Dom Jaeger

I can understand the appeal of seeing filmmaking as a hands-on craft, but that quote completely ignores the intellectual contributions to the industry. Without the theories underpinning the fields of optics and chemistry, for example, you wouldn't have lenses or film stock. Without highly conceptual directors like Eisenstein or Griffiths you wouldn't have the basic syntax of filmic language that has evolved over a century and which we now take for granted. Without gifted scriptwriters who understand how to use and sometimes subvert the various theories of narrative structure you wouldn't have great scripts. Virtually every great film movement has sprung from a theoretical standpoint at odds with the prevailing mindset. I could go on. Even if the quote is presuming 'film industry' to mean just the crew who do the filming it still seems a narrow view. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have appealed much to the highly intellectual Kubrick, who meticulously researched and planned all his films. As a fundamentally collaborative art-form, surely the best filmmaking is a combination of ideas and practical skills.

Probably the most important factor in removing screws without stripping the heads is the tool used. It's crucial to use the correct screwdriver size to fit the screw, whether slotted, phillips head or pozidrive. With slotted countersunk screws the driver head should be slightly smaller than the slot, to avoid scraping against the countersunk seat. The driver tip should also be undamaged. A phillips head screwdriver with the tip ridges all chewed or a slotted one with the corners rounded is a stripped screw head waiting to happen. The easiest to damage are hex or allen screws, which can easily be rounded out, especially the tiny ones. Make sure you don't use an imperial driver on a metric hex or vice versa. If the allen key or hex driver tip is starting to round off it's time to grind a new tip or buy a new one if you don't have a grinder. Much easier than drilling out the screw, I can assure you. A lot of camera screws are held in place with loctite or varnish. The best technique to loosen them is acetone (nail polish remover) and then maybe a heat gun. I generally find heat a better option than freezing, especially steel screws in aluminium. The coefficient of expansion for aluminium is twice that of steel so the screw hole expands more than the screw. Also freezing with ice can only alter the screw temperature by probably 15 or 20 degrees Celsius at most, and it can be hard to only cool the screw head. If you cool the surrounding aluminium it will shrink more than the screw will. For corroded screws I give them a drop of a rust inhibitor/metal lubricant like CRC 2-26 and let them soak. If they still stick I'll use heat. The tips about using brief jolts and pressing down hard are spot on. If you do strip a screw it is probably best to take the camera to a professional. Drilling out small screws is very tricky. You need to drill precisely down the centre of the screw and then use an easy-out. The screw is almost always harder than the surrounding metal so a deviant drill easily veers off and destroys the threaded hole. And you also need to keep the swarf out of the mechanics. A word of advice about film cameras in general - if you see a screw that has been sealed with a drop of paint it is often a critical adjustment screw and should not be tampered with. I would also advise against undoing the set screws on lens barrels unless you know what you're doing - sometimes they too are holding in place a critical setting.

Recently here in Melbourne Canadian filmmaker Rob Spence premiered footage taken with a camera fitted inside his prosthetic eye! http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2010/08/25/2993426.htm Welcome to the future. At present it's only a medical type camera, like those used in colonoscopies, but wait til the nano Red comes along... Another camera in his other eye and you'd have a 3d system.. though he might have trouble wandering around the set. Not sure how his girlfriend feels about it.

You can download the quick guides for both ST and LT here: http://archiv.arri.de/entry/arricam.htm They have well diagrammed loading and threading instructions.

The grease is Isoflex LDS 18/05, still available from Arri (I just bought some). I believe it is indeed made by Klueber. The oil is Arri's heavy oil, which is Chronosynth 1/8. Golden yellow, heavier than PDB-38 which is used on some later cameras. Not sure who manufactures it, but Arri probably still supplies it. I'm sure if you called some rental houses that have been around for a while the service departments might have a little to spare if you offered them a beer in exchange.. (my preferred currency) ;)

Not quite what you're after, but you might find of interest http://evanerichards.blogspot.com/ This site has copious sequential screen shots from about 70 films (mainly of the last 20 years), including most of those on American Cinematographer's recently published list of 'the 50 best shot films of the last decade'. (A subjective notion at best but hey, everyone loves a list, right?)

Yes it definitely pays to have them checked out by a lens tech who is familiar with them. In the last 5 or so years anamorphic Lomos have surged in popularity and depending on where you source them sometimes they seem thrown together in haste. Sometimes the front and back halves have been interchanged without being properly recallibrated, or the rear anamorphic element is not centred or slightly off azimuth. I've spent many hours tweaking Lomos to get the best image possible. But once callibrated they should centre resolve 200 line pairs on projection even wide open, which is as fine as my projection chart can measure. Obviously things like contrast and chromatic aberration improve dramatically when stopped down a couple of stops. They do drop off a little in the corners (like any older anamorphic) but it should also be remembered that older lenses have a focus plane that is more concave than flat, so shooting a flat wall as you have done means the edges are going to be slightly out of focus, especially with the wider angles where the distance to centre is far less than the distance to edge, and when fully open where the depth of field is shallowest. FWIW I really like the anamorphic Lomo look, in the right hands they make stunning images. Australian cinematographer Tony Luu ACS shot this ad for the Sydney Dance Company using our Lomos and D21 (in MScope mode 4:2:2)

Well if you're talking advertising, I agree the quality of the sound/ visuals will tend to give a product a sheen of excellence it may not actually possess in real life. But I seriously doubt the viewers of a you tube video explaining how a magic trick is performed will be saying "jeez the highlights are blowing out" or "those skin tones look a little off"... I appreciate your viewpoint though, personally I always value quality. I'm sure most people here do. But the reality is that budgets will always limit the image quality available, and sometimes it matters more than other times. But that's also why a good DoP is so important, because good cinematography can often make up for less than perfect image capture technology.

A similar study from the University of Wagga Wagga showed that it doesn't matter how attractive your partner is as long as the sex is good and the lights are off... Actually I think Karel answered this one in a nutshell, it's a question of the context and whether visual quality matters. If you're making an instructional video, who cares. But if you're looking to do more than inform or distract, the visual and aural quality are vital. In that context, story is always important but the medium is pictures and sound, so you can't relegate those aspects to second order priorities. It's the difference between looking at art and watching the news.

Hi Tom, I'm not a cinematographer, but for what it's worth I'll throw my two cents in. It sounds like an intriguing idea. If I understand you correctly, you want to make the same short film over and over, but each time using a different cinematographic style. To be blunt, you're probably biting off more than you can chew. It's a bit like wanting to paint the same picture in the style of various masters - unless you're a very talented painter it will just look very amateurish, and the point you're trying to make will be lost. I think the various qualities of great cinematographers are much harder to emulate than just copying a set of stylistic cliches. But having said that, it would be great fun to see the same film shot in the styles of Yuuharu Atsuta (Tokyo Story) next to John Schwartzman (Pearl Harbour)... Best of luck.

Cooke provide front masks for the S4s for S16 use, to reduce the image circle.

Sounds very much like Ladyhawke, but that was 1985.

Hi Colton, We've had the same problem with some of our older SR2 mags. It seems the rubberised paint that Arri used on the inside of the doors and on the two inner platines starts to break down and get sticky after so many years. I think humidity changes don't help either. The paint was rubberised as a sound barrier. You're right that the film should stay clear of these surfaces normally, but if the film isn't loaded properly and the mag gets tilted the film can rub against that sticky stuff and possibly cause a jam. Or it can pick up residue and carry it through the gate. So you're also right to feel safer with the other mag. Most of the time it would be OK though. I haven't found a solution yet other than having them stripped and repainted, which is an expensive route. You could try leaving it in the sun with the doors open and see if it dries out a bit. The first thing I'd do is contact the seller and see if they'll replace the sticky mag with a good one. If anyone has had success with another solution I'd be interested to hear it myself. Someone recently told me they used a citrus-based cleaning agent (like you use to remove sticky labels) and it worked, but I haven't tried that yet, and would be surprised if it was a long term solution.

Getting no backlash in geared systems like a follow focus is pretty hard without introducing tight spots. You need to back the gear meshing off a little to allow free movement and so every coupling adds another bit of play. The belt in the swing arm flexes a little, and as the unit gets older and suffers the inevitable hits to the handwheel, the slightest damage to the driveshaft throws out the meshing. The Arri units are pretty durable though, with good internal adjustment available to get the backlash to a minimum. The only lens in our fleet of cine lenses that the FF-4 doesn't accommodate is the 35mm anamorphic Lomo, for which we have a modified FF-3. I don't know about photo lenses. I haven't got my hands on the O'Connor CFF-1, but it looks like a very usable design. I'm curious as to what their "minimal backlash mechanism" might be. The offset handwheel, while a good idea for functionality, adds another gear (or belt), and must make it more susceptible to damage from knocks. Arri fell into that trap with their 2-speed handwheel on the FF-3, which was a nice idea but made it more vulnerable to knocks and the extra gearing, if not carefully calibrated, added enough play to put a lot of focus pullers off. The dual 15mm/19mm option also sounds like a great idea but as Evan discovered you sometimes pay a price for flexibility. The true test of the O'Connor model will be to see how they hold up after a year of use in the field. Arri have had decades to fine tune their design.

I think maybe there's some confusion here between the term variable prime and the Zeiss/Arri range of lenses called Variable Primes. As I said earlier, the Zeiss lenses are probably more like short zooms, albeit with the ability to lock off various focal lengths, so yeah, they're heavy. But the term variable prime is also used to describe other lenses, like the projection lenses I mentioned. They use less elements because they don't need to be a zoom lens, so they are faster and have better optical properties. Here's the blurb from Schneider: Variable Prime Variable Prime lenses are cinema projection lenses with a variable focal length of 7%, designed to allow precise control of picture size while maintaining the highest image quality standards of our prime lenses. To continue to address the needs of today's multiplex designers, Schneider has developed the first series of Variable Prime projection lenses. The Variable Prime VP-CINELUX series consists of 13 lenses that have the unique property of adjustable focal length. With their 7% range of picture size adjustment, the image they project can be precisely sized to fit the screen. These lenses are correctly called Variable Prime lenses. They are not zoom lenses, so they don't have the performance compromises and light-loss associated with zooms. They are all fast F/2 lenses, projecting large quantities of light and producing bright, uniformly illuminated, high-resolution images even on the largest of screens. But I realize the original post was probably referring to the Zeiss lenses, rather than the generic term, so I shall apologise and bow out.

But I get all my information from Reduser, never let me down yet... :lol: Actually what I said was they don't necessarily keep focus through a change in focal length. I haven't had a chance to project Zeiss VPs to see how well they keep focus, I'm sure it would be pretty good, but they are, by definition, not designed for in-shot zooming. They are designed to be set to a focal length and then used as a prime. Or perhaps Zeiss/Arri are just using a marketing trick, and they're actually short zooms. At any rate the term variable prime is usually used to describe a lens with variable focal length range but less precision zoom mechanics and elements in order to have the image quality and speed of a prime. Otherwise why not call it a short zoom? Schneider for example make variable prime lenses for projection, allowing a small focal length change to adjust the projected picture image size. They are not designed to zoom, which primarily means they do not hold focus.

The term variable prime as I understand it also refers to the fact that it does not necessarily keep focus when you change the focal length. Freed of that rather stringent requirement, and with a generally shorter focal range, they can be made lighter and faster, as Rob said. Proper cinematography zoom lenses like the Angenieux 24-290 mentioned have a very tight tolerance on their defocusing curve, something like plus or minus 0.01 mm of equivalent back-focus. Practically speaking, that means they should resolve 200 line pairs/mm throughout their zoom range without needing to alter the focus ring.

Can't help you sourcing them sorry, but in answer to the second question, no. SR3 batteries are completely different - 24V in a larger case with a 3 pin socket. SR1 and SR2 batteries are the same, 12V with a coaxial socket. You might have trouble sourcing an old Arri SR2 charger, I tried for a film school and had no luck, ended up just putting Arri plugs on a modern charger. Be warned though, the plugs (from Arri) cost more than the new charger did... :blink: Also, you said you might be interested in an onboard adaptor - if you don't already have one you won't be able to use the onboard batteries. Apart from holding them in place it adapts the camera's 4 pin XLR power recepticle to the battery's coaxial socket. Sorry if you already knew this. Good luck in your search..

Yup, something like a Bolex RX 5 is tailor made for this kind of job, no batteries required! Up to 28 seconds of filming at 24fps before you have to rewind it. Tough enough to survive high altitudes, easy to load, and best of all you'll get beautiful 16mm images.

Sounds like a health and safety issue there... :D Getting somewhat off-topic, but in Australia our very own rancid little cookery show is so mind-numbingly popular that the one and only televised leader's debate we have had in the lead-up to next week's federal election was bumped out of its normal prime time spot because it clashed with the cooking show. Wouldn't want to deprive the people of their 'Survivor Chef' for something as disposable as democracy.. So effectively the people who produce this show wield more power than the government. No wonder it's a closed shop.

There are all sorts of combo ground glasses out there, and some that are custom marked. I've pencil marked 1.85 frame lines on a scope ground glass for clients. Most rental houses have the capability to do this, but it's a tedious process to do properly, and removing the lines later can damage the surface, so it's not something you'd do for a 2 day student shoot for example. Often small tick marks at the frame corners are sufficient.

I like it Adrian... you can be an Awesome, but only on the condition that henceforth we humble camera techs are known as Magnificent Bastards, as in "Yeah, the Awesome was fooling around and dropped the camera in the creek, but luckily our Magnificent Bastard had it dried out and running by next day." :D

Mitch's memory is better than mine, I had to go check the Ultras... :unsure: Both Ultra Primes and S4s will fit an SR3 if the viewfinder arm is horizontal and above, as Mitch said. For S16 use we fit front masks to the S4s to reduce light spill around the S16 aperture. For wider angles Cooke also produce a 6, 9.5 and 12mm specifically for S16, called SK4s, colour-matched to the S4s.

Just out of curiosity, would those clients be mainly shooting digital? Ultra Primes are very sharp and somewhat cool, which tends to highlight the deficiencies (or to be less judgmental, the non-filmlike look) of sensor capture. Often lesser quality glass actually looks better on digital cameras because it 'takes the edge off'. Not criticising the CP.2s at all, I don't think Zeiss could make a bad product if they tried. But there is a reason they are a third the price of Ultra Primes.

Our national broadcaster here in Australia showed Orson Welles' Touch of Evil last night (at 2 in the morning of course), and its justly famous opening sequence made me think of some other long, single take shots that I've enjoyed. The opening of Altman's The Player and of course the remarkable but flawed Russian Ark sprang to mind, among others. But my favourite still remains the final shot in Antonioni's The Passenger, where the camera slowly floats out through the bars of a hotel window to the courtyard, and pans back to the room it has just left. Easily done now with some CGI and stitching, but at the time Antonioni had the entire hotel cut in two, pulled apart to let the camera through, and then pushed back together for the pan around. Flawlessly executed, and a perfect match of camera move to story. Anyone else have a favourite long take they'd like to share?