Trevor Greenfield

Yeah that is a GREAT effect. Play with all of the plugins, theres really a lot of power in Vegas.

I spent a good number of years with Pentax K-1000 Manual SLR's. The ability to play with ASA's, fstops, shutter speeds and focal lengths and cheap processing taught me a LOT about how film works, how to properly read and expose with a light meter for reflective readings (ie. if you have a light source in a frame its a big no no, it will give you a false reading and you'll end up underexposing) and how one adjustment on any of these factors can change your outcome dramatically. I picked up a Minolta MD not too long ago at a swap meet with a stock 50mm lens for under $30, I suggest doing that to test out how it all works and what the prints look like before shooting expensive motion picture stock. Firewire/Mini-DV is totally the way to go over DVD, the compression scheme is better. Now I'm not an expert with 20 credits to my name so take my comments with a grain of salt if you wish, but 16mm and 35mm motion picture film are pro formats, and like all pro tools require knowledge about the tool and the process of what your are doing with it. If you want a film camera you can just slap a cartridge into and go, they make s8 cameras just for that. But Skateboarding, if done right, could be really, really sweet on 16. Just get used to what you are doing.

Saturation is done via a plugin called Saturation I believe. You have 3 choices, track plugin (On the track label itself the little square icon), overall video plugin (where the preview is, the little square icon) or the media clip itself (the little square icon at the right side of the clip on the timeline). Brightness/Contrast also has to do with saturation to an extent, you can add those to the plugin chain. Also, the odd way to adjust saturation of individual color levels would be the "Color Levels" plugin. You need to give people time here to respond, most of the users are professionals who reply when they have off time, but seeing as you have many posts here, you probably knew that.

Thanks for the suggestions. Wow, I'd really appreciate that and Id be willing to pay for postage but I think France to Idaho will take awhile and be pretty expensive. I will call AlphaCine tomorrow and see if they can send me one. As I figure it, I just need one, because as I go through 1 spool, that will be the one I'll use as a takeup spool on the next load. Really, thank you for your help and willingness to send. I'm hoping to breakthrough with a new method of filmmaking, being able to use a k3 and a video camera and come out the other side with a high def file with synched sound.

great advice, thank you. Yes just from looking inside I have noticed a liberal amount of grease, must have been surplus from USSR tanks :D Later on I will be converting to s16 and crystal sync. As another side note, I have already tried blimping this camera with a simple winter Starter jacket. It is quiet enough that if I shot with a unidirectional boom I should have no problem. I just spoke with the seller. He says he didn't put any white balls in it, he used plastic like what we call visqueen here in the USA, Customs must have taken it all apart for security reasons. They must have ziplocks or something like that there that he could have packed the camera in. Oh well.

Thanks a lot. That was what I figured. Will have to buy a couple of spools because I dont have any.

Once again, thank you. I bought a SEKONIC LIGHT METER- Model L-VI off ebay in good working condition. It seems to be pretty good, although it gives fstop readout, not footcandles (which is not bad but as I said, I think footcandles would be more scientific). It seems like it can do everything. I am pretty far out of a major city so I don't even know that there is a camera store around here. I'll probably order one from B&H, I've got $100 in an 80a, 85, ND3 and a new battery for the light meter coming, so do I need to get the Kodak grey card pack? Or wil the 3.95 Delta do the job? Technically they're all 18% grey right?

So when I got my K3, the seller did a terrible job and didn't protect the case, nor did he cover up the mount, and consequently the packing balls he used got all inside of the case and a few found their way into the camera itself. I spent a few hours cleaning everything, but I found that the wind didn't work. I figured a few of the balls were caught in the wind gears. I removed the face plate and very carefully took out all of the little balls I could find in the front of the camera. It still wouldnt wind. I forced the shutter around and it finally felt like it clicked into place. It wound and worked. I spent the next two hours looking into the backside of the camera through the front and locating the little balls that had fallen into the backside of the camera, behind the baffle plate, and removing them. I fully wound and discharged my little Katrina (my pet name for her) about 10 times, each time the spring running sounded like it got smoother and smoother, but I am still thinking it would be a good idea to take off the baffle plate. While it is off, I will remove the loop formers, but also I'd like to grease all of the gears again. Any suggestions for some long lasting grease? Any piece or gear I should NOT grease? Thanks in advance for your suggestions/comments.

These two guides - the post and the website - have helped me a bunch. Thank you! However I have a small problem. My k3 did not come with any spools. I have 6 various speed 100' new Kodak daylight spools, but no empty ones. So how does this work? When I load a new spool of film, do I have to put it in another spool or does it load as is into the camera? And for the takeup spool, what do I use? I have seen one person comment I can use a used daylight spool, is this right or do I need something else? And then when I send in the takeup spool for developing and telecine do I just put it back in the box that it came in? Thank you in advance.

Thank you very much for the advice, John. Unfortunately I left my palm pilot at my other house which I'm not going to for awhile but that looks like a great program, Ill keep it bookmarked. You say something more sophisticated than a Weston III. Anything specific I should look for? Looks like most here recommend Sekonic (Like a 398M), but those are about $100-$500 on ebay. I'm not opposed to spending that much I just need to justify it. And for spot meters, no way thats in my budget, not right now anyway. I just need a simple light meter for incident and ambient. You bring up a very good point on the 100TASA. I do want that higher-than-normal contrast and saturated circa 1950 type look, but I plan on doing a HD telecine from Vision2 stocks... so I was thinking I would slightly underexpose and introduce this in post. Finally, can you recommend an inexpensive place to buy a greyscale or grey card or can I possibly print one? Thanks again. Trevor

Hi, great, great forum. Been lurking here for awhile, read every post in 16mm and Lighting forum, but still some questions linger. Some info quickly about me. I am new to motion picture film, but I've been a still SLR photog for 8 or so years, so all of the components to compose for film are understood pretty well by me. But Motion pictures is a little different, and I want to get it right. Moving from DV where I shot a couple of short things, edited commercially two feature length projects, and have done camera work for another feature which will be coming out next year. Made "The Soup Party" a 15 minute short on DV last year, as kind of a good test to get a good grip on the skills it takes to make some films, and it won its first film festival, a local small one, in its first 10 minute cut version! So now, onto the questions. 1) I now own a K-3. I understand the shutter speed should be set on a light meter for 24fps to 1/60th. However, I am intrigued by the scientific output of footcandle readings for incident readings. Incident readings are new to me too, but after reading how they work it seems like this is totally an ideal reading compared to reflective for controlled lighting situations. I feel footcandles should give a much more exact definition of what my settings should be and if I want a higher output I can simply adjust or add lighting based on my expected FC increase. So I am seriously considering buying a Weston Master III or similar for the readings. My only problem is, the Kodak guides that layout the FC to Fstop readings for their film is based on the premise of 1/48th (actually they say ~1/50th). How do I make the conversion to 1/60th for the chart? 2) I asked on another board but didn't get much in the way of expert advice. Experts: I love the hard look I have seen for controlled light situations and for daylight on 100ASA. I know that in situations/scenes where you have low lux you need higher speed film, which I am willing to intercut as needed. But really 100ASA seems like the ultimate choice for most situations where there is enough light. Especially considering that most situations I'll be able to pump at least some light and I really do favor the hard/fast falloff look. Am I right? What have you found with shooting 100T(64D)? 3) Actually I do have one more question. I am planning to do 4 test reels. I have 500T, 250D, and am about to buy a couple of rolls of 100T. My game plan is to have like ~5 various lighting situations, testing each stock. I'll take my readings to determing where I *should* be, then shoot 1sec of footage. Then, I'll go up 1 stop, and do the same, then 1 more. Then go back to where I should be and go 1 stop the other direction, then 1 more. At the end of each reel, I want to test my method for sound synch. I am going to blimp the heck out of the K-3 and run a boom to the video camera. The video camera will be realtime adjusted as well, to the actual look of the shot, in other words exposure set to what my eye sees. This way when I get my stuff back thats been Telecine'd I'll be able to see exactly what I've got with the different stocks, what the difference is between the stops (maybe the lens is a little off in its F-stop so I can check this), and I can compare it to what the scene really looked like compared to the video camera output. I can then try to change the fps of the audio from the video camera and synch it with the telecine'd footage. Sound good for a thorogh film camera test? Never had to do one before. Thanks for all of your advice/suggestions/comments in advance! :)