David Mullen ASC

Only about 1 1/3-stop difference in depth of field compared to a 4x3 regular Alexa... Cheaper to find some f/1.4 lenses.

Yes, there is a lot of wind when driving around so you have to secure everything that might get blown around. It helps to pick diffusion that rattles less for sound reasons.

You’re taking into account that you only use a .89 : 1 area of the sensor for a 1.78 : 1 frame if there is a 2X squeeze?

If you’re talking about a standard Edison screw-in socket the only thing is that above 60W you should probably install a porcelain socket if there is a plastic one. Definitely if you are talking about 250W and 500W photofloods.

Just as with the F900, turning off the Rec.709 color matrix probably won't create a big difference, some colors might fall differently on the vectorscope, maybe the gamut is slightly bigger in some directions, smaller in others. Mostly you see a difference in the saturation and shade of certain colors -- red is more orange in Rec.709 than in P3, for example. I remember I had some odd color clipping artifacts with purple neon on the F900 that went away when I turned off the Rec.709 color matrix so I assume the matrix was increasing the saturation too much in that color.

A 25mm LF lens on a Super-16 camera will give you the same field of view at the same distance to the subject, the same depth of field, etc. as a 25mm lens made for Super-16. BECAUSE IT IS THE SAME FOCAL LENGTH. The frame won't look any different other than any particular lens personality like contrast, flare, edge distortion, etc. You wouldn't change the camera position just because you switched from a 25mm LF lens to a 25mm Super-16 lens. Yes, of course a 25mm LF lens on a larger format camera will be different than a 25mm lens on a Super-16 camera because now the format sizes are different, the 25mm LF lens on a larger format will have a much wider field of view.

Actually it is the same as using a tighter lens other than the depth of field difference and loss of resolution from cropping. But if you crop a 25mm lens by half the view, it is identical to a 50mm lens other than the depth of field / resolution issues. There are mechanical differences in building a 25mm versus a 50mm so it is never exactly the same distortions but they are close. See this: http://yedlin.net/lens_blur.html Field of view is field of view, the how much view the lens sees within the frame -- if you're using the term in some other non-standard manner, then people are going to be confused.

More or less, Film Rec is designed to work within Rec.709, sort of like Sony's HyperGamma, though technically Rec.709 describes a color space, not just a display gamma. So I guess it is possible to turn off the Rec.709 color matrix in the camera and yet shoot Film Rec? Certainly you could turn off the Rec.709 color matrix in the old F900.

"Lighting Director" is more of a title for live theater lighting situations like for a concert show -- "Lighting Designer" is the more common title though. If the live show was being photographed, there would be a separate cinematographer or videographer or Director of Photography. If this show was a scene in a movie, then the Gaffer / Chief Lighting Technician would be in charge of the lighting department though that person might hire a theatrical lighting designer to handle the stage lighting since that's such a specialized skill. There used to be an old designation in U.K. cinema for "Lighting Cameraman" -- who would be the cinematographer -- as opposed to "Operating Cameraman" (the operator).

He said he was comparing the 18mm LF lens put onto the S35 camera, so yes you get a narrower view compared to being put onto a LF camera, but the same view as an 18mm S35 lens. 18mm is a physical measurement of a lens, it's independent of the format size it is going onto, other than the coverage (image circle) issues. Yes, a 50mm Master Prime on a S16 camera would have the same view as a 50mm Ultra16 prime -- it's a 50mm!

The focal length is a constant, so an 18mm is an 18mm whether on a Super-8 camera or an IMAX camera, it's just going to have a narrower field of view on a smaller format. It also may not cover a larger format. So an 18mm designed for FF35 but put on a Super-35 camera will look the same in terms of view, depth of field, etc. as an 18mm designed for a Super-35 camera, but the 18mm designed for the Super-35 camera might vignette on a FF35 camera. Yes, you can argue that in terms of sharpness, contrast, etc. that the design compromises depend on the format size. On the one hand, a lens designed for FF35 but put onto a Super-35 camera will be using more of the optical sweet spot in the center of the lens since the sides will be cropped to a narrower view, but on the other hand, sometimes larger format lenses are designed with a lower MTF simply because if your format physically has more "millimeters" overall, then a lens does not have to resolve as many lines per millimeter, which is the advantage of oversampling.

By coincidence, today I ran across an article on using focal lengths in a 1966 issue of "American Cinematographer" -- Though it doesn't talk about the 50mm, at one point, it says "The 35mm lens, once considered strictly a wide-angle lens for 35mm cinematography, is now utilized as the standard lens in several studios, especially when scenes are being shot to be masked off for the 1.85:1 aspect ratio of projection. This lens has also become standard for much of the filming done specifically for the small format of television. It lends better modeling to sets and actors, while creating a more dramatic depth perspective. Faces, however, are definitely not flattered by this lens and it should not, therefore, be used for closeups."

When you say "diagonal" though you have to remember that 4-perf Super-35 full aperture was only used in the Silent Era, and today Super-35 is cropped to 1.78, 1.85, or 2.40 so the diagonal is shorter. And Hitchcock shot "Psycho" in 4-perf 35mm Academy, not Super-35, cropped to 1.85, so even a shorter diagonal. Anyway, the tradition has always been a 50mm for FF35 as being "normal". From Wikipedia: "For still photography, a lens with a focal length about equal to the diagonal size of the film or sensor format is considered to be a normal lens" / "For a 35mm camera with a diagonal of 43 mm, the most commonly used normal lens is 50 mm, but focal lengths between about 40 and 58 mm are also considered normal. The 50 mm focal length was chosen by Oskar Barnack, the creator of the Leica camera." Also the wider the aspect ratio, the shorter the view vertically is compared to horizontally so often there is a tendency to split the difference in terms of what would be considered a normal view and go with something a bit wider in view horizontally to compensate for the reduction in view vertically. Hence why the 50mm in 4-perf 35mm Academy felt like it saw "more" of a view compared to a 50mm when cropped vertically to 1.85.

"Cinema Mode" (no standards for that) tends to be on the dimmer side, I think they assume you're watching it in a darkened room. But there's nothing stopping you from adjusting your TV set for what you feel is closer to the way it looked in a theater. I usually adjust my TV from the Standard Mode base, sort of ending up halfway to the Cinema Mode.

Yes, it's confusing regarding Hitchcock and the 50mm -- I think in the Herbert Coleman book on producing for Hitchcock, he mentions supervising a reshoot / pick-up for "Vertigo" and Hitchcock chiding him for shooting it on a 35mm instead of a 50mm, but being a VistaVision movie, a 35mm would be on the wider-angle side. Perhaps Hitchcock did his VistaVision period mostly on a 50mm so when he did "Psycho" he used the equivalent to a 50mm view, i.e. closer to a 35mm, but was used to saying he used a 50mm after five years of shooting VistaVision?