Joshua Csehak

That looks great! How'd you end up doing it? In Rope, Hitchcock did the "short dissolve as something covers the lens entirely" trick, tracking the camera past something all black, like the back of someone wearing a black suit. The flash of laser light to hide the jump cut is brilliant though! Never knew that.

In the Jan 2010 issue of AC, Shane Hurlbut, ASC mentions that when he switched to Panavision Primo lenses (from still ones) for shooting on the Canon 5D mkII, he got an extra stop and a half of latitude on either end. That's 3 more stops total, just from the lens! (9 stops with still, 12 stops with Primo.) How is that even possible? I always looked at lens differences in terms of sharpness, color reproduction, breathing, stuff like that; but I had no idea different lenses had different dynamic ranges. What are other people's experiences with this? Do you have go-to lenses for maximum dynamic range?

Yeah, definitely. And of course, one of the most famous examples: http://www.masters-of-photography.com/L/la...e_car_trip.html omg I'm so sick of those micro-snap-zooms! It's like, "Sir, we got the forensics back from the lab." "Hand 'em over. My God." Micro-snap-zoom! "What is it?" Micro-snap-zoom! "The lab technician forgot to initial the manifest." Micro-snap-zoom! "Get him on the phone, stat." Micro-snap-zoom on the phone! etc...

Not that I'm not replying from 5 years in the future, but check out the scene in Star Wars where Vader interrogates Leia in her cell with the syringe droid. The lens breathes when they rack focus, and it looks pretty cool and ominous. So it's not necessarily a bad thing...