Ben Syverson

I actually hate the "K" terminology. People still believe it means something, when It's almost completely meaningless. Originally it referred exclusively to the horizontal resolution in film scans, which was meaningless enough (different scanners will pull different amounts of detail from the same negative, at different noise levels, and pixels don't guarantee detail), but when I first heard it extended to digital sensors, I must have groaned so load you could hear it coast to coast. You might as well measure overall film quality by running time. Or if you've ever heard a press person request a "300 DPI image." Okay, 300 DPI at what size? On its own, "DPI" 100% meaningless. If you want to measure detail, you need to switch to line pairs per mm (MTF is too confusing in discussion). If you want to measure tonality, you need to switch to SNR (aka dynamic range). If you want to measure latitude, you're screwed, because there is no accepted way to measure it (the best way is to pick an "acceptable" SNR and figure out how many stops you can reproduce above that SNR, but "acceptable" is wildly subjective). Pixel dimensions has an impact on some of these factors, but NOT in a direct way. Sorry, this is a major pet peeve.

Forget "great lenses." Forget "L" lenses. The video modes on the 5D, 7D and 550D simply do not resolve that much detail. My advice would be to figure out one or two focal lengths you think you would like, and get the cheapest possible prime lenses in those lengths. It will be cheap, and probably give you better results than a good zoom. Definitely forget zooms. For example, if you think you would want a wide-normal and close-up perspective, you could do the 24/2.8 and 50/1.8, which would set you back $364 used at KEH. You just will NOT see any real benefit from f/1.4 vs f/1.8. Down the line you can decide if an extra third of a stop or two is worth the large difference in price. In the meantime, you will be able to actually use your gear rather than sit around saving money, and your lenses will still have good resale value.

The Lensbaby is a good idea, but it most certainly will NOT be wide on Super 8. You might get similar results by focusing a 10mm lens at infinity, unscrewing it from the mount, and simply holding it up to the mount at a weird angle (covering the whole shebang with a darkcloth, letting the lens peek through). It will be best for close-ups, obviously.

Believe it or not, when it comes to pizza in Chicago these days, thin is in! Next time any of you are in town, you should by all means check out Coalfire Pizza or Spacca Napoli.

I think the ability to crop into a master take could be useful for industrials or event videography, but it's hard to imagine it being used in narrative filmmaking. When was the last time you did a master and then left the camera there but just zoomed in for the close-up? Seems like it would wind up looking pretty static.

So you had one bad flight at O'Hare, and that colored your view of Chicago? If you judged all cities by their airports, you would be forced to conclude that New York was a backwater and Baltimore was a modern city on the move. Add me to the list of people wanting a Chicago sub-forum. I mean, do Boston, SF or Seattle even have film labs anymore? It's insulting.

Charlie, That 71QM is pretty fantastic! Having been spoiled by large format still photography, focusing by tape measure is an adjustment to say the least. Like you, I'm more interested in the authentic Eyemo "look" than hot-rodding them with crazy mounts. I actually want to do a series of "moving portraits" -- sort of like Warhol's screen tests, but shorter and a bit more restrained. I've even been toying with the idea of flipping the camera and doing them in portrait orientation. So while I need to be able to get the subject in focus, I don't need the crazy sharpness of a modern lens. In fact, an uncoated triplet will probably save me on ProMist costs! Anyway, that's a long way of saying "yes," I would love to try out an uncoated 50! :) The scan I posted was a snip from the head of that test roll -- I just threw it into my Nikon V ED. Once I get my DIY scanner set up, I'll know a lot more about the registration. So far it looks pretty steady, but that's just based on comparing the size of the framelines with a loupe.

BTW, in the other thread, someone mentioned that some wide and medium Eymax lenses were deliberately short focused to increase depth of field for shots focused at infinity. In other words, "infinity" on the lens is actually a hyperfocal distance for f/16 or something. So I'm thinking more and more that my lens IS correctly adjusted. It's just that the scale on the lens is not meant to directly correlate to where it's focusing (!).

Just wanted to update this to add: I am particularly interested in acquiring a General Scientific Miltar lens.

Thanks Charlie! Now I just need to track down a 50mm Miltar lens. Just the other week I let one slip on eBay. Foolish!

Just throwing it out there to see if anyone has an "extra" laying around that I could put to use. I'm still slightly unclear about all the different mounts Eyemo lenses have; I'm looking for a lens that will fit a single-lens A4 camera. I'm most interested in finding a 50mm/2.8, but would be interested in hearing about anything you have. Thanks so much

At 2K, a 35mm frame is generously oversampled. Each pixel has discrete information. Comparing the 2K scan to a "2K" Bayer image, you should find that the film is slightly noisier (grainier) overall, but that the digital image is not quite as sharp or pleasing. 4K is another story, because you're starting to be grain-limited in the scan. Depending on the camera you're comparing to film, you may find that the red channel is clearer and sharper in the scan, while the blue channel is much nicer in the digital image. Ultimately, at the pixel level, it will come down to taste. Bayer interpolation means you're dealing with a characteristic set of artifacts, just as with film you're dealing with grain. Having implemented a few de-bayer algorithms, I'm very sensitive to the Bayer "look," which is simultaneously edge-enhanced and interpolated. Perhaps a result, I find film to look much cleaner despite the grain. To wheel back around on-topic, as a huge Fincher fan I'm not yet convinced by his switch to digital. To my eye, the low light scenes in The Game, Fight Club, Panic Room, etc, have a more dynamic look than the low light stuff in Zodiac or Benjamin Button. I can't put my finger on why. The digital stuff just feels "flat" or monochromatic.

I'm in Chicago, so there are not as many options repair-wise. Charlie, I've been keeping my eye out, but many of the lenses, such as the one you linked to, are fixed-focus. There is one focusing 50mm on eBay right now, but it's $300 and I don't see f/stop markings on it. I'm a little nervous to pull the trigger on another 70-80 year old lens... Maybe I'll post a wanted ad here.

Charlie, thank you so much. I've emailed Paul. I agree that it may be cheaper to simply buy another lens... If I go down that route, I may try to create a nondestructive adapter for MF lenses rather than chase after a Eyemo lens in shooting condition.

Here is a scan of a representative frame downsized from 4K to 1440, showing the focusing error... Her eyes are exactly 4' from the film plane and the camera is set to 4'.

It occurs to me now that perhaps the lens and camera are completely mismatched; maybe this lens is designed for a turret camera? The lens itself has "1940" stamped on the mount. Here are some pictures which may help.

Charlie, it's an A4 military style (single lens, full/silent aperture). I have the Air Force repair manual for the camera, but it doesn't have any info on adjusting the lenses.

Ha, great advice Bernie. :) Thanks. I think I will talk to one of the rental houses in-town and see if they have any experience adjusting these things.

I shot a test roll on a newly acquired Eyemo, and it came back slightly out of focus. Investigating, I found that the flange distance was 100% correct (1.5000"), but that the lens itself (B&H 50mm f/2.8) was close focusing by a pretty large amount. In fact, it cannot achieve infinity focus in the mount. Using a piece of diffusion material as a ground glass, I could see pretty clearly that a subject that was 4' away would be in focus when the lens was set to just past 5'. So, does anyone have any advice or experience that could help? My theory is that at some point in its 70 year life, it must have been adjusted incorrectly. If there's an easy way to readjust it, I would love to do it and give this old lens a second life.

With still photography I often overexpose by as much as a stop... You can go further, but there are diminishing returns grain-wise, as you start to push skintones into the compressed shoulder of the response curve. However that doesn't always bother me, because you're also dragging the shadows up into the more linear portion of the curve. With the right shot, you can get away with +2 stops, especially if there are no faces in direct light and you need to be able to fill in the shadows or reduce contrast. Edit: I should note that my comments apply to a digital environment (ie, DI), where you have some control over the tonal curve. I don't think I would overexpose by +2 if I was printing photochemically, though I'm sure it wouldn't be the end of the world if you did so accidentally.

Paying one lighting TD to work on a shot for a full day or two (or even a week!) is much cheaper than holding up an entire production for hours as you mess with lights... So while CG lighting isn't free, it's vastly cheaper than physical lighting. The tools are now fast enough that tests can be rendered in minutes and seconds, not days and hours. GPU renderers like Octane are now starting to enable realtime feedback. I would never pass judgment on the use of CG per se. In fact, I'm willing to say you can be a cinematographer without ever picking up a camera (try telling me this isn't cinematography). My beef is that I don't think artistic awards should go to managers. On a hypothetical 100% CG film where every shot was independently lit by a different person, I would say "cinematography happened," but there was no cinematographer. That obviously wasn't quite the case with Avatar, but it was a far cry from the singular, lovingly-crafted work we saw in "The Hurt Locker" or "The White Ribbon." Christian Berger did not walk off the set and say to the grips, "Go ahead and light it -- you know how I like it. Tomorrow I'll see how you did and give you notes."

They did a DI (according to IMDB anyway)... Looking at the 1080p trailer, those grainy sections look pushed to me; photochemically, in the DI, or both. Either way, deliberately underexposed and then brought back up. I'll be curious to read the AC.

I listed all the lighting TDs because I'm strongly inclined to believe that these people placed and adjusted lights in the CG environment, independent of the DP's input. That is not the case with the electric or grip crew. The DP doesn't phone in some suggestions and then review the result after it's shot; he or she is always on set for first unit shooting. I'm no purist by any means. I'm more than happy to call what those lighting TDs did "cinematography," and I've done my share of CG lighting as well. For the record, it's not flicking a switch, but it's also not nearly as challenging as using real lights. In CG, lights can be invisible, hung at impossible-to-rig angles, or made not to cast shadows or reflect in shiny surfaces. You can change the size, shape, intensity, color, or position instantly, and see the results in real-time! Moreover, because all it takes is one person to adjust (versus a whole crew in film), you can spend much longer tweaking and adjusting everything. With "real" lighting, you often have to move on and live with whatever is in the can. So even if Fiore had been involved in every lighting decision, it still bothers me that he had an advantage over the other nominees, because he would have had no physical or budget/scheduling constraints to create the lighting. As for duplication and mass production, I think it's a bit sad that we're considering extending the concept of "generational loss" to artistic integrity. You may be watching a 3rd generation VHS of Apocalypse Now, but you're still seeing Storaro's work. He was there, making decisions, doing the actual work. If you lose that requirement, then every award will eventually go to a manager rather than an artist.

In this case, the lighting was mostly decoupled from the shooting. I'm sure the shoot itself was challenging, and I'm sure many things about the CG were challenging, but the lighting was probably not. They had tons of time and resources to work on it after the shoot. And difficulty IS part of the art and craft. If it was trivially easy to light a movie beautifully, do you think cinematographers would even have jobs, much less a category at the Oscars? We call great cinematographers "great" because we know what they do isn't easy. If directors could radically alter an actor's performance in post, it wouldn't bother me, but I also wouldn't hand them an Oscar. Part of what makes an actor great is the knowledge of how difficult great acting is. Awards are there to recognize skill, not patience. With respect, I disagree completely. A matte painter will literally create the "light" in a scene from whole cloth; none of the other jobs you mention do. And compositors often add, subtract and modify light in a much more direct way than any of those positions. In fact, they're frequently called on to take subjects shot in one light and make it look like an entirely different light. I'm not saying all those names deserve DP credit, but my point is that given the sheer number of people who did the actual work of lighting Avatar, I wonder how much input Fiore even had. Maybe he worked one-on-one with every lighting TD; I don't know. But even so, if I was handing out awards for Best Wood Carving, I'd hand it to the guy who carved something by hand as opposed to the guy who stood over the shoulder of a CAD designer with a CNC machine. Just saying...

What is and is not "cinematography?" It's not black and white... You could argue until the end of time and never come to a consensus. Me, I have two big problems with Avatar getting the award. The cinematographer simply didn't have to deal with the constraints (time, budget, weather, physical impossibility, working with less than ideal subjects or circumstances) that the other nominees did. Dealing with those constraints creatively is to me the real craft of cinematography. So giving Avatar a cinematography award is like giving Milli Vanilli (or T-Pain) a "best live performance" award. It's hard to imagine that Fiore had much direct input on the lighting in CG sequences. Nothing against him personally, but I don't believe the award should go to someone who was on a conference call with some Visual Effects Supervisors. I don't think the award should go to someone who dropped by the client couch a few times. If your involvement is limited to consultation and notes, you're a producer, not a DP. The people who actually lit the majority of Avatar are listed below. Note that these are ONLY the people who have "lighting" in their title; there are plenty of other people who affected the lighting, such as the compositors, matte painters and people listed generally as "CG Artist." I will shut up now, because this list speaks for itself!!! Adel Abada .... lighting technical director Johan Åberg .... lighting technical director Tony Alexander .... lighting technical director: Weta Digital Melissa Almeida .... textures & lighting: Hybride Anuj Anand .... lighting technical director: Framestore Romain Arnoux .... lighting technical director Mark Barber .... lighting technical director: Weta Digital David Basalla .... lighting sequence lead: Weta Digital Michaël Bentitou .... textures & lighting: Hybride Brian Blasiak .... lighting technical director Jorge Bobadilla Jr. .... senior lighting/compositing Albert Bonnefous .... lighting technical director Maryse Bouchard .... textures & lighting: Hybride Matt Bouchard .... lighting technical director: Weta Digital Andre Braithwaite .... lighting technical director Jessica Braun .... lighting technical director Christophe Brejon .... lighting technical director Dhyana Brummel .... lighting technical director: Weta Digital Bertrand Bry-Marfaing .... senior technical director: lighting Ben Campbell .... lighting technical director Keanan Cantrell .... lighting technical director Nicolas Chombart .... lighting technical director Amy Christensen .... lighting technical director Roberto Clochiatti .... lighting technical director: Weta Digital Peter Connelly .... lighting td & compositor Graham Cristie .... lighting technical director: Weta Digital Alexia Cui .... lighting technical director Christophe Damiano .... textures & lighting: Hybride Rahul Deshprabhu .... lighting technical director Marco Di Lucca .... lighting technical director: Weta Digital Curtis Edwards .... lighting technical director: weta digital Hassan El Youbi .... lighting technical director: Weta Digital Nick Epstein .... lead lighting technical director: Weta Digital Carl Frischmuth .... assistant lighting technical director Jason Galeon .... lighting technical director: Weta Digital Stefan Galleithner .... lighting technical director Yanick Gaudreau .... textures & lighting: Hybride Brian Goodwin .... lighting technical director Anne Hall .... technical director: color & lighting Tulio Hernandez .... sequence lighter Alex Hessler .... lead lighting technical director: Weta Digital Sam Hodge .... lighting td: Weta Digital Nickie Huai .... lighting technical director Nathan Johnson .... lighting technical director Amanda Johnstone .... lighting technical director Byung Gun Jung .... lighting technical director Miae Kang .... 3d lighting lead: Weta Digital Joseph Kasparian .... lead textures & lighting: Hybride Michael Kennedy .... lighting technical director: Weta Digital Steven Moussa Khoury .... lighting technical director: Weta Digital Adam King .... lighting technical director: Weta Digital Balazs Kiss .... lead lighting technical director: Weta Digital Susie Kleis .... lighting technical director Manfred Kraemer .... lighting technical director Daniel Kruse .... digital lighter: Hydraulx Vassilios Lanaris .... textures & lighting: Hybride Donna Lanasa .... lighting technical director: Weta Ryan Leasher .... senior lighting technical director: Weta Digital Phillip Leonhardt .... lighting technical director Kimberley Liptrap .... lighting technical director: Weta Digital Chishan Liu .... lighting technical director: weta digital Daniel Macarin .... 3d lighting lead: Weta Digital Christoph Matthiesen .... lighting technical director: Weta Digital Brett McConnell .... lighting technical director: Weta Digital Steve McGee .... lighter & compositor Luke Millar .... lighting technical director Giuseppe Motta .... lighting technical director: Weta Digital Alessandro Mozzato .... lighting technical director Daryl Munton .... lighting technical director Alfred Mürrle .... lighting technical director: Weta Digital Marcell Nagy .... lighting technical director: Weta Digital Serena Naramore .... lighting technical director Carlos-Christian Nickel .... senior technical director: lighting Gary Noble .... lighting technical director Paul Oakley .... lead lighting artist Mark Osborne .... lighting technical director David A. Ostler .... lighting technical director Geoff Pedder .... lighting technical director: Weta Digital Stewart Pomeroy .... lighting/effects technical director Arun Ram-Mohan .... additional lighting: Weta Digital Pavani Rao .... lighting technical director: Weta Digital John Roberts-Cox .... lighting technical director: Weta Digital Frank Sabia Jr. .... lead lighting td: Weta Digital Ai Saimoto .... lighting technical director: Weta Digital Florian Salanova .... lighting technical director: Framestore CFC Alessandro Saponi .... lighting lead: Weta Digital Durant Schoon .... lighting technical director Michael Slater .... lighting technical director Laurent Solignac .... lighting td Rainer Stolle .... lighting technical director Prapanch Swamy .... lighting technical director: Weta Digital Jonathan Swartz .... lighting technical director Raqi Syed .... lighting technical director Peter Szewczyk .... lighting technical director Ben Thompson .... lighting technical director: Weta Digital Rupert Thorpe .... lighting technical director: Framestore Jon Tojek .... lighting technical director Marc Toscano .... senior lighter Daniele Tosti .... senior lighting technical director: Weta Digital Celine Velasco .... textures & lighting: Hybride Noah Vice .... look dev/lighting technical director: ILM Sean Noel Walker .... lighting technical director: Weta Digital Kelly Walsh .... lighting technical director: ILM Ian Ward .... lighting lead Tim Ward .... lighting technical director Rachel Williams .... lighting technical director Alan Woods .... lead lighting technical director Malcolm Wright .... lighting technical director Joyce Young .... lighting technical director: weta digital Fabio Zangla .... lighting technical director: Weta Digital Mohand Zennadi .... lighting technical director