Daniel Klockenkemper

Thank you! I think technical reasons are the original purpose for all strengths of diopter, and the extra artefacts of the higher strengths are probably an unintended side effect. But using technical flaws in unexpected creative ways is part of the innovation and fun of cinematography. In your case, anamorphic lenses are a special scenario - especially classic/traditional lens designs - because they're known for having different behavior depending on the focus distance. I think they might behave differently, I wish I could try that! Thinking about all this reminds me of a tilt-s

I also decided to do a test to get to the bottom of this. I actually have the same lens as the one in the original post, a Zeiss Contax 50mm (not rehoused, but the glass is what matters), and combined it with a "full-frame" camera and some Lindsey Optics diopters. The first test was set up to replicate the interior conditions mentioned above - the slate was 4.5 feet away, and the background 15 feet away. The lens was set to f/2. Focus was sharp on the slate for each take. I only used the +1/4 and +1/2 filters on this test, because the farthest focus with a +1 diopter is 1 meter.

Thanks, and likewise! I think you've got the right idea. I'd say there's three categories - "this looks good," "this might look iffy on the monitor but I know I can deal with it in post," and "I need to do something about this before we do a take." Watch enough movies and you'll see that even the greatest cinematographers occasionally have a shot here and there, where they got into a little trouble with the exposure... but it's only something that a real nerd like me would notice. This interview with Gordon Willis about The Godfather Part II is great, and I think one of his statem

Hi Robert. I'll give it a try, and probably explain a few things you already know along the way. 🙂 I think it helps to start with how it works for film, because it's easier to visualize. If you look at the pictures in this post on another forum - https://www.minilabhelp.com/forums/topic/25897-control-strip-issues-v30-ra-kodak-chem-lorr/?tab=comments#comment-62349 - they're Kodak control strips, with calibrated pre-exposed steps. The lightest, most see-through parts have no exposure; and the more exposure the negative received, the more "dense" (i.e. opaque) the negative is. Cons

The aperture works exactly the same; depth of field, exposure, etc. will behave as they normally would. You can think of it as extracting the central 1/3 of a 135 stills frame. To tell you how I learned the hard way: I once borrowed a Nikkor 55mm f/1.2 for a shoot, hoping it'd be a bit more similar to the Kowa 16mm primes in terms of the coatings and the stop. While passable wide open for full-frame stills, on 16mm the chromatic aberrations were proportionally larger since the area of the negative being used is smaller. I went back to my Contax lenses after that - the Zeiss 50mm/1

This is no problem at all. I used a c-mount to Contax adapter all the time when I had an Eclair. Coverage is not an issue, since the 135 stills format is much larger than 16mm. The only minor caveat is that, because the diagonal measurement of 16mm is almost 3 times smaller than 135, the image from the lens is effectively magnified 3x. So if the lens has some aberrations, they will be much more apparent than what you might be used to from stills or video from larger formats. I'm sure you're aware that c-mount lenses can become unscrewed if the lens is torqued; this shouldn't

While 'personal shooting quirk' satisfies Occam's razor, it's definitely interesting to speculate what the reasoning behind the decision is. For the most part, lenses designed before the 1990s had their best performance when focused at infinity - aberrations, especially away from the center of the frame, increased at the closer distances where filming normally takes place. (Optimal performance at closer distances was a big selling point of the Ultra Primes.) So perhaps the idea was to use the lenses closer to their 'sweet spot,' ignoring the effect that adding a diopter has on lens pe

From the pictures on this site, it looks like the c mount is attached to the back of the lens, and you're missing that piece: http://www.bigeye.url.tw/big5/d_ange17_68_22.htm

If you're looking for a modern style of head with adjustable counterbalance, there's unfortunately a large gulf between the affordable heads and the heads that can handle a higher payload. You're right to look on the used market. Something like an old OConnor 30 doesn't have an adjustable counterbalance, but it's from the same era as the NPR and would probably work rather well. When I owned an ACL, I used a higher-end Libec head - they're often overlooked because most Libec gear is aimed either at the low end or towards broadcast studios. A used H70, H80, H85, or even H100 could likely

CVP has an excellent web app to check illumination circles for various combinations of cameras and lenses: https://cvp.com/tools/cameralens The Fujinon MK lenses aren't listed in the tool, but from what I recall they only cover the 4k S35 crop mode on the FX9, and vignette on 5k. As for FS7 vs FX9 4k - it's 2012 vs 2020 sensor technology. Even without oversampling I'd expect the FX9 to have better overall performance.

Hi Toto! The plates look quite good to me, I especially like the compact top handle. One small thought about the handle, you might also add mounting positions for the tape hook on the left and right handle sides as well to provide some different options. To everyone else, I've known Toto for quite a while, and worked with him several times going all the way back to film school. I have great trust in his design expertise, and I believe the thought he's put into these accessories is obvious. I'd certainly be interested if I owned an SR3. 🙂

I think the Vantage spot diopters will do exactly what you want: https://www.vantagefilm.com/en/products/optical-tools/vantage-diopters I got a similar effect with a homemade version:

Hi Selinica, have you looked up the patents for the system? This one seems to be related, and has some drawings and dimensions: https://patents.google.com/patent/US2780142A/en?inventor=Bouwers+Albert It sounds like an interesting project! What are you using to model the optics?

For starters, tell them not to tape the film to the core. It's hard to make an exact diagnosis from the pictures. Certainly, the film coming out of the lower sprocket started to accordion and got sucked into the upper sprocket. But without physically inspecting the magazine, I can only guess that it was either loaded incorrectly - most of the time, it's from not following the film path correctly, too much slack somewhere, not closing the sprocket guides, etc. - or that there's some mechanical issue like the belt slipping or a gear being broken. Has your friend tried turning the m

Skyfall, released in 2012, came out in the middle of the theatrical transition to digital projection. (In Jan. 2011 there 16,522 digital screens in the USA and Canada; by March 2015, the number in the USA alone had increased to 38,719, which was about 97% of US screens according to Wikipedia.) They probably thought there were enough unconverted screens that a small number of prints was still worthwhile. I actually saw a 35mm print of Skyfall in a discount theater, I think it was a $3 ticket, and it was a strange experience. The print was very beat up and had noticeable scratching, but