Tyler Purcell

Depends on if you need really good slow-mo. I don't know a single decent, non-MPEG based/Raw capturing/Interchangeable lens camera which has excellent slow-mo. Mostly all of the cameras which allow you to do over-cranking use MPEG codec's which are absolutely atrocious to edit. I gave up trying to make slow-mo and simply learned how to tell stories instead… I use the Blackmagic Pocket cinema camera's and honestly, they aren't really designed for sports, but they work great. The rolling shutter effect isn't really bad and they have a more cinematic look, totally different then the "trying to be too sharp" DSLR's, of which I dislike tremendously. I also prefer the Blackmagic concept of shooting RAW and Pro Res. If you copy and paste the link in my signature below into a web browser, you can see some of the motocross stuff I've shot. Unfortunately I can't embed those links into this page.

Maybe the optical printing done from 35mm to 70mm simply caused more problems then it was worth? The IMAX film prints had the 35mm stuff DI'd which is why it looks totally different. I think it must be more of an issue with the 70mm prints, because I'm not nit picky and the focus issues were so bad in the 35mm stuff, I thought there was something wrong.

Ohh and David, love your stuff on the Widescreen Museum site. That's the cinema format bible for us younger folk! :D I have watched a few Cinerama movies on the dome, it was a unique experience. Today with digital projection it could be a worth while format to experiment again with.

Crystal Skull I believe is anamorphic 35mm as well.

Yea, the BluRay's of the Indy films are amazing. As a kid, I remember reading the ASC articles from my home-town library of producing the original films from Raiders through Crusade. The sets were so well lit, there was so much light in every nook and cranny, even the dark scenes were perfectly exposed throughout the entire shot. It's that even lighting and as pointed out above, the stopped-down nature of the shooting which makes the films so amazing looking. It's awesome to have these films restored to eye-popping quality. As a side note, been going through the Ultra Panavision and Super Panavision films from the 50's and 60's like Ben-Hur, Mutiny on the Bounty, West Side Story and Lawrence of Arabia and they look absolutely amazing on BluRay. I was always depressed with 80 Days Around the World because they seemed to have a lot of production issues, even the restored version has lots of color shifting and dirt in the negative. Still, most of the other films are absolutely worth watching on HD at home.

That was my initial thought until it went to IMAX material and it was perfectly in focus, even the close up's. But yea, the edges of the screen weren't in perfect focus, that's to be expected at the dome. It's far worse with their digital projector, it looks like crap.

I was thinking the same thing Doug, about the editor taking an out of focus take due to performance. However, there is so much out of focus, it's more likely an incompetent operator. I suggest seeing the film at The Dome because I think the experience was pretty good, outside of the curved screen and the focus issues with the edges, which kinda sucks.

The Anamorphic stuff looks really bad. They didn't even bother lighting, they opened up the lens and yelled action. I'm under the belief, if you have to use 500 ASA stock (I assume they used Vision 3 500ASA) for critical dialog scenes, you've for sure under lit too much. Roving camera, master wides, heck even medium shots or quick dialog bits, fine. But when every single emotional moment has an actor out of focus and dark, it gets tedious. Besides, the IMAX stuff looks so different, it's almost like too movies. Nolan should have taken a cue from PT Anderson and shot THE ENTIRE MOVIE in 5 perf 70mm. It would have required them to light more and as a consequence, it would have looked a lot better. Speaking about "The Master" what a stroke of genius that film was and the cinematography was nothing but outstanding. All the things that hurt Interstellar, aren't a problem at all with "The Master" and it's unfortunate Nolan continued to push is IMAX craze so much. Honestly, flipping between 2.35:1 and 1.9:1 on the IMAX prints, gets tiring for the audience. It takes them out of the film and I know many people who could care less. In my view, any technicality which takes the film away from the story is bad and out of focus, grainy dialog scenes are just that. Nolan really needs to re-work his process for the next film because if he keeps down this path, it won't matter if he shoots film or not, people will simply not watch his movies because of these issues. A beautiful 2.20:1 aspect 5 perf 70mm negative, optically blown up onto 15 perf IMAX and projected in 2.20:1 works perfect. So what it doesn't fill the screen, it's still larger then life!

I know this theater pretty well and have seen many 4k presentations originated on 4k and this thing blew me out of the water with it's sharpness and texture. The IMAX stuff looked flat-out amazing, almost as if it was from an entirely different movie because as someone else mentioned, the 35mm stuff is purposely shot to be grainy and dark. So once you see the IMAX stuff, it looks absolutely flat-out amazing. I'd love to see this movie in IMAX just to get a feel for the full negative scenes. I have a decent home theater projector and excellent sound system, so I'll wait for the HD video release before seeing it digitally.

In my eyes, this 70mm presentation of Interstellar is exactly what this industry needs to get moving along. It's something special and it's something very unique, which is what the old days of road show films was all about! Anyone can watch a digital screening of this movie at home or at the cinema. We've spent so much money promoting digital projection, we've lost sight of quality, we lost sight of uniqueness. What Nolan has done is bring back some of what the industry is lacking and hopefully his box office will be enough to do the same thing with his next film. In my view, the cost to produce big films like Interstellar on 70mm entirely, using vertical Panavision and skipping the IMAX phase, is far less then producing the entire film in 4k 3D. Basically do what PT Anderson did on "The Master" and be done with it. Strike a few vertical and horizontal 70mm prints, allow the smaller theaters which can show those prints to "premiere" the films in a roadshow format (for this week only) before all the other cineplexes. Make movies an event once more, rather then something you see on a rainy day or when your bored sitting on your couch at home in your underwear. My experience tonight with Interstellar in the Cinerama Dome, was exactly what cinema should be like. Outside of the rude and uneducated friday night audience, it was a fantastic experience that I will put on my wall of experiences as something very special and hope to one day do again.

I must confess, I'm a madman for celluloid, clearly born 50 years too late. The few years I had hands-on experience with film in Super 8, 16mm and 35mm were brief and mostly documentary/industrial projects, rather then narratives. The near-death of film stock production this year, scared the living piss out of me. Broke and barely able to afford my own equipment, I felt so helpless and upset I was forced to shoot digitally in this modern world. When I heard that Christopher Nolan was going to be shooting substantial chunks of Interstellar on 70mm IMAX and projecting on 70mm, my ears perked up. Living in Los Angeles has a few benefits and one of them is having a 70mm theater only a few miles away from my house. The 8 month wait between the announcement and ticket sales, was arduous. However, tonight I finally got to watch the movie at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood and wanted to discuss some of the filmmaking elements which make this movie so interesting. Being the first one into the cinema, I quietly stood there facing the projection booth, being a complete nerd watching the projectionist feed the 70mm film from the supply spool out of sight through the projector. Not like I haven't seen this many times before at IMAX theaters, but to see standard 70mm vertical projection today is very rare and is mostly "classic" films. For those who haven't been to the Cinerama dome, it's a great theater for film, but it sucks for digital because they never invested in a curved lens for the projector to match the screen. So the image distortion is off the hook and very annoying to anyone who knows anything about technology. The trailers were digital up to a certain point, then the screen went black. I turned around and by golly gee, the film projector was running. PT Anderson's new movie (his last film was shot with Panavision 70mm) had a trailer included with Interstellar on 70mm! All of a sudden, all the technical issues with the lens went away and I knew we were in for an amazing screening. The film starts off in 35mm anamorphic and drops right into IMAX material. Shocking as that cut is technically, the phenomenal sound system and "It goes to 11, so set it to 11" loudness, blows the audience right out of the theater within the first few seconds. I wouldn't be surprised if car alarms on Sunset were going off during this movie from how much rumble was produced, to me… that's one of my favorite things to experience. As the film settles in, it was abundantly clear anamorphic 35mm was the wrong choice as a substitute shooting format to complement the IMAX material. Not only was it grainy, but critical focus was lacking in many scenes. At first, it seemed like the projection, but the moment the movie switched to scenes shot in IMAX (very blatant) all the focus issues disappeared. This disturbed me greatly being a filmmaker and watching this fantastic story unfold, but being distracted by poor focus. Funny part is, medium's and wide's were fine, it was only the very close stuff that had a problem, mostly under-lit stuff with the aperture wide open. The funny part is, because it was a film print, the 35mm Anamorphic stuff simply looked like we were watching a 35mm print. The moment it switched to IMAX material, the true quality of 70mm shined through and boy was it amazing to see. The detail was quite good on the 70mm print, far better then I expected actually. Some of the digitally created shots were glass, could have been 4k digital projected and you wouldn't have noticed the difference. Even with the slight registration issues on the projector and the very noticeable flicker (not seen on digital projection) the image was bright and crisp during the IMAX material. Watching the film, it's very clear some of the 35mm anamorphic stuff could have gone though a photochemical finish and optical blow up. There weren't any deep/rich blacks, it was very muddy compared to the IMAX material which clearly went through DI because all of a sudden the rich blacks showed up out of nowhere. Plus, mostly all of the IMAX originated material had special effects of one kind or another, I can't imagine very much of it being 1:1 without any clean up work. Some of the effects were astounding, clearly lots of model work was used and composited onto shot background plates. The compositing was excellent, except for a few minor issues which were quick and clearly stuff they didn't have time to make better. Being a fan of the movie Gravity for it's technical ingenuity, Interstellar in my view is more realistic looking. Partly because they never resorted to using fake fire balls or shots which were completely created in a computer using multiple composites. Part of Interstellar's soul comes from the music and powerful mix. I was absolutely blown away by the complexity and presence of the music and mix. Hans Zimmer's score was off the hook, absolutely by far the best thing he's ever produced and in the credits, it seems he had a lot of help making it. Modern 70mm uses DTS 24bit 7.1 surround sound and the days of magnetic stripes on 70mm are long over due to the chemical agent needed to bond them to the film being illegal. One small fault which I blame the theater on, was the lack of center channel. It was quieter then all the other speakers. Needless to say, if it was intentional, it was clever because it made voices harder to hear during loud scenes, making it more realistic. However, I do think it was the theater because as loud goes, it didn't have much dynamic range when it was loud, making me believe they simply peaked out their system. Over-all I really enjoyed the film. Without ruining anything, it's a combination of Gravity and Contact mixed together. It's pretty heavy on the science, with a heartfelt story that pushes the plot forward to a very interesting and clever resolution. As a Nolan fan, this is by far his best over-all movie because it's the most accessible, with the most interesting story. It also makes the audience think, like Momento or Inception, rather then simply watch eye candy. Every bit of dialog or action, moves the plot forward, there is no time to waste in this movie and in my eyes, that's how proper movies should be made. So the big question is… see it on film or not? Well, if you can see it on 70mm, horizontal (IMAX) or vertical, I'd go for it. We may never get another opportunity and next time I see it, I'll be headed over to the Chinese theater to see an IMAX print, just to get a sense of what else I may have missed on the vertical 70mm presentation. There is no question in my mind, everyone who enjoys cinema and likes science fiction, should watch this movie. It's a cinematic journey that not only moves the heart, but also makes you really think about a subject not many of us have ever thought about.

Sorry ya… CInema DNG not DPX. I did talk with BMD about it being a 4k camera in an enclosure and they said it wasn't because it will capture still images and the camera can't. We talked in length about the current philosophy of zooming the chip. They said a different magnifying lens will be available for super 16mm and the prototype didn't have it. We scanned 4 perf so yea… it can do 4 perf no problem.

I saw one and had a full hands-on experience a few months ago during a Blackmagic Design demo session. It was quite an amazing kit, plugs in via thunderbolt and will color on the fly in DaVinci using a Macbook laptop in 4k! I mean, absolutely stunning technology at work here. My biggest beef is the gear drive mechanism and the fact for $40K USD (suggested retail) you don't get a keycode reader, sound reader or even an alternate gate. It also won't do 2 perf 35mm, only 3 or 4 perf. These aren't huge problems for people still shooting film, looking for a reliable system to telecine, I think it's awesome for what it is. One semi-unknown feature which will be on the final production model is a scanning function vs telecine. It will actually pause each frame in front of the sensor, which will then take a picture and store I assume as an uncompressed DPX sequence. I'm not sure how fast it will be, they mentioned 15fps, but that could have been an arbitrary number. Registration on the unit was excellent, far better then any Cintel I've ever used. The source material was newly shot 35mm negative, not a scratch or bit of grain in the image, it was flawless. We had it presented on a big monitor and I saw absolutely zero registration glitches, it looked like a scanned image vs telecine, quite amazing. In summary, I'm throughly impressed with the Blackmagic telecine/scanner. It's absolutely worth looking into for those who need a telecine/scanner at their side at all times. The downsides seem minimal, though buying a thunderbolt computer with an excellent graphics card are two prerequisites. So right there, your cost of ownership just went way up!

I agree with Carl, it's far more important to have a dedicated non-creative career path, then waste money on creative stuff for college. Anyone can make a movie these day's, decent cinema grade cameras are cheap and if you're talented enough, weekends are all you'll need to hone your skills. Very few (if any) graduates of film school, wind up being "filmmakers" of any kind. Degree's don't get you cinematography or editing jobs, you need a portfolio of work, to prove your worth. So that means, you've gotta start shooting stuff on your own dime, helping people create little projects here and there to build your skills. A really good industry trade school like Los Angeles Film Academy will teach you the ancillary technical things you may be missing. Most colleges or universities which teach film are all about theory and history, rather then hands-on experimentation. It's that experimentation time which is what you need to succeed and you've gotta be able to tell a good story. All of that to say… having a backup skill set is the most important thing. Once you have that down, then you can head out to L.A. and take some classes as you build a resume in your backup skill set. This way you always have something to fall back on which can keep you a float. I didn't get here until I was 24 and it took me another 12 years to be a full-time filmmaker! During that time, I used my skills as a technical engineer type to survive outside of being a filmmaker. Without that backup skill set, I would have been screwed. The funny part is, I have lots of degree's and nobody has ever asked for them, nor do I bother putting them on my resume. The film industry is a strange world, it's all based on a feeling, on a snapshot of what your capable of doing and if the stars don't align, if you don't have exactly what someone is looking for, you won't get the gig. It's a dog-eat-dog world and it's very, very, very difficult to get your foot in the door, let alone be successful. The only reason why I've been successful at all is because I'm a technical guy and I've been able to make friends with some top people in the industry because of my technical expertise. That's not something everyone can do, but it's for sure a gimmick which has allowed me to be in the right place at the right time and make a living at doing what I enjoy doing most! :) Good luck!

Funny enough, I read Kubrick shot Eyes Wide Shut in full frame in an ASC article. He did that on many films including; The Shining and Full Metal Jacket due to his belief that cinema's of the day were inept at presenting wide screen images to specific aspect ratio's. He simply framed scenes for 1:85 and if the theater used the wrong cropping (1:66 or 1:85 or full frame) it didn't matter. It's the same reason why most of his 35mm release prints were in Mono, yet the film's were all meticulously produced in stereo and converted. Kubrick believed most theater's wouldn't have stereo audio, so it would be better to mix in mono to produce accuracy across the board. It surprises me Kubrick never returned to 65mm shooting after 2001. Projecting on 70mm would give him all the specifics he needed, but I gather his budgets weren't quite big enough. I for one would love to have seen Barry Lyndon shot in 65mm… that would have been very interesting. ;)

Yep, its just anti-alising. My video projector does the same thing, smoothens out SD pretty good honestly. Even my laserdisc collection doesn't look bad! LOL :)

I posted a new version of the video, a little bit more professional and discusses some of the issues people had with the first version. Thanks for the comments and hope you enjoy it! Use the same link above to see the new version! :D

Yea, exactly… stuff shot on film and projected on large-format film, not 35mm. I have absolutely zero desire to bring back the 35mm projection days, I think digital cinema works fine to feed the masses. Maybe the future will be roadshow releases like what Nolan is doing with Interstellar. Maybe the whole concept of showing a film two or three weeks earlier in special theaters, large format style, will be a new fad. I just hope Nolan has played his cards right and not only made an amazing movie, but also makes a poop tun of money to prove that 3D and digital cinema is not the only way to travel. In my book… if you can't get capture it with the lens and on celluloid, then it shouldn't be up on screen to begin with! Yes, movies like "Gravity" are amazing, demonstrating how powerful visual effects and truly be. However, today's audiences expect bigger and better, which leads the filmmakers to outdo one another interns of effects, instead of focusing on stories. "Gravity" didn't even have a story! It was one big action scene and the trouble is, that's what people wish to see today and my hope is we can continue to make cinema in the future which doesn't require 500 artists in post production to make the vision come to reality. 2001: A Space Odyssey holds up pretty good and with some minor tweaks to some wide shots done photochemically using today's motion tracking animation rigs, we could make it even more realistic. All through the use of fantastic story telling and some ingenuity!

Interesting John… didn't know about the ad campaign stuff being the catalyst, but it makes sense. However, I was much more referring to large-format cinema, rather then simply 35mm roadshow movies. The description of horrible projection in cinema's stems from the 35mm days of low-budget cinema, I'm not very old, but I do recall seeing movies in mono and having dirty prints as well. However, it doesn't seem in years prior that 70mm road show cinema's had the same low-quality presentations. It seems, they had things kinda figured out and the failure was ditching large format in favor of standard 35mm, where film stocks of the time were still pretty bad compared to anything I've ever used. I've seen non-restored prints of 70mm and 35mm films from the same vintage and its staggering how horrible the 35mm prints look compared to the 70mm prints. Being a fan of 70mm, just the sound of the underlying "hiss" as the magnetic soundtrack starts, is comforting. No optical pop's and clicks or compression noises from older 35mm prints. No cleanliness of digital audio either. The room isn't completely silent, as the projector chews through film like its going out of style. My favorite spot to watch an Omnimax film is right over the projector hole, so I can feel it vibrate the chair for the entire movie… I have yet to visit a cinema and NOT peer into the projection booth prior or post screening, like a curious 5 year old wanting to figure out how cinema is made. The "magic" for me is in the moving image, not some fake digital hollow representation of 1's and zero's. Celluloid and all the nuances which allow it to come alive are what has stimulated me for my entire life and to loose that, is to loose a huge part of who I am. I can hold it, I can move it forwards and backwards with ease and project it onto anything I want without the need of electronics of any kind. My parents use to be avid cinema goer's and they haven't gone on their own in years. When I ask why, I generally get the same answers; why bother? They have each other for company, they can invite friends over if they wish to see a movie in a group. But for my technically advanced father, he could care less about seeing the same image on a big screen he can get at home on his BluRay player. He doesn't want to bother with the crowds of people at cinemaplexes, the parking, the walking, dealing with lines, concessions, horrible seats, etc. Theaters haven't really changed, they upped the quality of presentation but only to the same level we can get at home. For cinema to truly stay alive, they need to offer a different experience. The Cinerama dome in L.A., perfect example. Huge screen, beautiful theater and fantastic presentation. Honestly though, it's still not enough, it's not enough to draw people out of their houses and into the cinema's. There has to be another reason and outside of children/teen's, nobody wants 3D… so what's the next big thing? Maybe Christopher Nolan had an idea… ;)

I've recently been buying BluRay's of remastered classic roadshow movies and watching them on my HD projector. The experience has totally changed my perception of cinema in the most frustrating of ways. See, back in the 50's we had surround sound, 70mm anamorphic projection, early versions of stadium seating and most importantly, amazing films made without the use of post production visual effects. Patton and 2001: A Space Odyssey, were two of the last 70mm roadshow films produced. After that, cinema in my view fell apart, partially due to the influence of television. So instead of film companies making more roadshow style movies, they basically stopped developing new and better technologies to attract people into the cinema. They focused on storytelling and forgot about all the technology. Just watch any 35mm film shot in the 70's, The French Connection is a great example, awesome movie… but its MONO! Yet in 1957, cinema's were FULL of movies not just in Stereo, but full surround sound! I personally feel film technology has been neglected for decades. It almost seems as if 2001: A Space Odyssey was the pinnacle of that technology and everything to come after it was a regression back to a simpler time. We never solved the issues with registration in projectors. It wasn't until the early 80's when stereo finally made it back to cinema's and not until the 90's digital audio made the big leap. Heck, even IMAX wasn't fully developed until the last 15 years or so with the addition of digital audio and better projectors. The problem in my eyes is very simple… why should I go to the cinema when I can wait 6 months and watch that new movie on my HD projector from a BluRay source in the comfort of my own house? There isn't much of a difference between 1920X1080 and 2048x1080… why should I pay $16 + $8 for popcorn, to watch a movie in the cinema for an extra 128 pixels? What guys like Christopher Nolan are doing is fantastic and I really hope more people jump on board and I truly wish for someone to finally break the mould and make an entire film in the full-frame IMAX format. People forget 15 perf 65mm is 18k resolution. Digital cinema will never get near that number, even with the best technologies today, we struggle to produce and distribute 4k cinema, most digital cinema is 2k. Plus and this is the most important plus, you can't watch an IMAX film at home! It's actually impossible because there is no way to get a high enough quality source to your house. Even if someone handed you the keys to a 4k projector and 4k source, where do you find a wall big enough to project it so you can get the IMAX experience at your own home? It just isn't feasible, it just doesn't work. What Christopher Nolan has done is go back to the days where the theater delivers quality better then anything you can get at home. For the first time since BluRay's were introduced, we now have a reason to head out to the cinema, IMAX is our savior, it is our current generation's "70mm roadshow" film and that's what excites people. They wish to see the best, they want an experience and frankly, if that means we have some registration issues, so be it.

I spent more then a year shooting a feature on 5DMKII's and it was absolutely the worst experience I've ever had shooting a film. Like yourself, I had no choice, as the equipment was being supplied by one of the three DP's on the project. We had never-ending issues from max file size issues to lens shifting when doing focus or zoom changes. We had three 5DMKII's, ALL of them had dead pixel's and every time you'd do the reset, they would show up somewhere else. At one point, we rented a 5DMKIII because we needed to make absolutely certain there wouldn't be a dead pixel and it had a light leak which prevented us from using it. It was a single location shoot, I was able to prep the location by putting a bank of incandescent's in the ceiling with chimera's. We'd then key light the actors with a color-matched LED panel or small incandescent bounced off a white board or white cloth. I kept the ASA low and the iris wide open so we'd have shallow depth of field. There was A LOT of light, more then enough to shoot at 200ASA. When I got home from the first day of shooting and saw the quality, I almost puked. The shots had digital noise, MPEG noise and a whole host of other issues like horrible focus. Of course, the cameras require to run double system audio since you can't monitor what your shooting. So we had to sync the audio and make a Pro Res file out of the 20hrs or so of material from that first shoot. This process took a week to achieve, running around the clock with a mac pro tower. It reminded me of shooting film, all the mistakes are stuff you'd get with film if you didn't know how to shoot with it. But man, I've shot narratives and documentaries on film and never had anywhere near this many issues. Few years later I bought a Blackmagic Pocket camera and I haven't had a single issue with it. No dead pixels, no audio issues, no focus issues, no transcoding, no re-synching audio, nothing. Yes, the larger sensor in some of the still cameras is intriguing, but to deal with all the other ancillary issues which go along with these cameras is not worth it in my opinion. :shrug:

When I was on vacation earlier this year, I met up with some people trying to shoot a feature film with an A7S. We spent hours talking about the camera and he showed me lots of clips of what he was able to achieve with it so far. I was unfortunately very unimpressed with the output. It shoots acceptable stills, but video was no better then a standard Canon 5DMKIII, which in my view is horrible for the price. Here is the problem and I apologize if this sounds like a rant. Still cameras need to be still cameras first, that is why they were made. The "video" capturing aspect is second to the still portion. This is very present with Sony's continuous devotion to AVCHD MPEG2 @ 50Mbps being the highest codec available for internal video capture. Sure, the camera has an uncompressed 10 bit 4:2:2 output, but once you hit an HDMI cable, you're stuck with Rec709 color space. All of a sudden, you've just locked in whatever signal you have and are stuck working with it through post production. This means, whatever quality the imager actually has, is lost in translation. The Blackmagic Cinema camera series, offers direct RAW capturing to solid state memory or SD card, depending on the camera. This means, even if the sensors lowlight capability isn't the best, you can still get something out of the image as everything seen will be captured if exposed properly. Latitude is what saves you in dark situations, because it will provide you with the ample color space and dynamic range to deal with fixing problems in post, where the Rec709 material, simply won't. Being heavily involved in post production, I'd rather you showed up with original camera RAW files, rather then some hacked together Rec709 media which "looks" like Raw, but doesn't contain the proper data.

Howdy Gents, I've been working with the pocket camera for almost a year now. It's been a non-stop learning process and I finally have an abundance of material to use for a demo. My goal with this video is to share a cinematographers point of view. I was tired of watching still photographers or home-video makers, review cameras designed for filmmaking. The workflow for cinema is entirely different and I have yet to see a review discuss the elements I have in this video. It's unfortunate there is a severe disconnect between the final Prores file out of DaVinci and what it looks like on Vimeo. However, only a few shots are effected, it's something I haven't quite resolved yet and with every posting I get closer and closer to a solution, but haven't yet cracked it. So mind the odd-ball random color shifts, they are invisible in my pro-res file. :shrug:

I've done a lot of Bolex shooting and ya know, as everyone else said above, these are the issues with the design. I always used wider lenses and stopped the camera down almost all the way, practically eliminating the focusing issues (though making it very difficult to see through the viewfinder). I did a whole ton of "home movie" shooting with the camera using black and white reversal stock and it worked well. My camera had a built-in spot meter and I'd simply follow the meter and adjust the exposure accordingly. Its a great little camera and sure it has little problems, but I think the key is to understand them and adapt your shooting style to go around them. If you want longer lens shots with greater depth of field in darker conditions, the camera may not be the right one for you. My favorite camera is the Arri SR. I had the snap on back battery kit and it too had a built-in meter. I'd throw over my shoulder with a strap, go out and shoot, mostly reversal, but it worked just like a video camera with no audio. I had a nice cheap-ass zoom lens which was falling apart. Shoot like ENG, zoom into the subject, get focus, zoom out and roll film. Its a great "working" camera, allows the cinematographer to be focused on shot composition rather then the technicalities of the shoot itself. I figured out how to "wear" an extra magazine on my back with a little net backpack thing and 800ft of film was always enough for a day of screwing around with the camera. When I shot more serious things, I'd borrow better glass, follow focus kit and matte box. However, those were all ancillary, great for "serious" filmmaking, but not necessary for shooting fun stuff for myself. As a side note the Arri's mirrored shutter does work better with focus, its a lot brighter, but when you stop down, it still makes the viewfinder darker. You get use to this and use the zoom-in focus tricks.

Its still a Sony… which means; you can only use Sony hardware. You're stuck in their world, with them telling you what you can and can't do. No standardization of SD card's for instance, they want you to buy all new cards from them. Good form factor, but too much money for what it is out of the box. If it had pro res and raw recording onto a generic SSD card, it would be MUCH more powerful.