Simon Wyss

Beautiful. The camera belongs onto sturdy sticks, I mean a really stable tripod with a good head. You can't go too rugged. Maybe you wish to introduce an additional light like a sunbeam . . .

How do you do ? There is that ugly duckling of motion-picture film printing or copying, something always a bit disregarded by cinematographers, perceived as a technical necessity but only rarely taken into consideration for creative reasons. Just look at Stan Brakhage who did Mothlight in 1963 in Denver on an old step printer. I'd like to share some knowledge and secrets of mine with those who are not afraid of such things as travelling mattes or flashing or high speed bulk printing and so on. Care for a post ? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stan_Brakhage

I always look for the base. We have ISO 250 and your meter reading. That is not enough. First you must know exposure time, for which the shutter opening angle is crucial, and the frame rate. I assume 24 frames per second and 180 degrees with a reflex viewfinder camera, am I right ? That makes 1/48th second. Cloudy overcast, no filters ( ? ), a medium-range zoom lens (am I right ?), focal distance not less than 3 feet, EV 11 is not far from f 5.6 (square root 32). I'd also favor Karl's view. The correct iris setting should have been f 32 to 45. Do try to get the film(s) underdeveloped by two to three stops.

Hey, Aaron Do you have a cinema near you ?

To be able to correct for an error one needs to know the shutter angle (camera brand, type and eventual modification) as well as the frame rate. Would you mind stating the values? Also there could be a bellows factor with macro shots.

Agree. Question is what reason do you have? The way you have drawn it's a CU, no? Take a fashion magazine and look for reflections on the eyes. By the time you will discover that they all distract. Cover them with a crayon. See, how the person suddenly comes to life? The closer you take the camera to a face the more you have to remove light sources. It's a terrible thing. Mastery will be fine modeling of the character without the ugly flares.

As much as I know you have 120 Volt in the mains in the U. S. A., haven't you? I measure 233 Volt here today. They are going to go to 240 Volt but nobody knows when. I think that about 5 percent of the population has an idea of the line tension. Housewives buy energy saving bulbs, as they're called. Half of them fail to burn the noted hours because the starter dies from overtension . . .

What is unfair with the comparison? Orwo UN 54 is a ISO 100 stock that looks about the same as Eastman PXN. We made that effort of opening a new way precisely out of the blunt NO from film manufacturers to review their black-and-white products. The calculation goes straight ahead. A fine lens may bring 400 lp/mm. Gigabitfilm shows detail up to 720 lp/mm at 1:1000 and about half of that at 1:1.6 which is not average contrast in the real world. At least I don't live in such a dull world but like a 1:4 to 1:8 contrast ratio (two to three times difference in light density). The overall resolution is only determined by the weakest link in the chain. That defines the image character. Example: Google Maps. While the image is being built up you see pixel clusters. As soon as pixel resolution exceeds our vision's resolution we don't see them any longer. One resolving power becomes replaced by the next. Cinema has a lot to do with waste. Here, too, an example: 1000 Watt arc lamp in the projector, some 20,000 lumen leave the arc. Measurement shows that 5 percent, 1000 lumen, reach a screen of 12 by 16 feet: 56 lux. We loose 95 percent. Or take development. Instead of trying to bring the necessary amount of ions onto a given film surface we send it through hundreds of liters of bath with several hundred times more chemicals dissolved in them. Polaroid was closer to an ecological gain in this point. Back to microfilms in cinematography. They are a valuable alternative. Were today's common black-and-white stocks as pimped up as the colour films are the situation would look a bit different. Obama was elected because he is younger than John MacCain and Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney. It's been a blow to an elder generation. So the beloved Eastman-Kodak and Ilford and Orwo and Fuji (yes, they have black-and-white cine stocks) get under pressure by a younger product line. To be frank, something like Gigabitfilm could already have happened in the 1960s when those thin-layer films came into trade. It took a chemist like Mr. Ludwig to think things over. To be fair, you pay the price for an invisible granulation. ISO 40 is the maximum developable out of the layer. Pictures slightly out of focus do no longer look like news footage, I meant to say, where you sometimes encounter a little blur due to not carefully set lenses. A classic emulsion would disguise some loss of fine detail. Gigabitfilm reveals how bokeh runs. It's difficult to describe it in words. Please ask me again for a picture file in December, I'll try to upload a section out of a 16-mm film frame. My situation is somewhat untidy today.

I'll be in with stills as soon as i get to it. Gigabitfilm excels by its extremely fine granulation. The film has double resolving power of what the best lenses project. The image's character is no longer given by the film but by the lens. The impression is that of a glaze. I want to say the film is like a mirror. Slightly out of focus is no longer news style but brutally unsharp. When I made my first print on Eastman 7203 I thought there is something wrong with that grain . . . until I realised it's the positive grain. So, comparing a traditional film to Gigabitfilm is like a comparison between silk and sandpaper.

I know that exactly this subject kept Eastman-Kodak worrying about their process for CRI. It was found best to install water spray jets from both sides in an empty machine tank.

Yes, there is Fomapan R(eversal) ISO 100 in 35, 16, Double-8 and Double Super-8. 35 with type P perforation. There is Gigabitfilm HDR ISO 32 in 35, type P perforation. Fomapan R is a true reversal stock with two different emulsions mixed together, a panchromatic highly sensitive one and a non-sensitised positive one, plus a silver anti-halation undercoat. The base is colourless triacetate. Gigabitfilm H(igh) D(ensity) R(esolution) is a most modern stock, actually the universal film. It has a colourless polyester base and a dye anti-halation undercoat. It can be processed to negatives, positives, reversing and even to high gamma. Check with www.gigabitfilm.de

Doesn't she (?) declare herself as student, don't students read books ? Maybe I'm a dinosaur, sorry, but we still learned to browse hand catalogues. Giving in. With the white race you have four types: black, brown, red and blond. Accordingly and in respect of the eyes (where the soul shines out) we ought to adapt lighting. There is also the interplay between an actress as outer appearance and her temperament. Marlene Dietrich was a light brown fidget. Once in Hollywood she (was) turned more and more into an ice cold lady with almost blond hair. Eyebrows shifted high, melodramatic underlight, a lot of kitsch. Marianne Koch, to stay with the Germans, is a natural brown with light blue eyes. She wears her hair darker. Shirley MacLaine is a red head. Would we light her the same way as others ? The answer lies in the spectator's eye. The closer we get the simpler can we light. Many great close-ups are made with three lights. In a long shot we won't see her eyes too well, so there's more judgment by the movements and other characters. With classic black-and-white cinema the culmination of woman and light was the moment when she surrendered, when she layed back her head for the kiss. Again sorry, I didn't invent it. Natural blond hair shows a very special quality when counter-lit. It can become so shiny. Now with even more light, especially from high-intensity carbon arc lamps in a high-key set-up you have that irresistible glamour look. Lana Turner had to stand in for it, Marylin Monroe, and many others. An old saying goes: The older the star the longer the focal length. That is only half the truth because there is a make-up. Today we have a pure chaos with light sources, filters, make-up, wardrobe, scenery and post-production manipulation that the human gets lost in all that. Light opens spaces, see, to show a woman light in a black sorrounding tells isolation. It's one form of sexism what is being done to women in the studios. An exception I'd like to mention here is Desert Hearts by Donna Deitch. She is really fond of women. I began to feel for women in a new way after I have seen that movie. I saw it a lot of times as projectionist back then. Analyze women and light on movies in theaters. Stills are there for different purposes.

Chemical film is more down to the ground, is more basic because physical. You have always materials that store picture and sound. You can break it or cut it. You put it together with cement or by welding or with adhesive tape. There is someone loading a magazine, there is someone rushing to a lab, there are technicians who develop, who lace up printers, who make density measurements. There are projectionists in tens of thousands of theaters. Film needs manpower. Video, I call it video, is made as a finger tip thing. No rubber gloves, no cotton gloves, no cleaning liquids, and no waiting. Films take time to grow, to ripen, to bear fruit. That is what's killing 35 mm (and any other format), the ever too hastened attitude. Films cost money, money for working people. One example for this being good: Synchronism can be regulated until the last moment. I am free to observe the cinema synch concept in threading the projectors. Do you have that control in the digital world ? Optics are different because photographic film layers are not infinitely thin. Cameras differ considerably depending on whether you want a cat on your shoulder or a versatile instrument for a CinemaScope adventure. With film you can deploy contrasts up to eight stops on screen (density log 5 is possible). The whole process of editing with a resistance from the sheer mass of material tends to sort film editors from non film editors. You can make a film without electricity: Spring driven camera, hand driven printer (not that much of a difficulty), hand driven projector with limelight. The Lumière for instance copied first with the apparatus in front of a sun lit white wall, lens removed. Many a travelling operator in the 1890s processed his strips in a hotel's tub. Read Oscar Depue's memories, very funny. Film sharpens your senses. You do it. Television and video and computer imagery is completely void of any sensual quality. To round it off, film connects you to the 19th century like a nice book connects you to the 15th or cookery connects you to the dawn of civilization.

The Western genre used to be a most political one. It was a vehicle for transporting sexism, racism, fascism or blunt either-or scheme thinking just according to the ruling party. Values like patriotism or faith were held high. There is alway the good and the bad, some feminine complication and a last minute rescue or showdown. Cheap Westerns were produced to entertain second and to keep everybody busy first. Do not forget the impressive mews. We can only dream of the teamwork they enjoyed then. Great Westerns such as High Noon bear classic plots inside: Schiller's Wilhelm Tell drama as an example. I think the Western stands in solid correlation with the doom of manhood of the old age. New age (aquarius) starts around 1894-95, has transition 1929-30 and fully pulls away in 1967-68. C'era une volta nel west of 1968 is nothing else than a swan song on the time gone with a strongly modern face. The film's base is a memory (boy with brother on shoulders, revenge as adult). See, the simple and clear lines of Western lives contribute to so to speak distilled-out dramatic situations. You have been encoded to all that within the first six to eight minutes . . .

Judging from how you cite the name of Marlene Dietrich you don't read too many books, do you ? There are libraries. Better hang around there

In theory resolving power decreases with stopping down. You are right when you say that a lens will improve in performance in general but who knows all the details of a given system. The physical laws do not dissappear in practice. On the contrary, they integrate all together. A recent computer calculated system can behave very different to an oldtimer. The stop numbers you mention are geometrical ratios. The effective lens diameter left open at, say, 1:16 is not the same in 4" X 5" photography and in Academy aperture cinematography, comparing same focal lengths because you have quite different systems. Only with thin single lenses and three or four elements the values come close to each other. Cine lenses are optimized for use at full aperture and one to two stops closed: Cooke, Zeiss, Canon, Bausch & Lomb, Panavision. What I know exactly is the behavior of the Kern Switar 1:1.9 or 1:1.4, a six element system. It shows best resolution-colours-sharpness-coma balance at 1:4. The Zeiss Tessar is also a rather-open diaphragm system. Closed to 1:22 you have diffraction of the worse kind. Modern Cooke lenses are best at 1:5.6 to 1:8 because of their warmer character. The red light parts are better aligned when under smaller angles which helps improve sharpness. To be able to compare resolving power values we need to ask the manufacturers for the curves. Some MTF curves have been published. In the end I'd like to know about the combination flange distance-film. Colour stocks have more but thinner layers for capturing the light. Silver stocks most often have only one layer but thicker. By closing the iris you link the film (depth of field). That produces less flange distance errors but the resolving power does not increase.

I know that. The magazine has to be taken apart, by a specialist of course, not any person in the field, and the hollow spindle assembly part be lubricated. What concerns ridged rolls: reason why Bell & Howell and Mitchell have corduroy magazine lining which regularly are vacuum cleaned.

Let me calculate for a 10 minutes 35 mm black-and-white short, COMOPT Camera, $ 3000 including lenses (Arriflex II) Raw stock, 4000 feet, ratio 4.44 to 1, $ 600 Processing, 4000 ft. X 20 cents, $ 800 Dailies, 4000 ft. X 50 cents, $ 2000 Projections with processing lab free Sound copy on split magnetic film, 2000 ft., $ 100 Synch work yourself Editing yourself Conforming of polyester negative, $ 500 Sound negative, 900 ft., $ 450 Trial answer print, 900 ft., $ 1000 Total, $ 8450 Please, don't forget, you make a film. With polyester base stock the original can be welded and will last a long time. An interpositive and an internegative or a reversal internegative (yes, there are even new materials available in black and white) can be made for wider distribution. If you're afraid of synchronizing picture and sound yourself, that'll be a professional editor's job. Labs usually charge per clapper like $ 5 or so. Moviola or flatbed editing machine can be rented. You'll also need some small items such as cores, felt markers, scissors, leaders, a couple Rivas with tape, isopropanol and cotton swabs for cleaning, another $ 100. I am not familiar with everything electronic at all. I master the classic work.

Everything in order it's worth $ 12,000 as a value of use.

greetings

http://www.kem-filmtechnic.com/

Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince, 1841 to 1890 (lost) William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, 1860 to 1935 Georges Emile Joseph Démény, 1850 to 1917 Eugène Augustin Lauste, 1857 to 1935 Arthur Melbourne-Cooper, 1874 to 1961

A beauty. I'd leave it the way it is. Go crank, go

Amadeus Keller, Keller-Elektronik-Mechanik, Hamburg, Germany. Junior Model 35, one picture, two sounds. Judging from the flowerpot it's not in high esteem there. Pity.

Exactly. 35 can be cheaper than 16 when you make yourself a lab's friend. Believe me, I have known a number of @*$#! clients who haven't got the slightest understanding of what lab people do in general and in particular. You can save money with one-band assembly where 16 needs to be spliced in checkerboard fashion, sometimes 16 costs as much as 35 in processing, the projection thing I explained already, and t-h-e-n : 35 yields something of a picture, resolution-wise (greatings from The Apartment, 1960). Almost no grain trouble. You are respected ! That's a cine camera, not a television squirt gun. (What am I mean !) Sound comes in good quality w-i-t-h-o-u-t extra costs. Edit 35 or split magnetic film on a flatbed and you're ready for the sound studio. There again you are respected. A-n-d you can have 35 reduced to 16. That looks nice at festivals.