Aapo Lettinen

I don't think BMD has ever even targeted the higher end professional field. every aspect of their cameras tells me that they are more interested in low budget and prosume customers and maybe selling a camera or two to high end productions for C unit or D camera or crash cam use. the whole point of their cameras is to have low enough price for indie filmmakers and prosume/low end professional customers who can balance their quirks and live with them if the price point is right. If one has more money to purchase or rent then there is not many reasons to choose a BMD camera instead of, say, Alexa Mini. I haven't seen the Samyang "cine" lenses in professional use either, pro cinematographers tend to use higher end glass because they have the possibility to choose. I personally haven't bought a Ursa Mini because of the missing OLPF and other reasons. the "pro" update does not change this though it is very nice to be able to change lens mounts without changing the whole sensor package with it (who had that idea in the first place huh, way to sell more sensors maybe :wacko: )

here in Finland the exception are situations where the information has came from a source who is a public servant making a transgression by giving out the information. in case of drug dealers etc. normal persons they can protect their sources. with the current US situation+development I would not be surprised even if the journalistic freedom would be suppressed there in the future to make some kind of Erdogan-style state (really hope not :o ) , freedom of speech as long as you have the same opinions with us... and a big wall preventing people from getting out ;)

* I am using a 300mm/180mm lathe with 600w motor, the unimat style micro lathe stuff does not work for any real stuff

I think one can get much higher quality parts faster by machining with manual lathe and milling machine than by using cheap ass 3d printing. Of course if low quality and relatively weak parts are good enough then the 3d printing will probably do. I myself prefer just using a chinese entry level mini lathe for making camera parts, much quicker and I can make them out of metal and most plastics with much tighter tolerances. I don't have proper milling machine yet but will purchase one later. Making lens caps with 3d printing sounds quite uneconomic unless something very special is needed, the chinese stuff is so cheap that it is much easier to just buy better product from ebay. Or if higher quality is needed, machine one out of higher quality materials

Pretty careless dealers huh :rolleyes: Journalists can protect their sources in most western countries if the sources don't commit/have not committed/are not planning to commit serious crimes (here in Finland the limit is the crimes where the penalty is at least 6 years of prison, the limits and conditions vary from country to country) . this may change though in the US I think, it seems that they are planning to limit journalistic freedom quite much in the near future so the limits might lower to smaller crimes

- first fix the most important things and only after that, if there is still time and money left, you can make the other parts of the product better -

someone will always notice... but the trick is to determine which things are more important to be finessed in greater detail than others and to direct your resources to those parts. We are always working on limited resources so a perfectionist will never be happy in movie business :mellow: it may, for example, be easier to perfect the edit and vfx part of a indie movie compared to a commercial product because the indie movie can have years of post time and dozens of trial/error cycles to get everything right. that is also why one needs much higher level of skills to make movies for living: everything has to be done right the first time, there is no time or money for trying out things or finesse anything which does not specifically need to be finessed to great level. (it's like Russian movie cameras, they didn't grind and polish anything which didn't need to be finessed. the camera body roughly machined and left as is but the film gate and pressure plate polished and finessed. Compared to an Arri film camera or a Bolex where everything is made perfect if in any way possible, even the parts that don't necessarily need it :lol: ) there is a huge difference between focusing on most important things and directing the necessary resources there (time, money, etc.) VS trying to get away with a roughly made product even when there would have been resources available to make it better. Often it is a good approach to finish some parts to a greater detail than needed so that one can get away with the more sloppy material in between the great shots if there is no possibility to perfect them all B)

I don't have any personal retirement funds yet, just the basic crappy (mandatory) national retirement fund which all working Finnish people have. With today's political climate and future political development, climate change etc. I don't personally think that most of the human race will survive the next about 35 years or so after which I will retire... And with the constant worsening of the healthcare system etc. it is quite unlikely that I will live past about 70 or so... I think the best retirement plan for me would be to purchase some good apartments and rent them out, then live with the rental income. and my children would have those apartments after I die so that the money would not go to waste if I die prematurely which is highly likely with the current political development I think :unsure:

I sell some leftover documentary footage on Shutterstock, mainly nature shots like landscapes and such. I also tried to register to istockphoto couple of years ago but they had a very awkward registration process which required samples of the types of clips I would like to sell via them, and the service rejected literally all my sample clips saying that "we already have this type of material" ("not interested about your stuff") which was very frustrating because the idea of the samples was to just evaluate the technical quality of my footage, not the content/subject matter :ph34r: Shutterstock had better royalties percentage at the time so I just started to use their service and did not bother with the istockphoto <_< they may have changed their service though because this was couple of years ago so you may see if they have made it easier. I think the Business Practices -forum is about right for this type of thread. Shutterstock has been very good for my needs and it was very easy to start and to add large amounts of clips per batch. If you want to create material specifically for stock footage use then you need to investigate more about which type of footage sell best ( high quality aerial and slow mo shots for example) , you need to sell a clip multiple times if you want to specifically create stock footage from the start and not to just dump the leftover material from various completed projects to the stock ;)

I made a small video how to load the Konvas magazines ("Every Loader's Nightmare") the easy way. The shutter alignment trick is especially handy with my cameras :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7s8-wCGC3eg&t=0s

yes, LTO drives are normally SAS only and you will need a PCIe card like ATTO for that. keep in mind that LTO systems have TONS of possible hardware compatibility pitfalls, you really need to check that your software is compatible with the SAS card, the card has right type of SAS connectors and is compatible with the tape drive and motherboard and right PCIe version etc etc. there is some Thunderbolt LTO7 drives coming soon I think, at least one model. will have to wait for a while for them to become a viable option and if you want to use multiple drives it would be more practical and affordable to use a SAS card instead I think. If you need to use these drives with a computer which does not have PCIe you can purchase a external Thunderbolt to PCIe box. same thorough compatibility checks are needed with them also. especially the SAS cards are very picky, you need to know the exact model which you will use. I don't know if there is any existing boxes for USB3. and even then there might be compatibility issues which would prevent to use them for LTO work depending on your hardware and software. the problem with LTO is that the system needs to be absolutely reliable and dependable which requires that it is built ground up and thoroughly tested regularly. And doing anything else with the computer at the same time may disturb the LTO transfers so it's a great idea to reserve completely separate computer for LTO use which is not used for anything else and any software updates etc. are restricted so that one knows that the system configuration has not been changed accidentally which would lead to testing the whole system again for reliability and compatibility which takes a lot of time and effort. I would not, for example, use my edit for LTO transfers... it would be highly unpractical and would increase the risk of data loss because the system changes all the time and has lots of additional software and plugins etc. which may be updated every now and then... it would also mess up with the hdd transfer speeds when editing and using the system for editing and LTO at the same time would reduce read/write speeds and increase tape usage when writing by creating more writing+sync errors to the tape. ----> I suggest just building a completely separate system for your LTO needs, it should have fast RAID storage and ethernet/fiber connections with as little extra software and stuff as possible and the most reliable components and software you can find. Also remember to use UPS backup with it ^_^

It's true that art and entertainment is somewhat needed to maintain mental health, especially if person's job is very repetative+boring+unsatisfying. But piracy is not a good solution for that... the more there is affordable easy-to-use legal platforms for watching content, the more piracy decreases when "normal people" choose to use the easier and safer legal channels for content viewing. here in Finland they started a campaign last year where a private law firm tries to catch torrent users and charges them a "standard compensation fee" of about 600€ so that they can avoid prosecution. A person can take the case to the court but the legal expenses can easily be 10 - 20 000 € so most people just get scared and pay for company to avoid personal bankruptcy, it seems to be that the content producers count on that actually to got easy money from them. I think a similar approach is used in some other countries also, including the US? this kind of "Stasi approach" is very bad publicity for the content producers I think and should only be used as a last resort if nothing else works. easy to use and affordable online platforms could reduce piracy in the western countries to almost zero I think but instead they choose to scare people to silent like some kind of mafia :blink: weird times :o

If someone steals food or medicine because can't live otherwise, that is an reasonable excuse I think. But one does not need movies to live and the persons who pirate them usually COULD afford Netflix or even purchase a physical copy, it is just the attitude that some entertainment should be free for them even if it costs huge amount of money to make that content. If the movie would have been easy to purchase/rent the legal way then there is no excuse to not to do so. It may be a bit different with films which are not distributed at all in the region one lives, if there is no legal copy available at all then one may need to watch the pirated version because there is nothing else... I never upload anything to youtube which I know I don't want to be stolen immediately. it is part of that community to steal other person's work and make compilations/"new content" out of it, then get some cash from the ad revenues. Google does little to stop this... it would be much easier if there would be no ads in the videos so there would be no financial benefits to keep the stolen content online. A very big and ugly watermark helps a lot, it may also help if you use very short images like 1 or 1.5 seconds which cannot easily be used in compilations or as a background image in lyrics videos etc <_< Vimeo is easier this way, it mostly lacks the "video mix" culture and the videos are more respected in their original form without the eager Movie Maker users immediately making their own stupid versions out of them :blink:

one of the biggest problems of indie filmmakers is that they want to do all by themselves which causes troubles in both learning the craft and also when trying to advance in the pro movie circles. the general impression from the outside is that these people are doing everything by themselves because they are either: - not able to work with other creative people to make collaborative art; either too introvert to communicate with creative personnel or do not have strong enough vision to express it clearly - are afraid to collaborate with other people because they fear that someone wants to change their perfect movie to conformist crap, thus wanting to do everything by themselves to protect their "perfect ideas" - only want to do non-compromise art stuff by their own rules and don't want anybody to interfere with their creative processes, especially someone from the selling POV (producers, sales agents, etc) or audience side (distributors, friend and family, collagues etc.) - are probably not interested in making movies which would be distributed widely and would likely be commercial successes (because they are only interested in making perfect movies by their own terms and not necessarily making a movie someone else would like to see) - may be egoists who think their ideas are best in the whole world and won't listen to any comments or critique not would change anything even a bit because their original idea is the best there is I'm not meaning to be harsh, but from a producer's POV you may look like a really bad choice for a director position if your CV is full of projects you have mostly made by yourself. It gives an impression that you are only used to making your own art stuff by your own rules and you may have lots of problems to adapt to a different environment where you need to work with a separate producer, editor, DP, colorist, line producers and whatnot. It may seem like a good idea to do a project all by yourself but if you want to get more work with it, it's extremely risky and it would be much better to let more people in to help you with the production and to build a somewhat similar environment than a commercial feature production would be. And it does not hurt your art a bit but can add lots of value to it actually because other people's creative ideas may sometimes be much better than your own. It may be hard at first if one is used to doing everything by himself but it will benefit A LOT in the long run. And one will never hear the other people's possibly better ideas if not working with them in the first place. that is what I meant when saying it is not a good way for a indie filmmaker to learn to do only one man band projects and own artsy stuff. I think R. Rodriguez would maybe be much better director if he would let someone else to produce and shoot and edit his movies and concentrate on the directing and writing part

I think a feature film needs to be already sold to some extent beforehand for it to be worth making. The less one thinks one needs dedicated producers the more one actually should have them I think. Especially in very low budget genre where there isn't necessarily any full time line producers and production managers in the production. First time directors are quite normally melting and having nervous breakdowns if they also need to wear the producer's hat. It is of course possible to learn to do both at the same time but one should have lots of experience from one of the fields FIRST before trying to combine the positions

I don't do camera lists but I am restoring and modifying my old Soviet 35mm Soyuz US3N camera at the moment, it is working with a pwm controlled battery drill at the moment while I'm waiting a Chinese dc motor to arrive which I will modify to work with it later by machining a custom axle and using angle gears to get the motor to the side for more practical form factor ^_^ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77lahNpFzOE

when adapting lenses, one of the biggest issues in addition with the ffd is the diameter of the mount. For example, the Canon EF mount is so physically large that you can't adapt it to PL, the mount just doesn't fit there (because of the shorter ffd the EF lens should go inside the 54mm PL mount but that is just not possible. some Nikon F or M42 lenses can be adapted but the physical sizes of the lens barrels usually limit the choices to only couple of low end models. Some Nikon AI-S lenses could for example be adapted to PL if the barrel near the iris ring would be a bit smaller (and the iris ring also smaller) . With longer FFD lenses like T2 mount lenses you can just use a screw on adapter and they will work just like that with a PL camera (though most T2 lenses are old low-end garbage not worth using with a PL camera...) . I got myself a small metal lathe and I have some spare AI-S lenses, I may try to adapt them to PL later this year. If it goes well I will share experiences with them but have to test it first... one needs to rebuild about half of the lens to adapt it so it might be actually easier to machine completely new barrels with focus mechanics and just use the iris and optical groups from the original design <_<

if the screw is loose from the beginning you can first try to tighten it. if that resolves the problem you don't have to go any further

here's a picture what is under the 2hole screw: the whole procedure should take only couple of minutes ^_^

1. remove that small center screw which has two holes, you may need a suitable tool for it 2. remove the plate and washer 3. now you see the grooves where the latch is attached and you can remove the latch 4. fine tune the latch to fit perfectly to the grooves 5. reattach latch 6. reattach the washer, plate and screw I may have a picture here somewhere...

doing a 1 or 2 day short film shoot is quite different compared to a indie feature... it may be quite ok to have people work for free in shorts if no one else gets paid and they are doing it just as a hobby for fun. A 20 or 30 day shoot however is too much for almost any person to do for free without considerable financial losses ( for example I don't shoot indie features anymore because just the lost work hours alone may cost me between 3000 and 6000 € and I will never get back any of it. they may also lead to missed job opportunities which may lead to incredible costs in the long run, tens or even hundreds of thousands € . I have actually turned down so many low budget indie films that they don't even ask me to participate anymore... one of the reasons is also that they seem to magically always schedule the shoots to the same days the commercial productions are shooting or when I have editing/post work to do) , a share of the profits is not enough if it's a small budget indie which is not likely to get any commercial distribution anyway. Of course if one is a student or unemployed with cheap rent or living with his/her parents it might be possible to donate time to a production (if getting free lunches at least) but for people with mortgages and children and living expenses it is generally just not possible without getting paid SOMETHING. something like a 100 per day seems to be the limit for most people to work on cheap ass productions, it's either around that or completely free work (either they get paid around the minimum profitable amount OR they will donate their time for free. but working for 15 bucks a day for example is insulting for most people. paying for travel expenses and food is however always mandatory, if it's a no budget shoot the director normally pays them from his own pocket because it is the director's artsy show most of the time anyway ;) )

this is more of a generalised lens design difference and linked to the image circle size vs physical focal lenght vs needed ffd of the lens mount. for example a 50mm lens can be for example a Planar design if made for S35 or S16 but for medium format, for example, a Distagon style design may be more preferred because of various reasons. you can project a very large image circle with a physically small lens if needed but generally the large format lenses have larger elements/more glass surface than the small format ones to correct the aberrations and to bring the ffd to a suitable levels for the used camera designs so that leads to more areas prone to flare and contrast difficulties. a mattebox with tight mattes will help a lot though as long as the lens coatings are great quality. with bad quality coatings you can have for example colour difficulties (green forest's colour ghosting all over the image etc. problems) whether using a mattebox or not

yes that is correct. you can sometimes see quite a lot difference in brightness when comparing different lens designs's F-stops because the internal light losses differ and the aperture ring is calibrated to the physical F-stops, not T-stops. but you can interchange different formats lenses and get exactly similar results exposure wise. large format lenses used on small formats can have reduced contrast and more halations compared to a dedicated small format lens because of the larger unused area on the lens surfaces. that is one of the drawbacks of using large format lenses on small formats, together with the generally smaller maximum apertures of the lenses compared to small format ones and the difficulties of finding short focal lenghts. large format lenses may also have a bit more chromatic aberration because there is no need to correct it as much as with the small format lenses where the produced image is "magnified more" and therefore the aberrations are relatively more apparent

I use a bayonet K2 every now and then, I have modified by myself a 10mm T3 kmz lens to fit (a lens made originally for Kinor16SP, the mount is NOT the same but can be modified by milling the flanges + recalibrating) and it works great though does not cover super16. For super16 one has very limited wide angle lens options which is why I normally shoot regular16 with my cameras... it is much better idea to get a modified arri sb or similar camera with one or two bayonet mounted Optars if needing small daylight spool loading S16 camera with limited amount of money and S16 is absolute necessity at all focal lenghts. It is, however, cheaper to use a S16 modified C-mount camera like Bolex and use cheap Chinese C-mount lenses with it, like a 8mm F3.5. they may not be any better than a Peleng in S16 but are very lightweight, small and handy and affordable with pretty good image quality compared to price so they might be an option. with Krasnogorsk both the bayonet and the M42 mount are quite limiting, it is a good idea to choose your film camera based on the lenses you want to use, not the other way around <_<

Generally it is necessary to use a head with at least double the maximum rating compared to your camera+lens combo's weight. I watched with a phone so cant analyze much but seemed like there was some amount of heat shimmer going on, maybe choosing a different shooting angle could reduce this?