Stephen Williams

Most VFX & motion control work shot on films over the past 30 years has been done with Fries Mitchells, some R35's others 35R3's. I bought one from Digital Domain that was used on Titanic & Dante's Peek. It images looks just like any other 35mm film camera.

Aatons for sure need regular servicing & there is quite a bit of Eclair in an Aaton I cant thing it's any different. Major expensive service every 4 years regardless of use so I am told-

Be aware that an old Aaton that has not had a full overhaul may well need $4,000 spent on it to bring it up to scratch. Ask Abel Cine in NY to look on their system to see what service history is like on any camera you want to buy.

It's a great dayloght stock that I have used extensivly over the last 12 years, very low grain. I generally mix it with other low speed stocks, if your grading in telecine you can pretty much match any 2 stocks, especially if there is a scene change!

The highest quality external recorder will be good, with least compression. A great deal depends what your budget is. Why not use an Alexa or Epic for the shot as you want 120fps?

Not sure why bother with the greenscreen, much more likely to look cut out, just shoot the scene with the person in different places & just soft edge between the 2 passes.

The lens centre will be off, probably not an issue on a prime.

A 2k at 110v is 18 amps A 2K at 230v is 8.7 amps A 100w dedo light at 12 V is 8.3 amps A 2k at 230v & a 12v dedo light with have approx the same amount of flicker. This is about from flicker from my gaffer's webstie. http://www.davidsatz.com/aboutflicker_en.html

It's the Voltage & Amps rather than the hertz so you need to double the size in Europe, so where you think a 2k is required then 4k or 5k in reality is probably the minimium. I have shot 1400 FPS with 5k's & 10K's, however my gaffer has used dino's on multi phase with good results.

You need to put the lens on a collimator or on another camera & see what happens.

Cooke S4's look very good.

They have been shipping for some time, I know at least 1 has landed in Switzerland

To the Eye the Epic Debayer looks OK, a huge improvement over R1.

No , it was a commercial for Swiss TV, it looked way better than any of the material they provided to cut with together.

The Epic Deybayer is pretty good, I had a post house using a Pablo refuse to use the original files as the offline tacken from a pix 240 was so good. They were able to recover details in a window where I had even used HDRX.

There will always be a few people who cant handle Epic, it's a huge step forward from a DSLR. As I usually shoot 35mm, I find the move fairly easy. I continue to be blown away by the images & how much info is there.

It will just about cover however may slightly porthole wide open, as you change focus there could be the odd place where it goed darker. It was designed for 4x3 Academy a long time ago. The lens's can be dirt cheap, however a service will run to 2,000 USD, I dismantled one & used it as a prop 5 years ago.

I remember that IBC well, Panasonic were not a happy bunch.

Assuming your a Califorian resident you know perfectly well that you have to pay sales tax on any in state purchases. I suspect the address the lens was sent to was an address you gave to save on Tax, I really don't get what your problem is. I have found Red to be 100% reliable on orders I made, however I stuck to my side of the bargain & paid by bank transfer the day I said I would. As soon as Red had my funds they shipped without delay, what more could I ask for. If you have an issue speak with your Bomb squad rep, thats what they are there for.

I was doing this in the 80's on 1" tame, long before Betacam, DV & legalisers were common.

I was just re-engineering what they wanted to see on their scopes with how I wanted the picture to look! It took about 2 minutes to figure out, same trick 20 years on with inexperianced DIT's today!

To pass QC at the BBC I usually had a tiny area outside normal viewing area at 100%, then they could not turn anything up, always worked like a charm!

Hi Phil, In my case I may have got an extra day or two, not totally sure either way, the shoots were all projects that I knew about before I got the camera. If I was looking to sell myself with Epic as a package, I would get more work for sure, not sure if that equates to more money or not. There is a huge amount of general interest in the camera, it's 'The in Camera' along with 'Alexa' right now. I suspect buying Epic M today is still a better deal than buying a Scarlet, most of the projects are using high speed 30% of the time & the difference in price is far less once accessories are added. I bought Red Armour today for £1850 for 2 extra years guarantee, I think the camera is good enough to still be in demand in 3 years time.

I am totally amazed by how quickly the camera will pay for itself, I am still shooting 35mm film & not pushing Epic at all. In November I will shoot with it for 9 days, with at least 5 additional rental days. December looks quite busy too. I had read of people paying off the camera in 2-3 months, thats clearly possible mine will be nearer 4 months however I had originally assumed 18 - 24 months.

The lens & camera needs to be checked, however you could just try to adjust the Back focus to the lens, it's rather easy with epic.