Tyler Purcell

What are you shooting where you need autofocus?

Super 8 cameras use the same registration system across the board. They put a slight squeeze on the film laterally in the gate, which helps hold it from shifting. So the camera should look like any other camera registration wise. I have gotten some hands on time with the new camera and was very unimpressed, it really is a toy. The lack of viewfinder, makes it impossible to use in broad daylight. When stopped down, the 480p video tap, is worse than any other video system I've ever seen, especially when running. The designers, didn't even bother putting in a flicker free video system, so it has a rolling shutter effect, which makes it even worse. Plus, the camera is heavy and large, it's the largest super 8 camera I've ever seen, 2x lager than the biggest Elmo I have and 1/3rd larger than the biggest Beaulieu I have. It's also horribly loud, complete total joke loud. Like, what were they even thinking. A quiet motor would have been much better, so you aren't getting audio. The meter is also trash, it's slow to recover from changes and is very indecisive. It will suddenly jump around. Forget about finding focus too, you can forget focus even exists. The only real "good" thing is the cool integrated battery system and the menu system which can store the cartridges used feet for a proper countdown system, which is something only a hand full of people would even use. Hopefully people are going out and can at bare minimal finish one cartridge at a time. I have not shot with the new Super 8 camera yet, I'm waiting to get the demo model from Kodak until we've moved. But seeing as the stock lens is total shit, I highly doubt it will even graze the 6008 Beaulieu I have. The other thing is that Super 8 pricing is going up. Labs just started charging more for processing. Thus, the cost of the format just ticked up a notch and so today, it's even less worthwhile working with. I only have my super 8 cameras for posterity and the occasional home movie shooting. I use them to capture real life moments, where I need a smaller camera. Otherwise, I'll just shoot 16 because it's actually price per finished minute, pretty damn close to the same cost as super 8. The problem is getting a good 16mm camera can be challenging. So in the end, Super 8 exists because Kodak makes a killing from the format. Remember, super 8 cartridge film length is half of 16mm. So 100ft daylight spool of 16mm, which is $64 bux, cut that in half to get 50ft and you get $32 dollars right? But super 8 is HALF the width too! So you're actually dividing that in half once more. So super 8 should actually cost $16 bux + the cartridge cost. So let's say $25 bux. But it's actually $39 dollars per cartridge in the US. So Kodak is making a KILLING on the format, it's actually the most expensive per foot film format if you actually cut it down to the width of the film. Where they're of course, not selling as much feet, they still make more profit. Imagine if Super 8 cartridges were priced at $25 bux? I'd probably shoot more! lol

The FX6 can't do 6k, which is a nice thing, it also really can't do raw. You wanna finish in 4k, so the key is to shoot 6k, so you have some wiggle room. The C400 kinda does 6k, but it's a hodge hodge mess of varying frame sizes which are all way off the scale of normalcy. In typical canon fashion, they kinda made up some faux resolutions that do the best job. It's sickening they still do this shit and consumers still buy it. Needless to say, it's a real conundrum. I was excited for the C400 until I noticed these and other issues. The C400 isn't even shipping FYI, so you've got a while. There must be some shortage of a chip because nobody is shipping anything new yet, it's all been delayed.

The Venice II is pretty nice. The FX9 is pretty nice, tho I would wait till the MKII comes out. The MKI has a few odd issues that prohibit it from competing with the Burano. I think Sony has a few interesting options in the pipeline, but nothing radical. They really only have their extremely sensitive imager with excellent propriety noise reduction and that beautiful variable ND system. Their auto focus is good, but so is Canon's. Canon is about to kick their ass with the C400 and Red just dumped the pricing on the Komodo X to the same as the C400, which makes it very competitive, especially considering it has a global shutter and actually records 6k raw internally.

Oooo not bad! Go for it. Cheap!

Yea it is!

I'm pretty sure its just this board: https://pro.sony/en_BD/products/option-boards-modules-and-plug-ins/cbk-55pd

It's 4:22 on the BNC connectors, so nowhere near the quality of a raw file. You're basically forced to capture Canon Raw 12 bit internally, which is a horribly integrated codec into all software. It's not user friendly like BRAW or Pro Res RAW. It's more like dealing with Sony and Arri raw, which is unwieldy. Canon Raw is small tho, so that's a benefit.

Yep I've used it. The only viewfinder is the LCD display which doesn't have a loupe. I'm pretty sure Canon will have one available, but probably charge more. They discussed the idea. I like the C300, at least it has XAVC 10 bit 4:2:2 iFrame. This new camera doesn't have that codec! I'm flabbergasted. Nikon has more options on their still cameras. Canon purposely does this shit because I think their digic processor uses a lot of energy and they'd need a different set of chips to record other codecs and they just don't want to integrate them. Having an external recorder as a handicap, that just should not exist in 2024. The C400 is also a thickboi, blown away how wide it is. When they pulled the curtain off, I was like, oh crap, chunky! Reminds me of the Ursa mini in terms of chunky. Nothing like the competition. So outside of ND filters and Mini-XLR inputs, what does this thing give me the Z9 still camera can't? Still confused about that.

Hey! Yes still lurking for sure. I went to the announcement event in Burbank at the Canon office. It's a cool camera, tho imager refresh rate was NOT something the techs were willing to even discuss, probably number 1 reason I didn't buy a Blackmagic 6k. Getting some hands on with the camera, the refresh didn't seem bad but for sure not great. I would guess it's 12ms or so. The camera was also very oddly shaped and of course missing any shoulder mounting system. It's heavy as well and the EVF can't be turned into an eyecup system, which is very weird. Kinda threw me off. No pro res. Only the 3 levels of Canon raw, which isn't a great codec and now a new variant of their MPEG codec. Yuck. So na, not happy. Imager looks ok, but who cares if you can't get that image into your editorial system?

Interesting, I wonder if it was just the grain level that prevented it.

How did it come out?

They did some interesting things, but it was way too much of a copycat to be a good movie. It was a real shame they felt they needed to literally placate to the original script, nearly verbatim. It was shot well of course and it was nice to see anamorphic 35mm. I wish they had gone more marketing on that front and maybe struck some prints. Missed opportunity in my opinion, especially with so many theaters wanting prints to show.

The concept was for traveling salesmen to have a simple system they could easily setup and do presentations. They made a suitcase with one as well. These were also used at libraries.

Go drag some arc lights out of storage. Setup a system to run them. Point them directly at the actors and create a few scenes. All of those exteriors of West Side Story were all lit with arc lights. Not 1k, not 2k, like 12k. Have you ever lit a scene with 12k lights before? Their makeup would melt under the light, they'd have to be patted down between takes there was so much light. So when you see a contrasty scene with a lot of color, it's because they're being hit with a lot of color, the reflection is what you're seeing. The old stocks do have a different dye coupler but it's not the end of the world to re-create that look. Any real colorist should be able to do it. I have seen some amazing re-prints of old movies and I have not once felt once the physical film itself had much of a roll in the look.

No, the formulation was very toxic. ECN-2 was developed as an entirely different formulation, which was less toxic and faster to process for labs. It was not just a temperature change, according to the Eastman ECN documentation in the history of film development I have. They only list the Kodak chemical part numbers as well, never what is in them. So you can't cross reference and formulate your own. Kodak did sell the chemicals in powder forum, but I doubt it would even work on modern film stock properly. It would probably perform horribly. If you've processed film before, it's a very fine line between success and shit. Another important aspect, coming from a motion picture group; who is going to setup their machine to run chemicals that don't exist anymore? ECN 1 machines aren't the same as ECN 2. Not compatible. So someone would need to change the layout of their processor to even attempt what you're asking for, which will never happen of course. Gotta focus on things you CAN change, not things that are impossible to change.

You do know many people have tried this before right? People with pretty decent budgets too. You can make anything look like anything using modern software, as long as you light and lens the way they did back then. Just watch Love Witch, it looks like it was shot in the 1960's because David used the classic lensing, lighting and camera techniques which mimicked the way older films were made. It's pretty incredible how good the 35mm print of that film looks. For sure sampling if you have the chance, they do play it every once in a while. I bet him with a vistavision camera and some good set design, could re-create vertigo exactly the way it was shot, with exactly the same look. Again, lighting, lensing, camera techniques, those are what define those films, not the stock at all.

Again, film is film, there no special stock. For some weird reason that I can't seem to explain, people tend to not grade 16mm off the scanner for some sort of "unique raw" look or something. Film will grade the same from super 8 through 65mm. So when you see people posting odd stuff, that has no validity on the source what so ever. Nothing is different between the stocks. Pre-flashing doesn't effect resolution much at all. Obviously, pushing and pulling doesn't either. I also disagree that grain has much of an impact, as in the footage below, 16mm can be shot and distributed without the intense grain so many associate with the format.

Yes, you're right, I was attempting to suggest using a 24mm because it's a non-specialized lens, on both S35mm and full frame. Sure, not as wide of a field of view, but a compromise due to the higher quality lens.

The main differences people really discuss between formats are more down to "Field of View" and "depth of field". The physical film itself, as you pointed out, doesn't really matter. Don't want grain on 16mm, shoot 50D right? It's otherwise the same stock as every other film format. In fact you can even use S35mm or FF lenses on a 16mm camera, so it's not the lenses either. Field of View is the first major difference. It relates to the maximum image sample, a camera can take an image of. A smaller imager, will have a narrower field of view. Thus, to get a wider frame, you need to use wider lenses. Wider lenses inherently have all sorts of distortion issues due to how many physical elements there are in the lens. They are also generally very tricky to make fast. Plus, wider lenses have a very flat depth of field. Depth of field is how much of your image is in focus. With larger formats like Full Frame and S35mm (specifically 4 perf), to get a wide shot, you don't need to resort to specialized wide angle lenses. In fact, to get the same field of view between S16mm and S35mm, it's 2x the focal length. Thus, a specialized wide angle 9.5mm for S16mm, would be equivalent to 19mm on S35mm and 24mm on Full Frame. A 24mm lens is a non-specialized lens, in fact 24mm, 32-35mm, 50mm and even 85mm, can have very few optics in the design , thus allowing for a more distortion free look, with greater accuracy (sharpness) as well. A lot of people call this "object compression". S16mm has a "flatter" look because of these issues. Where it's true, you can help create depth through the use of longer lenses, placing objects closer to the camera and running at a wider stop, the field of view will always be compromised on S16mm compared to larger imager formats. You can't ever fix the field of view issues inherent in the small imager. Thus you can't really create a more compressed image with a larger imager. Sure, you can stop down a lot, like find a lens that can go to F22 and sure, you can use long lenses. But the longer the lens, the more depth you add to the frame, no matter what! To me, these issues and of course the added sharpness of a larger negative, are the reasons people shoot with S35mm and Full Frame formats like VistaVision, 5 perf 65mm and 15p 65mm. Longer lenses, to achieve wider shots, delivering a shallow depth of field, wider field of view, with less object compression AND of course, sharper image. There really is no contest if you want that cinematic look people attribute to these factors. With the 4:3 4 perf 35mm look in vogue due to its massive height, IMAX releases like Oppenheimer and digital delivery not really caring what aspect ratio you use, people have been experimenting with different looks using modern tech, in ways we couldn't really do prior; faster film stocks, focusing aids, faster lenses, better video taps, etc. I think the S16mm format in general is more "locked" to its base look, but the other formats, seemingly can bridge the gap between digital and film in a way that S16mm can't. So to get S35mm to look like 16mm, is kind of impossible. Even if you pushed 500T several stops, you'd still have the field of view associated with 35mm. That will never change.

New PL mounts are hard to find. Just be aware, just because the labor is simple to install, doesn't mean the hardware exists.

High saturation generally requires a lot of light. So later in the video when there is basically no specialty light on the actress, there isn't much post production can do to compensate. The trick is to always be consistent with lighting and to always have more than one light on your source. High saturation content like Wizard of Oz, creates that look by simply illuminating everything with an extreme amount of light from every direction. So for that classic saturated look, that's basically what you need to do.

99% of all modern TV's have automatic smoothing function, which makes all content look like the highest refresh rate the TV will do. I bet it's actually higher than 60hz in your case. Most modern TV's are 120 or higher refresh. You can go into the menu and turn off all the smoothing functions. In fact, anything that has an on/off switch in settings, turn off. My Sony Bravia has at least a dozen automatic settings and with them all off, it looks normal.

Yep, I don't remember, but it used a standard intermittent with the mechanical method of working, which is a lot easier to time. I think it was used for high speed photography as well.

What, like a sprocket intermittent in a 35mm projector? They tried that, didn't work. That poor motor would be doing all sorts of weird things, they aren't designed to start and stop something in 1/4 of a revolution and then start back again. It would struggle greatly to line up anything. Plus you'd still need some sort of registration pin system because the sprocket drive is too loose. So to hold it in place would take something special, like a registration pin. Finally, it wouldn't make the camera any cheaper. It would just make it not worth buying. It's one thing to do what we've been talking about and use a traditional movement system, but mixed with a few new toys like the LCD shutter for variable shutter speeds and fancy beam splitter and video assist. All of that is a bit more ascertainable in a lower cost 16mm form factor. Can't do a sprocket intermittent with 16mm, that's for sure.