Jess Haas

Great little cameras. I have 4 of them. It is not at all surprising that that was all it took to get it running as they are built like tanks. Keep it oiled and that camera should outlast us all. ~Jess

Anyone tried the Vietnamese silk lanterns? http://www.paperlanternstore.com/whvisila.html More expensive than the nylon but they supposedly fold up like an umbrella so they store in a tube. They are also made from silk instead of nylon. For china balls I usually use the ceramic fixtures that take a threaded lamp rod. I use bailing wire to secure it to the harp and the threaded lamp rod fits perfectly in a gobo head. The wiring goes through the hollow lamp rod. ~Jess

7201 is a great stock so if 50 is fast enough for you I would go with that. If you expect the weather to be very gloomy, or want to shoot during dusk you may need some 250D. For the night stuff your best bet will be 7219 (v3 500T). I have underexposed the vision2 version a stop or two with decent results. It is grainy, but doesn't look bad. I don't know how fast those zooms are but you really should have atleast one or two fast primes for the low light stuff since I doubt the zooms are as fast as a prime could be. The 500T should also serve you well for the interiors. For super low light stuff I have a little 16mm filmo with a wide shutter angle and a 25mm c-mount prime that opens up to f0.95. It is rather soft, but nice for getting those shots when you really need the extra stop or so that it gives you. For the night scenes people will need to be rather close to the fire for you to get enough light and you may need to pump those fires up a bit. I would suggest taking some aluminum foil and some silver reflectors in order to try to get a little more light out of them when you can. Definitely shoot some tests so you know what will work and what wont. ~Jess

With modern negative stocks and properly exposed film a little bit of color correction is all it takes to bring things back to normal. ~Jess

I mentioned that before but I don't think I put enough emphasis on it. The bigger the boat the steadier the camera will be. Personally I think I would rather shoot handheld on a much bigger steadier boat then use a stabilizer to shoot off of a smaller boat. ~Jess

The reason for putting the bag on the tall leg is so that it does not touch the ground. If the bag is touching the ground it is not doing its job. If it will fit on another leg without touching the ground then there is no problem. Bags can be put on shorter legs by wraping the bag around the stand. Leaving an extra riser at the bottom also makes paning a lot simpler. ~Jess

You overexpose the blue layer but with modern stocks you can get away with it and it is done all the time. Just keep in mind that you will start to lose information in the blue layer a little sooner than you would with the filter. The filters for the filmo depend on which lenses you have. I know mine are a small series filter but don't know the one of the top of my head. All of the filters I have for it are in very bad shape so I will probably get some NDs and an 85 at some point. Thanks for the info on where to find them. ~Jess

If using nets they can look a little funky if they are in focus. Just something to keep in mind when deciding which to use. ~Jess

If shooting negative stocks you can get away with just doing the color correction in the telecine. If you can find a source for these small series filters I would also be interested as I could use some for the lenses I have for my filmo. ~Jess

So this was one large piece that the tripod sat on top of?

I used the movietube on a shoot and was not at all happy with it. Since the groundglass doesn't move you have to shoot close to wide open or risk seeing the ground glass. Because of this the fact that it was designed to be good for handheld isn't very useful and the whole angled camera thing was more annoying than anything. We had the version with all the accessories which had mounts for 15mm video rods and 19mm film rods. Unfortunately our matte box was 15mm film spacing so we had to remove the shoulder mount/19mm rod mount to add our own base plate. Without this piece the base of the movietube is very thin creating a very unstable connection point. I also had some serious focus issues with only the very center of the frame being in focus. This was more of a problem with certain focal length lenses than others, but definitely a problem. There could have been something wrong with the unit I was using, but I never really looked deeper into the issue since nothing about the unit made me want to use it again. ~Jess

I was thinking that would probably be an issue. Should work fine for locked off shots, but operating would be difficult. ~Jess

Most people who are serious about steadicam take a workshop: http://thesteadicamworkshops.com/ http://www.steadicam-ops.com/ ~Jess

With primes if the lens is not properly collimated it will work fine but the focus marks on the lens and the infinity focus mark will be off. There is a chance that the adapter will be setup correctly and your lenses might not need to be collimated, but SLR lenses don't tend to have that accurate of focus marks to begin with. The reason that collimation is more critical with wider lenses is that they have a shallower depth of focus. Depth of focus refers to the focus on the image plane as aposed to depth of field which is the focus on the subject. The more depth of field you have the less depth of focus you have, and as such wider lenses have a shallower depth of focus so the focus on the image plane (or collimation) has to be more accurately set. With zoom lenses if the collimation is not set properly they will not hold focus throughout the zoom range. ~Jess

Looks like heat lamps. They produce a redish light and a lot of heat. You can also find red practical bulbs rather easily, or use theatrical red gels. Add some CTO if you want it more orange. ~Jess

I have used the Kish finder and while the markings weren't extremely accurate(at least for S16) it worked. The Mark Vb is the standard but it is twice the price and much larger and heavier. ~Jess

If using house bulbs in kino 4ft fixtures start with the ballast in 2ft mode. 4ft mode is for high output bulbs so it will overdrive regular bulbs causing a color shift and more of a green spike. 2ft mode will give you standard output for a 4ft bulb. Andrew, did the flicker appear to be coming from just a fixture or two or was everything flickering? If the later was the case I would guess that either your camera wasn't running at a solid 24fps or your shutter angle was too small. ~Jess

That is great news. So Mitch, what are your thoughts on this little camera? I personally have never been a big fan of the look of sony cameras as they tend to look a bit too video compared to say that dvx100 which has a slightly more organic feel to it. What are your thoughts on the matter? The specs certainly look great, but sony has always had great specs even when the look suffered a bit. ~Jess

Your kidding right? ~Jess

Yeah, he is a bit too enthusiastic...... ~Jess

I heard something about some slight vignetting in a pre-release version of the camera and I don't even know if there was really any truth to that. Do you have any actual information on the topic or are you just spreading an unsubstantiated rumor so that you can sling some mud at Sony? ~Jess

No clue on rate but I wouldn't expect it to be too bad since they are meant as an accessory. I have only used one when it was mounted on much more expensive toys. I would expect that your proximity to chapman could have a huge influence on the end cost. Where are you located? Used one on a shoot with their gyro stabilized remote head mounted to the lenny arm mounted on the deck of one of their camera cars. At one point we decided to test out just how well the setup worked and decided to drive the camera car of road. Was rock solid until we finally hit a ditch that the vertical stabilizer couldn't handle. When you hit that point it looks really bad so keep that in mind. Up until that point it worked amazingly well, but we also had the crane arm and the vehicles air ride suspension working for us. ~Jess

From a usability standpoint the P+S blows the M2 out of the water. There is of course a substantial price difference. ~Jess

So the midget into a 20x book light I am planning to use to key a crowd scene for my next shoot might not be enough light either? ~Jess

SLR lenses are great for longer lenses but good wides are a bit harder to come by. They also tend to be much larger and heavier than necessary since they are made to cover a much larger frame. One option for a wide SLR lens is the russian 8mm lens. They can be had for a reasonable amount of money. For wides you might be better off looking at c-mount lenses. With longer lenses you can get away without having them collimated but wide lenses will most likely need to be collimated to your camera. ~Jess