Aapo Lettinen

pentacon six lenses can be used with an intermediate locking adapter on PL, no need to modify the lenses themselves at all. By my experience they tend to not be very high quality on small formats compared to other options. Don't bother with the cheapest ones if you go with Pentacon6 mount lenses. the MIR and Kaleinar are not very good by my tests and don't have any interesting look to them. Zeiss Jena ones are OK but the ones I have tried did not perform very well on full aperture and should be stopped down approx. 3 stops to be viable option on smaller than FF formats. Additionally the Zeiss Jena ones have a bit counterintuitive iris mechanics and the iris adjustment can stop working correctly if you store them for long or if they are in bad shape in general or if they just don't like your face or the movie project in general (there is couple of springs inside which transfer the iris adjustment forward and the spring balance can easily go wrong which makes them stick to fully open or fully closed aperture or somewhere in between)

Why one would not attach a screw to the outside of the 1" core so that it would grab the slot on the 2" core the film is on? Then one WOULD HAVE the friction adjustment magically enabled and it took one minute to do ? I personally use the Arri core adapters on both axles so the cores fit to them and can use the friction adjustment.

I use a rewinder which has friction adjustments. I can just tune the friction when the feed roll starts to get smaller so that the film is wound relatively tight but does not slip on either rolls during the process. I don't need to touch the film to control friction so will get less static as well

Luckily no one handles film rolls like that so it should not happen in real life. In the case of a total newbie one would learn from single try that that's not gonna work very well :D the palm technique is much better anyway. In the case of the outermost film layer falling off to the side when winding it, yes it of course can happen but you will usually hear it and can always try and feel if there is any extra mess where it shouldn't be. out of curiosity, were they factory new rolls or clearance stock? Did you track the batches? Older vs totally fresh?

What do you mean by it being "loosely winded"? I have seen that only once with factory roll and that was an Ilford bulk roll, not Kodak. Movie film should be rolled tight from the factory, otherwise it may scratch itself on the feed side when the film layers are slipping against each other. Kodak doing loose rolls regularly would be unbelievable. But for lab rewound stuff it could be possible (that is not factory film though)

in the past they tortured animals to make the art better but current laws don't enable that so torturing people must do. Everyone knows that there is no art without suffering.... otherwise it would just be a good movie. no survival story to market it to the audience

hungry and frustrated crew makes better art, just watch all the great shoestring indie productions out there :P

Master Primes are crappy lenses, don't buy them ? they flare even when every youtuber claims that they should be "flare free" !

I have those cotton gloves somewhere but never use them when handling unexposed negative. they have couple of disadvantages, the first being that they make it more difficult to handle the film ends by feel and the second is that they create some lint and fibres which may go to the film and cause lots of dust and hair problems in camera (at least the gloves I have here) . If using rubber gloves you risk static electricity and/or spreading the talcum powder on you films if the gloves are the type which uses the powder. One is never touching the actual picture side of the emulsion when spooling down. At least not the area where you actually record the image. The tails may be touched extensively but that does not matter in the end if there is some fingerprints on the tail of the film which is not used for actual image anyway. Depending on how you spool them down (straight-straight OR cross-cross) you will not cause any problems even if testing with bare fingers how much film you have left on a roll because you are then touching the backing of the film, NOT the emulsion side where the fingerprints would show. The disadvantage of using bare cores and platters is that the film layers may accidentally drop from the side more easily creating a mess. Small pieces of tape will help with this so that you can secure the film whenever needed (like when cutting it in the dark in the middle of the roll, that is one situation where it will accidentally unspool very easily)

is "gimble" even a real word? ("Kimble" is a popular board game sold here but I don't know what a heck the "gimble" is ? ) It goes to the same category than "Cannon" lenses and "Arryflex" cameras and so on

the Arri rental still has it listed on the page BTW. Seems to be around 32kg / 70lbs with the smallest magazine. It is just like someone superglued two or three fully equipped 535's together to a big solid chunk and then trying to shoot something with it. It is more handy than a blimped Mitchell but you get the idea. See why they tend to like Panavision's 65mm stuff more? anyone like to try that 32kg beast on a steadicam? https://www.arrirental.de/camera/65-mm-film/arriflex-765/

I don't understand this whole whining about cameras being picky about the loop size. I am regularly shooting with Konvas cameras and they jam if the loop size is wrong by ONE perforation. Still rarely having any problems. Not a single jam in the past 2 or 3 years

As I have understood, the main reason why 765 is and was rarely used is because it is heavy as hell and big and thus challenging to use for modern cinematography. That is why Panavision has been more popular for 65mm work. It is not that the Arri would not be a good camera, it is just impractical for most 65mm work

our local rental house seems to have the cn-e prime in PL (haven't asked if they were custom modified) and the Sumires can be purchased in PL as well

I meant that one would want to use friction adjustment knob INSTEAD OF using a hand directly on the film roll. Sorry for the typo :) Personally I often split directly to 100ft daylight spools and then wind them back to another daylight spools to get the winding correctly. One could also use a metal spool as Tyler mentioned. OR one could wind down to another core using a platter for support on one side. That is a bit trickier but is useful if you want to first wind everything on reverse roll and only then start to split it down. I prefer leaving every daylight spool a bit short instead of doing one shorter one. You may get couple of feet variance between spools but that is pretty much as accurate you can do at home

you will want to avoid static discharge when spooling down camera negatives in dark. The static flashes will make very weird marks on the film resembling blue streaky flashes coming from the film edge to the picture area. So you may not want to use the kind of gloves which create large amounts of static (for example nitrile gloves have been bad in my tests) and will want to use the rewinder friction adjustments instead or using a hand directly on the film spool to maintain the desired friction when spooling down.

you will need to spool from 400ft on core B-wind EI roll to 100ft B-wind EI daylight spools. I assume that is a 16mm winder? it should have square center axles where you can fit daylight spools. For attaching a core to it you will need a core adapter like the ones in Arri SR magazines. You will need to get the perforations, the winding and the emulsion on the correct side so you will need to wind it two times. If you attach the 400ft on core to the left, you can wind either all of it to the right side or some specified amount of it if you want. Then remove the left side core and the adapter and attach a daylight spool there and wind back to the left side the amount you want. You may want to make a measuring tool which you can use in the dark which tells you where the outer edge of the film should be on the daylight spool to have 100ft there. You need to wind either cross-cross OR straight-straight from spool to spool so that you will maintain the correct B-wind and emulsion in. if using 2R films you could get by with single passage if you don't mind the keykode numbers running in the wrong direction but with normal single side perforated film you will need 2 passes to get it right

And of course I made a crappy YouTube video about this procedure as well :D How to shoot stills film with a movie camera

absolutely... there is lots of differences in many areas, especially the grain texture. part of it is that the colour negative does not technically have "grains" anymore, they are just coloured stains on emulsion layers on the places where the original grains used to be before they were bleached away. additionally they can be on 3 to 6 separate layers (some films have double layers per colour channel, one with high sensitivity for shadow detail and one with low sensitivity for highlights) , this makes the texture look totally different from the b/w negatives which have one or two layers of real grain forming the whole image instead of the 3 to 6 layers of colour stains stacked over each other. There is also something special in home processed films which can't quite be emulated easily. the additional benefit with home processing is that one can really get creative with the developing and try different approaches easily. the disadvantage is that there tends to be more scratches and dust, and also more variance between developing batches than with lab processing. This limits the applications for home processing (like the length limitations and drying challenges do as well) but it is a great experimenting tool and can be very useful for special projects or limited segments/scenes on a longer project.

Orwo UN54 and 74 are also wonderful stocks for diy processing though I have sometimes managed to get emulsion cracks due to using too cold water with it. The double-x is also good but I don't personally like the texture and shadow detail much though have only tested it with two developers and it could probably be possible to get more out of it if experimenting a bit more. At the moment I use Fomapan 400 negative film on 35mm bulk rolls and it has very nice retro look. They don't sell it in 16mm but I would try Orwo if you can get it from somewhere for reasonable price

positive (reversal) stock has lovely colours and contrast when projected on film but it can be a real pain to scan to digital to get most out of it. the contrast is difficult to handle to most scanners and you will get less room for any adjustments during scanning or post prod. this is specifically on motion picture stock. I have not done much still work but as I have understood the photo negative scanners are much more capable than most motion picture intended units so the stills scanner would get much more out of the similar contrast slide than a MP scanner could in reasonable time and effort. Additionally you could use considerable amount of time per frame when trying to get the best out of a stills frame whereas moving image has much more limitations in this regard. It can be nice to be able to watch the camera original directly on a projector but realistically speaking no one really uses that option nowadays unless for home movies. It has no value on any kind of distribution application which is why reversal has never seen much use on MP use in the first place. Negative is much easier to handle and duplicate and it enables sound work and much safer editing. When distributing digitally the negative enables digital grading but if using reversal you pretty much need to nail the look in camera because post adjustments are extremely limited and you will lose even more of it if the scanning is not top notch. I personally like the look of Fuji Vivid stocks but they have always needed more telecine time for being higher contrast (more adjustments needed on telecine/scanning) so that the transfer has been more expensive. On low contrast stocks like Vision line or Eterna 400T you could almost transfer one-light with only couple of adjustments per roll if having very hot highlights or dark shadows. It just costs more to transfer because of the time needed. Reversal is much more demanding and the lower end scanners can't even handle it properly without crushing everything

You can't substitude a steadicam with a gimbal. Sometimes they can be used for same type of stuff but the results and feel are different. One of the problems with small gimbals and lightweight setups is that they don't remove the perspective + parallax shift even if they otherwise stabilise perxectly. You will notice this extremely well when being close to subject. It can even make the shot unusable whereas the mass/inertia balanced system (steadicam) might have a better change depending on the shot. Ideally you would use a dolly when shooting precise stuff or very close to subjects but whatever tool can be used if it produces the results you like. I use the AK4000 gimbal with mirrorless and dslr for lightweight stuff and steadicam or full sized Ronin for everything else if dolly track is impractical due to logistics

when considering a camera purchase I use to divide the budget in half. max.50% for the actual camera and at least 50% for lenses and accessories. That tends to work for low budget pretty well if you don't have all the accessories beforehand (all the needed lenses, support, monitoring and power) . helps to balance things out ? You may want to look carefully the lenses you would like to use. For indie films you can go either with modern lower end still zooms/primes or you can use vintage glass (some of it is affordable and good quality, I recommend trying Nikon AI-S primes and Pentax Super Takumars and SMC Takumars for starters if you are interested in low budget indie glass. both of them have very good mechanics if they are in good condition... by my opinion some of the Takumars can have almost as smooth focusing as real cine lenses if they are in good mechanical condition)

true... digital post of film captured image can get very complicated on some projects whereas digital post can be very simple sometimes on a good day :) the film scanning technology affects the final image and post prod pipeline considerably and it needs to be planned carefully which stuff to correct where to maintain efficiency. For example if you need to expose differently, develop differently, scan differently or just grade differently to get the desired shadow or highlight result. Film has less correction headroom in post than current digital capturing if you want to maintain consistent look and texture. Yes film highlights can be surprisingly flexible when trying to get details out of them in scanning but the shadow correction range is minimal and you will affect the grain amount /texture of the image considerably more than when doing similar adjustment on current low noise digital raw materials

film has challenging logistics if you need fast turnaround and shoot lots of it per day. learning to use any camera is pretty easy and should take from 5 minutes to one day depending on what it is and how much experience the user has from similar systems. Post workflow needs to be known well no matter which format is used. For most modern uses the digital is a simpler choice and young people tend to expect the wysiwyg and unlimited undo buttons