Robert Edge

Maybe it's because I've spent a lot of time navigating sailboats, but I wouldn't be in a hurry to spend US$335 ($100 for the software plus $235 for the compass/clinometer) on this product. The information provided by the software, and for that matter more information, is available from many government websites, such as the one run by the US Naval Observatory at http://aa.usno.navy.mil/ If you go to that site and click on Data Services, a new page will open that contains several headings. Under the heading Complete Sun and Moon Data for One Day, you can determine your latitude and longitude and the times of the beginning of civil twilight (magic hour), sunrise, sun transit, sunset and the end of civil twilight. You can an also determine moonrise, moon transit and moonset. Under the heading Altitude and Azimuth of the Sun and Moon for One Day, you can determine the altitude and azimuth of the sun throughout the day. You can obtain this information at any increment you choose between 1 minute and 120 minutes. You can get the same information for the moon plus the amount of the moon that is illuminated. If you want it, the University of Oregon Solar Radiation Monitoring Laboratory has a website that will give you the altitude and azimuth data for the sun plotted on a graph: http://solardat.uoregon.edu/SunChartProgram.html I also wouldn't spend $235 on a compass and clinometer. That is an awful lot of money for a compass. It is also a lot of money for a device that measures altitude, which is something that anyone should be able to do by eye. If one needs help estimating an angle, it's a lot cheaper to go to a local art supply store and buy a protractor for $2.00. If one really wants to spend $235, there's no shortage in that price range of handheld GPS units that will give precise latitude and longitude and that incorporate a compass. Personally, I would just get a decent map of the area (I mean a real map, not a roadmap that you buy at a gas station) and plot my location and the sun azimuth data on the map. In a rural area, a cheap compass would be handy. In a city, where compass readings are unreliable and GPS readings may not be possible, it should be very easy to determine direction from landmarks, such as streets, shown on the map. Of course, as anyone can tell you who has found himself stuck in the ocean with a sextant in the dark ages before GPS, all this sun data stuff is useless the sun is shining :)

As someone who worked exclusively with natural light until about a year ago, I empathize with what you are going through. There are two books that you might find helpful. The first is Nestor Almendros's A Man with a Camera. It is out of print, but should be available in some libraries or second-hand through www.abebooks.com. The second is Ross Lowell's Matters of Light and Depth, which you can get from Amazon. Then there are videos. I haven't seen the Kodak series. They are expensive, but said to be of very good quality. I have seen Richard Avendon - Darkness and Light. The Avedon video is not specifically about lighting, but like Almendros's book, it will help keep your feet firmly on the ground and make you think twice before you go and blow your brains out on lighting gear. You have made the important point that reading won't get you far unless you have an opportunity to practice. If you haven't worked a lot with natural light, start by making a conscious effort to notice, and analyze, what is going on with the light around you both on the street and indoors. Find out if your local educational institutions offer short courses in lighting. See if there is a local still or motion picture photographer, or designer of theater lighting, who is willing to let you watch him/her work. Get a video or digital still camera and mount it on a tripod so that your hands are free. Buy a sheet or two of foamcore from an art supply store. Get something that you can use to hold the sheets of foamcore, preferably a couple of light stands (chairs and some tape might work in a pinch, but at the cost of considerable frustration). Choose a subject, preferably one that is not terribly large, that you can photograph either outdoors or lit with window light. I don't recommend a person, because I can tell you from experience that people get bored real quick. It could be an arrangement of objects on a table. Use the foamcore, playing with whole sheets and parts of sheets, to manipulate the light on the subject until you see an effect that you like. When you like something, film it and look at the results. The next step is to start working in a room where there is no natural light. If you are working at home, this means that you either have to cover up windows or work at night. Get your hands on two lights, with stands and Super Clamps, that are powerful enough to light a subect that is not terribly large. Others may disagree, but I would go with two focusing spots. If you can't borrow lights, either rent them or buy them. Either way, get the best quality lights you can afford and, whatever you do, don't skimp on the stands. Start experimenting with various subjects using the two lights and some foamcore. Film and analyze the results. At this point, you will know where you want to go next. Hope this helps.

Apparently these lenses will become available toward the end of the year. Pricing info not yet available.

A rep from Arri informs me that this lens will be available toward the end of the year and that pricing is not yet available.

I think that the reason that most colour films for still photography are daylight balanced is that most still photographers, when they work in a studio or otherwise with artificial light, work with flash rather than continuous lights. Flash is daylight balanced. Historically, continuous lights have required tungsten-balanced film. There are now continuous lights that work with daylight-balanced film, but they are much more expensive than tungsten lights. I am currently involved in a large format still photography project for a book and I decided, for various reasons, that I wanted to use continuous tungsten lights rather than flash. So, at last fall's NY Photo Show, I bought some Dedolights instead of the latest flash system. In fact, it is because of this project that I started to follow this site. My interest wasn't in cinematography, but in continuous lighting, a subject that very few still photographers these days know anything about. In fact, if you spend a few minutes reading threads about lighting on the major still photography site on the internet, you will find that it is considered a self-evident truth that the use of continuous lighting is both obsolete and, for heat reasons, stupid. What you won't hear about is that there are indeed still photographers who are using continuous lights, both tungstent and daylight balanced, in preference to flash. Unfortunately, the result of following this site is that I've become interested in making a couple of films :)

I'm thinking that this might be a good core lens for use with a super 16mm camera, and particularly with a camera like the A-Minima in stripped-down mode, supplemented where desired by a wider or longer prime. Anyway, I've sent an e-mail to Arri with some questions about this lens and will summarize the response.

Congratulations. You've just discovered the frustrations that come with having a book published that contains photographs. You're at the mercy of the printers unless you deal with them directly and see the proofs. I'm currently working on a book that will contain a large number of colour photographs. We're spending a lot of time on the photos, but it will be for nought unless there is follow-through on paper selection and quality control at the press run. If you intend to persist in moonlighting as an author, and aren't already familiar with bookmaking mechanics, you might find it useful, if only to hold your own in discussions with publshing people, to read the new edition of Marshall Lee's Bookmaking: Editing, Design, Production: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...=books&n=507846 There are also a number of books out there on colour management in the publishing context. Congratulations on the book. My bet is that you are looking at the illustrations a lot more critically than will your readers.

Go to this URL and click on the photo entitled "lightweight zoom": http://www.arri.com/entry/products.htm. Thanks for your reply to my question about production dates.

Does anyone know what the design/production of any of the following lens series dates to: Cooke S4 series Cooke S3 series Cooke S2 series Zeiss Ultra Primes Zeiss Ultra Speeds (current version) Zeiss Standard Primes (current version) In the case of the Zeiss Ultra Speeds and Standard Primes, are the design/production dates the same for 35mm and 16mm lenses? I'd also be interested in any observations about what design changes were made between the various series and the impact of these changes. Are there any books or articles that discuss these questions? The American Cinematography Manual lists the various lens series of these and other manufacturers, but does not talk about production dates and series characteristics. Thanks.

Are these lenses on the market yet and, if not, does anyone know when they will be and/or what the pricing is likely to be? Also, does anyone know what they will weigh? I'm particularly interested in the weight of the 14mm.

I gather that this lens is not yet on the market. Does anyone know when it will be available? Are there any test reports on it, even informal/anectodal ones? Has a price been set? Thanks.

A couple of questions: How does the third edition differ from the second? How substantial a re-write is it? Does it cover material that is different from what is contained in the current edition of the American Cinematographer Manual? Thanks.

Andrea, You might consider approaching Deepa Mehta or the people who work at her office in Toronto. Among other films, she made Bollywood/Hollywood. Here is some information about her: http://www.collectionscanada.ca/women/002026-708-e.html

I mentioned Chesterton's conservativism as a writer only in acknowledgment that much of his work might not appeal to modern readers. He is, like two of the other authors in Mr. Seper's pantheon, a distinctly Christian writer. Fans of murder mysteries like to debate whether G.K. Chesterton or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote the better detective stories (the Father Brown and Sherlock Holmes stories respectively), but except in those circles, Chesterton is these days rather unfashionable.

I have some lights from this company, and I am extremely happy with them: www.dedolight.com

In fact, here is the essay, now in the public domain: I remember one splendid morning, all blue and silver, in the summer holidays when I reluctantly tore myself away from the task of doing nothing in particular, and put on a hat of some sort and picked up a walking stick, and put six very bright coloured chalks in my pocket. I then went into the kitchen (which, along with the rest of the house, belonged to a very square and sensible old woman in a Sussex village), and asked the owner and occupant of the kitchen if she had any brown paper. She had a great deal; in fact, she had too much; and she mistook the purpose and the rationale of the existence of brown paper. She seemed to have an idea that if a person wanted brown paper he must be wanting to tie up parcels; which was the last thing I wanted to do; indeed, it is a thing which I have found to be beyond my mental capacity. Hence she dwelt very much on the varying qualities of toughness and endurance in the material. I explained to her that I only wanted to draw pictures on it, and that I did not want them to endure in the least; and that from my point of view, therefore, it was a question, not of tough consistency, but of responsive surface, a thing comparatively irrelevant in a parcel. When she understood that I wanted to draw she offered to overwhelm me with note paper. I then tried to explain the rather delicate logical shade, that I not only liked brown paper, but liked the quality of brownness in paper, just as I like the quality of brownness in October woods, or in beer. Brown paper represents the primal twilight of the first toil of creation, and with a bright coloured chalk or two you can pick out points of fire in it, sparks of gold, and blood red, and sea green, like the first fierce stars that sprang out of divine darkness. All this I said (in an off hand way) to the old woman; and I put the brown paper in my pocket along with the chalks, and possibly other things. I suppose every one must have reflected how primeval and how poetical are the things that one carries in one's pocket; the pocket knife, for instance, the type of all human tools, the infant of the sword. Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about things in my pockets. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past. With my stick and my knife, my chalks and my brown paper, I went out on to the great downs. . . I crossed one swell of living turf after another, looking for a place to sit down and draw. Do not, for heaven's sake, imagine I was going to sketch from Nature. I was going to draw devils and seraphim, and blind old gods that men worshipped before the dawn of right, and saints in robes of angry crimson, and seas of strange green, and all the sacred or monstrous symbols that look so well in bright colours on brown paper. They are much better worth drawing than Nature; also they are much easier to draw. When a cow came slouching by in the field next to me, a mere artist might have drawn it; but I always get wrong in the hind legs of quadrupeds. So I drew the soul of a cow; which I saw there plainly walking before me in the sunlight; and the soul was all purple and silver, and had seven horns and the mystery that belongs to all beasts. But though I could not with a crayon get the best out of the landscape, it does not follow that the landscape was not getting the best out of me. And this, I think, is the mistake that people make about the old poets who lived before Wordsworth, and were supposed not to care very much about Nature because they did not describe it much. They preferred writing about great men to writing about great hills; but they sat on the great hills to write it. The gave out much less about Nature, but they drank in, perhaps, much more. They painted the white robes of their holy virgins with the blinding snow, at which they had stared all day. . . The greenness of a thousand green leaves clustered into the live green figure of Robin Hood. The blueness of a score of forgotten skies became the blue robes of the Virgin. The inspiration went in like sunbeams and came out like Apollo. But as I sat scrawling these silly figures on the brown paper, it began to dawn on me, to my great disgust, that I had left one chalk, and that a most exquisite and essential chalk, behind. I searched all my pockets, but I could not find any white chalk. Now, those who are acquainted with all the philosophy (nay, religion) which is typified in the art of drawing on brown paper, know that white is positive and essential. I cannot avoid remarking here upon a moral significance. One of the wise and awful truths which this brown paper art reveals, is this, that white is a colour. It is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black. When, so to speak, your pencil grows red hot, it draws roses; when it grows white hot, it draws stars. And one of the two or three defiant verities of the best religious morality, of real Christianity, for example, is exactly this same thing; the chief assertion of religious morality is that white is a colour. Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell. Mercy does not mean not being cruel, or sparing people revenge or punishment; it means a plain and positive thing like the sun, which one has either seen or not seen. Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc. In a word, God paints in many colours; but he never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white. In a sense our age has realised this fact, and expressed it in our sullen costume. For if it were really true that white was a blank and colourless thing, negative and non-committal, then white would be used instead of black and grey for the funereal dress of this pessimistic period. Which is not the case. Meanwhile I could not find my chalk. I sat on the hill in a sort of despair. There was no town near at which it was even remotely probable there would be such a thing as an artist's colourman. And yet, without any white, my absurd little pictures would be as pointless as the world would be if there were no good people in it. I stared stupidly round, racking my brain for expedients. Then I suddenly stood up and roared with laughter, again and again, so that the cows stared at me and called a committee. Imagine a man in the Sahara regretting that he had no sand for his hour-glass. Imagine a gentleman in mid-ocean wishing that he had brought some salt water with him for his chemical experiments. I was sitting on an immense warehouse of white chalk. The landscape was made entirely of white chalk. White chalk was piled more miles until it met the sky. I stooped and broke a piece of the rock I sat on: it did not mark so well as the shop chalks do, but it gave the effect. And I stood there in a trance of pleasure, realising that this Southern England is not only a grand peninsula, and a tradition and a civilisation; it is something even more admirable. It is a piece of chalk.

Josh, I noticed in your exchange with Mr. Seper, which I don't want to get into, that you mentioned that you had not come across G.K. Chesterton. He is a pretty conservative writer. That said, I've read your website a bit, and it occurred to me that you might like an essay by Chesterton called "A Piece of Chalk". I think that it is one of the great essays in the English language, and certainly one of the most charming. Just thought that I'd mentiion it in case you have a few spare minutes to check it out.

I will admit that I had never heard of torrents until last week when a friend tipped me off and sent me some associated software. I checked it out. It is wrong. Whether the police should be involved is another matter. In any event, my taste in film, and that of torrents participants, apparently differs. There weren't a whole lot of films on the sytem that interested me. I'm happy to pay for a legit copy.

Recently, I saw several episodes of an American television series shot in NY called Third Watch. From what I saw, the images include a lot of NY buildings. In many cases, there are shots of a cruiser car driving by many buildings in succession. I've read David Mullen's statements in this thread, and on the question of whether one is entitled as of right to photograph a building in the US, he said in response to my post that knowing the law can lead to paranoia. I read that as a statement that ignorance is bliss, or alternatively that I am missing something. So I have two questions. First, do the producers of Third Watch negotiate an agreement with the owners of each of the buildings that appear in the show? If so, what do they do if one owner, in a shot that covers several buildings, decides to hold them up to ransom? Secondly, I am under the impression that a person who enters into an negotiation with the owner of a building for consent to photograph the building, without knowing that as a matter of law that no such consent is necessary, is not paranoid, but rather a fool. Am I wrong about that? I'm just asking these questions so that I can understand how knowing your legal rights as a photographer is paranoid.

You won't have any trouble getting authorisation to work in Canada. I assume you know that the federal Government and the various provincial governments offer tax incentives relating to film production. If not, you should find out about the rules. There's a pretty good article by a US lawyer about how it works in the magazine Filmmaker, two or three issues back. You should also have a look at this website: www.telefilm.gc.ca Richard, Are you aware of the fact that one of the reasons that Days of Heaven was made in Canada was that Nestor Almendros could get permission to work in Canada, but could not get permission to work in the US? Just curious :)

Yes, there can be a difference between the law and the conduct of enforcement officials. If you're on a well-funded commercial shoot, it may well be easier to take the path of least resistance. On the other hand, if you are on a tight budget, and can't do things like close down a city block, maybe you rely a little more on your rights. If you are a documentary filmmaker or a street photographer or a news photographer, it's another story. You've got to know what your rights are and sometimes you've got to insist on them. At the moment, this subject is a hot topic for documentary filmmakers and street photographers in the US. The open letter in the current issue of Filmmaker, by a photographer who had a run-in with the authorities because he was filming with a Bolex through the window of a commuter train, is an interesting example. Recently, there was a vigorous debate over a proposal to ban all photography in the New York subway system. Had this ban been in place not so long ago, we would not have Bruce Davidson's Subway series. One reason that the ban hasn't happened, at least yet, is that photograhers, instead of taking the path of least resistance, made their voices heard. Myself, I'm planning to shoot some outdoor footage in New York in the near future. I've shot there on a number of occasions with a 4x5 without incident. That said, I know that there is some potential for problems, whether from the police or New Yorkers who just don't like photographers. I've decided to shoot with an A-Minima in an attempt to be reasonably inconspicuous, and I may go through the process of getting a permit for a couple of places where I want to use a tripod.

Doyle does the commentary track for the DVD version of the film Last Life in the Universe. He doesn't talk about technical issues much. Instead, he presents his views on the aesthetics of photography and talks about his preferred approach to filmmaking.

Drew, The question was about photographing a building, not about photographing people who are mentally ill. On the question that was actually asked, the interesting issue is the different intellectual property treatment given by some civil law systems as distinct from common law systems. In other words, some European countries give greater intellectual property protection to architectural design, in at least some cases, than countries like the US and Canada. My bet is that the rest of the common law countries, such as England, Australia, New Zealand, etc. follow suit. That said, I've seen a number of threads on this website about photographing people in which participants make statements that better reflect paranoia about lawsuits than an understanding of the law or, for that matter, the real history of cinema.

The answer depends on what country you are in. In the US and Canada, you have a legal right, if you and your camera are on public property, to photograph the exterior of a building that is on private property. The law on this in the US and Canada is crystal clear. It's too bad if some filmmakers are so afraid of lawsuits that they won't take advantage of obvious legal rights unless they can get a release. The foregoing does not address the post-9/11 issues that have arisen in relation to photographing certain kinds of infrastructure and buildings in the US. Unlike the US and Canada, in some European countries you need the permission of the owner in at least some cases. I am not a European lawyer, but I've been told that the different approach arises from a certain point of view about copyright in architectural design.

Did anyone attend this? Comments on what transpired?