Adam Brown

It's important that you recognize what you do and do not have a budget for. You might be able to still afford to rent a Zephyr or a Glidecam equivalent, either from a rental house, online source, or a generous operator that wants to make some money renting their rig out. The smallest professional Steadicam systems will support the weight of the RED, albeit stripped down. However, you will likely not get a trained, experienced Operator with it, so the trade-offs are that your shots will likely not come out as "smooth" or "cinematic" as you intended, and thereby not worth the money spent. My suggestion would be to adapt shots as best you can to utilize a nice doorway dolly and/or jib combo like the Portajib, either on track or wheels. When properly used, you can get that very nice controlled, deliberate look that will still feel "cinematic" and "smooth" but within the realm of your technical experience and budget. Also, it has been my experience that most rental houses don't own/rent out Steadicams, not because Operators own them, but because they are highly advanced, specially calibrated and very sensitive systems. Rental houses have no substantial way of measuring the experience of those who they rent out to, so in all likelihood, rented Steadicams would spend more time in the shop being repaired from misuse than making money, making them a difficult investment for a rental house. Just FYI.

What David said is the best approach. Depending on where you have your talent facing, just form a proper angle between the camera, their eyeline and the soft material. What is your lighting package like? If you know how wide or tight the interview will be framed, as well. Just think about reflections and how they change the further away you are from a mirror. All these things will help you when you're on set and trying to determine camera position and the position of the material. If you have some muslin, you can rig it, however big you need based on your camera position and the relative movement of the interviewee. Then, based on what you need for exposure and look on your subject, just decide how to illuminate that material; whether by shooting lights through it or bouncing diffused light off of it. Know that unless you're on a controlled soundstage where you can feasibly be surrounded by an illuminated white wall, you'll need to instruct your interviewee to be aware of the angle they turn their head. They should be pretty stiffly locked to look at the specific area in which you've rigged the material. There are pros and cons to this, depending on the nature of your interview and the person in general, but if you're worried about it looking unnaturally stiff or affecting the comfortability of the interviewee, then I'd just opt to make that area of material as large and evenly illuminated as possible.

Just trying to think outside the box here. But, what about using the 5Ks on stands, on the ground, aiming them toward the center of the room, where you can hang an array of mirrors from your studio grid to reflect the lights down into your diffusion frame. Block out any spill onto your subject. Just thinking...

bumpedy bump? New price. $3,500 OBO.

Also, camera is located in Boston, MA. I am willing to do a local pickup, or ship anywhere (buyer pays shipping). I can take more specific pictures if you request. Just let me know!

I'm selling my Panasonic AG-AF100 kit. Included: Panasonic AG-AF100 (http://www.panasonic.com/business/provideo/ag-af100.asp) Charger AC Adapter Panasonic VW-VBG6 Battery Panasonic CGA-E/625 Battery Manuals Additional: Panasonic 14-140mm f4.0-5.6 Zoom, Autofocus Lens (Like New, Scratch-Free Glass) (http://shop.panasonic.com/shop/model/H-VS014140) RedRock LiveLens MFT Canon EOS-MicroFourThirds Mount (to mount and electronically control iris of Canon EF/EFS mount lenses on the AF100) (http://store.redrockmicro.com/livelensmft) Everything in this kit comes entirely in Like New condition. The camera only has 21 hours of use, which can be verified in the menu of the camera. The entire time, it's been kept in a climate-controlled storage unit, inside a Pelican case with padded foam inserts. I need to verify by rummaging through my basement, but I believe I can even include original packaging if it's still down there and you want it. Ha. Price is $3,750 or best offer. I am willing to break apart the 14-140mm lens or the RedRock lens mount from the kit if you don't need/want it, but priority goes to those who would like the kit as a whole. Feel free to message me with any and all questions. Thanks very much and have a great day!

On a Megabus trip to New York, I tried to visit my favorite Cinematography forum. TO NO AVAIL. Thanks Megabus! ;)

A very cool story, man. A pleasure to read!

Thanks so much for clarifying this! Much appreciated!

Thanks for clarifying, Illya. Just out of curiosity though, everything I've read about the PL conversions of a 5D/7D says that the mirror must be removed. There is no electronic sensor on a 5D/7D like that of a M43 system, so how can the cameras retain any still photo abilities, without having the ability to control a shutter opening and closing? Won't the mirror end up knocking against the back of the lens? Thanks very much!

If you want to modify your 7D to accept all PL lenses and not just the EF lenses, it would be a permanent "fix" as they need to remove the mirror entirely. This is because the back of a PL lens sits further back into the camera and would thus interfere with the camera's normal photo-taking abilities. Removing the mirror would allow the use of PL lenses but would effectively disable your ability to ever take a photograph with the 7D. Plus, it's expensive. Hot Rod Cameras does DSLR modifications to PL mounts and it would cost almost double what you paid for the 7D. And, when you're paying close to 4 grand for the DSLR + modification, it begs the question, "Why not just buy a Sony FS100 or something similar and get the same results with an adapter that doesn't permanently affect your camera?" But, since you have the CP.2s and if those are the ONLY PL lenses you'd want to use on your 7D, why not just go back to Zeiss and get the EF mount kit, and attempt to swap out their interchangeable mount system to EF by yourself? If it were me, I'd probably leave them in EF mount all the time, and then just swap them back to PL when you've got a gig that requires it, or you happen to rent them out to someone who needs them in PL. That way you save yourself the time, hassle, and money of constantly switching them back and forth. That is, after all, one of the nicest benefits to the CP.2s!

Hey, Where are you located and will you ship to anywhere?

Nice work, Evan! That stock/lens combo works great on music videos... And you turned me on to Cadence Weapon, so cheers for that!

You might need a nice long sleeve shirt or a light sweater, but the camera would be fine, oh wait, what's that? you're talking about celcius? *googles celcius to fahrenheit conversions* jesus christ, that's hot. :blink:

Hey, Not sure what size you built your ring-light setup for, but you can get step-up/down adapters for whatever new size filter thread you're working with. So, if you've got a 77mm ring light setup, you can just easily buy a $5-10 step-up adapter to get you from 58mm or whatever up to that 77mm thread size. This is a very cheap solution, obviously and might work out with your existing setup!? Hope this helps!

If you set your exposure time to a fixed 1.6 seconds, make sure you set your intervalometer to something like 2 seconds and and try to keep that delay between shutter fire and timer to a minimum. This way, you'll have less of a "shutter lag" and it will appear more as if it were recorded from a video.

Never come across a more thorough and helpful breakdown of the production process. Thanks very much, John, your advice is much appreciated!

What lenses are you using? This definitely has a major impact as an anamorphic cine lens vs. a Canon SLR lens vs. a Master Prime will all behave very differently. And, in some cases, worrying about flare might not even be necessary. I've shot exposed bulbs of a chandelier plus headlights into the lens on a set of Cooke S4s and seen very little flare. On the other hand, anamorphics will pick up and emphasize flare very easily.

Hi, Where is the camera located? Thanks!

Hey Adrian, I hadn't heard anything about Leica releasing a second set of cine lenses? Do you have any links about that announcement or details on these lenses? I tried searching and found nothing. However, if you were referring to the Summilux-C lenses, then those in no way would be comparable in price to the Panchro/CP.2 sets, as you could get an entire set of those Panchro/CP.2 lenses for less than one of the Summliux-C's. Just curious, because if they're planning on releasing cine lenses at the same cost as their stills lenses, then I have to seriously reconsider my spending habits. ;)

http://www.kesslercrane.com/product-p/100154-5.htm I'm a big fan of Eric Kessler's products. Great customer service, great reputation for solid build quality and reliability. All-around great company as well. Plus, I find that it's smooth and very easy to use with the hand crank. Plus, you can adapt motors/controllers for smooth easing in and out of key points, as well as support for precise time-lapse work. Hope this helps!

Would you be alright with local pickup? If so, could you please include the location of the film? Thanks!

It's going to depend a lot on the specs of the projector and what kind of light output it can produce. What type of setting is it? Is it supposed to be like a theater, or is it abstract? Because, if you're setting it up to resemble something where the projected image quality is very important, then the material you choose to project on is pretty crucial. There are all sorts of rear-projection screens available. You'll want to look for something that will reflect the vibrancy of the light and not soak up all your colors. For example, I did an installation in a gallery once using a Rosco rear projection material that was specially designed to make colors pop accurately and give a wide angle of view. It was pretty costly. If that projection quality is not as relevant, then you could always use something as cheap and accessible as thin, white bed sheet. Keep in mind that sharpness of the projection deteriorates significantly, as does the color saturation and brightness of your overall image. Another thing you'll greatly want to consider when lighting your subject is to flag off your lights from spilling onto the projection material. You'll want to keep that part of the set as dark as possible, because you'll need every bit of contrast you can get. And, any spill from your lights on the screen is only going to negatively affect that. As far as the choice of light goes, I don't think it matters specifically, as long as your choice works within the context of your scene. You do want to make sure that your lights, either with or without gels, match the color temperature of your projection for white balance purposes, so that both the projected elements and the subject the you're shooting have accurate color. Hope this helps!

Well, first off, the T2i is primarily a stills camera that offers video features (just for semantics) so you're still using the adapted lenses on the same system. And, yes, assuming you'd get an adapter-which, depending on the manufacturer could be anywhere from $10 up to a few hundred dollars-you could still produce "quality images." However, quality is entirely subjective. There are quality lenses out there for Pentax (I know less about Yashica) but, these lenses I'm assuming your talking about are most likely older film lenses. Older lenses often lack multi-coatings and other features such as Image Stabilization that modern advancements in lens design now offers. Therefore, as a result, you'd be force to a.) use these lenses in a full manual mode, without any sort of focus confirmation, built-in TTL metering, etc. And, b.) the lenses would be more prone to flaring, chromatic aberration, and would in all likelihood be less sharp than their modern counterparts. That is not to say that modern lenses are not without flaws. But, depending on your photographic experience, there is definitely an "ease-of-use" benefit if you're just starting out on a T2i to be able to learn metering and have focus confirmation. If you already have these collections of lenses, I'd say it's best to test them out and see what you think of them. If the look you get is pleasing to you, and allows you to create the types of images you're striving to create, then you're all set. Although, if you're just starting out, I'd definitely recommend at least getting the kit lens or a Canon EF 50mm f1.8 in order to have something easier to practice with. Have fun!

Ah, thanks so much, Charlie! Had no idea, but there were several shots in that trailer that made them clearly visible. Indeed, such a good movie. Gotta love classic trailers too! Thanks again!