Robert Hughes

I love that it's snowing in Johannesburg - it's about 99 and a half degrees in Washington...

Depends on if you intend to do the most of your shooting with synchronized sound. If you plan to do a lot of wild MOS shots, the Arri S style is a lot more portable than a BL.

:huh: Huh? That's like saying; Mercedes showroom cars are spotless, so my old car will have that "new Mercedes" look if I wash it.

There are a few sound people on board here. Do you have something specific in mind?

Well, it sounds like you decided before you even signed on. So why did you ask for responses, then call them a load of crap? Seems pretentious and self-defeating to me.

The Nikon R-10 will accept any ASA film you put into it. So bring a few different types; low ASA color reversal like E64T or Fuji, and medium ASA b&w reversal Plus-X (100) and Tri-X(200). The Tokyo Ginza shows up great with any color film (you might try some 7217 negative), but the bright neon signs may blow out if you use negative 7218 (500 ASA) at night. 7218 would be very handy for existing lighting indoors (homes, museum, theater). X-Ray machines are a problem at airports nowadays. Can you mail some film to a hotel or PO box and pick it up when you get there? Otherwise, use carry-on baggage and request the security staff to hand inspect your film to avoid the X-Ray; sometimes they'll oblige you, sometimes not. One cultural oddity; if a policeman waves at you, he wants you to talk to him. Don't walk away.

About once a month you'll see an ad on eBay for someone selling Bolex C mount extension tube sets. They were made specifically for macro photography shots like you are describing. Bolex H and RX cameras also support single frame advance. What is a brickfilm?

Perhaps the most graphic example of the principle of cancellation comes from the early films by DW Griffith, shot by Billy Bitzer on a large format MP camera using unperforated film. As the film advanced through the camera, a set of wheels would pull the film through between frames, without any precise distance defined. When the film was in position for the next exposure, a pair of sharpened die-cutting pins would punch holes in the film and essentially staple the film to the gate for the duration of the frame exposure, after which time the pins would extract and the film would advance to the next frame. Bitzer claimed that one of his main duties as camera operator was cleaning the film chaff out of the camera between takes. During printing, the film frames were lined up on the pin holes. These frames were not spaced an exact distance from each other, however each frame was positioned exactly with reference to the punch holes generated in-camera, which is one reason why Griffith's early (pre Pathe camera) films look as steady as they do.

How about Tarkovsky's "Andrei Rublev" - in addition to the whole setting of medieval Orthodox monkhood, it's got that Christian versus pagan scene by the river. Of course the demons in that film are all human. Also Dreyer's "Joan of Arc".

One of the questions that comes up with the registration pin issue is: what is good enough? Does anybody but the filmmaking team notice the difference? Just about any camera from the humble Bolex or Filmo on up can give you a good picture with reasonable steadiness, but the tolerances held by well-tended pin registered cameras are of course held to a stricter standard. It's not like non-pin cameras are beneath the quality standards of film production. For instance, Auricon and CP-16 cameras aren't pin registered, but millions of feet of film have been exposed by them and played to satisfied audiences. As with firearms: if you're shooting handheld, about any working 16mm camera will be more steady than you are. But, if you need to shoot process shots where exact registration is mandatory, you'll have to use a camera suited to the task, such as an Arri, Aaton or other machine with pin registration.

Here's a plug for Ken at Whitehouse. After a year of dithering I finally got up the nerve to crack open the case to my CP-16RP. What I found was the usual for an old camera that's spent a couple decades in storage: clutch belt mostly distintegrated, timing belt stretched and inelastic, clutch pads nonexistent. I called up Whitehouse AV and talked to Ken Hale, and we had a pleasant, enlightening discussion on the inner workings and foibles of Cinema Products cameras; belts, circuits, power supplies, batteries (Ken makes new batteries and chargers for CP-16's if anyone is interested). I was stalled, thinking I couldn't ever get this machine going again because of the anticipated $2000 overhaul fee, but Ken has all the parts I need to turn this hunk of metal into a working camera again. It'll be rough, certainly not ready for feature film prime time for awhile, but thanks to Ken and the Whitehouse parts store I'll have my CP-16R shooting within the week. Ah-right!

For comparison, here is Steve Hyde's clip using an Angenieux zoom: PC users take note. It's a .mov file. http://www.steve-hyde.com/filmo_7201_test

Nathan, the telecine shop mentioned has probably been in business for years - have you any background on the shop or are you going to base your opinions of their product on the complaints of an inexperienced and underprepared student? Claire, I've read this thread several times and still can't figure out what you've done. What is this camera you used to capture mini-dv footage? Where was it in the chain? Were you using a real telecine, or videotaping the film footage off the wall, or videotaping off a television set? And "dual drive thingy" is not in the least bit helpful or descriptive of anything other than your level of technical knowledge. Face it, filmmaking is a technical art, you can't get around the complexities of machines and workflows without understanding what they do and why they exist. As they say in the Marine Corps, "you've got to know!"

I've never heard her or this interview, but she's a comedian, right? Sounds like Ms. Garofalo successfully pulled your leg and you didn't even catch the joke.

I'm working on adding cameras to the Super 8 Wiki and created a page for the CP-16: http://super8wiki.com/index.php/CP-16 comments/edits welcome.

I suppose you could get a PL lens fitted with an adapter for RX compatibility, but then it would not be compatible with standard PL cameras. Perhaps somebody could make a PL adapter with an RX-compensation element built in, but the NRE and manufacturing costs would be prohibitive for a one-off project. You might be better off buying an Arri SR and converting that to PL mount.

On November 4, 1995, Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a gunman in central Tel Aviv after attending a rally. He was laid to rest on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem. Yigal Amir, a 27-year-old law student, told a magistrate in Tel Aviv's main court, just a few hundred yards from the scene of the shooting, that Rabin wanted to "give our country to the Arabs." "I did this to stop the peace process," Amir told Magistrate Dan Arbel in a calm, even tone. "We need to be coldhearted." It must be nice to have a selective memory...

My impression is that your workflow image structure is not properly balanced. Generally, in order to retain the most image quality in a workflow you want your transfers to go from the highest quality to lesser quality image formats. But you're intentionally placing BetaSP (with 340 lines horizontal resolution) earlier in the workflow than the higher resolution digital formats. Everything downstream from the BetaSP transfer will bear the BSP stamp; it will be bandwidth limited to whatever the BSP deck provides. Essentially, you're using the BSP deck as a low-pass resolution filter. Yes, the graininess will be less, because it will be smudged out in the BSP stage. But why concern yourself with a higher resolution computer capture downstream if you bandwidth limited the image in the previous step? What you're proposing is similar to using a softening filter on the lens, then running the image through an electronic sharpening filter to compensate for loss at the first stage. That may be an interesting effect, but otherwise it's not an appropriate workflow for keeping the highest fidelity video image & signal.

Let's hear it for artistic purity. ROTFLMAO! :D

Before your shoot, go out to your location to find out light levels at the time of day you'll be working. Depending upon the time of day, your desert scene can get very bright; you're likely going to need to use ND filters with any stock, particularly 500T. Using a slower daylight stock like 50D may simplify your daytime shots. You'll probably want to do a short film test with the color filters to find one that approximates your needs. Also check with your post production house; the sepia tone effect can be created during telecine or printing, so ask for examples.

OK, you say you know of mis/disinformation about Bolex lenses. Do you know what the "RX" issue is? Do you understand the spherical abberation problem encountered by the designers of the Bolex RX cameras when they placed a prism into the optical path, and what they did to work around the problem? Do you understand why no other camera manufacturer has to deal with this issue? In short, if you use a longer lens (say, > 50mm), or stop down a shorter lens to f/5.6 or greater, you should be able to focus a non-RX lens on a Bolex Rex camera. That issue is not dependent upon what lens mount you use. But any PL mount lens is NOT an RX lens because Bolex never supported the PL mount for their RX cameras. You could have found this out by reviewing the many threads already existing on the subject. DYODD.

Thanks for the update on the Wilcam. Do you have any pictures, plans, manuals, etc you could show here? Perhaps you could put up a page for it on the super8wiki (even though it's 16mm, I know).

Well, why don't you enlighten us? Which is which? And why would someone knowingly provide disinformation about a camera? What affect would a mount adapter have on prism optics? Pull your weight. You tell us. No.

DXC537 - older generation but still provide fine pictures - wish I had one. Try genlocking the cameras to the switch or to each other, and verify the shutter timing is the same. Try shooting under incandescent lights. Does one of the cameras have "Zebra" turned on? Zebra stripes show up in 70% highlights in the on-camera video monitor.

Arabs and Jews have not always been historical enemies. In 1492, when King Ferdinand of Spain expelled the Jews from Spain, the Moroccan and Turkish Muslims accepted them with open arms. The cultural tolerance of the medieval Muslim world toward Sephardic Jewry was leagues beyond the comprehension of white Christian Europe. A significant portion of the blame for continuing strife in the third world can be laid at the feet of one man: Sir Winston Churchill. He personally rewrote the map on large tracts of Asia, Africa and the Middle East, and in many cases he created arbitrary political borders that cut across traditional tribal lands, thus guaranteeing continued dependence in perpetuity on Great Britain for the new countries' security, financial and cultural survival. You could say that the amount of bad blood generated by WC was accidental and unintended, but WC was a very shrewd character and probably knew exactly what he was doing. He was a contemporary of Stalin, Hirohito and Hitler; because they were so immensely bad WC comes out smelling like roses in the history books, but on his own, IMHO the verdict would have come out quite differently.