Aapo Lettinen

I think the mount flexibility matters much if you use both PL and Canon EF or Nikon cameras. If you have a e-mount or mft mount camera you should buy PL mount lenses and rod mounted mount adapter for your camera. e-mount and mft are so small mounts and have so much play/bend so much that they are real pain to use with follow focus if supported only by the camera mount. So I recommend buying either PL lenses or EF lenses depending on your use and use a very good quality adapter to adapt the lens to the smaller e-mount or mft. that way you can also change the lenses more quickly (don't have to attach support directly to the CP2 primes because of the strong adapter which is supported by the rods) and don't have to shim the lenses all the time because of the mount changes, just shim them once and then use correctly shimmed adapter with your camera which is perfectly adjusted for that particular camera body (camera mount's ffd:s can vary a little if the camera is using still lens mount (EF, e-mount, mft, etc) so it is not practical to shim all your lenses to fit that particular camera and have off marks with all the other camera bodies, if you just shim your adapter you can always use lenses which are shimmed according to mount standards not cameras

they are made for much bigger market and have more optical compromises, like varying max stops across the range. they breathe less than UPs and the mechanics are more modern. one thing to consider are Cine Xenars, I've heard lots of good about them. I don't know about their Xenon series which is near the price range of Compact Primes. I think the CP2's are very good owner operator lenses especially because of the interchangeable mount. They also should SOMEWHAT match to other zeiss lenses so you can rent the ones you don't need very often and only buy a basic set which you'll use all the time

the REDs are generally speaking FIX-IT-IN-POST cameras, they are specifically made for people who want to use lots of time in post tweaking raw adjustments before they do anything else with the material. If compared to still photography, it's not like comparing raw still and jpeg, it's more like comparing raw still and 16bit or 32bit full resolution tiff recorded in-camera. you can do practically all the same things with the tiff if the in-camera image processing is working well. (and most cameras don't record uncompressed raw so you still get artefacts with it, for example jpeg artefacts. because of the raw-->rgb processing, the artefacts don't look like the same after processing than if shooting normal video so they don't add up in the post chain and are therefore usually manageable although can look weird and lower apparent resolution etc) I think the Mini will be good camera if it'll be reliable enough (not blackmagic's speciality) and the new sensor is usable. Most cameras, especially the lower end ones like Blackmagics, have usually had serious problems with the usability and user interface so I hope their design is practical in the field (not like FS7 for example which has bad viewfinder ergonomics, too complicated menus and not rigid enough lens mount)

I hope they have got rid of the FAT filesystem, it is one of the biggest disadvantages of REDs although not such a pain in the *** than cinemadng or ML raw. I don't find any info but maybe they are at last managed to switch to UDF, I don't know :) compressed rgb formats are just mandatory in today's production environment, of course you can still use raw if you have time and resources to backup and post process it. I think about 90% of people will shoot prores444 or XQ with the Ursa Mini anyway and the raw option is mostly for special use and indie films where you are either shooting very limited amount of material or where you have unlimited time in post to tweak the material (like shooting with Epic and tweaking every clip 2 hours in RedCine before even making previews :lol: )

could be easier at airport security check at least :lol: (Yes I have this Weapon and couple of batteries for it, and also couple of Tactical Cage parts and some Battle Tested gear in those bags. What do you mean I can't bring this Bomb Viewfinder to the plane :lol: )

As long as you're not using windows10 you'll be fine I think :D Anyway, if the scene is about some kind of terrorism I think it is quite unlikely for them to get military grade explosives, more likely scenario is ammonium nitrate, stolen dynamite, acetone peroxide or even mekp. But maybe you don have to be very realistic on this one and it might be even bad to make the scene too realistic

you could watch couple of Mythbusters clips, they blow up lots of stuff with C4 so you can see what a real blasting cap etc looks like so you can imitate them more easily. https://youtu.be/AwyniA5ryhY?t=14 and so on. I think almost all action films have a C4 scene or two. the coiled wires and a timer with a display and a flashing light are cliches though so you may want to think if you want to use them in your film or not :) close up of a blasting cap (detonator): https://youtu.be/01pjt_K-94M?t=2166 I think if you have an item which is closely looking like a blasting cap and just some white clay like substance it will sell the scene easily

Yeah, almost all of them are big budget films from huge studios... The list should have been named " The Greatest American Blockbusters of All Time" or something like that :D There is lots of smaller excellent American films and also lots of better films from other countries, for example Japan, France, Denmark, Soviet Union / Russia, GB, etc. One thing is that without big studio the film is not likely to get wide distribution in the US and is thus very unlikely to end up on lists like these. People usually vote films that everybody has seen, it is also much easier to justify the decisions when most of the audience has seen the films they are talking about. It is usually the same thing in Academy Awards for example, a widely distributed blockbuster is very likely to get most of the awards

meant to say "over the noise floor" :lol: anyway, I think 14 stops or more is good enough in 95% of cases and very rarely you would need something like 16+ stops. if you are, for example, shooting high contrast scene with reflective surfaces it may be useful, or with for example drone shots where you can't control the exposure 100% during flight. We had some drone shots in Spain for example which had backlit water and very high contrast, the water reflection was a bit too much for Epic Dragon which ran 3 stops of HDRx :blink:

the usable dynamic range depends a lot of the noise floor and how noisy stops are still considered usable. I think most of the current cameras have at least 1 or 2 stops less usable dynamic range than the manufacturer claims because of this reason. (you record the lowest stops and they can be seen below the noise floor but they are so noisy that they are just not usable for commercial purposes and can be very well forgotten when determining the actual dynamic range :P ) It's just like with film, you know that it can record, say, 4 stops below middle gray but you know that you can't use that last stop for anything important

Hi you all! I just wanted to inform you that according to my tests the Double Data 's manual verification mode DOES NOT WORK AT ALL in the 1.2.1 (current version) of the software. I did not find this info easily from the web so I thought I should share it in case some users are not aware of this problem. This is just for the "Data Manage" ----> "Verify..." -function and does not affect normal transfers. It can cause you trouble however because the software does not read checksums correctly in this mode because of the bug and may show that the files are OK even if you alter them or remove all of them and just leave the first text file in place which contains the checksums from the original camera media. Because of the bug, the software actually copies checksum data from this file and adds a new text file containing these checksums which it is thinking is the checksum data of the verified files. So, if you look manually through the checksum text files they seem to be OK although they have nothing to do with the new verification round. So, it basically falsifies the checksum data in this manual verification mode and green lights all the files no matter if they are altered or not or even are in the same folder anymore. I contacted the manufacturer and they don't have any bug fix release yet but they are aware of the problem and are working on it, so it is best to not use the manual verification (Data Manage -->Verify... -function) at all with this software until they get a fixed version out. As I said, the bug does not affect any normal transfers from camera card to storage, and is only in the additional manual verification which can be used afterwards if needed. You can also trust the checksum files which the program creates during normal verified transfers.

You can get continuous rec with the high bitrate h264, if i remember correctly it splits the files so fat filesystem is not a problem. You still need to test it first, too high bitrate can cause stop of recording

yeah, the range is quite similar to the range of a still raw image captured with 5D. the noise may look a bit different because of the line skipping and lower resolution / scaling so you can't gain the image as much in post as you could gain a still image. I think the compressed mode is best option for general use and raw is usable only for special purposes, for example if you need to use more noise reduction in post or if shooting gradients etc where the compression shows clearly. With ML you can also use higher than normal bit rates for h264 recording so it could solve a lot of problems you are trying to avoid with raw. I think that the ML RAW is too time/work consuming and unreliable for general shooting but for special purposes it is OK. I, for example, use it with 5D2 for underwater tests and when I have to shoot in places where the camera is at risk so I don't have to put a more expensive camera, for example FS7, to danger and can still get usable shots for doc purposes.

1.yes it is possible. you may have drop frames and take length limitations depending on your memory cards, ML version, rec settings and even the specific camera you use (some cameras react to hack firmwares better than others even if identical models) 2. you have to update the firmware of the camera which always has small possibility of "bricking" the camera if the upgrade fails. this is rare so you should be fine 3.you don't get any more range than with h264 using aggressive gamma settings but you get rid of the compression artifacts. other artifacts like moire and noise are still there, although noise reduction works better for less compressed format. it's something between 9 and 10 stops which you can get from raw at maximum if you use the noisy lowest stops 4.it depends from a lot of things and even varies if for example temperature changes or other weird things, see 1. if lowering resolution you can usually shoot at least 50 seconds continuous but it may vary from take to take so only way is to test with your actual setup 5.usually you transcode the ML's own raw format to either CinemaDNG or compressed Quicktime, for example Prores. I have made some low scale stuff by transcoding with Rawmagic to cinemadng, imported to After effects, made raw corrections, exported to 10bit prores 444 and used that for editing 6.you should be aware of possible drop frames and varying max take lengths. I suggest not to shoot dialogue or any kind of stuff which requires lots of takes, you'd be more happy with a black magic for that if you need raw and the workflow is much quicker and easier 7. you should test the noise floor you can live with, you can't expose the camera carelessly even if it's shooting raw. aliasing is also there and you should test if you can live with that, raw creating a clearer image reveals all the other imperfections more clearly

it depends a lot on what gels you use. for example CTB heats a LOT more than a CTO (you can see this by comparing the transmission percentage. if a gel has for example 25% transmission then you can assume that about 75% of the visible light hitting the gel converts to heat (maybe less because the gel surface also reflects small amount of the light back to the fixture) . and that is A LOT of heat if you are using for example 5K tungsten behind a CTB

probably for cooling. if you have dense gels they would build up lots of heat and the one closer to the lens may melt at least a bit

you would need a holder so that the gel does not warp in the filter frame. I don't use wratten gels but I use normal light filters for special fx and have Lee plastic 4x4 holders for that purpose, they seem to work OK for this. Gels damage very easily so if you could get two thin 4x4 glass plates you could sandwich the gel between them

the Tri-X is acetate base film. tape splicing is easiest to do and you can open/change/repair the splices easily if you want. they usually show very clearly in projector so for final product other techniques would be better

yeah it can be done in post if the colour channels are not clipping and you are shooting colour and adding the b/w effect in post. a pola can also help a lot

the only bad thing I can think of about Master Primes is that they are physically quite large compared to alternatives. UP's are very good lenses although they may breathe a little bit. If the physical size is an issue you can also consider S4's, the look is different but may suit the story very well

I recommend 0.5ml pipettes for the oiling, you only need two three drops per bearing

All the konvases I have bought have been pretty dirty inside, one even had little rocks in it and all of them had lots of dust and film chips so it may be a good idea to open the camera for cleaning and clean the movement parts. You just have to be very careful to maintain the flange focal distance and not to break the mirror shutter. Turn the shutter to viewing position before opening. If you dont dare to open it by yourself at least oil the tachometer bearing, there is instructions in the manual. Dont use oil to the gears, especially the tachometer wormgear, it will spread all over the camera interiors (I accidentally dropped some oil there once, took whole day to clean it up). The shutter bearing is not difficult to oil but the oil spreads easily to the bottom surface of the shutter and will fly all over the camera if you add too much, the shutter rotates about 1400rpm at 24fps so it will spread quite effectively. For such a old camera you should really clean and oil the movement but that is only possible if you open the camera body. Dont dismantle the movement mirror shutter groundglass combo unless you want to spend great time reassembling and timing it. It might not even be possible to reassemble it correctly without special tools so if you are going to shoot features with the camera and really need to disassemble the movement and shutter for complete service you should send it to a professional, for examle olex, who can retime and adjust the critical parts correctly. Opening the main body and cleaning and lubricating the movement and gears is very straightforward, as said. Just dont disassemble the movement or mirror shutter/groundglass combo and also check the ffd after putting it back together and you should be fine

It may cause small scratches and also loosen small amount of remjet which then sticks to the emulsion side. has not been problem for me often but it is better to avoid this whenever possible

another sample https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teuvaVQO42A&feature=youtu.be full resolution screenshot from the 4k prores master: https://www.dropbox.com/s/dij9ukbevv1ub6l/konvas_scanner_4k_sample_frame_from_4k_prores.tiff?dl=0

I am working on a film scanner system I made out of Konvas 1m camera, it is very good for testing the lenses and such and also for b/w art projects. here is a small sample from yesterday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paHQC762j3s The scanner project: http://aapolettinen.blogspot.fi/2015/05/making-film-scanner-out-of-konvas-camera.html