Phil Rhodes

It barely matters. Without being in a fairly stable viewing environment for a while and having your eyes adjust, the perception of brightness is so variable as to make a complete mockery of any attempt (well most attempts) at calibration. Walking from a sunlit day into a blacked-out DIT tent and immediately glancing at a display is not likely to leave anyone with a particularly accurate impression of what the image will look like in a nice controlled grading suite after an hour of acclimatisation. Naturally it's nice to have it as close to right as possible, but so long as you know t

I don't know that it's ever going to be massively accurate, it's hardly a "reference display," but it's probably accurate enough for field work, which doesn't really demand much accuracy. Most people seem to use them for the massive brightness which is of course not really representative of a calibrated specification, most of the time, it's just about sheer visibility, and they certainly do that. P

Five 20K HMIs! One thing about this that may be worth a bit of consideration is how it's scheduled. What I'm thinking here is that any mismatch between the lighting is likely to be less objectionable if it happens between big changes in angle, so maybe shoot all your stuff one way during a morning, shoot the reverses in the afternoon, and repeat over your three days. May drive the cast slightly bananas hopping around in the script, but eh, it's a very big ask to see all that exterior and have it look consistent for three long days. I think something has to give; if you try to do what

There's something to be said about the original question, too. In theory, in modern digital video systems, black absolutely can just be black. If you feed in a pristine, digitally-generated frame full of zeroes, it's quite likely you'll get something very like that out (there are reasons why that may not always be completely true, but it'll generally be mostly true). Modern codecs are very capable of taking a block of image and deciding that the best way to compress it is as a defined area with a single colour in it. The problem, of course, is that well-shot moving image material ten

I suspect everything is unique, but since you ask, eh, Schneider Xenons? The emperor has lots of sets of new clothes. P

Sigma Classics are at least that much slower than the conventional types. The conventional range is T1.5 between the 20 and 105, whereas the Classics are 2.5. The 14 and 135 are a little slower. I never understood why wide lenses are slower.

Well, sure, but can't you get that with anything... bad...

Is this in any sense sane? My observation is that most lenses look extremely similar beyond about f/4 and that even when they aren't identical, no lens is... that amazing...

I was watching an interview with Timur Civan the other day, talking about the Classic version of Sigma's cinema primes. The classics have either no coatings, or reduced coatings, which provokes a lot of flare and veiling. Civan discussed the fact that the veiling was actually enough to materially affect exposure, reducing contrast and lightening the blacks. The veiling is very intense on those uncoated lenses, more intense than a K35, which wasn't really intended to do that at all. I've not done anything serious on K35s but I have seen video that suggests they do veil and glow a bit wide

I didn't cut it out; I never did social media. I started feeling like a real adult when I heard about facebook and realised it was something I thought was utterly ridiculous. Nothing wrong with a website, I just have no need for one. I still own the domain name and I might do something with it one day. P

The 1990s video game generation has had some experience of that film through a very obscure reference. Click to listen.

This is something I think the likes of blackmagic need to pay attention to - right now they're good to 800 with a following wind and that's about it. It's not a deal-breaker to me, but I fear some people will think it is.

I keep almost buying those Sony CineAlta primes everyone seems to think are actually quite good, but then I look at the situation with super35 and think... I don't want to spend ten grand on that. And I realise I'm in the UK.

I'm not seeing the photo, but you're right in that shop signs may be hard to match. Get an LED with full colour mixing, or get a gel swatchbook and match it by eye. LEDs may react oddly to gels so match it using the actual light you'll be using. P