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Tyler Purcell

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About Tyler Purcell

  • Birthday 07/28/1978

Profile Information

  • Occupation
    Other
  • Location
    Los Angeles
  • My Gear
    Aaton XTR Prod, Beaulieu 2016, Beaulieu 6008, Elmo 1012S
  • Specialties
    Aaton Camera Specialist (West Coast United States) and Film Scanning/Restoration. Visit us www.narrowgaugefilms.com

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  • Website URL
    http://www.narrowgaugefilms.com

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  1. Me too, just hard to measure MTF and resolution with a one light off the negative.
  2. I've been working on a similar test, but more technical, using density testers, measuring MTF, using all 3 major formats (s8,16,35) and multiple scanners; Arri Scan XT, Scan Station and Scanity. Kinda showing the difference between the formats, but also how they deal with post workflows. Then we are going to also compare digital cinema cameras with the same crop factor as the film, tho this would be probably S16 and S35mm, rather than S8 as well. The final part of the test will be projecting Ektachrome test patterns on 16mm and 35mm, so we can see how much resolution humans can deduce from the formats. Sadly even one light prints of negative reduce resolution quite a bit. The final video will be on our channel (Now named Narrow Gauge Films LLC) and we'll be in production shortly. We've already started the S16mm vs Blackmagic 12k G1 (cropped to S16mm) resolution test. Sadly the Blackmagic whips film off the block, even when cropped to S16mm. We are going to do another test because the first one was so bad for film, we need to potentially use sharper lenses, but that's easy to figure out. I think the key with any resolution test is to first look at what Steve Yedlin has done and try not to repeat it. He's already done a fantastic job at showing the difference between digital and film with 35mm. He even did 2 videos and they're both excellent. Spending a lot of money doing exactly what he did, isn't going to further anything. Anyway, good luck! Looking forward to seeing your results! I'll for sure post mine when done, probably over the summer.
  3. Digital IMAX is usually 1.90:1 aspect ratio (tho some theaters are still 1.44:1) . I would shoot 4 perf open gate S35mm and simply protect the full 1.33:1 aspect ratio and understand it could be matted down to 1.90:1 in the finished product. I'd also shoot fine grain stock, so IMAX doesn't simply reject it due to the grain, which they have in the past. They'll just AI de-noise it which looks like crap. You really want to shoot in a format like VistaVision or even Arri LF for IMAX distribution, simply due to the lower noise/grain level.
  4. This is a lovely piece, I really enjoyed it. Absolutely spot on with your cinematography and post work. I love this type of documentary, it's really bite sized and you can get the point across without diving too much, which I think is more powerful. I hope you submit this to documentary film festivals.
  5. Yea it has a RGBW lamp, which is good at least. I work with scans from the scan station and scanity all the time because we also do post. I haven't really ever seen an amount of adjustability in those scans that aren't present in my scans. So I'm not quite sold on working in a Cineon color space. I get the consistency aspects, especially when clients are looking for a specific metric to grade from. A lot of clients want to drag the film into their timeline and have it automatically apply a LUT to convert it. Honestly, I've got our workflow so tight, I could create a 3D LUT for resolve that works on nearly anything and simply give it to our clients as they walk out the door.
  6. As Brian said, you aren't actually looking through the lens with the video tap, you're looking through an optic and a ground glass. Plus and this is critical, you aren't going to have a high quality image anyway because the amount of light going to the video tap is around 15% of the light going through the lens. So the digital imagers for the tap really struggle. No matter what, it really doesn't look good. Now a 100% video system without a ground glass, then we're talking. But that doesn't exist.
  7. There isn't any reason why you shouldn't do a high quality digital grade that the film colorist can use as a reference.
  8. Oh yea, the FF absolutely does not do this.
  9. Thanks for the explanation. I honestly didn't know the Scan Station and Arri Scan were cable of setting up base calibration per roll, that's great. Have you gotten that to work with the Xena as well? I guess you're right, the key here is that without automated density checking beforehand and an automatic compensation system, the scan will be kinda umm not great. We've worked around that by extensive testing and finding settings that do give optimal results, but I fret it does take a bit of effort in post to bring them back to a sensible result. Compressing the data into a log look, doesn't really matter much, the DR of the 16 bit Tiff files our scanner can deliver, is good enough. I would buy a scan station, we finally have the place to put one, but I first need the clients. That's the hard part. Nearly all of our clients are restoration work and our scanner does a good job for that, especially due to the custom wet gate and clamping gate. For negative work, it's challenging because there are so many people heavily discounting their services on the west coast. To get in the door, requires a stroke of luck. Every year at NAB, I talk to Brett about getting a machine and he's been very copasetic, but it's all about that initial client who will pay for at least the monthly bill. At this point, we do better servicing cameras and doing restoration, neither of them have any real overhead.
  10. It's how the Cintel II works. It's how the Spirit works. It's how the Imagica works. Those are the 3 other machines we use on a regular basis. All of them work the same as my Film Fabriek. You set the exposure based on the beginning of the roll and prey you're good. 9 times out of 10, it's fine. But in situations where the beginning of the roll is way off (you never actually know), we've found it can lead to a re-scan. So what is wrong? Looking at the waveform and seeing clipping on either side. Mind you, these are either 12 bit from the Cintel II, 16 bit from the Imagica or 16 bit from the FF. So it has nothing to do with imager DR. With the HDR pass, the problems entirely go away because you have extended the DR of the scan substantially. I mean an optimal scan would actually be a compressed contrast scan, so you can hopefully fit more information. We have found it doesn't really matter tho, SDR scans will struggle with this issue, if the neg or positive density has wide shifts. The moment you do an HDR scan, the problems generally go away. With the Cintel II, we always do a one-light scan in HDR and it's flawless. Since I mostly shoot documentary style on S8 and 16mm myself, the exposure ranges can widely vary. On professional productions, you don't see this and the scans generally come out fine with a single pass for those guys. We just did 2 16mm features in the last few months, every single frame was perfect without needing to re-scan in SDR. Yet, quite a bit of the reversal camera masters we scan, need a lot of work to dial in, along with our own camera negative stuff, mostly due to a wide swath of exposure fluctuations.
  11. Plz no sprocket holes lol 😛
  12. So if you set exposure on the first scene, but it's 2 stops under, you won't have any issues when they're 2 stops over later on the same roll? I'm confused how that works. I've never heard of such a thing in an SDR, single flash workflow.
  13. Well yea, if you're perfectly exposed. LOL If you've got a roll of 50D at the head of the 1200ft scan roll and you're over by 2 stops, then later in the same 1200ft roll, you've got 500T and you're under by a stop or two, yea its not going to be an optimal scan. We coded out software updates, we pointed the servers to 172.0.0.1 and it STILL does auto security updates. On average, it breaks two or three times a year. We were down just a few days ago and had to restore. I have windows clients across the nation that we support and they're always a problem.
  14. Absolutely, but I always find myself cleaning up things in resolve before delivering. It takes what, maybe 10 minutes to clean up a 1200ft roll. So you scan for the day, do the clean up after the scan on the same system and hit export before ya leave the building at night. Ya don't need it to be perfect most of the time, you just need a decent grading monitor that's calibrated and a lightweight grading specific control surface. With the Cintel II, you can run it just like a VTR, it's just outstanding how well it works. Part of the reason why I like looking through the original raw files on the system we scan on, is simply to check for errors. Sometimes you set everything at the first scene, walk away and come back and mid roll, there is something way over or under exposed. Catching that BEFORE you unload the reel, is really good. Then you can simply rewind to the spot (which is automatic on the Cintel II) and re-capture that section with different settings. Even with HDR mode, there are times where basic changes in exposure can be problematic to deal with in post and you will want to rescan. Do you pay the yearly support contract? Is the system connected to the internet? Are you running regular windows updates? I guess if the system is an island, perhaps it would just keep running. I think most small businesses would struggle to do that, mainly because sending clients samples on the same system they scan with, is kinda nice. I guess if you have a bunch of employees who can take care of that work for ya, then that's why you can isolate the PC. I find myself going into clients places on a regular basis and supporting their post workflows, many of them have Cintels and they absolutely have internet on those systems for this exact reason. We have found over the 20 years of using windows systems for this sort of specific work, that they generally break constantly. My partner is a windows expert and keeping our scanning system running, has been a nightmare. Not due to the scanner software, but due to updates that break specialized hardware that we need to scan. Obviously, just plugging a computer into a thunderbolt connection and installing Resolve, kinda helps with this.
  15. Sure, but what would you the user rather have? A scanner that's all in one, that basically requires a basic non-workstation to operate, or a scanner that requires a specially built computer with licensed software that needs to be maintained. At least with the Cintel, you can drop a new host system in by simply walking down to the Apple Store buying a new system and installing Resolve Studio. Nothing else required. Having dealt with never ending windows issues for decades (nothing has ever changed), I can't imagine relying on a PC as a host system to get work done. I'd rather have the plug and play thunderbolt solution with the transparent user interface like Resolve. Anyone can sit down and run film through it. No "specialist" needed, which is the entire point. Now, I'm not gonna sit here and say the Cintel is a great scanner. It's a great concept that is letdown simply through a bad imager. They fixed the lamp source. The fixed the gate issues. They fixed the transport issues (it's now both capstan or sprocket less). The only thing they need to fix now is the imager and that of course, will require a new black box. So when they do, it will be $50k probably and I feel it will be a good scanner for most people. HDR, decent lamp source, decent resolution imager and perhaps optical format changes instead of punching in on the imager. That's all you really need. Pro Res on the output is cool, but modern Mac's transcode so fast, it's really irrelevant. Being in Resolve the entire time you're scanning and being able to do scene by scene correction during the scan AND THEN again before delivery, it's pretty powerful.
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