Aapo Lettinen

If you want an on-set job, then you have to get your experience and contacts from that sector and build your career around it. If you want to do post production, then again concentrate on that field and get lots of experience and contacts to make it happen. Switching back and forth does not work like Tyler said. I know that too because I have worked the past 7 years in post prod as well. A very important lesson about filmmaking is that you will get more and more the same type of job you are known for. And generally nothing else. So if you start being a catering and you are good at it then they will remember you when they will need someone to do that job again. They never call you if they need a AC or a Runner or a DIT because they only know that you are suitable for one job position and they know you have experience doing it. So if you want to be a Cinematographer, then you have to do cinematography related stuff. No one will hire you as a cinematographer if you are known for doing post work (then they will only hire you for post work and nothing else and will get their DP from somewhere else).

it is very different path to advance in Post production and Editing than in Camera + G&E. Additionally, if you want to make feature films or other high end stuff you need to choose between Editing and Post Production as well because they are done by different people in different companies who are specialised in that type of work and nothing else. You will need internships in any case but you can easily spend/waste 5 or 10 years in a 'wrong' department dreaming you would be a Cinematographer one day. Sure you can do both color and assistant editing if you choose to do lower end projects like reality etc. But in higher level stuff you have to be so good at what you do that it is mandatory to specialise early on because it takes years and years to get to that level. For example it generally takes at least from 10 to 15 years of extremely hard and concentrated work to get to a level where you can shoot feature films as a Cinematographer. You will never get to that level if wanting to do a little bit of everything. It is totally fine to be a jack of all trades but if you want to pursue your cinematography career then you really need to concentrate mostly on actually shooting stuff and leave the edit and post departments to someone else to handle

there is block style cameras like the Z-Cam E2-M4 and the similar style system from Panasonic. they have M43 sensor and are relatively small and handy. you will need a external monitor though

btw I researched a little how it would work to use a GPSDO as a timing reference for a movie camera like the CP16R. It is purely theoretical but it is possible though highly unpractical. The most usable solution would be to attach a factory made Chinese gpsdo module like the zyt-gpsdo3 to the camera and use the 10MHz output as a reference for the custom crystal sync electronics. The reasons why this is not very useful in real world situations: GPSDO takes lots of adjustment and calibration time to start tracking satellites and to calibrate the internal ocxo of it accurately enough to have any accuracy benefit as a timing reference. The electronics persons here know that OCXO's need some time to stabilize as well. Why this is not useful in a movie camera application is as follows: - the antenna of the gpsdo needs to stay pretty much completely still during the whole shoot. you can move the camera and the gpsdo box itself but the antenna needs to stay as still as possible. Basically you have couple of meters of cable to move the gpsdo box around. If you need to take the camera further away, you need to leave the gpsdo box to the floor and use a cable to extend the 10MHz output to the camera. This might work for studio applications but on location, pretty challenging. if you need to move the antenna constantly, you lose all the benefits of the gpsdo accuracy and would as well use a simple calibrated ocxo for about the same accuracy. - you need to feed constant power to the gpsdo all the time and because they all contain OCXO's they have relatively high power draw for needing to be always on all the time (not practical for battery applications). You can't simply switch it off when changing batteries etc. Ideally you would bring it to the shooting location at least a day or couple of days before the actual shoot and would power it up, then leave it there on mains power to self calibrating and tracking satellites. You would never switch it off or move it during the shoot. If you would need to move to another location, you would need to have another gpsdo which is installed to that location at least a day beforehand and left on to track satellites there, staying completely still. ---- It is possible to use a OCXO as a internal timing reference for a movie camera. Then you would not need gps signal but would still need to feed constant power to the camera and allow the oscillator to warm up before you can shoot with the camera. You don't need limiting antennas or cables but still need constant power fed to the camera and cannot switch it off between takes. This takes away some of the benefits of using a film camera (film camera does not consume much power unless you are actually rolling film or using the video tap). I have some used CTI ocxo's which I could use in a movie camera no problem. Or build a system using a Vectron or similar ocxo. Or even a new expensive one. But it is just too unpractical to be an option unless someone really wants to make crazy electronics installations and not actually shoot anything with the camera. I would rather not have a camera which takes about 1 ampere of extra power all the time and you cannot switch it off in any case unless you want to wait an hour for it to warm up and stabilize again ? One would still need to calibrate the ocxo regularly by using a gpsdo or a rubidium clock as a reference and having a really good frequency counter available and expertise to take into account all the probe capacitances etc. basic stuff for the calibration to be reliable. It is the same with the TCXO's : one can add one trimmer on the board to make the calibration mechanically easy but it still cannot be done correctly without high quality special test equipment and experience and having a reliable and very accurate timing reference. It is not something one wants to do on field during the shooting day. ------ I have a very busy Summer so the cp16r crystal sync system will be delayed a little and will most likely be available in about October November. I have the system fully designed now but I don't have time to test it anytime soon. It does use tcxo as a timing reference but I did not add any 10MHz input for gpsdo because that it useless and does not have any real accuracy benefit ? (most of my designs use a normal quartz crystal with a additional calibration trimmer to calibrate it accurately. This is much more accurately system than the original CP16R crystal board which uses a plain quartz oscillator without calibrating possibility. The reason why I am using the tcxo with the CP16R board is because it takes less space on the circuit board even when needing a separate voltage regulator and capacitors to run correctly)

it is much easier to make up all kinds of excuses why you CAN'T shoot a movie with your current equipment than to actually just stop complaining and make the darn movie. After all, about 99% of people just seem to collect film cameras and not actually shoot anything with them. they just love to compare their technical specs and nitpick about their differences and manufacturing quality of the parts. The "I will shoot a movie with this gear soon" argument is just meant to justify the money and time spent on the gear when the wife asks what the heck is that new pile of transport cases in the livingroom ?

if you are shooting in low light situations and/or your lens choices are limited, then it makes lots of sense to use Super16. For example if you need fast wide angles then it may be more practical to convert the camera than to try to get away with the N16 gate and cropping. Personally I have always used N16 for everything. Part of the reason is that I don't have any reasonably converted S16 camera available and the main reason is that the cameras are pretty old with dim viewfinders so I am always shooting with low speed stocks to be able to see enough through the viewfinder. Practically it means that I am always shooting either 50D or 250D or the about 100ISO b/w stocks. No reason to shoot 500T because it is more expensive, I can't see anything through the viewfinder and you need to be more careful with the 500T if storing the raw stock or shot footage for long before developing (budget reasons)

I might have one of my own crystal sync modifications available in a month or two after finishing working with another motor first. It is a one with the 4-teeth rubber coupling instead of the two prong metal coupling used in some motors

their b/w films are of great quality and they have excellent customer service ( I am ordering directly from them nowadays) . There is no doubt they can make good quality color negative mp film if they want to and if there is a demand for it

blackmagic design has very shitty quality control on their products. for example in a movie I am working on there has been three Ursa Mini G2's and only one of them has worked correctly so far. the second one has errors and freezing multiple times a day, especially when shooting in sub zero temperatures. One of them was broken literally right out of the box, it did not turn on at all and had to be returned immediately. the third one is working correctly so far. I have never seen a movie camera being broken right out of the box. Every manufacturer in the World at least checks that their product can be turned on before it is shipped... well, Blackmagic does not?

That reference image presents digital optical tracks which can only be made in the lab, not in camera. The variable area track can be made in camera using a small slit and a rotating mirror altered by magnetic field generated by the audio signal. Most in camera optical tracks are variable density which is the simplest one to create

35mm always has more picture information. It is exactly the same film stock than 16mm but cut wider

35mm is generally easier to scan because you have higher quality original so it may need a little less tweaking in scanning. Less grain and better stability to begin with. 16mm would be more cost effective if the raw stock and developing are normally priced. All the scanning places here are charging per minute of material so the price per minute for scanning is the same for 16 and 35

It is not possible to combine multiple hard sources to one beam without having serious drawbacks like multiple shadows. I would suggest having the par ungelled if it is barely bright enough. Or you can try to replace it with a 2k tungsten source. Personally I like to use 1.2k hmi par for this type of stuff if the spotlight does not need very sharp edges. If the very sharp edges are needed, then you will need a leko. It is possible to create the spotlight with one source and then light the subject from the sides with other sources which are flagged off of the stage surface to hide their position

You mean the original motors? They are pretty rare. There may be some on eBay and some of the forum members may have spare ones. If you need a crystal sync one, the most practical way would be to adapt a regular brushed or brushless motor to work mechanically with the camera and then let me or az spectrum to make crystal sync electronics to the motor to enable crystal speeds. It would be practical to make maybe 4 or 5 of these motors and to keep one, then sell the rest to cover the costs. You would need to take care of all the financial risks of course

You still have to worry about the 2/3 compensation if wanting the same shadow detail. And you will lose a little bit of highlight detail because the blue is always overexposed when shooting without the filter. The point was that it may be more practical to shoot without needing to worry about the correction filters and the colors can be corrected to look very similar if grading digitally. They are not exactly the same but will totally work for the audience

The vari temp led light have half of the leds daylight balanced and half of them tungsten balanced. When changing the temperature one changes the dimming of the daylight ones vs tungsten ones. On tungsten setting the daylight ones are completely off and on daylight setting the tungsten balanced leds are off. This means that you can only get about half of the maximum output unless using the intermediate temperature where both of the leds are fully on. That is somewhere around 4300K. This is why I preferer daylight balanced led lights: they have about double the light output compared to a similar wattage variable temp light. Led lights are low power anyway so it does not make sense to waste half of the output just to enable a feature which is relatively rarely needed on higher power lights (on low power ones it is useful but on the 200-600w range it is complete wasting by my opinion)

Variable temperature leds have the highest output when adjusted to intermediate temperatures around 4300K. If adjusted to either end the theoretical maximum output is much lower. So if going for a cold look with vari temp leds it would make sense to use the tungsten stock so that you dont need to have too high color temp on the led and can thus get higher output from it. If using a fixed temp daylight led then it would not matter that much. But most people go for the varitemp ones so it does make a difference if wanting to have as high output as possible

sad to hear that the original electronics died. But if the camera is mechanically functioning correctly and the original motor itself is intact, I can try to build new electronics for it in July or August after first modifying my own camera in the Summer.

Further info about the CP16R modification I am working on: - Availability: August or September 2021. - 12 Crystal Speeds built in and the possibility to use external speed box as a reference too. This is to save space on the back panel of the camera. - basic internal footage counter with end of the film warning (similarly working than the original counter, just much more modern and reliable) - accessory port which enables using a external speed box which allows selecting any speed from 10 to 40fps in 1/1000th fps increments and has a display which shows basic information like the amount of footage shot and remaining footage, etc. ----------------- So the camera would work without the external box as a basic system with pretty similar functions than the original CP16R except that there would be 12 selectable Crystal Speeds (instead of the original camera's one crystal speed and couple of non-crystal speeds) Will need to complete the design to be able to say anything about the prices but probably the modification of the camera body to the 12-speed model would be about 700 to 800 USD and the external speed box something like from 200 to 300 USD. I am working towards the about 1K total price of the modification + shipping but we'll see ? I am making the 12-speed modification to my own camera anyway and can post images when getting it ready sometime in the Summer ?

it is available in eBay too though the price is a little higher due to eBay costs: https://www.ebay.com/itm/50Hz-60Hz-Crystal-Oscillator-Module/254889709824?hash=item3b589c5100:g:hPkAAOSwraBgQSxw

I made a batch of 50Hz / 60Hz Crystal Frequency Modules if someone needs a stable frequency reference for pilot tone applications or other uses. It is a pretty neat and reliable design with accuracy of about 40ppm (parts per million) and designed for continuous use. The output frequency is selected with a jumper before startup. If anyone is interested, these are for sale for 50usd a piece + shipping. I can make more if needed. Designed and assembled by me with each board individually tested. 1 year warranty. DM me if interested :)

lum vs sat curve was what I was using as well in Resolve

a quickly made test example: the original shot with just the basic LUT and some saturation added:

saturation roll off is actually pretty easy to do in post as well (the accuracy may not be the same depending on your capturing format but it is possible to do with standard grading programs)

if the images look nice for a person then it is only because they were shot on one's favourite capturing medium. And if they are not pleasing enough then it is only because the person shooting the images made a mistake and somehow made them look bad. I have been listening this type of stuff for 25 years too. The camera is talented, not me... because the camera can make good images by itself and if the image happens to look bad it is caused by me making a mistake. Poor me didn't have the magic button which would have automatically made everything look Hollywood by adding the standard "film look" over it ?