Daniel Klockenkemper

Hi Tiago, Tiffen's diffusion triangle is helpful in identifying the relative effects of their filters; I've attached a copy of the diagram. Tiffen also has a video demonstrating many of their filters: https://vimeo.com/92660033 The three types of filters you mention all work in different ways. Despite the placement on the chart, Low Contrast filters do have an effect that is a bit like halation - light from bright areas bleeds out into the areas immediately around them, adding a bit of "glow." This might help with the perception of highlight roll-off in some cases where the highlights are clipped, since it causes a gradual increase in brightness which gets stronger as it gets closer to the highlight. The highlight glow from low con filters has had a cool, cyan color cast with the filters I've used, though the filter set I used was fairly old; newer low cons or equivalents from other manufacturers might be different. Tiffen calls the Satin filters a white halation filter, so they work a bit like a pro mist but they are more subtle. I would expect to see a mild neutral/white halation around highlights, which might also seem to help to blend the edges of clipped or near-clipping highlights, but could cause some loss of detail which may give the opposite impression. Ultra contrast filters are different altogether - without any halation, light from highlights is spread throughout the rest of the image, which lifts the shadows. So this doesn't help highlight roll-off directly, but you can use this to your advantage by reducing your exposure slightly to retain more highlight detail, while still retaining shadow information that would otherwise be lost or have more noise. How much effect you get for a given filter strength is somewhat scene dependent. Testing is of course strongly advised. Hope this helps! Best, Daniel

It sounds like the Cine Reflect Lighting System is exactly what you want: https://www.thelightbridge.com/ Their system uses flat aluminum panels polished in precise amounts to control the exact amount of beam spread. Putting the panels up in the air and keeping the lights on the ground is one of the main applications of the CRLS system.

I'd say longer is better if the wood is deep enough. Washers aren't strictly necessary but I'd probably use them if I was screwing the blocks down with power tools.

I wouldn't use sticky velcro directly on the back of a Quasar tube - the rear half of the tube is a heatsink, and it would get hot enough to make the adhesive melt and unstick. Off the top of my head, I think #10 screws fit the holes in the Q-blocks. What are you trying to attach your tubes to?

I have decided after much deliberation to sell my Eclair ACL 2. It's a fairly complete, late-model kit - serial #2665, which I think dates its manufacture to the early 1980s. It has the orienting Kinoptik viewfinder, large base with 4-pin XLR plug, heavy duty mirror parking motor, on-board battery mount, and ergonomic hand grip. The camera was modified to Super 16 before I purchased it; the lens mount and viewfinder markings are recentered. The shutter was also changed to 144 degrees in order to close completely during the pulldown of the S16 movement. The motor control has been upgraded with AZ Spectrum's internal speed control, which gives precise speeds from 4 to 75 fps, and adds a Fisher port for external speed controllers. The kit includes three 400-foot French magazines and one 200-foot English magazine, a 15mm rod base from Les Bosher, and several lens mounts: Cameflex with Arri bayonet insert, Arri standard, Arri PL, Nikon, Leica R, and C-mount to Contax. The 3 battery packs have been changed to NiMH cells, which can easily run the camera at high speed on a single pack. The new packs use a modern world-voltage charger rather than the original NiCad charger; as such the original charging ports were removed (though the parts are included). An assortment of spare fuses, port caps, extra magazine platters, and some miscellaneous small parts are also included. The majority of the kit fits in the fitted Delsey suitcase, with a second flight case holding the two magazines plus some room for accessories. The camera and its components are all in good working condition, however they have seen little use since I moved to Los Angeles, so I would recommend that the camera be serviced before using it on any important projects. I'd like to get $2500 for the kit. Local pickup in the Los Angeles, CA area is available; please message me if you need a shipping quote.

Yes. If the 100ft roll is on a daylight spool, remove the platter from the magazine and the spool will fit directly onto the spindle.

My friend owns a small rental shop in LA and has the Modern L bracket. I'll send you his details.

There is one other possibility, which is to adapt a teleconverter to change the optical path so that the adapted lens is outside the PL mount. This does already exist as a product: https://www.newsshooter.com/2017/04/27/tokina-ef-to-pl-mount/ The downsides of course are that the focal lengths of the lenses become longer, and the aperture/transmission becomes slower, but it is cheaper than rehousing...

You've hit a dead end because it is a dead end. In the "gold rush" of adapting stills lenses for digital cinema cameras over the last decade, if what you hope to do were economically feasible, it would certainly have been done already. There's no such thing as a free lunch.

Bayer pattern sensors (or similar, basically any single chip) have color filter arrays made using dyes or pigments. These dyes and pigments fade over time and with continued exposure to light, which is the purpose of the sensor in the first place. Exactly how much each color dye or pigment fades would depend on a lot of factors - the composition of the dye/pigment, what wavelengths pass through the filter stack, how much UV (studio vs outdoor environment), etc. How quickly the CFA fades will almost surely vary from one sensor design to the next, and would seem to be very closely guarded information by sensor manufacturers.

Hi Brandon, It's been quite a while, but I've shot hi-con in the past. It is sensitive mainly to the blue part of the spectrum, with just a little green sensitivity. From what I remember, the dynamic range is very limited, and the effective speed was around ISO 10 or 12. (Yes, two digits.) You could use an HMI or other daylight-balanced source to film indoors, but it would need to be a very powerful source to get correct exposure, which would probably negate the cost savings from the stock. No such thing as a free lunch, unfortunately. Daniel

As Bruce says, wider lenses are most susceptible to flange focal distance issues - the depth of focus (the depth of field behind the lens) is most critical for short focal lengths. Long focal length lenses have a much greater depth of focus, so if you're adapting Hasselblad lenses you shouldn't encounter any significant issues. This bit me on a project many years ago - footage from the 75mm turned out fine, but footage from the 20mm was soft. This assumes that the ground glass and gate both are an equal distance from the lens mount. A good technician should be able to check this for you easily. The other issue to look out for when stacking adapters is that one or more of the adapters might not be up to the task of holding the weight of a heavier lens. This could introduce some tilt, which would also affect focus. If you're adapting some of the longer Hasselblad lenses, I'd highly recommend a lens support if you don't have one already.

http://visualproducts.com/pdf/moviecamcompactmanual.pdf The connector wiring diagrams are on the last 2 pages. I would second Dom's suggestion to inspect the internal wiring, and also check the wiring of the cable at both ends - if the polarity was reversed, it may have been done within the cable rather than on the camera itself.

There is another factor that has so far been overlooked. Manual focus stills lenses are only designed for a person's hand to turn the focus ring slowly, by small amounts. (This also applies to older cine lenses like standard speeds, which were primarily focused by hand via a follow focus.) Modern cinema lenses need to be robust enough to handle the very high torque of remote lens motors, turning the lens 300 degrees from infinity to minimum focus in a fraction of a second, possibly hundreds of times per day, day in and day out. Repeated high torque focus racks like this would quickly destroy the mechanical parts most stills lenses (and it isn't good for cine lenses with older mechanical designs either). When you add in the increased complexity for other reasons, e.g. breathing correction, and the need for quick, easy maintenance, it's no surprise that the construction of the lens becomes larger.