Aapo Lettinen

Digital cameras are never future proof. You have to calculate how quickly you will get the purchase price back and base your decision on that. In two years you will probably update to the next camera model. Better to purchase only when absolutely needed and as late as possible and then try to work like a madman with the gear to grab as much money as you can with it before it goes obsolete and needs to be upgraded. Personally I only want to purchase equipment which is difficult or impossible or expensive to rent locally like specific lower end camera models, onboard recorders, steadicam and gimbals, underwater gear, some drone models, special lenses. No need to own the Alexa Mini or S4 lens set, they can be rented from anywhere for a good price. But if you need a Konvas or Bolex or a set of spherical Lomos or a remote controlled underwater camera it may not be as easy because they are not highly demanded stuff which everyone uses daily and the rental houses thus don't have them. If you do lots of doc work then the fx9 would be a great choice. for narrative work the lenses and support gear are the main problem I think... you can't get really good cine lenses without spending a fortune and the investment will pay itself back slowly. And you will probably choose a set which could be easily rented for affordable price from the nearest rental house whenever you need it. In the case of the Gemini you would have money for the camera but not for the lenses. with FX9 you could get a good camera and reasonable quality doc /corporate / music video lenses and when a feature comes up you can add a PL adapter , fit in the same primes than the main camera and shoot second unit or other stuff with it. OR you could rent the higher end lenses if the customer demands them on music video /corporate/commercial shoots and keep your own camera. (personally I prefer owning lenses though. A good digital camera serves you 3 to 5 years but a good lens set serves you a lifetime. )

the Krasnogorsk cameras are notorious of jamming if the sprocket roller is installed incorrectly or if it's shifted a little. It can be installed multiple ways but there tends to be only one position where it does not jam occasionally. If it was the roller issue then it can be corrected relatively easily by adjusting the roller position

those 100ft capacity Lomo spiral tanks are extremely rare and you will probably not find one anywhere no matter how much you are willing to pay for it :( . the ones possible to get easily are the upb-1a models which can process either two 15m (50ft) rolls of 8mm or 16mm film at the same time on two stacked spirals OR one 15m (50ft) roll of 35mm film if you remove the middle spiral plate and load the remaining assembly carefully (no center support then for the top plate to keep it the proper distance away unless you manufacture said support part by yourself) . If wanting to develop the full 100ft by yourself you may need to use bucket processing OR one of those "Morse" reel to reel tanks or their Soviet copies which are pretty similar in operation. (There is one of those Soviet ones on eBay right now, I purchased the other one if someone wonders where it disappeared so quickly ? )

you will need a solenoid or a servo which presses the "run button" on the camera. then you can run a cable and button to start the camera remotely. and you will need to fabricate some kind of custom attachment to mount a mini cctv camera to the viewfinder. you may need to trial and error with the cctv camera lenses to get the least annoying image out of it. you will need to use the original spring motor. the K3 is not that useful camera for very serious work to justify heavy and expensive modifications to electronic motor (even crystal motor). it can be done but I would not bother because there is much better cameras for that kind of use if you need them. You may need to have remote focus as well depending on what you do. Preferably with a little bit more powerful motor than for example the Nucleus Nano which is amongst the cheapest ones (that motor would probably not work with the K3's primes very well because of the low torque. With very easy focusing lenses like AI-S Nikkors it works fine) Probably you will get tired to the K3 gimbal setup after couple of days or weeks but it is an interesting experimentation nevertheless. I did some experimentation with full sized Ronin gimbal and Konvas 1KCP a while ago. have not finished the video tap for it yet so it is in progress but it is fully possible to use this kind of setups if you are used to rigging them. Not rocket science at all, they behave just like any other camera except the balance shift when the film is running from spool to spool. Practical? sometimes, yes. Most of the time, maybe...

one does not usually need the 4k monitor for GRADING itself and it would need to be pretty large screen to benefit anything from it. But some kind of full resolution quality control device is essential and it better be as large screen size as possible to detect compression artifacts and sharpness problems. You will want to check compression and sharpness with the large screen, the colour stuff can be done with smaller real grading monitor. I personally do dailies grading with calibrated 27" display but the quality control part with a uhd 75" tv which is by my opinion just enough to detect problems if the material is intended for cinema release. There surely is better options for large screen quality control if wanting to spend tens of thousands to it but the as-large-as-possible-consumer-TV is the best one can do if not having budget for over 65" full 4k grading monitor. the problem with "4K" tv's is that they are not DCI4k but UHD so a little bit of scaling or side cropping is needed when viewing a dci image. Documentaries may be made in UHD from the beginning so it should be a non issue then. Just don't grade with that consumer tv, it is not enough for that job even if properly calibrated. it can be used for client preview during grading though, it might be good enough for that even if the colors vary a bit compared to the real grading monitor. the client is probably more happy with the larger image size and the small nuances are less important

I think that using heavy lighting equipment will slow you down and make the end result worse than working with lightweight gear and taking advantage of the natural light. You will need to know your locations very well to know which times of day the sun position is perfect for a scene. then you will just bounce and reflect the sunlight as needed and need to work very fast before the sun changes position. With lots of pre-planning and precise schedule it should work great but your scenes can't then be very long or complicated. try to choose a day when the sunlight will be consistent (no clouds at all or full overcast the whole day) . You can have battery powered led panels as a backup but they need to be easy and fast to setup whenever needed. You could use frames and silk to soften harsh sunlight but setting them up will slow you down considerably (there may not even be enough room to use them in the jungle anyway) and you will need a larger crew (though still easier than using hmi and generators in that kind of location) . it could be possible to add a small portable generator which would be just enough to run a 1.2k or 1.8k hmi to create sunlight effect on small couple of meters areas if absolutely needed. But as said you will need to work FAST and any kind of bigger lighting package will slow you down. I would see the biggest issue being the massive green ambience you tend to get when shooting around and under vegetation. You might want to have SOMETHING to try to cancel that out which is why I would want to take some led panels there if nothing else. otherwise it tends to be super green in the shadows and the sunspots still normal looking which looks kind of weird. surely there is some Indian productions where you could see how others are shooting in similar situations?

As Phil said it is pretty impossible to recommend any solution without knowing the specifics. As a general note, the logistics in that kind of location tend to be very challenging and probably the location is not easily accessible for big trucks and lifts/cranes so you are provably down to using small under 2.5k hmi:s on close to ground level with portable generators if you need additional light. Led lighting is also an option though not as powerful as hmi. Getting your lights high up over the trees is pretty impossible without the cranes/lifts of at least 150/200ft high and being next to a good road. Rigging the lights to the actual trees will take forever and will not look the same though could work if you have plenty of time and people trained and capable of doing that safely. I think a good gaffer can figure out some solutions for you if seeing the actual locations. One possibility is to use lightweight led lighting as backup and mainly just shape the natural light and trying to find good locations and times of day to shoot when the natural light looks great

they are meant for situations where the air is moving relative to the mic, whether you are outdoors or not. so if you are shooting indoors in a situation where the air moves (like near ventilation or opening and closing door etc) then it might help using the screen. You might do with only a foam windscreen or a zeppelin type system without the fur. as a side note, that type of windscreen shown in your picture is not the best when recording outdoors. It is cheap and compact yes but it does not take the wind noise off very well if you have any harder than the most trivial air movement. The zeppelin style screens with the fur are pretty mandatory in most outdoor situations and they are not that expensive considering that one lasts maybe 10 years or more in normal use. the point of the zeppelin style ones is to get more airspace between the mic and the windscreen to calm down the turbulence more. they have the added benefit of having better shockmounts for the mic which reduces handling noise a little more than those quirky rubber things used in those cheaper systems

It is cheaper if you need to record lots of material without on-set backup possibilities. Having a true uhd or 4k monitoring does not hurt either if doing more serious stuff with the camera. I don't see the lack of sdi as a big issue, there is cheap converters which can do the trick if sdi is needed

https://www.postproduction.be

something like Ursa Mini Pro G2 could be more useful in that price range. I think one could benefit a little from the interchangeable lens mount as well and the framerates and raw would be a huge benefit. if the customer specifically asks for that Alexa model and you will get most of your investment back from that single job then it would be no risk but I would not purchase a HD camera nowadays unless having a specific use for it which would pay back the whole bill very quickly ( like a live streaming job or something similar) . As others mentioned one needs to calculate the other expenses as well. The tripod for full size Alexa can easily be 5 to 10k, a usable quality lens set at least 8k or so (probably you would go with Xeens or with some kind of lower end zoom) . batteries and chargers maybe 3 or 4k . monitoring and follow focus (remote focus would be preferable) from 5k upwards. recoding media can cost anything but 2k would be more than enough for it if only shooting HD? throw in couple of K's for great quality ND filters and usable quality mattebox as well. the filters can easily be 500 bucks a piece and you really can't cheap on them because it will show instantly in the final image. the tripod and PL lenses and batteries are the biggest additional cost with the Alexa compared to more modern cameras. With other cameras it would be possible to use nice affordable vintage glass like spherical Lomos but I have understood most of them don't fit any Alexas or Amiras so one would need to stick with only couple of modern cheap PL glass options like Xeens or alternatively purchase the better ones which means 10 or 20k PER LENS.

I am not a big fan of Blackmagic products but the Pocket4k or 6k might work pretty well for the OP's use. one of the advantages is integrated display which simplifies using it quickly and traveling with it (though may be hard to operate on any other than eye level) . the main advantage is them being simple packages but still good recording quality. you will probably need external battery though for most real uses unlike with most other small cameras which complicates the operating a little bit. there is also the disadvantage of having only HD hdmi output so there is no way to use external recorders with it. for onboard monitors the hd output should be enough

the local broadcast store claims that it already has a small quantity of the 6K model in stock. If that's true it is really really impressive of Blackmagic. Finally they being able to deliver SOMETHING in time ? I am boycotting their cameras for now so not going buy this one any time soon but pretty great thing anyway that they have something out already and not next year ? (I would need PL mount anyway so the 6K model would not do and the 4K model has too small sensor to be usable with the PL lenses I want to use. If they would have the 6K model with MFT mount then it would be pretty interesting for me )

here is a DIY housing project I am working on. Something similar style could work for your application if you can get someone to built it for you. This is just a prototype and I will change the design on next one but you will get the idea. This is made out of 10mm Lexan sheet (because I got leftover pieces of it for cheap) and the plastic dome is purchased from eBay. More high quality dome would be ideal for you though. I recommend trying to find the plastic material of at least 2cm thick if you want to do a housing this way... otherwise it is challenging to seal it properly because not having enough room for it. This is just a first prototype after all and I will just do basic tests with it so it will do for couple of weeks of use I hope ?

there is also a great change of getting something knocked off when the camera hits the water at great force when jumping in. The custom underwater housing option would probably be the best bet especially if you want to get a clear image above the surface too. there is also the weighting issue. you need to balance the housing to be somewhat neutral in water which means you will need additional weights in it with that lightweight a camera. that means the camera setup is NOT lightweight on land and operating it may be more challenging than one would think at first. I don't know the exact dimensions but I suspect the custom housing would weight something between 5 and 10kg with that camera inside because it has considerable external volume even when the camera by itself weights close to nothing.

the tricky things with underwater stuff is how you waterproof the camera controls (how to do push button controls and levers that can keep the water pressure out but are still easy to use from the high pressure side) and how you shoot through the watertight housing without the additional plastic or glass surfaces and the air/water boundary distorting the image too much. Nikonos-style wet lenses are the best solution but expensive and very rare. Dome ports are one of the most useful compromises for most uses and I think it should be relatively easy to do a housing which uses for example the DL lens ports https://www.ikelite.com/collections/dl-lens-ports

you want to jump into water but not going much under the surface? so a splash bag could do and no need for an actual dive housing? something meant for prosume video cameras could work with the a-cam I believe if the size is somewhat similar. you could also let someone to custom manufacture a dive housing for your camera if you'll gonna use it extensively in water so that this kind of better solution would be practical. For example a thick glued-and-bolted-together polycarbonate custom housing which uses Ikelite lens ports. The deeper you want to get the more challenging it will get to keep the water out (one bar of water pressure added for every 10m addition in water depth) but should be reasonably easy to manufacture one for surface shots where you'll be no more than about one or two meters underwater

yes it can generate disturbing strobing artefacts if always shooting at 50fps and converting everything to 25. if the camera has rolling shutter it can add to the effect to generate even weirder artefacts which can be very difficult or even impossible to remove. I recommend shooting those shots at 25fps which you KNOW you will never do slow motion effects to and the rest of the material can be 50 if you want. I mostly work with slow motion material which can be conformed directly to the playback fps and it will never play at normal speed. For example material which is shot 120fps on 50base and then I will just interpret footage it to 24fps before editing. One does not lose ANY image quality that way and it is very simple and fast to do. That workflow is possible because sync sound is rarely needed and the camera sound is not usable if there even is any. ------------------ One of the problems of not knowing what you'll gonna do with the material afterwards is that you will always lose image quality one way or another and will make your post workflow more difficult. By my opinion, you have to know .

I meant this model, NOT the m4/3 normal E2 model: http://www.z-cam.com/e2-s6/ they are developing raw options for their cameras. we just started to use the regular E2 model for documentary stuff and it manages very well in that environment, especially when needing the remote controls. the integrated monitor thing is not important for most users if they are really doing work-related stuff and not super low end vimeography as a hobby. A fixed non-orientable monitor on the back of the camera is just not usable at all in any real production environment, not even in low budget indie films. If you really want to do anything with the camera you will need a separate onboard monitor anyway. the built in display on the Pocket is usable though if one is so low budget that cannot even afford proper lenses to put on the camera... It is nice to hear that the regular Pocket has been reliable in most uses. by my experience the Blackmagic hardware tends to be cheap build quality and unreliable at times so it would be great if they would have at least one product which does not release smoke and die in the middle of the production XD probably the 6K Pocket will not be delivered in time like has happened with all their camera models. Still better though than the Nikon Z6 raw option, they NEVER deliver the promised features not even one year late :P

EF to PL adaptors are not compatible with anything. or maybe one or two or three lens types but very limited lens options can be used and would be much more practical to just use the EF version of the same lens because most of the ones which can fit the adapter can be purchased and rented in EF mount as well or can be easily switched between PL and EF. Anyway, if someone noticed there is some comparable models from Z-Cam which are in same price range and have some features the Pocket cameras are unable to do... like full remote control, more practical form factor, batteries lasting longer, full resolution 10-bit hdmi. Can be ordered in PL mount as well. As I see it, the Blackmagic and Z-cam are now competing directly with each other and the Kinefinity cameras (being less bang for the buck even when the intermediate mount system is very very nice solution) are those who are going to suffer

I always stack the densest filter closest to the lens to avoid reflections from the less dense filters like diffusion filters which I use very often. diffusion can have significant impact on saturation if the image contains bright highlights... for example the Promist filters will contaminate the other parts of the picture with that bright area colour, for example if the highlight area is bluish white the filter will contaminate most of the image with that colour and it will be most prominent in the shadows. and will reduce the saturation on objects as well because of "spreading a layer of colour over the image area" . I personally use promists mostly for the highlight effect on digital cameras and will grade most of the exposure boost +contrast change away. sometimes I also use them to fake more dynamic range to the image (depending on the content I can get an advantage of about 1.5 or 2 stops that way but I will lose some colour separation and saturation so it is not a perfect solution for all uses)

the large format and anamorphic trend after the 3D is not a new thing at all, it has happened multiple times in the past. People are all into 3D for a short time and when it fails they will go to large format and anamorphic again. It is a cycle which seems to happen once per every generation I think. This is maybe the fourth time it is happening again...? anyway, I think at least the VFX thing has come to stay... that is because the market is nowadays dominated with endless sequels and remakes and adaptations of existing material (for example the Disney remakes with talking CG animals, the Marvel adaptations and sequels with lots of vfx, all the book adaptations etc.) and there is relatively small amount of completely new fresh content. almost every film nowadays seems to be a remake or based on a bestseller or a comic book series. It is much safer to finance that kind of content than to try to invent something new which has never been seen before and which needs to be rebranded.... (compared to for example to those Disney remakes where they mostly seem to pretty much copy the original hand drawn characters 1:1 and replace them with talking CG animals. no need to even compose new music for the movie because you can just use the old songs and everything. you can recycle the whole script as well, just let the current big name actors to read the character lines again and you're done :P )

the better xavc varieties may be visually very similar looking in quality compared to the prores422 unless you underexpose the xavc camera a lot which may generate weird compression artifacts like blue dots flashing around. I haven't pixel peeped them side by side with material shot in the same situation (would require the same camera to record both at the same time which has not been practical yet in projects I do) . nowadays I shoot a lot with an external recorder on Prores422hq and it is slightly better quality than xavc especially if underexposed though will take significantly more storage spage. So I would put it pretty close to the Prores422 on that scale if it is properly exposed. workability in post is pretty much the same in most situations I think though you may find differences if the material is not optimally shot. this is for the 300-400Mbps 4k/UHD xavc varieties... if you shoot the more compressed ones like the 100Mbps ones then there is lots more difference

one could probably also construct something out of one of those multi-purpose ladders which can be bent to U-shape... that should be a fast alternative if said ladders already exist on set