Kar Wai Ng

You have a lot of options in this price range. For a little over $40k, you can get a set of six Cooke Panchros (18, 25, 32, 50, 75, 100). Yes, they are T2.8, which is generally not as limiting given the high sensitivity of today's sensors. Image quality is almost identical to the S4 range, and you can intercut them with S4's and 5i's. Should you wish to sell them in the future, you would probably get the best return on investment from these as opposed to a less established make. I would also strongly consider the UniqOptics Signature series lenses. $32k for a set of six, and the image quality is very, very good. The Red Pro Primes are also optically very good, though they are sparse on focus marks. I have commented on another forum in the past in regards to the Illumina lenses and I wasn't thrilled with the optics and the mechanics needed work. Yes, they are T1.3, but even stopped down to T2 I feel the UniqOptics perform better. They have apparently improved the mechanics on the Illuminas but for the asking price, there are other lens sets that I believe are far better options.

I would suggest to arri for their next firmware revision that they have the low batt warning appear only if the voltage has dropped below the threshold and stays there for a few seconds. That way, transient drops in voltage won't trigger the warning.

They've been out for a while, I think at least since last summer. I've used them, and like them a lot. Optically, I think they are very sharp and the closest comparison I would make is with Ultra Primes. Mechanically I have no complaints either, nicely damped and AC friendly, though an extra couple of distance marks would have been nice. The price point is very impressive, and I think the only other set of primes of comparable quality in this price range are the Red Pro Primes.

You don't mention what exactly you're shooting in Africa, but I would absolutely take a polarizer and some grads as a minimum. Depending on how much landscape shooting you're doing, I might consider some antique suedes or coral grads.

You might consider getting an NP-1 battery adapter, so you can use common NP-1 'chocolate bar' batteries with your Aaton. NP1's are available from many manufacturers. See this post for a discussion on NP-1 adapters for Aatons: http://www.cinematog...showtopic=12085

Most things photographic or electronic have no duty when crossing the border, but GST/PST or HST taxes are added on (as you would when buying something locally here in Canada). There's no equal to anything like B&H in Canada, but Vistek is probably the closest equivalent store catering to photo/video professionals. There's also Henry's, which is a little bit more consumer-oriented, though they carry most the same gear. I personally like Downtown Camera as well. One trick that can save a bit of money is buying out of province, but still in Canada. That way only GST is assessed, not PST, so you only pay one tax. The Camera Store in Calgary and Simon's Cameras in Montreal are two places I've ordered from in the past. Though now that Ontario has the HST, it might have changed...I think we pay HST on out of province purchases now. A good place to compare camera prices is photoprice.ca. It ranks a lot of photo stores for the most popular cameras in terms of the end price to the Canadian buyer; it factors in shipping, exchange rate, and one or two taxes depending on whether the store is in your province, out of province, or in the US. It's a handy reference.

Is it possible to replace the octagonal-shaped iris blades in Cooke S4's with rounded iris blades? Has any lens technician ever tried this modification? I've heard of iris blades being replaced on other lenses when being rehoused, so at least it seems feasible on a technical level.

Nothing wrong with using 1" cloth for marking. Lots of camera assistants with far more experience than I standardize on 1" cloth for marking. It's perfect for hard floors, because after it's been stepped all over it lifts right off without shredding like paper tape can sometimes.

Common batteries like AA's, 9V, etc are expendables and as such should be paid for by production, just like camera tape, markers, or any other supplies or expendables. If production has an account with the supplier, then it goes through a purchase order, otherwise it comes out of petty cash, and if there is no petty cash (and the sound guy bought the batteries himself) then he remits the receipt to production for reimbursement as an expense. Fairly standard practice.

The Scorpio remote focus system has an optional motion encoder module to do this exact thing. There is a kevlar belt that goes along the dolly track, the encoder reads the position of the dolly on the track, and the MDR automates zoom and focus motors to maintain the same subject size (and focus!) And then there is full-fledged motion control...

Also, when doing reg tests with S16mm (at least with the Aatons and Arri SR series mags) you must do a reg test for each mag that you are using. So if you have four mags, you have to do four separate reg tests. This is because the mag itself forms part of the film path: each mag has its own pressure plate and affects the way film travels through the gate. This is also true for the Aaton 35-III...any instant-change mag. 16mm is a far more time-consuming format to reg test than 35mm. Doing a reg test with a 435 or 535 takes less than half an hour (with reversing ability in-camera a real time-saver) but with 16mm it'll take the better part of a prep day, depending on how many mags you have. Having a 2nd help you in prep is a huge time saver, as you can hand off mags to be re-wound/canned/loaded while you do the tests. Exception is if you've got a 16mm camera with displacement mags (like a 16BL, or Elaine...then you only have to do one reg test with one mag) but you're not likely to encounter those cameras.

No need to do that with 16mm...one perf is one frame...

I love the message stencilled onto your top shelf. Maybe I should do that to mine.

The A-Minima requires special spools. They're daylight spools (200ft) and the film is also wound emulsion out.

I built a bottom shelf out of plywood. I trimmed the edges with aluminum U-channel for durability, and epoxied a layer of vinyl rubber runner material on top. You can get that by the foot at Home Depot or whatever, it's got this ribbed texture so it's non-slip. I like that I can load heavy cases on and off the bottom shelf easily without dealing with a lip, but at the same time, the rubber surface holds cases in place and I've never had anything slip off the bottom shelf.

A 14-day schedule is long for a series already in production (I usually hear about 7-11 day schedules for most series), but not for a pilot. Pilots tend to be on longer schedules...something like 21 days is not unusual.

Or preventing camera shadow.

Yep. On the 535 the motor driveshaft and the movement become disengaged from each other when the movement is lifted away from the gate. Sometimes this prevents the movement from being swung back into position, so you just have to slowly turn the loop adjustment knobs until it'll swing back. Can be annoying if it's your first time with the camera but once you know why it happens (and now you do) it's quick to reengage them together and just becomes routine.

All important factors to consider and test in prep. But on set, the curvature of the field of focus will have the biggest practical effect on your routine as the focus puller. Since the "plane" is now an arc, a subject at the edge of frame at 6 feet will be soft if the lens is set at 6 feet. The field of focus would lie in front of them. So you have to compensate for that. In prep with a set of E series anamorphics on a lens projector, I found that the field of focus was a perfect arc. If the tape measure was the radius of a circle, and the centre of the circle was the lens nodal point, you could swing the tape measure from one side to the other and the arc it created corresponded pretty much exactly to the field of focus. So on set when you need to cheat an actor at the edge of frame forward a little (or cheat your focus back), you would know exactly how much compensation was required. You just run out your tape measure at an angle. I don't know if other anamorphics behave the same way in terms of their field of focus corresponding to the arc of a circle, or if some are more irregular (ie arc of an ellipsoid...) Another thing to keep in mind is that anamorphics breathe a lot on focus pulls and tend to call attention to themselves on big pulls, so it's something that needs to be considered in the staging of each shot.

I'm even more geeky. I measured the label sheets that come with HDCAM, DVCPRO-L and DVCPRO-M tapes, and I made InDesign templates for each of them. Then I can pre-fill all the info like show name, season, etc. Then when you're on a show where you have hundreds of tapes, you can easily label them in batches. Just take out all the label sheets from the cases of tapes, and feed them through a laser printer. The label sheet for the DVCPRO-M tapes are about as small as the minimum sheet size for my printer, so it still feeds in properly. Then you end up with a huge stack of pre-printed labels that you can then start putting on your tapes in one giant label-sticking session. On the day, you just grab a tape and write in the roll# and date.

If the cables you bought don't lay flat when you toss them onto the ground, they never will behave...they will always be spaghetti factory. They're either flexible to begin with or not. Field-use cables are flexible, while most other coax is meant for permanent installation, and is quite rigid. Also, cables with stranded core are much more flexible than solid copper core. For standard def analog video, the best flexible cable is Canare LV-61S. For SDI, you should look into Belden 1505F (with Canare connectors).

Because the anamorphic element on Hawk lenses are in the centre of the lens, not at the front, the blue streak artifact is far less pronounced. If you want to accentuate it, you could cheat a little and use the streak filter that Vantage also makes.

My preference are Philips TL-950 tubes. They're T8 size, have a CRI of 98, and colour temp of 5000K.

I hope they incorporate a rear gel filter slot for NDs to pair with their OVF design. With the Epic rated at 800ISO natively, any outdoor shooting is going to require massive amounts of ND, which is going to make operating from an optical viewfinder very difficult with heavy ND on the lens.

Get in touch with IATSE 667. The trainee program accepts trainees once a year (application deadline is December of each year) but apparently there's a severe shortage of trainees right now (the industry got busy all of a sudden) and they are letting anyone in who applies because they're desperate. This is what I heard from the grapevine, so YMMV, but now's a great time to apply if you want to work right away...