Jason Hinkle RIP

I have three ACLs and I've finally decided to let go of one of them. It's up on eBay at: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=140432052494 It's your basic ACL, with the exception of the CP motor, which are somewhat rare. My other two cameras are both Super-16, but this one for sale is a regular 16mm. I actually like shooting with it anyway, because it's smaller and lighter than the other two. I love to hit the streets with a small C-mount lens on this camera! Also included is the standard Angie 12-120 T2.5, 1 200' mag and the power cable. All you need is a standard 12v battery and it's ready to shoot. Any questions, please lemme know. I hang out in the Eclair forum as well. If you're in Chicago, let me know and you can check it out in person. Thanks, Jason

I responded over in the canon forum before I saw the same post here. I'm kinda psyched that my guess was somewhat in line with David's more educated response! As I was thinking about it I did also think for a second that it was, not pointless per se, but perhaps mis-phrased as far as achieving the deepest DOF. Because you threw the 5D in there, it becomes more of an academic puzzle about whether a bigger sensor produces a 1-1 bigger image in the footage (which it does not in the case of the 5D). It was a fun question to ponder, though, I suspected this was not what you were wanting to know.

I'm really interested in the GH1 with a PL mount adapter. Are you able to back down the bit rate so it's more reliable without write errors?

I think about 50% of your reel looks extremely professional. The other 50% still looks good, but since you do actually have some very nice looking footage, if I were you I'd cut my reel down and stick with only the very best shots. There's no reason to show people anything but your best work - that's just my opinion. The shots that I like are those with the rich colors and lighting (your third shot CU of a guy, one with a girl hanging clothes). Most of the film shots look good, especially the more abstract ones. Hope that helps!

I think if all other things are equal and you are cropping in post so as to use only 22.5mm x 15mm from each sensor, I believe that they all produce the exact same shot with the exact same DOF. Because the light coming from the back of the lens hitting that 22.5mm x 15mm rectangle of the sensor should be the same. I'm assuming you're talking about doing the math and cropping in post, rather than doing some type of modification to the sensor..? There's probably more to it than that with cropping at the optics level vs cropping at the pixel level in post. I don't really know the answer to that. But if they're all the same DOF, then I'd say the best quality would be the RAW footage that you'd get from the RED.

I personally hate working with the lens adapters, they're like a black hole of time spent fiddling to keep everything in focus and not vignetting. Probably many people have them figured out better than me, though. The 7D would be good if you can deal with it's various issues. The 12 minute per shot time limit, they can overheat if you shoot for a long time requiring you to take a break. Obviously the compression and rolling shutter business as well. But if you can deal with those limitations the 7D is very easy to work with.

What Edgar said - two 8Gb instead of the 16. For backup safety, but also so you can swap them out and have one transferring while you are shooting with the other. Otherwise you will have to take 15 minute breaks to download your footage all the time if you only have one card. Obviously you need a CF card reader to do that if you don't have one already, they're cheap though. If I could only buy one single lens, especially for documentary purposes I'd go for a more practical zoom instead of just one prime. Primes are great but ideally you get a set of them so your not stuck with just one length. With documentary you don't get to set everything up where you want it and you usually want to stay out of the way. You'll have trouble getting close-ups without getting in people faces if the only lens you have is a 50mm.

Hey James, lenses are what make your image so aside from quality it's also a matter of taste. Some cinematographers are loyal to specific brands or lenses because they consider it part of their own personal style. My suggestion is to start with a good range first (in millimeters) so you can actually go out and shoot. The 25-105 is a great range - extremely versatile. You could probably shoot your entire career with that one lens. I personally got the 28-70 because it's faster at f2.8 vs the f4 on the 25-105. All Canon "L" glass is top-of-the-line. After you have that, you can go in all kinds of directions. For me, I prefer wide shots so I got the Canon 10-22. You could start getting primes at that point - try some Zeiss primes, get a longer telephoto, get faster lenses, etc. You'll start to figure out what you personally like and pretty soon you'll be broke like the rest of us! Good luck, though, I love my 7D. You're going to love shooting with it!

I think professional film and video experience are both equally helpful to get great results from a DSLR. As is experience with still photography. None of them transfer perfectly, but they all share a lot of the same fundamentals.

thanks, i really do appreciate the kind words. astrolab/filmworkers did the transfer here in chicago (in the former corner office of one hugh hefner!) i was in the lab for a good part of it and saw the footage right off the film - the hot spots are definitely there. the colorist did his best to give me something to work with which was fantastic but a few shots were beyond repair. i guess i'll send the camera in at some point. in the meantime, i don't know what to think, i'm paranoid about using the nikons at the moment because i can't duplicate the problem in test shots and i don't want to get burned again on my next shoot! Oh, i did use a matte box with french flags. taped up the mags. some shots had 1 stop of ND filter, not sure if that is part of it. I don't know I can't figure it out!

Here's some pretty decent suggestions with links: http://eclair16.com/eclair-acl/accessories/ The two things that affect your image are the format (Super-16, Ultra-16, etc) and the lens. So with that it mind the ultimate rig for me would be Super-16 with a PL mount for use with rented Cine lenses. One more piece that can affect the image is color correct and ND filters and you need some way to attach them in front of the lens. So, a good accessory is a matte box or lens hood (or just filters that screw into your lens threads). For all the other stuff, renting is a good option. Since you don't always need everything for every shoot there's a good chance that you'll never really "break even" with buying all the support gear and you can have much better pro gear when you need it.

Thank you guys for the compliments and the info. I've heard it may be related to the mirror as well, I don't know for sure. Anyway, if you have the misfortune of some similar footage, I posted a how-to of my whole process: it probably seems overly elaborate, but i must have tried every possible flicker removal solution i could find that didn't involved so much labor. They either didn't work, or else they worked but caused noticeable side effects such as blur or a trippy-looking frame blending "echo". If you're really patient, my method will get rid of any amount of flickering and the footage still looks sharp. I'd love any comments if you have a better technique because my solution is obviously a huge pain in the neck!

i've never seen the arri software, though, from what i hear it has a lot more parameter for dialing in on noise without removing detail. neat video does it's magic using temporal filtering so the images can sometimes get a tiny bit soft. Neat video is pretty amazing, though, especially considering it's $99 while relativity is around $50,000. the demo movies on the arri site don't look dramatically different from what neat video does.

Did anybody watch the finale of House to see how the 5D looked? I'm a big fan of the Canon DSLRs, but I have to say the footage didn't look quite as beautiful as the usual episode of House. That's not to say it looked bad at all. Also most of it was set in a dark exterior instead of the usual bright hospital setting, so it had a totally different look. It seemed like a lot of it was graded very blueish for the night exteriors. It's likely that I was scrutinizing a lot more than usual too.

the overheating updates makes this firmware worth installing in my opinion. that's definitely an issue that can come up when shooting video.

i found this post which is a little too much science for me, but the guy sounds like he knows what he's doing - http://www.cryptobola.com/PhotoBola/Canon7D_ISO.htm The relevant parts or the article seem to be: (with ISO 340) "The camera's firmware multiplies the pixel values gained with ISO 400 by 0.8; this "shrinks" the pixel values (and causes the "combing" in the histogram); thus the shot appears for the raw processing software as if it had been made with the lower ISO gain.", "The same is happening with ISO 160, 640, 1250, 2500 and 5000 - they are derived from ISO 200, 800, 1600, 3200 and 6400, respectively. One consequence of this way of ISO implementation is, that shots made with ISO 160, 320, 640, etc. appear less noisy than with ISO 200, 400, 800, etc. Some users believe this is a reason to use these ISO steps. The reason for the lower noise is the 1/3 stop higher exposure, not the ISO difference itself. One can always reduce the noise by increasing the exposure, with any ISO, but this may cause clipping. " Then for a more unscientific study, this guy did some video tests: http://vimeo.com/10473734 (7D noise test http://vimeo.com/10701955 (t2i noise test) according to the video the 160, 320, 640, etc have way less noise. but the scientific article says that is just because the exposure is artificially increased on those settings. The t2i looks simpler - the lower the ISO the better.

hey ryan, i was looking for that info on the 7D recently. the weird thing is that if you turn off the "in between" stops on the camera, you would think those would be the optimal settings. however on the 7D the "full" ISO stops are 100, 200, 400, 800, etc. In other words 160, 320, etc are in between settings. But, I've read the same things as you recommended to use them. it seems like the opposite of what you'd expect. do you happen to remember where you found those settings listed?

i'd love to hear more about that too. i've played around a bit with using the canon software to pull focus on my laptop connected to the camera via USB. it works but the canon software is pretty clunky. A wireless focus control would be killer.

The smart advice is to take all the money you would spend on camera support gear and instead spend that on better quality lenses. But, the lure of making one's camera look like an awesome movie rig draws us all in, my friend. Gear lust is a disease that constantly eats away at your savings account. Seriously though, I've been shooting with a 7D for a while and if you can afford only one accessory, I find a loupe/viewfinder to be almost essential. When in movie mode, you can't use the camera viewfinder so you're stuck with the LCD. It gets really tough if you are focusing by eye, and/or trying to work outside in the sun. If you want to buy a bunch of support gear, though, this site has a lot of really affordable gear specialized for DSLR cameras - http://jag35.com/new/category/products/dslr-products/

strangely with my mag i find the cores can be louder than the spools because the film isn't held in place on both side. It starts to cone a bit and it rubs against the mag cover. I sometimes have to stop half way through a 400' spool, put it back in the changing bag and push the film back. somebody told me once that a trick is to give the mag a good smack on the feed side to keep it from coning but it still winds up getting noisy towards the end of the roll for me.

wow, that's surprising - can i ask where you ordered those? I've been wanted to try some 200' daylight spools. I actually much prefer using the 200' magazines just because they're small and light. But constantly loading the 100' spools gets to be a drag and I haven't delved into winding the film myself. Be sure when you take it to the lab to tell them to give you your spools back because normally they just give you the processed film back on a core. As far as the sound, the ACL is generally pretty quiet but sometimes the mag can be a source of noise if things are rubbing and they might need occasional service. I don't think the spool would necessarily be different from the core plate in that respect.

I've been seeing a lot of bogus listings on eBay for Eclair ACL cameras. I've been reporting them whenever I see them but I just figured I'd mention it here so if you see them you might report them too. It seems a strange item to try for a scam but maybe that's the point? Anyway the items are fairly easily identified as being a pretty sweet ACL rig with a ridiculous starting bid (say $.099). The real give-away is that the listing instructs you to pay a buy-it-now price by contacting the seller directly via email. They circumvent eBay protect by putting this text in an image instead of the listing. I doubt anybody here is falling for that scam, but I hate to think of our cameras as becoming known as a high risk item to bid on. If you see one, please click the "report" link, it only takes a second to do so.

Ian is right - If you have a 200' short-end, well that is suggesting it is the short end of a bigger roll, which of course can only be a 400' roll. And 400' rolls only come on cores, not spools. It's unlikely it's an A-Minima load because they come in 200' so that would not really be considered a "short end" for the A-Minima, it would be considered a full spool. I would say it is most likely that you simply have 200' of film on a regular core. Open in it a changing bag to be sure. Though you absolutely can shoot that film, you are missing some parts and making things much more complicated than necessary. If I were you, I would just sell those short ends on ebay and use that to buy 100' daylight spools instead. If it does turn out that you have 200' daylight spools, that would be very surprising. 200' daylight spools are not common at all. If you really want to shoot your 200' short ends, you have two options: The first option is to buy two core adapter "platters" for the ACL so you can load film on a core (you can see what this looks like at this page, 0:45 into the video: http://eclair16.com/eclair-acl/how-to-videos/loading-film/ ) Unfortunately the platters are a specialty item. The best bet would be to call Bernie or one of the other techs to see if they have some. I've seen some show up once on eBay in the past few years. I think the last time I looking, it was $250 for a pair of platters. Also the 200' mags are a tight squeeze with 200' of film. Short ends are not an exact science of footage so they might be a little under or over 200'. If it's over, there is a chance when you go to load it that it won't fit in the mag and it could be quite a mess fumbling around in the changing bag. The second choice is to re-spool the film onto two 100' daylight spools, which are cheap on eBay. (or 200' spools of course). The problem here is that you have to have a film winder to do that. They go on ebay for $250 or so, or else you can try to find parts to make yourself a DIY one. For your first time shooting, though, it just seems like so much extra work and risk of damaging your film. If your school has a winder, or you have a friend at a lab though, this might be a reasonable option. Well, there is a third option as well, which is to buy a 400' magazine. You'll have to duke it out on eBay with the rest of us for that because they rarely show up and they fetch pretty good prices! I hope you don't take this as discouragement - I'm just trying to suggest the easiest way to go out and shoot with your camera. In my opinion, stick with 100' daylight spools until you're able to get the gear you need to use film on cores. I hope to see your footage posted here someday soon!

Excellent advice from Evan and Ian. If you're not into the DIY thing with batteries, I use these - http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/4495...te_Battery.html I'm sure there's a place to order them in the UK. Comes with a charger and everything for under $40 so it's pretty cheap and will power an ACL for practically a whole day. my humble advice would be to go out and shoot as much as possible with the rig you have now. it's pretty easy to get consumed with building the ultimate rig! in the meantime just put a watch list on ebay and wait for parts to show up. motors show up once in a while, not too often. sometimes it's cheaper to just buy a whole new camera package, take what you want from it and then re-sell the rest. be sure to post back when you shoot some footage.

hey Patrick, i experienced some bad flickering on my ACL footage recently. It started happening after my super-16 conversion. it sounds similar to yours - in really bright sunlight it's pretty bad, but under normal lighting it doesn't seem to happen. it's also inconsistent on my camera and I'm at a loss to know what the problem is. It's actually possible to completely fix the footage in post, though. I tried every flicker-removal plugin i could find and none of them worked for me. But I discovered a plugin called Neat Video, which is not really for flicker repair, but it uses temporal filtering to remove noise and an unexpected side-effect is that it removes mild flickering as well. If you have severe flickering, I figured out some additional tricks to get rid of that too, however it's extremely tedious. PM me if you are interested.