod shots :lol: small sample: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDOj4_D_QX4 If someone is still shooting with these old cameras I'd love to see samples and finished projects, Vimeo has one short shot with Cameflex but that's about it :lol:

so it would be easier to have SOMETHING on the wall which is resembling the poster well enough most of the time so that IF it looks fake in one single shot you can rotoscope+replace only that poster and 95% of the rest can be the physical printed ones which will pass easily in most of the shots anyway

there is lots of work involved in rotoscoping the person's hair etc with good enough quality so that you would have good enough edge against the posters. remember that in tighter shots you will see the edge quality very clearly and it will immediately scream fake if there is anything wrong with it. in tighter shots it is also difficult to get enough tracking markers in frame to be able to get track on all the axis needed

a small disclaimer: there is about a million ways to do these effects and camera move or lighting change from x to y may matter quite much so your cgi person will know best how to do these effects most efficiently :) if your effect is supposed to be pitch black (without any texture) floor with edge lighted cliff area that could be done quite easily to the all against black footage (you still need tracking marks for the cliff and possibly match move=lots more markers if the camera move is big enough to change perspective considerably) the pitch black areas also always have 'camera texture' (noise/grain) so it is a good idea to leave lots of headroom for masking if you can't fill all the frame with the same quality black

it is possible to shoot for example this way if you can add the light shafts in post. the piano may reflect green screen quite much if keyed fully so it might be simpler to key only the parts from it where the piano player's hair or hands go over the edges. the immobile piano edge can be rotoscoped (if edge lighted!) and thus just shot against black so you can get rid of disturbing reflections vfx_example_.tiff

are the shafts of light going to be seen in the air in front of the cgi elements and what texture the floor (ground??) is supposed to have, if the ground is also cgi and not only black surface you need to replace all of it also under the actors. You can mask quite easily most objects which don't move so you would only need to green screen all if the shafts of light are seen and you can't hide the transition from shaft against black vs. black against green later in compositing. If you can add the shafts later you would only need to green screen the moving objects (the guitar player, the piano player + moving parts of her dress) and you could mask+rotoscope the rest (the piano for example which is static) and do the shafts later. If the camera is moving you would need to rotoscope all which can't be keyed and match the camera move to the other player's element, then match move in post to get the same move to the cgi plate. This again assuming that the ground needs to be cgi and not only pitch black surface without texture. If the background really IS black without post texture and the cgi elements are outside the light shaft areas and moving edges it would be easiest to just shoot it all against black as David said :) I'd say it might be easier to add the shafts in post if the cgi is seen BEHIND surfaces which need keying/rotoscope and are IN the light shaft

yes I also though about D-tap but how much voltage the camera can handle, if you have to lower it down closer to 12v you need more complicated adapter

v-lock batteries are also possible but they will need more work and money to get to the 4pin xlr and 12v and may need a regulator depending on voltage. Of course the gel batteries are also good with the camera if you don't have to do handheld with it

I think you can manage with NiMh tamiya batteries, for example those made for airsoft use. I use them with Konvas and Cameflex cameras and all kinds of accessories with either tamiya connectors or tamiya to 4-pin xlr adapters. the wires are quite short so you may want to make a extension for them. I recommend making a tamiya to 4pin xlr adapter with fuse holder and about 0.5m wires and making the other extension cords with tamiya connectors because they are much easier to replace and you can use factory made 4pin xlr cables also if needed, plus you don't have to change the battery connector. example of use: http://aapolettinen.blogspot.fi/2015/01/handheld-batteries-for-konvas-1-kcp.html

if you have access to a pola you can open 1 - 2 stops that way. or if you have two linear polarisers you can stack them together to get a variable nd. maybe you can even darken a UV or flat filter with rubber smoke (very fine soot from a piece of burning rubber. I don't know if it works well and if you get horrible colour shifts with it but it could definitely work to a point :lol: )

if you want to learn talking head type of interviews just buy the camera first, you can manage with the most basic 5 buck stand as long as it can hold the camera to the right direction (don't need to be a tripod, you can use it on table to get it to correct height. after you have learned the interviewing aspect of things you can start buying the other stuff. learning to capture good quality sound would probably be the next step, then learning how to light good quality stuff efficiently

I dug up my old SR3adv footage and it looks like to have pretty accurately 0.70mm edge width. And yes you CAN reverse engineer these things also according to the camera gate because some rare occasional scratching or pressure sensitization does NOT matter if it happens outside the picture area, especially because you always crop the image a bit in printing or scanning to get rid of the frame mask. the guides would be more difficult to modify, so it could be easier to just buy a modified mag as suggested. ------- Maybe I'm so used to Russian cameras that I'm unable to understand why it's so 'impossible' to modify or repair something by yourself in the field or at home ;)

you can measure a S16 film piece and find out how wide the area between the film edge and the frame edge is, and then just decide how much support you will need on that side when knowing how much there is generally available. theoretically you could also made the support side a little wider than the gate edge < > film edge area because your ground glass markings always crop a little bit and thus you probably don't use the last 0.1mm anyway. I would maybe first machine the edge to 0.6mm or 0.7mm and then add a 45° slant so that the actually support top would be 0.5 or 0.6mm wide. but difficult to say without seeing the actual rollers and I'm not a pro machinist or know how brittle the material is. there is also different ways to do this mod correctly so as long as you don't get pressure sensitisation marks or scratches it is "whatever works" based I believe :lol: the film guides would be tougher to modify, I believe you would need a cnc milling machine for the work at least? Luke said he already has two S16 mags so I suppose it would be possible to measure actual modified rollers to find out the dimensions needed :)

I calculated it SHOULD be around 0.5 - 0.6mm but I hoped someone like Dom could tell the exact width of the support edge, it is very difficult to find it from the web. I have some old footage shot with SR3 which I could use to measure the dimensions of the SR3adv gate and determine the width available but that would be unnecessary because someone already knows the exact dimensions and could just bring them up <_< The point was that one will need a metal lathe for the work, whether if letting a pro machinist to do the job or by trying to do it by yourself (that is entirely possible though the end result may be not absolutely perfect) . first it is of course necessary to find out the exact width of the edge but after that it is very straightforward unless the guides have to also be modified

That said, I think it is very important in this case to specify which kind of tools one would need to modify the rollers so one would understand the amount of work needed and could then find out which kind of place could do the actual mod and order the service more easily

Should I use the term machining for that, in Finnish it is normal to specify also the work process if it is known (eg do you use lathe or milling machine for removing the metal or in this case plastic, and if you use multiple tools for the job it is usually said that you are machining the material. So, in Finnish you would definitely "lathe the soundtrack area away". I have used metal lathe and milling machine so I know the process quite well but don't know all the pro terminology for all the processes)

You will lathe the soundtrack area of the roller's contact surface away but leave just a little narrow bit of it to support the film edge, i think it's half or quarter of a mm or something like that

The fs7 is a bit noisier than f5 so it is a good idea to overexpose it a bit. The iso1000 range is a good start. I have understood that the sensors are f5 leftovers which dont meet all the specs of the f5. The filter pack may not be exactly the same although the sensor somewhat is and the signal processing is different. The fs7 is slower to use because of the user interface and the lens mount is not sturdy which can be a problem with follow focus and bigger lenses. And it has scope problems with the slogcine mode and certain output configurations, I have had to shoot quite a lot with it using only zebras because the other scope options stopped working in the middle of the shoots. Also you may experience odd white balance setting changes after changing batteries etc. These are firmware bugs mostly but are not yet corrected fully yet.they can vary between cameras though. Our camera made these with different firmwares so i think it's more of lousy programming error than single faulty camera