Guillaume Cottin

Hello, I will be shooting a night scene and I will have a Honda EU 65 IS rented. The rental house said it is crystal sync but I am not quite so sure. Anyway even if it's possible to power square wave HMI's on that genny, unfortunately I will be using old magnetic ballasts and I wonder if that may cause a problem since I think I've heard they have less tolerance regarding the quality of the current. Thank you!

Me too. But I would be scared to drop it on the ground or if lose it, because then you lose all your tools. It's always good to have a bacup meter, especially when shooting film. The Sekonic L-398 or the Gossen meters are great for this because they don't need batteries to work, and also being analog, they are not fooled by strobes. There is also an older version of the L-558 that has a zoom spotmeter, which is pretty cool, I don't remember the name of the model though but it is gray instead of black. And Spectra meters are great, too. Cheers

I don't know about the price difference, check out the dopshop or B&H to find out. The Bolex has a 165° shutter and a reflex prism that eats 1/3 stop (0.3 EI), it is in this type of situation that the Cine version is useful, no calculation, just enter the data et voilà. I am saying that the filter compensation is useless the way it is implemented in the meter. In fact the meter has a couple of filter compensations in its memory but not enough to be very useful, like 4 or 5, and they are Wratten filters that you do not use when working in digital. Instead of using the dedicated feature I use ISO2 for filter compensation. Those meters really have a lot of functions but it's often easier and faster to not use them. If you feel geeky you can create a profile for your camera or for film stock, or download it on the internet.

Hello, Well, this is an easy one. Everything is top-lighted. The sources are most likely fluorescent tubes rigged all over the ceiling, but you can also use spacelights or shooting something through a big diffusion frame. This gives you a broad, shadowless top lighting. This lighting tends to give a very low-contrast result. The goal is to try to recover some contrast. A good trick is to kill the lights that do not play too much in the frame, or the light in the background. Some negative fill might also be used for the same purpose. Best G.C.

Hi Lorenzo, Basically the regular L-758 does not have as many different frames per second, nor shutter angle or filter compensation (the latter being really useless). Apart from those small differences, which are really more about software than hardware, the two lightmeters are the same. I think if your budget is tight you can go for the other version and rely on external calculation for specific cases, but that's just my opinion, and I have the Cine version but that's just because I got a discount. Bye

Hello everybody, I am a young film school student who just graduated from film school in France. I am currently working in New York and France. depending on the size of the film, I work as a cinematographer, gaffer or AC. I just updated my website and reel, so if you have 2 minutes and 10 seconds to loose right now, you can go to: www.guillaumecottin.com I will be pleased to hear opinions and/or critique from my fellows. Thank you! Guillaume

Well, my opinion is that all depends on what you are using you camera for. Many prosumers or videographers will be very happy with 4:2:0 on a AF100. 4:2:2 is enough for most chroma-key scenes and also suitable for mid-range short film production and grading and can be obtained using an external recorder. For higher-end users, given that the F3 is the same price as a Red One, the choice is obvious ! The F3 is by far overpriced. Bor for those who want to use the F3 : if they really want to shoot 4:4:4 then my guess is they have the budget for an external recorder. The F3 outputs uncompressed 4:4:4 via dual HD-SDI. Now about AVCHD, I agree that Sony probably put this AVCHD codec for marketing reasons. But there are different implementations and versions of this codec. Just as MPEG-2 can be crappy or high-quality. The result can be surprising. DSLR's AVCHD codec is terrible, but everybody "loves the image of the 5D", right ?? Of course I want the perfect camera for under $4000. But let's face it, we live in wonderful times and the engineers and marketers finally understood what we want and are trying to provide it. The market for this NXCAM 35 is all the prosumers who want to keep the 35mm sensor size but can not afford an F3 and probably will not afford a Scarlett S35 either. Then for them, this will be the cheapest digital 35mm prosumer camera (as opposed to HDSLR). This codec will probably also allow to record on SD cards and not on SxS. E-Mount is "Bleeech!", but the competitor's Micro 4/3 is not better. At least both of them have short flange distance and I bet a lot of ugly third-party adapters will be available soon.

Yeah, either Red or Canon. My guess.

Hello, Today in New York during a SMPTE conference, a new camcorder in the NXCAM series was announced. His codename : "NXCAM 35". Il will be more low-cost than the PMW-F3 since it is announced under $6000. Release is scheduled for the first semester of 2011. Il will be a real prosumer model, between the $2000-consumer VEG-NX10 and the $10000-"professional" PMW-F3. The spokesperson said it was only a prototype and the design can still change. We hope so ! This camera will have a E-mount (like the NEX cameras) and you will be able to use Sony Alpha still lenses with an adapter that will allow the autofocus. - CMOS sensor, Super 35mm format - E-Mount - Records AVCHD up to 1080/p60 - Price : around 6000 $ The press release : Sony Global - News Releases - Sony to expand 35mm large format sensor camcorder lineup "NXCAM" HD camcorder under Bye