Tyler Purcell

I do have an axe to grid because people are UNEDUCATED and it drives me crazy! If cinematographers knew, what they shot wouldn't last forever and was going to be down-sampled to the lowest acceptable resolution for theatrical release, don't you think they'd make changes? The problem is that everyone keeps their mouth shut about this topic. The rug is lifted up, the topic is swept underneath and nobody is the wiser. I have been in production meetings as a technical expert, trying to persuade filmmakers to shoot film so it will last forever and the moment I show them my worksheet on data loss and longevity, they flip their lid. Yet, most people still shoot digital because it's easier. The problem is, everyone is nearsighted, they can only see whatever project they are working on next. VERY few people care about longevity and no... I can't think of a single cinematographer who has outwardly stated they prefer the look of digital over film. As in, the reason they aren't shooting film is because they dislike it's looks. In fact, MOST cinematographers on MOST movies comment how difficult it would be for them to shoot film, so they "SETTLE" for digital. So here we are, it's been 15 years since we started shooting digitally and nothing has changed.

Yep, I saw that and it clearly shows you how frustrated Seale was. Re-watch it and you can see for yourself. I did a bit of digging and pulled up some other interviews in magazines and such, which re-count his frustrations even further. The bits about the DIT were hilarious and scary. The cinematographer, the one who's job it is to do things like make sure the exposure is correct, make sure there is proper lighting on the actors face, make sure the lens selection is right for the shot, make camera decisions and work with the director on delivering his vision, was overruled by some punk ass computer nerd sitting in a black van. So Seale got bored, grabbed a unit and shot C camera. Otherwise, per his own words, he'd be sitting around watching a monitor. Besides, the WHOLE MOVIE was made in post. I've seen raw camera material and it looked like ass even with a decent LUT applied. Not to mention every shot had effects. Also... I have no idea why ANYONE in their right mind would even give that movie the time of day. It was exactly what is wrong with cinema today; just throw a bunch of poop at people's faces, where decent films like Beasts of No Nation doesn't even get a nod? For ANY category? Swap all the nods (outside of VFX) for Fury Road with Beasts of No Nation and that would be the best thing the Academy would have done. But yet again, let the stupidity reign!

Yea like lighting? They didn't really use lights. The director selected the lenses, he selected the cameras, he selected the compositions of each shot. According to John Seale, he literally was pushed out of the normal cinematography job and into that of a camera operator. So to say Mad Max Fury Road's "cinematography" is good... that award doesn't belong to Seale, it really belongs to Miller. I mean Seale was there, he was just incapacitated and a "requirement" from the studio. I'm sure Miller would have rather not had a DP on location at all. Now it's hard for me to work with DP's because I went to school for it and ALWAYS run the camera. However, there is no way I'd push the EXTREMELY TALENTED John Seale away from adding his creative input during production. However, Miller did just that and it pisses the ever living poop out of me. If I were Seale I would have said **(obscenity removed)** you all, I'm going home. By the way, this is all well documented.

Wait PXL2000 arguably the worst camera ever made, is a "great camera" for doing different stuff? If you aren't shooting film... if your whole world is digital... you can make digital look like ANYTHING in post. No reason to waste time, money and energy on making old video cameras work, when you can buy a decent camera for not much more money. I know I sound like a broken record and everyone is probably tired of hearing this, but the blackmagic pocket cameras are going for $600 on ebay. You can buy a piece of junk M43 lens for $150 bux and be done with.

Ohh now that's pretty sweet! :) Now only if it did 65mm! (yes I'm obsessed) :)

It's actually worse then that as well. The vast majority of filmmakers just flat-out don't care! To them, the ease of shooting digital is all they care about, even if they could rent the on-site instant dailies mobile lab, it doesn't matter. Sure, MOST films are just garbage anyway, entertainment for bored people. But there are some AMAZING movies being shot on digital and the excuses for not shooting on film range from, no lab near the production location to X-Ray issues on The Revenant. Everyone has an excuse why they can't make their movie on film, yet there are still at least 20 big movies each year being shot on film. Now for the worse part... There is no long-term storage program for digital media. We have a huge collection of 100+ year old films, some were destroyed in fires, but those that exist, we can still see today in many cases. Modern RGB separation prints, which are struck for MOST movies to this day, will last upwards of 300 years! At this point in time, outside of RGB separation prints, the life expectancy of a digital camera master file is roughly 10 years. We made this huge leap into digital filmmaking, around 15 years ago and it's come A LONG WAY. We have these crazy 6 and 8k cameras today, we have all theaters outfitted with digital cinema projectors and we have a workflow that's downright easy. Yet, MOST films are finished in 2k resolution. The RGB separation prints would be struck off that 2k master file. So the "archive" of the film is 2k!!! Doesn't matter if you shot it on a 10k camera, it's still a 2k finish. So 50 years from now when studio's go back through catalogs and re-release things in 8k, that high resolution master file, won't exist! We will have a 12 bit 2k DCP and a 2k originated RGB separation print. One could argue that theatrical prints were 4th generation and in a lot of cases, lower resolution then today's digital films. However, that's only because nobody bothered improving the technology. All the money went into faster camera stocks, digital audio and smaller/quieter cameras. Nobody bothered to sit down and make an all-new workflow for motion picture film, a format that hasn't changed much since the beginning of WWII! Imagine what our current digital projects will look like 80 years from now. They'll be like VHS to High Definition (1080p). Go watch Gone With the Wind or Wizard of Oz and tell me they don't look flat-out amazing on BluRay. Do you think any of the current digital acquisition films will look that good? No way... we'll STILL be watching restored versions of those movies saying to ourselves, why did filmmaking take such a left turn. Thank god we have so many awesome filmmakers who understand this problem and are using film to it's benefit. The 70mm acquisition and distribution with photochemical finish workflow/revolution, has just started. Theaters are now realizing, hey... we can get 3D prices for screenings! Maybe FILM will put an end to 3D! Only time will tell.

John Seale had very little to do with the cinematography of that film according to himself. The DIT took over principal A camera photography and Seale ran C camera with a long lens for most of the production. Plus... it's a HEAVY VFX film and slow-mo film, relying on "gimmicks" and substantial post work to make it pretty. In my eyes, it shouldn't even be nominated... there is really nothing "special" about it. 100%. I thought Carol was the most outstanding achievement in Cinematography with Bridge of Spies right on it's heal. Even though I didn't like a few things in Bridge of Spies cinematography wise, I thought the good stuff was flat-out perfect. The open of the film for instance in old New York, those scenes were so well done. It's so true and it was my biggest beef with that film AND Hateful Eight. It was like, meh... anyone can go outside and shoot nature. I mean for gosh sakes with Hateful Eight, they had one room to light... "best cinematography" don't think so. Carol blew my mind away, the simplicity of each setup, the color pallet, framing and staging, it was so well made. I REALLY hope he win's, but we all know the most pretty films win. In my opinion, cinematography should be based on what comes through the lens, not what one highly trained specialist does sitting in a chair for a week or two AFTER the film is done.

The Alexa 65 has a 6k imager that's more or less equivalent in size a 5 perf 65mm frame. But it's still 12 bit and there currently isn't a higher quality distribution format then 4k. So where it's awesome to have a 6k camera, nobody is going to see that resolution until we have 8k cinema projectors, which is A LONG WAY OFF, considering MOST projectors are still 2k and MOST movies are finished in 2k. 65mm camera negative resolves 32bit @ more than 8k resolution. Prints resolve a bit less then 6k. So it's still a FAR superior format to anything we can shoot and distribute digitally. The problem is, the moment it hits a computer, you're most likely dropping bit depth and resolution.

Yep agree. I do know the lens/imager are "fixed" on the demo's I saw. But you could theoretically make a longer lens to "zoom" the image and of course crack the software to compensate.

Well... yea. People try to spend all this time and money making a consumer format look good. No matter what, it's a consumer format... Reminds me a lot of hi-8 and svhs. Consumer formats that had "professional" equipment made, but the results were still far lower then betacam. I posted on one of the other kodak super 8 threads that super 16mm is still far better quality and similar cost to a logmar super 8 camera and using super 8 as a format.

I hear ya! Thats partially why I don't have a zoom for my digital camera.

I thought you could just change lenses, use a different focal length?

Umm, totally different product, not even remotely close outside of the fact it captures an image from motion picture film.

Camera is still available! I'm very motivated to sell!

Speed booster and a 21mm?

I used it in 2015 as well, the machine hasn't changed one iota. In fact, their scanner "expert" didn't know much about it. I wound up sitting in the chair for the whole day showing people how to use it. It's not in the wild quite yet. I'm waiting for an e-mail back verifying what the deal is.

I got my 10 - 120 for a grand and I saw a similar modified one go on ebay for $850 recently. I was like holy crap! The Arri/Zeiss ones are $3k - 5k easily and they are no better.

Mine doesn't have any vignetting in final filmed shot, though you can see it on the edges of the viewfinder. It was modified by Optex and they did a great job. Close focus is only 5 feet when wide, but if you stick to that, it's all good. I think that's why the Arri version is 11 - 110, they may have wanted to try and create closer focus when fully wide. The Angénieux had vignetting all the way wide all the time! Plus, it was HARD, just a black circle, where the Zeiss is soft, you can barely see it.

Umm, most of the transcode programs will up res, but the scaling tools bring out digital noise. The best thing to do is simply scale in Avid. Bring the media in normally and use the 3D warp tool and which will allow you to scale in pretty decent quality. I'd then take the effect, drag it to an "effects" bin and label it. So next time you need to put another clip in, just drag the effect over and you're all good. Yes it will need to be rendered on older Avid systems, but anything from 6.3 onwards, it should render that effect on the fly.

The Beaulieu has a more traditional lens mount so you can use manual glass. However, the format itself, the inherent nature of the plastic backplate (in the cartridge) and perforations that aren't exactly made properly... means the format in of itself doesn't necessitate high quality glass. So it really doesn't matter what camera you buy because the glass doesn't play the biggest role, the format itself does. Cameras like the Logmar, solve most of these problems and the images that come out of that camera look more like 16 then super 8. You can check for fungus in the glass and if it's clean, just roll with it!

The flange distance has always thrown me for a loop. The K3 has a very close flange distance, so does my Bolex. They can accept a very wide range of lenses, which is sweet. However, the Aaton's flange distance is much greater, magnitudes greater! So the last element of the glass has to be much closer to the gate. The problem of course, you have to put the lens inside the mounting hole! Finding glass and an adaptor that will let you do that, is going to be nearly impossible. Now you COULD use a speed booster for PL, but nobody makes one! So back to square one on that. I had the same problem, only I have EF mount glass that I wanted to use. So it won't work even if I shove it in the hole, the flange distance on those cameras is so much closer, it's worthless on the Aaton. SOME older Nikon glass does fit the Nikon adaptor, but not much. I tried some older Nikon lenses I have, none of them worked with the Nikon adaptor I have. So I bought Bayonet mount glass and B to Aaton mount adaptors. You can get Bayonet mount cinema glass for reasonable pricing. Plus, the stuff just works! The adaptors are very sturdy and work great!

Yea, I mean they can turn it off...

Yea I didn't see any sharpness issues either. On my computer it was crisp and looked good. Though the later shots had a lot of noise in them and the focus seemed soft when zooming in. I've used Angénieux lenses for years and they are absolutely a "softer" lens then other zooms like the Zeiss 10 - 120 that I currently use. It has a good look though, especially for film. For digital, the coatings look a bit weird. I've seen many tests and they all have an unusual bloom of red in them. When I used Angénieux full-time on film, my biggest complaints were the vignetting issues and how the speed changed when you zoomed. One of the Angénieux lenses I used all the time, wouldn't let you run all the way open unless you were zoomed in I believe. I like shallow depth of field, so I'd always want to run the zoom's all the way open and it was tricky. By contrast, I've found the Zeiss 10 - 120 MKII to be a MUCH better lens. It doesn't have any problems really.

I have a lot of notes about using it on the Blackmagic thread. I've got quite a bit of time on the machine.

It's kind of a beta product. They're using the older 4k imager that nobody really likes. The concept is great, the pricing is decent, but it's not a complete product. It's really designed for people like me, who need a quick way to transfer camera negative at my shop. I won't ever work with archival material and I have a lot of clients who need low-cost transfer work done. When they update the imager to the new 4.6k version and use optics to go between the different formats, it will be a really good machine.