Stuart Brereton

I don’t think it’s a question of right or wrong, it’s more about the needs of the show. If you are trying to match existing fixtures then your gel pack will be governed by achieving a certain color. If you’re not matching then you can choose a sodium color that you like, regardless of how accurate it is. I’ve tried many different combinations over the years, and some of them look great, but I’m not sure that any of them are particularly faithful to the actual rendition of a sodium lamp. One thing I tried years ago was photographing sheets of white paper under various different vapor lamps, then looking at the RGB values and the histograms of the stills in photoshop. You can then compare them to the transmission graphs of the gels. It’s not an exact method, and a lot depends on the particular camera you are using, but it can help.

There are so many different recipes for these color combinations. Roger Deakins apparently likes to use 1/2 CTO & Straw 013 on tungsten lamps for sodium. I've tried 1/2 CTO and 1/4 plus green, which I quite like, but it really depends on how gritty you want to go. Rosco Industrial Vapor looks great if that's the look you are after. A lot is going to depend on your exposure, and how saturated you want the colors to be. Sodium always seems underexposed to me, so it's pretty saturated, whereas Mercury can be a lot brighter.

Thanks Mark.

If I remember right, as long as the size of the light source is less than 20% of the distance to the subject, the inverse square law is still useful. So, light coming from a 4x4 diffusion frame at 20ft from the subject would behave according to the law, but as you moved it closer it the law would become less and less accurate.

A friend of mine has recently inherited some Super 8 equipment, and not being a filmmaker, wants to find it a good home. The camera is a GAF 735 Super 8. It’s in very good cosmetic shape. Hasn’t been used in about 20 years, but it appears to run ok at 18, 24 & 32 FPS. Optics are clear, and the zoom works smoothly. There’s a Eumig projector as well, but I don’t have details of that at the moment. Any ideas on what it might be worth?

Huh? The OPs user name is 71825_1552249278. Don’t know where you got Max from

Btw, this is a real names forum. You need to contact the forum owner, Tim Tyler, and change your screen name to your real full name.

Contrary to what TV manufacturers would have you believe, 3840 pixels is not 4K, it’s UHD. The two terms have become conflated over the years as manufacturers have used them interchangeably, but 4K is, well, 4K. 4096 pixels, not 3840. Whether or not your audience cares about this distinction is a different question.

I rarely find myself using anything longer than an 85mm these days. On the rare occasion we need something longer, I prefer the 100mm focal length. I’ve always felt that the 135mm is a holdover from FF stills, and not that useful in movie work. Of course, that may well all change with the move to larger sensors.

As PL mount lenses are generally intended for use with 35mm motion picture cameras, there is a good chance that the image circle of the lens will not cover full frame, unless you are talking about a modern FF pl mount lens.

As Gordon Willis once said, there’s no such thing as a three stop push ?

Phil's point is that RED are not the first manufacturer to have repackaged off the shelf components into a proprietary format, and they won't be the last. I agree that it's very annoying, and I find Jarred Land's deliberate deception and pretend outrage rather distasteful, but it's not surprising. From reading some of the rest of the thread on REDuser, it seems you have a vested interest in this argument, so in the interests of transparency, perhaps you could explain your reasons for posting this here.

I think the issue here is the deception and the fake outrage from Jarred Land. If it wasn't so obviously hypocritical, it might be easier to sympathize.

David, while you are correct that it is not necessary to be either an expert or likeable in order to be right, being likeable has other benefits. On a forum like this, where most members will carry on conversations over a period of months or even years, and yet never meet each other, it is only natural that people will be curious about each others backgrounds and experience. Knowing what experience informs the attitudes of our fellows makes it easier to understand their views, and helps to avoid unnecessary arguments, particularly in a medium where nuance and tone are hard to convey. You evidently have strongly held opinions on a variety of subjects, and you appear to be well informed, but it's also true to say that you are extremely aggressive in your tone when responding to others with whom you disagree, and you seem very willing to attack the poster, rather than the post. That's not good for anyone involved. May I suggest that we turn the heat down under this conversation, and keep it friendly.

David, I think this continued discussion would probably benefit from a less aggressive tone from yourself. Strong opinions are welcome, but personal attacks are not. Lets keep it civil.

In common with most stylistic framing choices, there are occasions when ‘short-siding’ works, either for practical or artistic reasons, and there are times when it is just a crutch for people who don’t have anything original to say, and who just copy whatever the ‘in’ thing is this week.

Bouncing the light off the ceiling won’t make a difference to the color temp as long as the ceiling is white. The saturation of the color will change with exposure. The more underexposed the light, the bluer it will appear.

I had a problem once where our lead actress’s make up artists were standing by monitor, and altering the blocking depending on where they thought she looked best. This was while I was still lighting the scene. In the end, I walked over to the monitors and switched them off. There were a few moments of indignation, then they all stalked off back to their trailer. If you feel the need to alter your lighting to accommodate an actress, then using a very soft key will usually do the trick. Bring it a little more frontal than you might for a male actor. if you’re abandoning any attempt at naturalism, then surrounding the lens with light works pretty well.

But what about OT, Greg??!!

Geoff Boyle, who runs the Cinematography mailing list, has just finished a series of lens tests. You can find the results, along with a lot of other tests he has done over the years, at cinematography.net

I think the Contax Zeiss C/Y lenses look great, and if you can deal with the issues of them being stills lenses, you won’t be disappointed. The Leica Rs are also really nice, but suffer the same problems. Canon FDs are good, but it’s virtually impossible to adapt them to EF without adding extra glass in the adapter. Another, slower option might be Mamiya 645 lenses. They’re from the mid 70s/80s and have a great look, but they’re f2.8, and as they’re designed for medium format, the range of focal lengths might not be what you need. I’ve just finished putting together a set of these, so if you want to know more, PM me.

That didn’t work with the lenses we had. The CA was bad at every stop. We also had some Zeiss Otus lenses which flared like crazy. Very unimpressive considering the price tag. It was a very low budget show, and the lenses were forced on me as I was replacing someone else, but even for a low budget project, I would never use these lenses again.

It was purple fringing on highlights. The worst I have ever seen on any lens. The 35mm was particularly bad. I asked around on the internet, and apparently it’s a well known issue. The Contax Zeiss lenses are from the same era as the Zeiss Super Speeds, and have the same T coatings. Lovely glass, but being stills lenses, some of them are slightly slow by movie standards, and they don’t have a consistent maximum aperture. They also have a shortish focus throw, although that might be less of an issue if you’re using a remote focus unit. I love the look of them.

The frame ear is going to be the safer option. The pipe slider is probably only about 3 or 4 inches deep. That means only two inches of a 6ft pipe is actually supported.

I’ve used the Rokinon Cine DS primes once or twice, and aside from being susceptible to veiling glare, they are not at all bad for the money. The set lacks a 100mm, which is a shame. The Xeens are basically the same glass, but with proper Cine housings. I haven’t really used CP2s, but we did have a lot of problems with Zeiss ZE lenses (which share the same glass) on a recent show. Awful chromatic aberration on highlights.