Tyler Purcell

Yea, its all about the mag. Worst part is, if you get a rental camera, its hard to test the mags until loaded and running film through them. I've had mags which at the beginning of the roll made almost no sound and towards the end were squeaking under changed loads. I've worked with such poorly maintained equipment, it amazes me I ever captured anything! HA!

But yea, Arri vs Aaton? I'm an Arri guy... SRIII for the win! :)

Its hard to work with an LCD monitor outside in the sun on a run-and-gun documentary style project. Even the small ones are bulky and need serious sun protection. I've been shooting documentaries on film and broadcast ENG cameras for almost two decades. So for me, the viewfinder is a pretty worthless thing, it really is only good to check composition. The nice thing about the BMPCC are the built-in tools for checking focus and exposure. With the viewfinder shade, it works pretty well, you can actually use the viewfinder.

People look at my results with the camera and wonder if they should by one for documentary work and I flat out say no way. Its a cinema camera plain and simple, it works great in a controlled situation. I only got one because I like the cinematic look and refuse to deal with H264 OR RAW files (DSLR). The Pro Res workflow, size of camera, lens availability and of course cost of package, really fits into my needs. Yes, I wish it did 60FPS, yes I wish it was 2k instead of 1920x1080. But these are sacrifices I'm willing to deal with and be more creative with my shooting to compensate. Anyone can shoot crap, slow mo it or highly stylize the material in order to fix the issues. My style of filmmaking is to show the audience exactly what came out of the camera. Post production in my eyes should be to assemble and apply color. ;)

The video above called "We Love Motocross Episode One: The Travelers" was shot in less then 3hrs and posted in less then 3hrs. If I was shooting on a DSLR or other compressed ENG camera, it would have taken me 2hrs at least to transcode the footage... Its all about ease of workflow and both FCP and AVID (using AMA) can reference the Pro Res HQ files without any copying or transcoding.

How do you stabilize the camera? Especially in the 1st video - I was impressed.

First trick is the eye piece. This is the plain-jane stripped MOS rig. Just push the viewfinder against your face and that helps stabilize.

Second trick is a cinema rig. This is a counter-balanced shoulder rig with matte box and follow focus. It allows me to use 4x4 filters of any kind as well. You'll notice the mic as well. This is the rig I use when capturing sound.

Also are you using ND filters? And if yes, are you also using IR filters?

I'm using 1.0 ND's when its super bright outside. When its not, I don't use any filtration. None of the video's above were using filtration.

Here is a video that uses the fill cinema rig in the 2nd picture with 2.0 ND's!

Still shooting pretty much non-stop. Got my complete rig now with mic's and filters.

Here is my most recent video, shot without my filter rig, but everything else.

200 ASA

45 degree shutter

Film dynamic range, Pro Res HQ 220 4:2:2 10 bit codec

Rokinon 8mm F3.1 EOS mount prime for fish-eye shots

Rokinon 24mm F1.5 EOS mount prime for wider shots

Rokinon 85mm F1.5 EOS mount prime for close-up shots

Edited with FCP 7 in native Pro Res

Colored in FCP 7 without any difficulty, no LUT necessary

My favorite main-stream 16mm film of recent memory is:

Moonrise Kingdom

Shot with Aaton cameras; Aaton A-Minima, Zeiss Super Speed and Canon Lenses. Aaton Xterà, Zeiss Super Speed and Canon Lenses. Kodak Vision3 200T 7213

Its a great idea for Arri to come out with this camera, the ENG market needs a quality cinema grade camera pretty badly. Remember, if you aren't an ENG guy, you wouldn't be buying this camera, there are plenty of other options on the market for cinema. This camera fills a void where people need a cinema looking camera, but the flexibility of ENG. I've used ENG cameras for more then a decade and I vastly prefer them over the "cinema" double-system cameras we have today. The problem has always been, the ENG cameras look like crap. One hopes this new camera looks good, only time will tell!

On a side note, isn't it funny Arri announced this camera between IBC 2013 and NAB 2014?

The Rokinon 8mm is the widest lens I shoot with and it works ok for those few times you need a super wide angle lens.

I find the 14mm prime to work much better as an all-around lens, they even make a 12mm... which I didn't buy.

"The camera is a cinema camera, not a camcorder"

 

Please do not smile, that thing will never be a film camera and Red or Alexa, either. They are video cameras that produce nice video but nothing seems real film.

Video cameras don't have 13 stops of latitude and RAW recording capabilities. Video camera's don't have "cinema" lens mount options. Video camera's generally shoot highly-compressed video. Video cameras have very few "manual" camera head controls. Most Video cameras are still CCD and not CMOS.

Here is a great example of a video camera: http://www.panasonic.com/business/provideo/AJ-PX5000G.asp

The blackmagic cinema camera is a good example of a "cinema" camera.

My BMPCC has all sorts of funny lines and noise pieces in it when un-corrected out of the camera. The moment I apply a color correction to it, they completely go away, as if they never existed in the first place. The problem has to do with direct light on the sensor and how it deals with it. For sure one of the "issues" of the camera, but you don't hear people complaining about it because I think most people color correct their material and as a consequence, color-out the issue.

I also rate this camera at 200ASA, I find the material looks substantially better at that ISO. I find it delivers far less grain and has a crisper, more cinematic look to it. The camera is a cinema camera, not a camcorder, not an iphone, not a D5MKIII. Its designed to shoot movies and I find just performing simple camera tests to be annoying, the moment you get outside and shoot something, then bring it back for color correction, I think you'll find the camera will work fine.

WOW is that a nice find! :)

I love the H16, one of my favorite cameras.

The ScanStation is a great product, remember seeing it at a trade show few years back. I love the optical lineup for the registration, works great.

The Super 8 stuff looks awesome, thats what modern film stocks can deliver. I wish back in the 80's and 90's when I was shooting Super 8, that kind of stock existed.

Good stuff! Love the 1440 mode on Youtube, I'll have to experiment with that more often. ;)

Few things...

I think you were under exposing the material and thats going to give you a flatter image over-all. I always use a spot meter when shooting film outdoors, because ambient meters won't necessarily give you the subjects proper exposure. When exposed properly, the film will have less grain in the telecine process because the operator won't have to crank up the gain to get a decent image out of it.

What stock you use also plays a huge role. The lower the ASA, the more light you need, but the less grain you'll have. A nice modern daylight 50 ASA stock will work wonders for reducing grain. Vision 3 7203 is the vision 50 ASA stock. When I was shooting 16, I made my basement a "dark room" and would load my own daylight spools out of 400ft rolls using a simple rewinder. Its important to learn these tricks up front because you will generate better quality footage from the get go.

As mentioned above, if you wish to spend some money, you can have the film "scanned" vs "telecine'd". Scanners are much higher quality then telecine's and the output files are much easier to grade because they don't insert their own color table like a telecine operator would. However, the difference in price AND time can make a lot of people walk away from scanning. Thats up to your budget and time constraints. Plus, you'd have to be up to speed on color grading material coming from a scanner. Sure they can put a LUT (look up table) on it for you, but in reality, you wanna do that stuff in your color grading tool.

Learning how to edit isn't too difficult, you should just take a basic class in FCPX and go from there. In terms of color grading, DaVinci resolve lite is made by Blackmagic Designs and its a basic "film" coloring tool which will allow you to apply proper LUT's to film you've shot. Its a complex tool, but if you can take a class and learn it, the skills will be invaluable for the future.

Thanks a lot guys, I appreciate it. I'm shooting with a Rokinon 35mm cine, you think that would cause problems? The image on the Black Magic is gorgeous for the price point, and I'd like to upgrade to something a little more tailored towards film making. And Tyler, the film look/feel thing is exactly what I want. I love the personality of the color, the grain, I would love a digital camera that could mimic that.

Yea, I'm all Rokinon lenses, nothing else. I want manual everything, none of this in-camera iris nonsense. Its hard to find cheap "primes" anymore, glass which is simply made for the cinematographer instead of the still shooter. I find the Rokinon lenses to be soft and have a very "filmic" look to them. I just received my filters so I'm finally using LOTS of filtration (2 stop ND's) in order to combat the fact the camera is so sensitive, I'm usually stopped all the way down outdoors, even at 200ASA. The lenses look great all the way open. Every time I shoot with this thing, I get more and more impressed with its ability to copy the look of Super 16.

Dang, I did the math wrong! HAHA Whoops... sitting here looking at the AJA tool, its Bits vs Bytes! EEK!

Yea, I mostly do commercial work in uncompressed, so the file sizes aren't a big deal. I was looking a folder full of uncompressed media and had forgotten that it was not a feature! :P

Here is what is happening at Cinelab this month...

 

Long live film, you can't kill what is made from the dead.

WOW Rob great stuff! :)

I dealt with CineLab for years when I was back in Boston, you guys rock. Glad to see you're still alive and adding more film services.

Long live film!

Maybe this is just relative. We worked with Uncompressed 10 bit HD on so many projects in the mid-2000's that just took forever to move around from machine to machine, that ProRes feels easier in comparison?

I use to work in uncompressed and pro res all day long, file sizes are actually not that different. Pro Res 4444, 12 bit 1920x1080 standard HD broadcast resolution is 312mbps. Uncompressed 4:4:4 10bit 1920x1080 is 274mbps. A lot of times clients specifically ask us for uncompressed HD instead of pro res.

I'm a huge pro res advocate, everything I do personally starts with pro res, but the file sizes are still huge. Last feature I exported in Pro Res 4444 was 215GB! Thats a very difficult file for any computer to open up... lemme tell ya, we had stupid fast 12 core mac towers with 4gb fiber raids on an Xsan and it was barely able to playback. Most of the time we'd have to copy the file to a local fiber raid and then play it back.

Anyway, I stick with Pro Res 4:2:2 HQ and thats good enough for my clients. ;)

Joshua,

Its funny you ask this question because on the very day of that recent shoot above, my dad was shooting with his brand new T3i using one of my primes. I haven't assembled the footage because it was hand-held like mine and my dad doesn't have a rock steady hand like mine. Still, just looking at similar shots and comparing them, the difference between the two cameras was very dramatic. Its not just things like latitude and color dynamic range, but more simple things like motion blur. The Canon simply looked like crap in comparison, like some Sony $400 handycam. I'm sure with some setup work, I can make the T3i look closer, but it will never look the same.

The BMPCC is a 1920x1080 resolution, identical to the output resolution of the T3i. The BMPCC I believe has a 2k sensor, which is all you really need anyway. The zoom factor is about 2x on the BMPCC. This isn't a big deal with longer glass, but it can become a problem when selecting wide angle lenses. My 8mm prime lens has some focus issues, due to it being a piece of junk. But it does deliver a very wide image for those moments you need one. Otherwise, having a camera that doubles the focal length is awesome because you can by shorter lenses (cheaper) which go longer. ;)

As Adrian said, the BMPCC needs some TLC in post, more so then the Canon. But then again, there is more data there to mess with. You won't get the graining issues you see on the Canon because even if you underexpose, there is still plenty of clean material to work with. Its so much fun in post because you can color things properly, which is a blessing! Reminds me of film! :)

I've been wanting to see how the camera performs in a more relaxed documentary setting. Armed with extra batteries, 14mm cinema prime, Rhode shotgun mic and viewfinder, I went out to the local trolley museum and shot some material over christmas vacation with my parents. I didn't want to add music or fancy editing, simple cuts to tell a story was all I wanted to do.

200 ASA

45 degree shutter

Video dynamic range

Rode shotgun mic (1/4" input), with gain turned way down to avoid distorting

100% hand-held with no aids

Rokinon 14mm cinema prime Canon mount with MTF adaptor

This is the first time I've used video mode and I didn't like it at all. The dynamic range was limited and simple exposure mistakes turned into big problems in post. I think the camera's strength lies in its film dynamic range, take that away and the camera does wind up looking more like a video camera with decent glass then a cinema camera.

Twas a fun shoot, more to come!

I'm curious about this resolution. For 4:3 16mm, we'd typically scan to 2048x1556. For Super16, you'd use something like 2048x1226. Why 2048x1080?

Yea, yea, sorry I was thinking 1.85:1 formatting, my bad.

For Image Sequences, Targa is just one of many - DPX is probably more widely used, but there's also TIFF.

Most of colorists I use prefer Targa or DPX sequences, not Pro Res files. I do all my prep-work in pro res and then deliver them just what they need as a still image sequence for coloring. I love pro res, it works fantastic for things like this. I have yet to edit anything on 2k Pro Res. Dealing with the 220mpbs 1920x1080 Pro Res HQ dailies is difficult enough. I can't imagine almost doubling the bandwidth to get 2k and 444 color space.

I would disagree that 2k is worthless. I'm unconvinced that you'd see much of a difference if you scanned at *more* than 2k for 16mm, though. 2K is really an ideal fit for the format, and not just for filmouts or DCPs. Hell, 8mm/S8 looks fantastic scanned at 2k, and if you're going to downconvert it to 1440x1080 to fit into a pillarboxed 1080p HD frame, you're usually better off starting from a bigger image and scaling down, than smaller and scaling up.

Remember, the topic at hand isn't theatrical distribution, its having fun with a film camera. Nobody (myself included) is suggesting that 2k sucks or something. I'm merely working out a workflow which is cost-effective and delivers the best quality for the time and money put in. In my eyes, 2k just isn't worth the time and money unless you have a theatrical deal lined up. Sure, "best source possible" is fantastic when you have a budget or don't shoot very much footage. But unfortunately, the truth of the matter is, 2k is expensive to deal with both in scanning costs AND most importantly, storage costs when you look at the big picture. Heck, even shooting a feature film on a very strict budget in S16, "scanning" wasn't even discussed when doing budgets. Single pass, one-light transfers is what most people do because of the time and cost constraints associated with scanning large amounts of film. Most films will live as digital files for sub 2k distribution anyway. So spending the extra money on 2k scanning, isn't worth while unless you've got the budget, a great colorist and theatrical distribution lined up.

Trust me, if I had a scanner at my office and could load film for minimal cost, I would do it. Unfortunately, when I budget films, we can either get 2k images OR we can get a Jib and Stedicam for the shoot. Most people will go for the Jib and Steadicam, over 2k images. ;)

Having fun/messing around with film is a totally different thing then actually putting together a production and needing a professional product coming out the back end. So for just having fun, here are some suggestions for ya:

There are some great soup to nuts full-service labs in the US, the two I've used are Pro 8 in Los Angeles and Cine Lab in New Bedford, MA. Pro 8 cuts their own stock from 35mm and ships them in 100ft daylight spools with flat processing/transfer included in the pricing. So its perfect for the budding filmmaker, looking to shoot a few daylight spools and get back the material digitally.

1920x1080 10 bit 4:2:2 color space "telecine" is the best you'll get from any of these labs for a reasonable budget. Since your Krasnogorsk shoots 4x3, your image will be pillar boxed on the left and right sides. Generally, I get labs to send me one-light transfers of B&W negative or positive and with color, I have them try to make it as flat as possible so I can touch up in post. I work in Pro Res HQ 220mbps, which works seamlessly/native with Final Cut Pro 7/10 and Avid Media Composer 7.

2048x1080 12bit 4:4:4 2k needs to be scanned not telecine'd. The difference is expense and time, but no major difference in quality for B&W material. Scanned files are generally converted into targa sequences which are huge and difficult to edit. 2k is generally a finishing format, not an editing format.

Once you've cut your film using the telecine footage, you can then pick selects to be re-scanned in 2k for your final cinema output. But remember 200ASA Vision 3 @ Super 16 dimensions is BARELY 2k. B&W negative and reversal, is more like 1000 lines of resolution square, so 1000x1000 4x3. So scanning it in 2k is pretty much worthless unless you're gonna do a theatrical distribution.

In terms of super8, I personally wouldn't project anything, ever. The projectors are notorious for damaging film and some negative is a different emulsion then positive, so its more susceptible to damage. If I were forced to shoot super 8 again, I would shoot it with the lowest ASA stock possible, negative (vision 3) and have Pro 8 telecine the results. Personally, to get the super 8 look, I'd just shoot reversal super 16 with an aaton a minima, purposely underexpose and push the stock in processing to get that grain look.

Good luck with your adventure, there are LOTS of youtube videos of people learning how to shoot motion picture film. Its a lot of fun and absolutely worth doing for any budding filmmaker!

I bought the filters separately, the matte box has 2 filter holders.

I still have to find a ND FILTER for my kit (am in Brazil now, summer, so VERY important). I need one that could fit my 4x3 matte box.

If you guys have a suggestions of a god one for a good price, please let me know.

I use a Proaim kit from India and it works great. They made it specifically for this camera.

http://www.thecinecity.com/eshop/PROAIM-Handheld-Camera-Mount-Shoulder-Kit-20-C.html

Its cheap and cheaply made, but it works great. Its got a 4x4 matte box and it stabilizes on the shoulder using a counterweight. I bought some cheap 4x4 filters from them as well, just enough to get me started.

I've been pretty successful with my camera so far, though its an all-new kit with EOS mount primes, instead of having to adapt older glass.

I've learned a lot about the camera in recent shoots, most of it has been positive, but some has been annoying. I still love the camera's quality, its sheer image quality is staggering for how small the body is. But I shoot wild and it can be a bit tricky to deal with. Not having any automation is rough, no option for auto iris OR a zoom lens is kinda frustrating when trying to grab that quick shot. However, I've come up with solutions for most things, I know which of my primes will work well in certain shooting environments and understand how to deal with mess-up's in post.

I'm going to schedule a short narrative film soon, I need to try shooting in a more controlled environment and see what happens. I have two more episodes of my dirt bike series (in the other thread) to finish and then I'm going to be onto a new subject.

I shot with my friends 5DMKIII this weekend, holy crap, what a piece of junk compared to the BMPCC... yes, I just said that. :)

Yea, I'd rather own something then rent it. I rarely get much advance notice of shoots and a cinematographers "package" seems more important today then just simply owning a camera and renting the lenses. Its part of the reason I went this direction vs buying a cheap S16mm body and continuing to shoot film. For the same amount of money as a film package w/o glass, I got a digital cinema package WITH glass. Yea, the zoom lens issue is a problem, its not a HUGE problem, but it does get annoying. I usually shoot with zooms unless doing extremely short or long focal lengths. So to have nothing but primes has been interesting. However, its been good for me as a cinematographer because its forced me to think outside of the box more. Zoom lenses are pretty much the "lazy-man's" way to deal with finding a focal length. heh ;)

I haven't read anything about the lomo's, I'll do some research, thanks for the info! :)

Yea, I'll have to watch out for that audio issue.

I thought about buying a PL mount adaptor and finding some old super 16 zoom's, but even they can be super expensive.