Art Leal

Pro8mm just sent me an email announcing their "Think Big, Shoot Small" Contest. It's their version of a "Straight 8" competition where you send an in-camera edited roll, and if you win it gets transferred to Blu-Ray HD using their Milennium Scanner. Heres the writeup: The Classic Super8mm Film Challenge Call for Entries: The Challenge is simple. Take Super 8 to the next level by shooting a project that will be viewed in HD with gorgeous 1080 resolution!!! Make a short film on a single roll, selecting from any of our 15 Pro8mm film stocks. All editing is done in the camera without splicing. Send the roll back to Pro8mm to be processed and scanned to Blu Ray Disk on our new Millennium II HD Scanner. Entries will be judged by our distinguished panel. It's that easy! The top 25 entries will be screened at a dedicated screening and party in Los Angeles, June, 2009 (exact date and location tba.) Select footage of these films will be chosen for the new Pro8mm DVD Demo which is sent to production companies worldwide. Here's the punch line: -Include your Entry Fee of $108.00. We accept Visa, Mastercard , American Express or check. Wow, maybe they should change it to "Think Big, Shoot Small, Get Jipped". I wonder if they'll clip 25 seconds of lead footage and dry splice a blank negative film leader to make up the difference like they did with the last two rolls I just sent them.

PAC Lab in NYC did this for me about two years ago. They converted a roll of 200T to a positive print. The results were less than stellar...the footage was overexposed and colors were from Mars. Not sure if it was their process that did it or the way I shot the footage.

I've often asked myself the same question, hence.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2-W39iF1kw

Sorry to hear it. Will be missed. Thank you for your great publication and interest in Super 8.

Rafael: I had the same problem after shooting my first ever 100' daylight spool on my K3...tons of dust. Then after sending it to Spectra they called and told me the film could not be developed because most of the perfs were all torn from the camera. I then grabbed some old stock and practiced loading and running it, then checking for tears. Since then I shot some more footage and did not see any dust after, at least not anywhere like before. Hopefully the "training" I gave myself will pay off. Not saying this is what happened to yours, but I thought I'd share that with you (my 16mm experience is very limited...almost nonexistent..lol). Either way I'd be happy to hear from others on the best way to clean it. Thanks

It does have a built in daylight filter which by default is always "on" or in place unless it is moved out of the way by a plastic screw that gets inserted on the camera's top. This moves the filter out of the way (unless your cartridge does it for you). The screw is red, has a "bulb" icon on it, and should be on the camera's underside. No tools are needed, it was designed to be done by hand. If missing, I magine a similiar sized screw should do the trick.

Allessandro I will leave a message in your Inbox. Thanks

Here's a side by side visual comparison between Double 8mm Cine Chrome 100D and Kodak 7293 16mm. http://s466.photobucket.com/albums/rr22/le...rrent=8vs16.png

As I understand it, it's 16mm film, but has twice the number of holes on each side, so it would be unique. I can confirm/deny this when I get home tonight and do a side by side with a strip of each.

Thanks for that Chris, I'll give it a look.

Spoke to him. He would be ok with it. Was going to ship it somewhere eventually anyway. Let me know if you're ok with it. Thanks again.

Hi Ric: Here's a few samples of a scene with different shutter speeds. The first id 1/60, with the variable speed set to no flicker (which I've been told should be close to 20fps). With this speed constant, only the shutter speed on the camcorder was adjusted. My projector is a three blade model. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irv2sALwHxo&fmt=6 What I meant by "noise" is the big grains you get in video when shooting low light scenes with a videocam (also called artifacting and sometimes "mosquito" noise). I have an older Sony Digital 8 camcorder which I had "hacked" by someone who plugged it into an EPROM and opened up features not normally available in this model such as zebra stripes, manual white balance and a few others. The gentleman who did this also supplied me with a sheet you might find useful..especially the "Low Light Tips" section, which describes how to trick the camcorder into locking the shutter speed. It works on mine, but can't guarantee it will for yours. It's a list of general commonalities found with the consumer type Sony handhelds. There's also a section describing what each of the exposure presets mean (ie Spotlight, Portrait, etc) http://www.flickr.com/photos/30330913@N08/2931139364 http://www.flickr.com/photos/30330913@N08/2930279621 http://www.flickr.com/photos/30330913@N08/2931139308 http://www.flickr.com/photos/30330913@N08/2930279585 Best of luck with your telecining, keep me posted I'll give it another try soon with the Velvia.

Ric: This camcorder lists a variable shutter from 1/50 - 1/3500. The only near decent results I have gotten with home telecining has been with camcorders who's shutter is locked at 1/60 (NTSC)..but yours would be 1/50th PAL. I've had the same "phasing". The higher I set the shutter manually, the slower the "phasing" or dark to light swinging effect. On the highest shutter speeds, it rocks back and forth from bright to dark...very slowly. I'm guessing your shutter is set to auto, and doing so will cause it run at a faster shutter speed when more light comes in from the image being projected (shutter priority mode). So, if there's a dark scene the shutter will open to full, which should put you at 1/50th. The opposite should occur when the image has more light (say a daylight shot), in this case the shutter increases it's speed to cut down the light to not overexpose it, but doing so causes the "swing" thing, since now the shutter is running at an undetermined speed (though we know it's higher than 1/50th), and thus causing the weird dark/negative look. On the other side of the coin, when I've set it to aperture priority, it compensates for dark images by throwing gain on it, which results in noise, but the swing effect is nowhere to be found. As far as oversaturated, does it look oversaturated when viewing it from the projector only? I can relate to not being for the faint-hearted. I read a comment from a reader regarding DIY telecining who wrote that having children is easier..LOL. Hope this helps.

A big improvement over my "jumping beans" version. Much better stability. If you don/t mind me asking, what cam did you use? Many thanks

Riddle me this!! B) Help fill this equation by mentioning the model DV cam you're using.

Tim: This happens with a JVC GR-HD1U HDV camcorder I have. I read somewhere that the CCD gets "overloaded" and produces this streak. With mine it is much more apparent and is usually a bright green, narrow vertical streak. Happens mostly in the daylight with the sun overhead a but I've seen it occur on internal shots when I'm using strong lighting as well. JVC aknowledges this as a defect and even offers a free replacement, but alas I've never sent it in.

Allesandro: Don't need matching time code on this. It's a musician who is looking to have me edit his material which was shot some time ago. I recommended going to Mini DV so I may import into my NLE. The work I'm doing for him is non pay, since I'm working to build a reel (if I can call it that..lol). Thank you for the offer!! I've heard of your expertise and passion with BetaSP. If you're so inclined, I'd be glad to send them to you (I think it's two tapes), and would gladly cover postage and whatever rate you can quote me.

Actually, its Beta SP I need to have done. I know there are a ton of places advertised but would prefer hearing anyone who's had any direct dealings with a place.

Can anyone recommend a place to have Betamax tapes transferred to Mini DV?

I was of the very same opinion as you not too long ago, until I took the plunge and tried HD..in my case HDV. I do most of my work now in it and rarely use SD anymore. Even when I need to distribute or publish a piece, downconverting from HD to SD gives me e better look than I was able to achieve with SD. Don't get me wrong, you have a dynamite cam, and I've seen stuff made in SD with proper lighting, composition, bla bla that has blown some HD out of the water, but overall the resolution you can get with HD is worth looking into. I use a Canon HV20 one chipper that simulates 24P with a cine mode feature, though what I'm saving for is a 3ccd'er HVX200 since I'm not too keen on the CMOS shutters...but that's another story. Perhaps you can borrow someone's and try some test footage. The biggest selling point for me at the time was the fact that with HDV, the file sizes aren't all that much bigger than with SD, so I didn't need to get tons of disk space from what I already had. True, the HDV files are much more compressed than those of SD, but I gave it a try nonetheless and was not dissapointed. As far as Instand HD, I have used it but for select footage to combine with HD. It basically upsamples footage with a lot of fancy antialiasing, but if you look at it enough it shows, the "stepping" is still noticeable and the clarity is not the same. Here is a sample of some SD I used Instant HD with. Best of luck! http://vimeo.com/1414322

This site sells them and includes a chart of which type Wein's go with which camera. http://www.weincell.com/ Haven't been able to find an English manual for the S560, but Martin Baumgarten does a pretty thorough job of explaining its features on this site: http://lavender.fortunecity.com/lavender/5...s560manual.html Here's some footage taken with the 64T and the same camera on full auto exposure: http://vimeo.com/1531118

I've recently shot some 64T with the exact same camera. I used Wein cells for the auto exposure, did not use a separate light meter and had excellent results.

Hi Greg: Here's a roll of 200T that I shot with the 310XL. The cartridge was notch hacked. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05g7qp1w7_M&fmt=6

Thanks Alessandro I find the 100D to have a "warmer" tone and yes, truer to life. I bought the Velvia knowing the colors would be "amplified". Was hoping it would be an option to keep as an "alternate look" stock.

thanks Andy. I won't ,mess with this stock again. Already had purchased two rolls so I'll try it with another camera but not expect any improvement. Someone recommended to use a tripod in order to get the stabilizing software to work better, so I'll do that.