Frank DiBugnara

Someone asked me for a recommendation on a text book for introduction to photography. This will be used as a teaching aid for beginners and intermediate students and will initially focus on still photography and possibly transition into motion picture. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

Does anyone know what it was shot on? Was the whole series shot on the same camera? Several different DP's listed......just curious.......

I have not read any articles on this yet, but I suspect they made a rule that everything that takes place on US soil was shot on the Alexa and everything that takes place in Iran was shot on film (looks like mostly 35mm except for the opening sequence where they incorporated 16mm and 8mm). This is great to know going in as you really get a very nuanced look at the differences between the two since they are constantly cutting back and forth between the two.

I'm prepping a 5D and using a camera body I've never used before. I'm monitoring HDMI from the camera to a monitor I've used many times with other 5D bodies. Even though the camera is not rolling, I'm getting an SD signal postage-stamp on this monitor. The camera is set to 1080 24. Any ideas on what might be causing this? I'm wondering if true 1080 preview monitoring was part of a firmware update somewhere along the way? Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

I got through about half of the test so far (the embedded Vimeo video loads very slow for me for some reason). After the first side-by-side series of comparisons, I began to cover the bottom left portion of the screen to hide the names of the cameras to try to objectively judge each image. It was interesting to go back and match my "unprejudiced" impressions with the camera names after the first viewing.

I thought all the overlay information was in the black area on the top and bottom, if I'm not mistaken. I believe there are options to get a clean image out. If that's the case, it would obviously be easy to crop out the top and bottom black areas. In regards to 4:1 issue, I'm wondering if this is simply in place as a way to take the native resolution of the sensor (by "native" I mean the resolution used in still mode) and down-sample to 1080. If that is the case, then the 5D is delivering a true 1080 signal, right? The sensor is natively much higher resolution than 1080, so it needs to down res somehow. Is the 4:1 issue the way they do it?

Since I had such a good experience with the AF-100 into a Ki-Pro, I'm wondering if anyone has done this with the 5D? We've known that the weak link in the 5D is the H264 internal recording. Would HDMI into the Ki Pro and cropping out the camera data in the black areas yield a clean 1080 recording in the Ki Pro? The 5D could not be recording, of course, as it switches into SD output as soon is it is recording to its own card internally.

I thought I'd post a follow-up for the benefit of anyone interested. We ended up shooting with the Ki Pro set to 422HQ. The resulting files were about the size of RED One 4K files and looked pretty good. We were able to pull an excellent key fairly easily. We put it up against some previous RED One MX 4K footage and, of course, the RED was sharper. Overall, I think the results were very good and I'd consider this set up for future green-screen stuff that would not necessarily benefit from getting a "2 for 1" focal length when shooting at 4K and finishing at 1080. Another note is that without a "raw" output from the camera, it is very easy to "bake in" some undesirable settings. Most notably, I discovered that the camera's default settings are really not neutral. Even some settings that have a default value of "0" are really much more neutral at something like "-7", for example. So it's very important to go through all those settings before shooting. I ended up manually emulating the look that we've come to traditionally associate with a "raw" image (very low contrast, desaturated, etc).

I have a green screen shoot coming up with the AF-100 and have the option to record on the Ki-Pro Mini via HD-SDI. 1) Does anyone have any thoughts on the advantages and disadvantages of this versus recording internally (mostly in regards to image quality rather than recording time, etc)? 2) Also, if I do go this route, it looks as though the camera, even in Psf mode, only sends 1080i out of its SDI, even if the internal camera recording setting is set to progressive. I'm assuming this means that if Psf is selected in the video output preferences, that the progressive output is "preserved" within the interlace output. In other words, even though the signal is being sent out of the camera is interlaced, there is still a progressive pattern "embedded" in the interlaced signal and thus the final effect of the recorded image on the Ki-Pro will be that of a progressive signal. Correct?

Gosh, that was such a light camera--I just put a towel folded in two over my shoulder for years and it was perfect. (I just saw this post as I finished two hours of going through and learning menus of yet another digital camera prepping for a shoot---I miss the old simple days).

Very unscientifically, I've noticed from experience that the 5D really does outperform the 7D in video mode. My friend is a professional still photographer who's shot stills with the 5D for quite a while. He just got a 7D as his second camera, and he reports a significant difference in latitude for still images.

I recently shot a short film/trailer, running time is 5 minutes. I acquired on Super35 and the transfer was to uncompressed 1080 files. The final online is pretty effects-heavy, so I think 1080 is pretty much the end of the road for this project (I had wanted to rescan at higher res, but that's not in the cards anymore). I'd like to have some screenings at local cinemas. I got a quote for a 35mm print. I'm wondering if I can get a digital cinema print for a whole lot less. Can anyone refer me to someone who can create my digital print? Is it something I could do myself? When I've proposed the idea of me (and not a major studio) providing a digital print for exhibition, I've gotten a lot of push-back from cinema managers. It seems as though they've never gotten a hard drive from anyone but a studio. They keep trying to push me to exhibit on Blu-Ray. The problem with that is that their Blu-Ray players display on consumer projectors and not digital cinema projectors. Any thoughts?

Yes, I need to take a young girl's voice and make it sound like that of a scary demon. I'm on a Mac platform and using Final Cut, etc. We tried pitch shifts, doubling/off-set, reverb, etc and I'm not too happy with the results. Does anyone have any suggestions or know of any plug-ins? Thanks.

Has anyone had any recent interaction with ECinema Systems or Martin Euredjian? I ordered and pre-paid for a monitor and now they appear to be going MIA. Does anyone know what is going on? Thanks.

I have a 3-Day shoot coming up in about a month. It's kind of high-end documentary style: Lit interviews, staged and lit recreations, daytime exterior, and some run-and-gun stuff. The final output is Blu Ray, SD DVDs, and web. There will probably be a few HD screenings as well. A few hours of online research and some past experiences have led me to choose Panasonic for this job. The most convenient rental geographically seems to be with a 2700 Varicam, yet I'm wondering if there is any reason to try to push for a 3700? I might want to do some off-speed stuff--not sure yet. Also, (assuming I go with the 2700) I probably won't get a lot of prep time to experiment with the camera. I have a lot of hours with the original Varicam and the HDX-900 and SDX-900. Would someone be able to offer some suggestions as to how to best configure the camera for a good "out of the box" look? I won't be painting images on set (no time) so I'll want to default to Panasonic's "Film Rec" (or equivalent on the 2700) mode and probably turn on this camera's dynamic range stretching, etc. to capture the most information while shooting and color correct later in post. Are there any other settings or configuration options anyone can suggest? Thanks.

Hi, I have a shot of someone running shot on RED, 4K, 24fps. I'd like to slow-motion the shot to around 50% speed. FCP and AfterEffects produce poor results. The third-party plug-ins seems costly and a bit complex, but might be a good option. Can anyone recommend a solution that produces good results and is relatively inexpensive and simple? Thanks.

Thanks, everyone....you are great as always. This is a big help. Happy Holidays.

Here's a follow-up question: In general, I have always stayed away from still lenses for any motion picture work. But now, with the prospect of doing a lot of traveling with the RED for documentary work, I'm wondering if I should revisit this option. I'm getting quotes on some of the newer short cine zooms---they are very costly and the ranges are limited when compared to the still lenses. I'm familiar with still lenses' incompatibility with zoom motors, follow focus, etc as well as the different barrel characteristics, but other than these limitations, are there any others I should be aware of? What kind of differences would I notice in optical performance between an $800 still zoom and a $50K cine zoom?

Thanks for all the advice. So, I am assuming that the Ekran and the 35 OPF-29-1 are the same lens? Can anyone suggest a vendor for this lens? Is it still in production?

I am putting together some packages for documentary work with the RED. We're looking for suggestions of good lenses that will cover 4K. They need to be small enough to to manage hand-held and more "on the go" type of shooting, but ideally still provide great resolution and good range--favoring the wide end. Primes are obviously out and the new RED 18-85 I've used seems to perform well, but way too big and heavy for hand-held. The older 18-50 and 50-150 RED lenses are smaller I believe (never used them myself) but I've heard mediocre reviews on them. Any suggestions? We're looking to purchase, not rent.

A LUT is a "Look Up Table". In short, everything that happens to your image from the moment it leaves your on-line conform/color correction and ends up on the 35mm IP or IN is going to have an impact on the image. There are many variables here, but the biggest are the characteristics of the film-out device and the film stock itself. LUTs allow you to compensate for the changes that are going to be introduced between the online-conform and the 35mm output. Without accounting for these changes, you can be sure that what you see on your HD monitor in your online suite is NOT what you are going to see when you watch the print. So a custom LUT is often created and then applied as an "adjustment layer" in color correction. I've heard them described as "magic sunglasses" that are temporarily put onto your image as you color correct. These sunglasses show you what the image is going to look like on film before it gets to the film, taking into account the variables introduced in the film-out path. Your color correction decisions are therefore based on what the image is GOING to look like in the end. When you finish the color correction you remove the adjustment layer before delivering for film-out. Again, I am learning that this step is completely messed up on a regular basis. I was not sure from your post how much of this you were going to do yourself---seems like you'll probably have some experienced people associated with the Filmmaster to help guide you.

There are obviously a whole lot of factors here. Here's a few off the top of my head: > If you are on a beach (I'm assuming day exterior) you can shoot a slow film stock which looks better on an HD transfer. > How much resolution do you need? Are you ending up at 1080? If so you don't need 4K necessarily, although oversampling is always nice. > Beaches during the day have lots of hot areas in the frame. Both sky and sand can blow out very quickly--a problem with Red at times. You asked about color correction---one thing that can kill you in post is dealing with a sky that renders white or sand that's completely clipped. You should be prepared for sky replacement. > I can't say I absolutely love all the 16mm I have seen transferred to HD. A lot of it looks great but you need a well-exposed negative and even then be ready for a little bit of sizzle that was not there during SD transfers. > Since you are on a beach, you should be able to move the SR3 back enough to smash backgrounds if you are looking for shallow depth of field. In terms of color correction, contrary to some belief, I think film can still take a much bigger beating in a low budget scenario and still look great--- it looks great out of the box. Do you have the ability to pop off a few test shot in the shooting environment with the two formats ahead of time?

Matt, I think that is exactly what you need to do. The image sequence does not have any metadata so adding the step of converting the sequence to some sort of uncompressed 444 color space which will provide a path back to itself from the lower-res offline is the way to go. Some of the latest Pro Res flavors are excellent---but not for outputting to 35mm. Are you doing the final color correction yourself? You'll want to make sure whoever does uses the proper LUTs along the way. I get the feeling this is where most film outputs fail.

I think we are going to just shoot the pick-ups on Red and have a 5D there to shoot some test. I'll let you know how that works out.

I need to do a few pick up shots for a green screen job that we shot on RED. I'm trying to cut some costs, so I'm wondering if anyone has had any successful 5D green screen experiences? Thanks.