Robert Hart

Matias. Please obey the advice of people more skilful. My personal preference would be :- Shoot some tests without filters in normal lighting environments. Any filters will remove light and in the night you need your camera the best it can be. Set your camera shutter slow so there is motion blur. In your colour grading software, desaturate all colours. Lay a green tint over your black and white image. Don't just pull up the green channel of your original footage. Ramp up the contrast so that highlights like lamps or highly lit parts of the image burn out. If there is gain noise from the camera sensor, so much the better. Don't try to clean up the sensor noise. If you wan't to replicate the trailing smear of strong highlights of some older NV devices, copy the footage to a second and third video track with each one frame delayed. So second track is one frame delayed, third track is two frames delayed. Transparency of the two overlaid tracks should be approximately 30%. Stacking delayed vision layers like this will reduce the intensity of the sparkle artifact or gain noise of the sensor to an artifact which will look more like low contrast film grain. You may need to pull the contrast of the master track up even more until you have the look you want. Good luck with it.

I forgot to mention, what the human eye sees via a night vision intensifier is of apparent better crispness than what a camera sees. The scintillation artefact ( video noise of an intensifier ) seems more sparkly and bright than what the camera sees. Using an intensifier to a camera may depending upon the type and camera adaptor provided, may require two focusing operations, one for the taking lens, the other for the camera's own lens which has become a relay lens. Managing two focus operations can be a real pain and consume time. The gold standard for mounting intensifiers to cameras I understand is the Astroscope family of kits by Electrophysics Corp. Their best kits can only be accessed and used within the US as there are export restrictions on certain grades of intensifier tubes for national security reasons. The company builds kits for the widest range of cameras and may by now have a kit for Sony E-Mount as well as the more well known camera types. Here is a link to information about one kit which may be suitable for the Sony F55 if there is a Canon EF-Mount ( EOS-Mount ) available for it. My personal preference remains with shooting a clean image and adding the artifacts and softening the image if need be in post. www.militaryandlaw.com.au/shop/item/9350-digital-35mm-still-cameras You need to scroll to the bottom of the page and download the .pdf file from a link provided. You may need to experiment with best time of day to shoot your night vision effects shots. With modern intensifiers, the sky can be seen. So you might need to shoot day-for-night because at night, your camera at its highest gain, may not see the sky unless you are in an environment where there is strong light spill into the sky from a nearby city.

If you intend to shoot the display screen of a night-vision tube intensifier, there are difficulties unless you have a specific kit to mount that device onto a camera. I understand, maybe wrongly that the display resolution of a 2/3" intensifier in the Gen 3 or Gen 4 class is still only about 72 line pairs per mm at best. That is around about the sharpness of standard definition television. By the time you frame out the circular display edge from your rectangular camera image, the resolution is reduced by about a third. For dramatic purposes, the circular image might be retained as a porthole in the rectangular camera image. I understand that for most motion picture dramas, a clean image is shot with a conventional camera, colour-desaturated, tinted green and the signature artifacts of the intensifier tube display added in post-production. Those artifacts are in case of over-bright image are hex outlines across the image replicating the stacked coherent fibre bundles of the image-inverting device within the intensifier tube or a sparking noise in the vision which in night-vision speak is defined as scintillation. Overbright areas within the intensified image are sometimes replicated by letting the originating camera image blow out the highlights. This image was shot a Gen 2 intensifier of 60 line pairs resolution. For much of the tine there was sufficient lighting for a modern high gain camera to aquire a usable image and I had to close the aperture on the taking lens to outdoors daylight levels tgo avoid blowing the tube image out. Because of adequate light levels, there is no gain noise or scintillation in the intensifier display. You will observe I chose a compromise between portholing the display image entirely or cropping out the circle altogether. In this image with the same Gen 2 intensifier, I was experimenting with a Metabones speedbooster for BMPCC in the optical path between the intensifier tube and the taking lens which brings the "apparent" image recovery up into the Gen 3 class. Of course a Gen 3 would perform even better with the same optical setup. You will observe that the sharpness in the image drops off in the much lower lighting conditions and the scintillation artifact challenges the camera's compression scheme. My personal preference would be to go with conventional camerawork and add the effects in post.

I was told that a few years back, a local director and DoP here in Western Australia shot a short film "Ronan's Escape" on 35mm and Super16mm, apparently on the same stock, apparently not by choice but driven by the 35mm camera breaking down and there being no replacement in time ( Affordability might have been a factor ). Director was A. J. Carter who has since moved to the US West Coast and DoP was David Lemay. Full movie. Trailer. The underscore for the trailer is a sweet piece of music. I don't know whether the full movie's credited composer Hamilton Cleverdon prepared the trailer underscore.

I am not sure if advising of an item for sale for a colleague is correct or not but here goes for now. In Western Australia, there is an Elemack Spider dolly with a Ronford Baker old-school fluid head attached to the 150mm bowl by an upstand on short columns, lengths of straight rail and a half-circle of curved track, studio wheels and pipe rail wheels, seating and low arm. Except for the low arm, all other parts are in industry transport boxes. It is offered by Steve Rice who now lives in Thailand. He wants $8,500 for it. He has it listed on the facebook. If you have a facebook account, you can find the listing here. https://www.facebook.com/groups/broadcastgearforsale/permalink/1662416403817500/?sale_post_id=1662416403817500 If you wish to contact him direct, his email is darlingfilms@hotmail.com

If you are a musician or otherwise an individual with heightened fingertip sensitivity, the Angenieux ribs can become a little uncomfortable to the fingertips. I have absolutely no idea why but a strip of tape or a thick rubber band has a nicer tactile thing going for it. It is also easier to see in a quick glance in dim conditions. I used to write notes on a smaller strip stuck on the base of the lens.

I have been dragged kicking and screaming out of the SI2K camp into the BM URSA 4K ecosystem. That does not however make me an anti-Sony disciple. I still use a Sony EX1 and Z1 for events. - One has to learn to live within the means of any camera system. A short film was shot here on the Sony FS7 system last year and they graded it up just fine. It looks sweet but best of all, it works dramatically.

Uh-oh. Temporary enablement to bait folk into the FF thing. They are just asking for some clown to hack it. I guess there will be very intimidating warnings about a very real risk of bricking the camera and Sony turning round and telling the owners of bricked cameras "stiff bicks". or charging a premium price to unbrick it.

It may be best to regard the Chinese lights as the "least unaffordable" option. They do work and mostly work well. The lamps I have had for a few years have suffered damage. - This can be managed but you may find yourself spending more time staying on top of the maintenance. If you do not have the hand-eye skills for basic to advanced metalworking your lamps and stands may become "consumer" items, good for a limited number of uses before going in the scrap box. Typical damage has been plastic knobs on lamphouses falling off or cracking/slumping from heat. Cracked fresnel lenses. Stripped screw threads in plastic in-line switch casework. Noisy wearing surfaces in flood/spot focus lamp base carriages which can kill globe filaments if it is violent enough. Loosening of lamphouse assembly screws due to thermal cycles. Cam balls in square-cut spiral actuator shafts sometimes fall out. You need to be gentle with the lightweight stands. The average tarzan on a volunteer or no-low budget crew will crush the columns due to overtightening of the thumbscrews. Extension columns may pull out. The little friction plates then fall inside. When re-assembled in haste on set by folk who have no understanding of the mechanism, no one tips the friction plates back out of the column and correctly reinstalls them. They instead allow the screw-ends to punch holes in the columns which permanently ruins them.

On more vague recall, I think there may be a very small lever built into the assembly, which you push against to hold back against the spring so that the shoulder flats and slot engage and the assembly will slide fully home and you can put the nut back on. Then you can release it and tension will be applied to the assembly. If you observe the close-ups in this clip, you will observe a silver-coloured piece of metal protruding elbow the swing-arm of the dummy assembly. That is from memory what you need to pull down, away from the dummy arm to re-engage the slot on the flat shoulders of the pivot pillar. I am no longer certain on this. I think it was applicable to the normal sound head swing-arm which had a small similar protrusion closer to the pivot pillar. Hopefully other folk who use the camera will chime in to clarify what may be my incorrect memory on this topic.

Jay. There is a way of getting that back on. You will observe that the inner piece which goes over the pivot stud in the camera body is itself able to move inside of an outer assembly. From memory there are two tiny flat shoulders on the pivot stud. The matching slot in the dummy roller assembly has to be rotated slightly against a spring tension so that the matching slots then slip onto the shoulders on the pivot stud. Once this is done, the dummy roller assembly has a spring pressure applied to it and acts to dampen film movement. Somebody here may be able to add the detail of how that is done. It is fairly simple but I have forgotten. Do not take the dummy roller assembly apart. It is behaving exactly as it should.

The CP16 is a quiet camera if it is in good condition. Some older specimens may emit a claw click if it is worn or has been bent by operator carelessness. If I could buy film economically and avoid the risks with shipping for processing I would still use it. If the two rows of chrome balls pressed into the gate are not worn flat, there should be no contact between the imaged portion of the film and the gate. CPs rarely scratch the film in the gate and have to be worn out to within an inch of their lives to do it ever. The magazines are another matter. It is important to be sure the film egress from the front passes between and not behind the felt-surfaced light trap rollers. Because there is little workspace for fat fingers between the film roll and the outlet, threading that floppy film-end through in the dark is an awkward business. If the film passes wrongside of a roller, it may make contract with a metal surface. The same goes for the rear in-feed but this is easier to get right because you can do that in daylight once the front magazine door is closed and taped secure. It is helpful to make a single steep long fold in the end of the 16mm film so there is a long and stiff arrow of about 400mm which makes feeding the film through the egress slot from the roll easier. You trim the arrowhead off afterwards. Do not form a double-folded arrowhead. It will be too thick and may damage the light trap rollers. Some loaders of the CP mags have had a dalliance with feeding the film-end through before sliding the roll core onto the spindle. This is not recommended. The chances of the film roll centre popping out and the entire roll falling apart like the toilet roll from hell are too great regardless of dextoral skills, it is really one of those "not if but when" things.

If your cam is anywhere near the metal, a sacrificial clear or UV filter on the front of the lens to protect against sparks coming off and melting pits in your lens's front element would be worthwhile installing.

No doubt many who own and operate ( or I guess it now may be a case of owned and operated ) the SI2K system most of the tricks and treats associated with the system will be known. However there may be some new adopters out there. For their sake here is a link to some handy hints I aquired or devised in using the system. Rather than use up server space by copying and pasting into this forum, here is a link to my posts on another forum under several threads. http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/silicon-imaging-si-2k/525540-si2k-handy-hints.html http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/silicon-imaging-si-2k/532898-repairing-si2k-oled-viewfinder.html http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/silicon-imaging-si-2k/510202-lens-information.html http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/silicon-imaging-si-2k/519883-si2k-irnd-filters.html http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/silicon-imaging-si-2k/520303-clock-battery-si2k.html http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/silicon-imaging-si-2k/524440-si2k-metabones-bmpcc-speedbooster.html http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/silicon-imaging-si-2k/533332-si2k-telecine.html

There are consequences when double perf film is broken up onto smaller reels. It may become inadvertently reversed by not being wound back onto another smaller reel and then run through the camera. The pre-flashed edge numbers may finish up on the wrong wide of the film and and not reproduce onto the workprint. In today's world of scanning the neg and finishing digitally, it is probably a legacy issue not worth fretting over.

The claws are often tough steel-based material, hardened against wear. High time pieces will get a slot worn in them and begin to pull at film with a increasingly louder tick as they withdraw after each pulldown. Some designs are a little more inclined to do that than others. Aluminium would not endure very long at all and has a finite fatigue life. Running a film transport unladen at high speeds may increase stress as the claw downstroke will over-run without the film mass and gate friction to dampen it. The drive crank or cam may impact against the returning crank mechanism, a little like the destructive valve-bounce in automotive engines.

If you shut the camera off before the spring power expired you may be in with a chance. At high speeds, any clockwork mechanism develops inertia which can over expend the spring, damage it or cause it to detach from fixtures. If it has not yet broken then it may well be okay but the spring may be fallable over the long term if end hooks or loops have become deformed, doubled-under and straightened with the rewind.

Looks like an ARRI maybe with Evolution viewfinder.

P+S Technik in Germany and TLS in the UK do vintage Cooke lens rehousing as mentioned above, so will be well up to date on repairing these lenses. A separation of an old-school canada balsam bonded doublet is a less painful repair than separation or degrading of the bond done with modern UV cure optical cement.

Could you clarify a little for me? By "speed" are you referring to the ASA / ISO of the film as in its sensitivity or the transport speed/frame rate of the camera?

At some point it seems to have been cinched up tight as there are spot scratches which suggests material on the surface drawn along the emulsion after processing. But there would have had to be some contaminant on there to begin with. The lab folk may be crying in their cups if your film has poisoned their processor chemicals. The smudges and stains are a curiosity. There is one partial fingerprint I could see. Some condensation may have wicked in from the edges of the winding if the film was taken out of its blackwrap too soon after coming out of the refridgerator and dew formed. That might account for some repetitive artifacts which are consistent with something having come off the film, got onto a roller or sprocket which printed it back onto the film in repetitive patches.

Footnote to above. If there is something loose inside of the lens, then a little metal key which engages in a slot in the moving structure inside may have become detached. In that event, the moving structure inside may be turning instead of being driven forward or rearwards by the helicoid thread. That could be a cause of failure to focus. When you move the focus "wings", have a look at the front or rear of the lens to see if the inner structure is rotating. If it is, try with then lens mounted to the camera or an assistant holding the lens by the mount, to turn the "wings" whilst stopping the inside of the lens from turning. You should be able to do this by shoving two fingers inside the corrugated anti-reflection surface inside the front of the lens or by grasping the inner rear section which may be rotating. If, when you have arrested the rotating movement of the inner structure, you can then see the front of the lens moving forward and rearwards in a normal focus movement, the key inside had likely come loose. It is the engagement of a key in a slot which stops the inner structure from turning with the focus ring in that type of arrangement. Another test may be to hold the wings from movement and attempting to rotate the inner structure by the inner front of the bit which sticks out at the rear which may show the same foreard or reverse movement. If the lube on the helicoid threads has become hardend and locked the threads, then the fastener of the key or the key itself may have broken off. The best method of all will be if you can afford the cost, to have a lens tech examine the lens.

Hold the wings and try to turn the very front of the lens barrel. Do not try to turn the lens barrel with the aperture ring. The Zeiss lens irises can be damaged by over-closing. If the lens barrel moves independently of the position of the "wings" and you can see at the rear, the inner body rotating inside the outer barrel, then that will have to be the method by which you focus it. The focus marks will be pretty to look at but meaningless as they are with a couple of old ARRI standard-mount Cookes I have. I don't think the Zeiss lenses are set up like that but who knows? That adaptor you have appears to be universal for the original ARRI standard and ARRI bayonet mount which were very similar. There may be interference between the rear of the lens body structure and the adaptor as suggested ikn a previous response. In the profile image, the lens appears to be riding forward in the adaptor by about 0.8mm but that may be my imagination or the flange face on the back of the Zeiss lens may have a small shoulder machined into it and thus a small apparent clearance seen in the image. If you offer up the lens to the adaptor, without securing the grub screws, try moving the lens back and forth within the adaptor a small whisker to see if the image sharpens. If that adaptor is correctly machnined and there is no interference between the rear lens body and the adaptor, then that face immiedately to rear of the focus marks should be hard up against the front face of the adaptor. To check if there is interfence between the lens body and the rear inside of the adaptor, use a sharpie or whiteboard marker to ink the inside of the adaptor then assemble your lens into it with the lens set at infinity focus. Do not fasrten the grub screws. Rotate the lens inside the adaptor, take it out again and see if you can find any ink stripped from the inside rear of the adaptor. If there is, then that is a point of contact which may have to be dressed back by a machinist to permit working clearance. Danger Will Robinson. The wall thickness of the adaptor may be insufficient to allow removal of enough material to achieve that clearance without breaking through to the outside of the adaptor body. If you have an engineer friend with a vernier caliper, measure from the front of the adaptor to the flange face of the C-Mount section at the rear. The distance should be ( 52mm - 17.52mm ) = 35.48mm. Please take heed of better and more qualified people than I who may critique my comments here.

If I go all nervous and trembly and drop my SI2K on his foot, it will nail him to the spot and he will go nowhere.

DANGER Will Robinson. Anything but really gentle and very slowly increasing heat near optical glass is an invitation to disaster and invitation accepted. If you have warm glass and you bring it into a cool environment, shock cooling will crack it. My personal preference would be to attempt to rejuvenate the frozen lube with thinners first but not so much as to have it go inside onto the glass elements or you may end up with stain glass and stains creeping inside of celled doublets - game over.