Tyler Purcell

What features does a 416 have that an XTR Prod doesn't? Both have S35mm viewfinders Both have really good video taps Both have timecode Both have lots of P tap's of various kinds Both have infinate speed control up to 72fps Both have variable shutter Both have changeable ground glass Both are PL mount

Yea, the prices are outrageous. I got my Aaton 35III 3 perf for about 1/3rd what they're charging for the Moviecam over at Alan Gordon. Ohh well. The 416 was pulled it looks like. Probably found a local buyer... it wasn't a good deal or anything, it was just "acceptable". May I inquire WHY a 416? You do know that film camera bodies don't really mean much. A well maintained 30 year old camera produces the same image as a brand new one. I personally went with Aaton for my cameras because they continue to have support and I like their designs. Sure, I'd love to have a 416, but mainly because it garnishes more money on rentals. To me, nothing beats the XTR Prod, which is the camera I own and use on a regular basis.

A few things to note... the differences in the videos you posted are mostly from old/bad film stock, poor film transfer and even in the case of the last video, some exposure issues. I would personally ignore much of what's on youtube unless it's an actual narrative project where the filmmakers care about what they're shooting, rather then making home movies. I find the 'camera test' films to be really god awful and irrelevant. I don't think you'll learn much from watching people's mistakes, it's far better to watch stuff that was done properly so you understand what the format can do. Also, there are dozens of factors that determine the look, just like digital; Stock, lens, exposure, processing, transfer, coloring, I mean the list goes on and on. So when you watch video's you never really know what they're doing, so much of what I post below is just a guess based on what I see. This film was shot with the camera on full automatic, so the highlights were blown out in some cases. The transfer from film to video is why the colors are subdued. It's just done with a camcorder and projector, probably one of the Elmo all-in-one transfer machines from the 80's. This "look" can be achieved in post no problem. Nothing special, those night shots are pretty much what film looks like. Not sure of what speed it is, but I doubt it's overly fast, maybe 200ISO. Colors are overly saturated in some cases, it may just be a poor transfer. The stock they used is an outdated/no longer available Fuji stock called Eterna. It's nearly impossible to find in any format these days as it was discontinued in 2013. You mean the blown out shot where there is no detail and it looks like crap? LOL :P I mean it was tri-x B&W stock, probably over exposed slightly as well. If you wanna learn MORE about shooting on film. Send me a PM and I'll gladly discuss the program I offer which is hands on with 16mm, it's a lot of fun and you'll learn a lot! :)

Great stuff, thanks for sharing John! My projectionist friends are mostly in their 60's. :)

Arricam LT and Moviecam 3 perf, both available at Alan Gordon, here in Los Angeles. Penelope's are worth their weight in gold, they're basically impossible to find and if you DO find one, the owner wants triple the actual value. There is a beautiful 416 package on ebay right now, well worth checking out.

I'm a bit on the young side, so where I do recall seeing movies as a child with change over's, the industry moved over to platters not long after. Some projectionists hate platters, others love them. I think the key to making a platter system work is the room and roller cleanliness. When the film has to travel a long distance, it's really susceptible to dust and dirty rollers just compound the issue. Today, I see a lot of theaters running cleaning rollers as the film goes down into the projection head. I think this practice is good, if you keep the rollers clean. The IMAX guys have a bunch of rollers on stand by and switch them out per showing. I think that's the way to do things properly, but it's hard to implement and it's more labor. Modern 35/70 projectors are pretty easy to thread and operate, they don't require much labor at all. A quick cleaning of the gate between shows is all that's "needed". Some of them don't even require re-focusing after each re-thread. Simply swing the lens assembly away and snap it back into position afterwards. So truthfully, one projectionist could run a multiplex pretty easily. I've been blessed to spend quite a bit of time in projection booths. Someday I will want to work as a part time projectionist at an art house or something when I get older, it's on the agenda. I recall a few short years ago, during the downfall of film, going to a multiplex that was still primarily film and hanging out with the projectionist for an evening. It was a very cool experience, the projection room maze was quite fascinating and she did the rounds, monitoring each and every show as the night went on. They timed out the changes perfectly, so she wouldn't be stressed and she always watched each show start to insure it was working. I saw the finished result and it was a clean, crisp, bright picture in every theater, it was quite amazing actually. She talked about digital and how bored she will be in the future, at least the film projection gave her something to think about. But 13 screens and one projectionist... yea, it was a constant job to deal with and I'm happy to have seen it before the whole industry disappeared. Today, I rarely see movies presented in digital, I only go if I'm watching a print. Hearing the projector start up is the sound of my childhood, it reminds me why I moved to Hollywood.

Umm, it has a very slight curve, nothing like this new imager. Plus, going horizontal or vertical isn't a problem, especially at not much of an angle. When you do BOTH horizontal and vertical, now you add a whole new can of worms.

Umm, how can you "curve" a pixel and keep them the same shape across the entire imager?

I don't know how you can make a pixel curve. That would introduce a whole new problem.

All of the Aaton's can run on 12v, so that's not an issue. My batteries are all 14v though. Aaton made 4 generations of XTR. The "Plus" is gen 3, the "Prod" is gen 4 and the Prod + is just an update to the magazines and maybe software. The XTR Prod has a few key features... These are the ones I can remember. - A brighter 35mm style viewfinder - Adjustable shutter angle - 72fps(infinitely variable speed control from 6fps to 72) - Timecode capable - More efficient on battery usage - Better video tap (in most cases) - Removable 1.85:1 ground glass standard - PL mount (super 16/standard 16) standard - Tools in the handle grip - Aaton glow - Blacklit display

Sure, DCP's are JPEG2000 files, but they're usually made from a 10 bit master, even though the container can be 12 bit. They're also a wider color space capable, but very few people put anything else but 444 DCI-P3 color space in them. UHD BluRay (h265) can do 10 and 12 bit, 4:2:0, 4:2:2, 4:4:4 color space. So it really depends on the disk and the processing they choose at the post house. I'm under the impression that HDR UHD BluRay's will be 12 bit 444, but I'm not 100% sure and there really isn't any way to test.

Ohh and BTW, that little black roller thing is on backwards I think. IDK why it would be where it is.

Cool find man! It's really unfortunate they don't make striped film anymore.

Absolutely. I saw a print of The Force Awakens, a week after it was originally release and it was completely destroyed. Looked like the film fell off the platter and then dragged on the floor. There is NO excuse for film print damage, the only reason it happens is human negligence. It's frustrating to me because there wasn't a "problem" and all digital does is take away the human. It's not better quality, in most cases it's less resolution with a more compressed color space. The whole point of going to the cinema is to see something you can't at home and with digital projection it's nearly identical to what's available for home cinema. UHD BluRay is HDR, 10 bit 4:2:2 color space with pretty decent resolution. Match that with an UHD HDR display device, now you have no reason (quality wise) to visit a theater. The moment 4k laser projectors drop in price, I'll have one and I can blow it up on my 13ft wide wall, so "screen" size is irrelevant. So yea... this is why "film" is so important because it's an 'experience' you can't take home. The final generation rolling loop 3D projectors that MOST IMAX theaters had before the switch to digital are amazing machines. They do "touch" the film a lot more then conventional projectors do, but because they were made to pretty high tolerances and use high pressure air (vacuum) to hold the film in place, they're actually more gentile on film then conventional vertical 5/70 projectors. They also have pin registration, which is pretty amazing and the only time I'm aware of it actually being used for a theatrical projection system. Another thing to take into account is most standard 35mm projectors in theaters were decades old. The final iteration of projectors from Christies and Kinoton, were really nice and stable machines. It's just, very few theaters switched over and many that did, found themselves regretting it as digital pushed them to the sidelines. I actually dig the Kinoton's quite a bit, they have the best registration I've ever seen on non-IMAX film projection, even on 16mm mode. The 35/70 machine is outstanding for 70mm presentations, using huge plastic guide rails to help keep the film in perfect registration and tension during the pulldown/exposure process. They also have electronic shutters which allow the projector to run at variable speeds, which means at normal speed, they self calibrate and have zero flicker. Arclight Hollywood has two Kinton's, one in the Dome and one in theater 6. Outside of hollywood, I bet they're hard to find because they really weren't designed for theaters, they were designed for post houses. I mean there ain't much reason to visit a cinema for digital projection unless you MUST SEE first run content.

2 days? More like 2 months! It takes A LONG TIME to make prints these days, now that all the high speed duplicators are gone. 70mm prints have always taken longer anyway because I don't believe there was ever one of those strings made for that format. Fotokem was conforming 5/70 and 15/70 reels 2 months ago, so most likely the prints are piling up right now and will slowly start shipping over the next few weeks. Theaters generally have prints nearly a week in advance to build them up and run a test screening. So opening in select cities a week early on film, wouldn't be TOO much of an issue at this point. They may still do something special, it's still too early.

The DMR tag probably refers to the digital release, not the film release. I've been blessed to see some amazing film prints, even recently with Warners release of many films on 5/70. The Wonder Woman print was stellar, absolutely amazing and a world of difference from digital projection... even though it was a laser out to film. I love seeing a good print, it just makes me all giddy because it's rare these days. I don't know how many beans I can spill about what's happening, but suffice to say, there are going to be A LOT of 5/70 prints of Dunkirk made. Rumors are that it will be the biggest roll out since Hateful Eight and that's a small clue into what Kodak are doing. I'm slightly miffed that Warner Brothers didn't allow Nolan to do a pre-release of the movie a week ahead on film. That really kills me because he can seemingly do anything he wants, but when it comes down to it, without purposely forcing the movie onto people projected on film, the vast majority of viewers won't see a film print. The whole point in my opinion is to release it on film early and force people who want to see it, on the correct medium. This is really the holy grail to keep film prints being shown. If you can make them "special" in some way... maybe a longer version, maybe an early release, anything to make it unique to the average audience, it will FORCE them to understand what the difference is. I hope, I pray, Kodak understands the power of what they're doing and advertises it as such. If the audience sits down and there isn't anything to label what they're seeing as special, umm... what's the point?

And Sony and Panasonic's cameras which are 2x the money, didn't? I think the A7SMKII looks like utter crap. Even though the GH4 and now GH5 look "ok" neither one looks marketably better, OR has a global shutter. Again, compare apples to apples... what other $998.00 camera is BETTER then the pocket camera? Also, what's the lowest cost camera that shoots RAW and 10 or 12 bit Pro Res? Honestly, I refuse to have an extra piece of hardware connected to my camera JUST to get a decent recording out of it. If a camera manufacturer can't build-in a decent codec that's usable, I refuse to even discuss their product's existence. Yep... and remember, the Alexa and Red cameras have rolling shutter as well. So the whole debate about rolling shutter is kind of moot if ALL the cameras have the problem. I use the built-in LCD display with a viewfinder adaptor that sticks on the back, so you can put your eye up against it. Again, been shooting with it for going on 4 years, dozens of shows per year and never once had an issue. Even though the display isn't high quality, with the viewfinder adaptor, it does work fine.

Yea that sounds about right, based on the BTS I've seen, it's mostly 15/70 cameras. I wonder if they'll zoom up the 5 perf stuff to fit the whole screen for the IMAX presentation, or if they'll letterbox it like they've done in the past. One exciting piece of news is that Warner Brothers officially owns a bunch of 15/70 projectors that they MAY be shipping out to theaters for this roll out. Right now, they were just pushed into storage a few weeks ago, so lets see if they make good on their promise and release the film ON film properly. A few of the big theaters still have 15/70 projectors, just pushed off to the side.

I've heard the same story from many people in the industry, they somehow think that film is dead. Partially because they don't care, in their minds it is dead. All they can remember are the negatives of film, they aren't in the business of making art in most cases. "Saving" motion picture film, came down to the studio's, not individuals. Sure, there was a lot of push from big filmmakers to come up with a deal (Abrams, Nolan, Anderson, Tarantino, Scorcese, etc) but it was the studio's who financed the deal, Warner Brothers having the largest stake, thanks to in part to Nolan and their management understanding how to make money off "film" presentations. The deal allowed Kodak to revamp their facility, tear down buildings and construct a new infrastructure. With an all-new management team, they've been able to create a completely sustainable business model. They don't really make much money off selling film, they make their money by leasing buildings at their facility. Kodak has become a landlord! So now they're literally good for quite a long time, no matter how good or bad film sales go. In terms of "numbers", camera negative sales has nearly doubled in the last 2 years. (2015/2016) over the previous two (2013/2014). This year I bet the number is pretty strong thanks to 15 theatrically bound features shot on motion picture film thus far and a few TV shows. Kodak's numbers over-all have been down of course, due to the lack of film prints, which was their main business. However, thanks to Nolan and Anderson pushing their films to be distributed on film, we may see a push towards more theatrically released features on film as the years go on. I do know of a few things which I can't say in public, that are going on behind the scenes which will dramatically change this paradigm. I can't wait for Kodak to spill the beans so we can finally discuss it in public. Needless to say, the release of Dunkirk maybe the right time to do it, so fingers crossed! Really, the only problems right now are the labs. There are a few "discount" labs, but the big guys are charging way too much money. Partially because they no longer make money off prints and partially because they're so big, they don't have quite enough processing to warrant making deals. This is a real hindrance and it's scary because it means a lot of big filmmakers who would normally shoot film, may not because they're concerned about the quality/speed of lab work and the studio's are concerned about being raked over the coals for pricing on that work. So there needs to be a better lab network and Kodak is slowly developing them.

The BMPCC was designed for people who wanted a cheap cinematic look out of a small camera. The D16 was a complete and utter toy that had zero purpose for existence. If it was literally a digital Bolex, as in the chassis/feature set were identical to a Bolex, only it had a digital imager, that would have been quite cool. However, what they designed was atrocious, not just in physical form, but also in what it was capable of doing. If it were sold at your local camera shop for $999, it would be worth the risk, but the prices they wanted were outrageous. The pocket camera blows the doors off the D16 any day of the week in pretty much every area. They could have kept going and changed vendors and/or manufactured somewhere else. If they were selling like hot cakes, they would have made it work, but when the quantities are so low, it's hard to justify. The design/marketing was atrocious. If you're very careful, the pocket can deliver great images without much rolling shutter effect. It's just, people aren't willing to be careful with how they shoot. All of these low-budget cameras have similar limitations, it's all about how you adapt. As I said earlier, I've been shooting with the pocket for going on 4 years now and it's been a frustrating experience sometimes, mostly because the thing is so damn sensitive, you've gotta run ND's to make a good image unless it's interior/dark.

Agreed, but if CCD was that much better, Panavision would have continued with Sony to develop a solution that kicked everyone's ass. However, they moved onto CMOS and they ain't looking back. Panavision is the only company who could have made a specialized solution work and even they gave up on the idea. I don't think it had anything to do with money. I'm fortunate enough to have graded raw Digital Bolex footage and I thought it looked like crap. It has a forced look that can't really be manipulated in post that is trying to hard to look like film, it forgets what it is. Plus, it was super noisy, latitude was like 8 stops at most and it had harsh highlight clipping. I'm not a fan and that's part of the reason they went out of business, where Blackmagic still sells Pocket cameras like hot cakes. No, I can't make the pocket look like the Bolex Digital camera without manipulation in post, but honestly in most cases, I don't WANT it to look that way either. The benefits of shooting digitally go out the window if you're stuck with a very particular look from your digital camera. I never liked the Viper.

No, I just take into account what products exist on the market, rather then a hypothetical solution that doesn't exist.

No confusion... Single CCD's aren't even on the radar/even worth discussing. Three CCD's are impossible to use with industry standard cinema glass that isn't specifically made for that design. With the amount of "new" lenses on the market today, for multiple mount types, there is zero reason a large-imager 3 CCD camera couldn't have been made and specialty glass that goes along with it. Panavision did it, but even their attempt didn't work well enough. The whole concept that lenses dictated the imaging technology we use today in my eyes is semi-bogus. We use CMOS for dozens of reasons as pointed out above, but also because it's A LOT CHEAPER AND SMALLER then a 3 CCD block. My "argument" above is that CCD's as good as they are, unfortunately aren't as good as CMOS in many ways and even CMOS isn't really that great. To this day, we still haven't figured out a decent digital imaging capture and presentation system. What we have is good, but it's not great and requires far to much manipulation with both the origination files and in the presentation.

But what is a hot-rodded DSLR? A 5D MKIV with open software? Still super limited bandwidth and bit rate. Gotta get up over the 200Mbps range to make a decent 1080p image and gotta get over the 400Mbps range to make a decent 4k image. They are amazing for the money. I work mostly in post production, but I bring up shots for people to see of what my pocket camera is capable of doing and everyone whose seen it, has been impressed. I'm also impressed what that little $998.00 camera can achieve in just normal Pro Res HQ shooting. Switch it to Raw and do a serious color pass in DaVinci, the camera looks really good for what it is. I have yet to use another camera anywhere near it's size with similar results. Both the Panasonic and Sony "alternatives" are twice the money, for less quality. Here is a little bit of footage I shot from a feature I worked on last year. A very basic grade done in DaVinci, but this is exactly what the camera looks like: https://www.dropbox.com/s/xonfgpua4u2kqyn/Blackmagic%20Pocket%20with%20Zeiss%2012-120.mov?dl=0 Well, my only digital cinema cameras are Blackmagic, so I have a different perspective. I've shot with pretty much everything on the market today and honestly, I agree with many of your comments. At the same time, I've been shooting with my pocket cameras since the day they came out. They have traveled around the world with countless other filmmakers (friends) who absolutely adore them. Two of the films that were shot are features, one of which is almost done with post, it will be out in theaters later next year. I personally have shot with them in extreme heat (120f) extreme cold (-22f) extreme rain/wind, on dive boats, floating in a pool with no protection, in super dusty situations (motocross/dirt bike videos) and the camera's have never once had a single glitch and I have two of them. Both look like they've been through a war, all the markings are gone and I've had them both apart to tighten the tripod mount a few times because I never bought a cage for'em. Needless to say, with a viewfinder adaptor and a PL mount adaptor, I can put my Super 16 cinema glass on them and create some fantastic imagery. Both cameras, a kit of Rokinon EOS mount primes (8mm, 12mm, 24mm, 85mm) wireless audio, batteries, cards, adaptors, bag, tripod... discounted pricing but still new, the entire kit ran me $3k. I shot two projects and it paid for the cameras right away, right now I'm just in the profits every time I use them on a paid gig. Now I've used comparable Sony and Panasonic cameras, but they aren't really any better. Sure they have bells and whistles, but at what cost. External recorders to capture 10 bit 4:2:2 in any other codec but Long GOP MPEG disaster? Sorry, not interested. The GH5 is the first Panasonic camera I've ever really been interested in and I talked my friend into buying one, so I'll be using it quite a bit coming up in a few months once he receives it. I'll do a full write-up, but needless to say my S16 glass won't work on it, so there goes all those well laid plans! LOL :) I've not scientifically tested any of the blackmagic cameras. I'm just a cinematographer, I go out and shoot poop, I come back and I edit it. Yea, I'm not happy with a lot of the skin tones and how the camera deals with certain unusual situations. However, I know how to work around those issues in post and how to light properly to help avoid them. All digital cameras have their little issues, the RED and Arri cameras do to, it's just they're so much more money, people buy them not realizing they too have issues. This is a discussion for another thread cuz we could go on about CCD's vs CMOS all night long! :) Suffice to say, nobody has made a CCD look as cinematic as CMOS yet, artificial or not, the high resolution cinema camera version doesn't exist. So until it does, it's all theory and discussions. I haven't seen MTF values for Vision 3 in a while. I'll have to look/compare. However, the proof is in the watching a print. I've watched dozens of prints over the last few years and haven't seen any non-technicolor print as crisp as the modern stocks. Dunkirk is suppose to have a lot of 35mm prints, all done photochemically, that will be a great thing to sample. Ehh... maybe? Honestly, I don't think so because a lot of movies are shot with more vintage lenses even on film. Also, just watch a 4k laser projected version of something modern shot on 35, it's so crisp and beautiful, it really is another world compared to the restoration transfers I've seen of movies even from the early 2000's. No way would they ever make a purpose built 16mm stock. The cost would bring the price so high, they'd never sell any. Honestly, 16 is very expensive these days because short ends don't exist and Kodak doesn't really give deals since they don't sell that much. 35mm sells so much, you can get recan's for cheap and Kodak practically gives away stock if you need it. They've treated me really well with 35mm stuff, I've been very happy. 35 is really here to stay and so it large format.

I've done quite a bit of shooting with the Epic MX and Dragon cameras recently. The Dragon looks pretty good, far better then any DSLR I've ever used, even in still mode. The color science is a bit whack, but with good warm glass and the right white balance setting, I was able to get some decent images out of the RED, stuff that's absolutely impossible to get from a DSLR even in RAW mode. You can't compare Blackmagic Designs to Red, Arri or Sony when it comes to the professional world. Blackmagic cameras are less then half the price of the competition for like features and as of the Ursa Mini Pro 4.6k, they've finally built a swiss-army knife camera that even with it's limitations, is worth the money compared to the competition. I shoot a lot of film these days and honestly, unless you spend gobs of money on a monochrome imager high resolution scan, digital still kicks the ass of film every day of the week. The problem today with film is that good scanning is still too expensive. It's still too labor intensive and it's still not capturing exactly what's on the film itself. So sure, you've got this awesome image on film, but getting that image into the digital world to look better then lets say a Red Dragon, is very expensive. So where it's nice to pick on cheaper cameras for being a bit constrictive on their abilities, trying to compare them to film is kinda silly. A $10,000 URSA mini Pro Package is "free" to shoot with after you get that 10k back. We're up around 60 - 70% 4k digital adoption these days, but the studios still release much of the content in 2k. This is because some theaters have older servers that struggle to playback 4k material and it costs A LOT LESS MONEY to finish VFX in 2k. So when a film is rushed out the door, a lot of times it's just finished in 2k. Hollywood went digital BTW prior to 2013. Even most non-science IMAX theaters had switched over to digital by then. CMOS is a garbage in-between technology. CCD's just don't have the dynamic range of CMOS. The industry also wanted to use the same glass and mount system, so they just went for a technology and we're stuck with it. Honestly, CMOS is more filmic then CCD, it's just lacking in the color depth that you get with a 3 ccd block. Umm... just the opposite actually. T grain is so much smaller/finer it's actually higher resolution because there are more granulates per frame then ever before. This is a huge increase in resolution to the point where modern 35mm prints look like they're digital, nice and crisp all the time, even if they've gone through a photochemical finishing process. I watch A LOT of film prints and I've never seen anything out of the 90's or older that even holds a candle to the modern stocks capabilities. Remember, in the early 2000's, everything went to 2k finishing and laser out's, so the quality decreased substantially. When you compare a print of a photochemically finished movie... Interstellar for instance, to a movie made 20 years ago, the difference is astronomical. The 90's prints look like standard definition in comparison to the modern prints. That's because our camera negatives and print stock is so much better, the resolution has increased substantially. I just hope Kodak invests in making a new stock. I've been told they are doing it right now and we should have some new Vision color negative stocks hitting the market in the next two years, that would be so awesome. I think a low-noise, naturally rated 1000 ISO stock would do really well, it would make people less concerned about lighting.