Karl Eklund

If contrast and fall off are the same in your mind might just be because they are usually interchangeable, however I think the better way to "see it in your mind is": Contrast = The difference between A and B. Fall off = "The rate of the contrast difference", i.e. is it going from full strength to half in 1 feet or 5 feet, 20 feet, etc... In practical terms it means that the sun has 0 fall off, but lots of contrast (which is also why it is such a hard task to emulate it properly with artificial lights). Basically you have to decide with lights if you gonna control the "contrast" or the "fall off", it is hard to get both right if the scene/objects being lit are very big/complex. The example you give is a good one, but it is also basically saying that contrast and fall off are two separate things which they are (which is why it isn't good to "combine" the two terms).

Top 5 is kinda hard, depends on who made the best movies, or who seems the best to work with, etc... But my 5 are, and in no order: Chris Doyle - Hero and In the Mood for Love, he is just very poetic and colorful. Roger Deakins - Always good, and always serving the story. Conrad Hall - Road to Perdition is "the" masterclass. Haskel Wexler - Mostly because of his big part of Days of Heaven (he isn't nearly as credited for that as he should be i.e. no oscar), and the fact I got to work with him for a while and he truly was brilliant. Gregg Toland - I admit I only know I have seen Citizen Kane of his work, but simply put, Citizen Kane is about as good as it gets, and if he manage to bring out that with a first time director then he surely knew how to work with people.

I have had the same problem on win 7, 8 and 10. I don't remember if I tried it on a new installation with no QT or Vlc. The thing is that windows use all its resources for it, like a RAM-leak, writing huge pagefiles (which is on fast SSD seperate from OS). I had hoped that win 10 couldn't be so overpowered by RAM-leak.

I have "huge" problems with large prores files in windows. I edit highlights for golf tournaments now and then and when working with prores files that are larger, i.e. 80-200 GB each, then windows more or less goes crazy while trying to cache the files for preview (so I have to turn off in Windows not to preview files I click). The files themselves plays back fine nowdays in premiere pro or VLC, its just that when they are caching (no idea why windows gets so fooled by the file) it drains 100% of the RAM (I got 32GB ram...). Basically a 100GB file can lock up my computer for 20-30 min... Can't move mouse or anything really... So I would advice caution if working with large files, smaller files aren't an issue, like 2-10 GB... Also, I myself haven't been able to export out reliable prores files from windows, I can make some that shows all the same encoding stats as a prores made in an AJA Ki Pro, but still won't play back in an AJA, and that have issues with broadcasting houses. So just don't bother with prores anymore, unless I'm given it by a client.

Blade Runner is one of my top 5 movies. Blade Runner's visual is basically film noir-neon, I hope they capture that style again. I don't think Dennis and Roger can "beat" Blade Runner, but I do think they can make a good and even a great movie (I think the script is the bigger hassle, because Dennis and Roger are both gifted. I would like the script to be only "spiritually linked" to the first, I don't want it to be a follow up or prequel, I want it to let the original remain ambiguous). Roger strikes me as one of those cinematographers that truly works for the director (and story), he can create beautiful visuals, but only does so if it enhance the story. His work on The Assassination of Jesse James showed that he can create "cool visual effects" with light streaks thru smoke (the train robbery), because I truly love the xenon lights in blade runner... He has worked with noir style-ish, not full noir, maybe "noir light" (somewhat of an oxymoron) in some Cohen movies. He hasn't done a single movie that is just like Blade Runner (but then again who has?), however he has done most of it if not all the important visual elements of that movie in his other movies. So, if they want to recreate the style/atmosphere of the first movie, he should be able to reach it, and if they want to go down another road he is pretty good to have as a driver.

I got to meet and work with him on a smaller project around 2008-2009 and I have yet to meet someone who is so sharp and quick to see what is right/wrong with a scene/cut. He was then in his mid 80's but had no problem running around shooting and giving great input. He had a really funny humor too, which is also evident in the interviews with him. He also had the nice quality to give advice and be respectful to a young guy like me, I've worked with others that have been in the business for a long time (no way near as good) they have had a demeanor of "know-it-all". Haskell when I worked with him was still interested in learning new things, he was using miniDV cameras (this after shooting on film for 50 years), he seemed to have a sense of keep learning and keep improving even though really he was a legendary master of cinematography. It is very inspiring to work with people like him.

This is why if I work in PS or After Effects in RGB-mode use transfer/blending modes, so that I can change the contrast without affecting the colors, much like doing a luma-adjustment, or using HSL instead of RGB. Does it really turn to a reddish in if the shade starts off greenish or blueish? I don't have PS installed on this comp right now, so I can't really check. Anyways, I no longer use curves/levels/contrast if I need to keep the hues correct.

The usage of "Linear" varies and means different things really when talking about Log vs Linear and when talking about rec.709 linear. Basically all digital sensors are linear by default, which subsequently means that highlights gets way more nuances/shades than black levels if stored in a linear file. It is because in digital, twice the amount of light on the sensor creates twice the electrical charge, So when storing data in a 256 shades of grey format (8bit) you will "waste" a lot of the shades on the highlights if the mapping is normal. Let us say you got a camera that can record 9 stops of dynamic range, then basically you will have the shadows of 3 stops be fighting around 30 of those 256 shades of grey, The midtones of 4 stops get 90 shades, and the bright last 3 stops will take the remaining 126 shades. So you see that the highlights take 3-4 times as many "shades" than the shadows. Now, my numbers aren't exact, but they sort of say what the problem is, i.e. there isn't a fair distribution of shades between the stops. So, what Log does (or should do) is making sure that every stop gets the same amount of "shades". So lets say we have 9 stops, and we need to squeeze it into those 256 shades, then each stop gets about 28 shades each (compared to linear in which the shadows 3 stops combined only had 30 shades). So that is "Linear vs Log". Then you have linear in other terms which basically just means it doesn't have a gamma applied to it, but as Dan pointed out, rec.709 has a gamma. What it can mean is that there can maybe be a "counter-gamma" to it (don't know a proper term). Like, now you can shoot in "flat mode" which looks like Log, but might not be log, and that might be stored in a codec that uses rec.709. LUTs I would say are good for shooting without baking in the look, it allows you to ballpark much better how the final image will look once graded. Most common LUT I would while shooting in Log or RAW is the rec.709 LUT. Log is very lowcontrast desaturated look, which is crap if you want to show the director/producer what it will look like.

I would recommend 2K instead of UHD. Last time I scanned S16 it was to FullHD (2011), which was more than enough resolution given the lenses used maxed out at around 1200-1600 pixels in sharpness (superspeeds used around T1.3-5.6). It was shot on Vision 3, T200 and D250 so with better lenses UHD might have been worth it, but then it cost like 3-4 times more to do 4K, and we would struggle in post even with 2K which was twice the cost from FullHD and only 10% more resolution. I took the DPXs into after effects and made ProRes files for editing, in FullHD. But you can just as well use premiere nowdays. Are you scanning and storing them in Log or Linear? I did Log and then used the cineon-effect in After Effects (premiere has it too) and once finished editing just re-linked and graded in AE. You are looking at around 1TB per hour of footage. When I scanned last time I was moving between MACs and PCs, and USB3 wasn't really out yet, so I had to stick to USB2, which was very slow and the bottleneck for production. Just transferring the scanned footage took a 24 hours (and then it isn't backed up)... With USB3, that should be around 3-4 times faster, since my disks stopped around 20MB/sec, and nowdays they go about 60-80MB/sec on USB3 or Thunderbolt. So expect 1-3 days of just transfer/backups including rendering out proxies.

The simplest and cheapest one I know is aluminum foil, crinkle it more for more scatter. I used it on set once together with some gels to create a "water-reflection effect." You can if you want cut holes thru it, put different gels on different parts to get some interesting patterns/blending of light...

It's been on my top 10 list since I first saw it. I just love the visuals that Michael Mann/Dante Spinotti had at the time, from Manhunter up to Insider. One of my favorite pieces is the shot of DeNiro in his apartment looking out at the ocean. All blue and black. The last shot is also worthy of closing the whole movie. All and all "epic crime drama" without screaming "Hey, look how epicly I framed this and wohooo".

I've shot with both, and I used 250D for sunset and sunrise shots, wide open at f1.3 to get the right sky color and ratio between street lights, I needed the extra speed it had over 200T (especially if I had to put 85 of it). But for regular outdoors during the day I would use 200T with 85. If the budget would have allowed me I would even have gotten 50D so I wouldn't have had to stop down with NDs on 200T to shoot outdoors, but for the shoot where I mixed the two I had to settle for 200T because it is really good for going back and forth between daylight and tungsten. Heck, you can even shot it without 85 outdoors and still get great results. I believe that's what Lubezki did on Tree of Life, because he didn't like how filters "homogenizes" shots.

I saw it in cinema a month ago or so, I could tell quickly it was shot on film, because of the textures and all. I was sitting to far from the screen to see if it was super 16 or 35, I have poor eyesight :) pretty sure it was a digital projection. Super 16 resolves fine around 2K (and that is down-sampled from higher quality so it isn't debayered or anything like that at 2K), and what is more important than pixels this, pixels that is the contrast and shallow depth of field, that also gives an apparent resolution that is higher. Film also have a higher resolution when the images are moving thanks to each frame being different, something that the new Aaton Digital Penelope tries to mimic. Lore is very high contrast, blue (we see more detail in blue compared to red), and use lots of shallow depth of field shots. One reason 35mm film might look bad too is that sometimes they tend to mimic super 16mm, like Argo, and Killing Them Softly, in the latter they push the film stock so the grain becomes more predominant. In Argo they did something like blowing the 35mm up and down down res again, I don't remember exactly but they did blow something up 200%, but I don't think it was Super 16mm.

Ironic you mention The Dark Knight since a person died on that shoot while operating a camera. I would think it is common sense for a person making a DIY-thing that it will probably not be as good as manufactured by a name brand, but there are so many things in this business and others as well where equipment are used for things they were not intended too. Do we need to buy professional clothing pins now too, for cooler lights? Or does things have to be an "apple-certified box" for you to dare stand on it? You worked with or under Roger Deakins, since you been on Shawshank and 1984, if I remember correctly he has some "home made lights" (modified by his gripper), do you dare work with him? I mean, Jesus, the dude can't afford real lights? I've seen plenty of shitty things done with professional gear, no sandbags on c-stands so they are leaning more than the Tower of Pisa. But I rather work with crappy equipment and use it accordingly, than working with great gear and idiots. I think it is very reasonable to be cautious of homemade stuff, but don't fool yourself or anyone else that DYI is guaranteed to be crap, and manufactured is guaranteed to be fail safe. By the way, I have plenty of tools and machines to build all kinds of things, like c-stands, but if I need some, I will buy, even if it is expensive to me.

That is probably smoke. The key is just to spread it out in the room, and let it settle a bit.

This forum requires a full name. Get a used canon 550D, or whatever Rebel-name it got. I don't understand why you would buy a camera because you start film school? Doesn't the film school have equipment you can borrow?`Because you are better off saving 1-2 grand for making good shortfilms than buying a camera and not having money to pay for anything. Canon 600D is good, Panasonic GH2 is good too, but requires a hack to be better than the 600D, and the thing is since you are just starting out, you will probably not know how to utilize all the functions/extra quality of a hacked GH2...

Yeah you are right. I never checked it out but I worked with one of the guys who worked on the first one and he said first was 35mm and rest was Red One, so I never bothered to verify.

The Swedish version was shot on film, and the two movies after it was shot on Red One (since it is a triology), and then the American is shot on Epic. I don't remember too much about the movie's cinematography, but I remember watching it thinking it was OK, looking like film should look. What kind of stuff did you watch the movie on? There are so many TV's that are setup in ways that make stuff looks like "TV", by interpolating frames and stuff. One of my friends TV have that effect, and from time to time it just looks awful, it makes cinematic stuff look like cheap TV, at least with the motion. Might also be some bad conversion from 25 fps to 24 fps, or 29.97... But also bear in mind that the Swedish one had a budget of 7 million USD, and the American one I think was around 80 million USD. There is an article in American Cinematographer about the Swedish one, from 2010, I think the March or April issue.

I would say it depends on the bags, there are some that folds well over a C-stand and can't get accidentally pushed off it. There are other ones that really don't fold at all and then sort of just "balances" on the leg, in that case I would think it is better for it to be touching the ground a bit so I doesn't get kicked so it swings out of position. But ideally, I have the long/tall leg weighted down and in the opposite direction to what the force is/are, gravity, wind, etc...

I just shot one of my grad films on s16, another one I shot primarily on HDW-750P (HDCAM) and one scene on F3. The s16, was shot on Kodak Vision 3, 200T and 250D. When I did a lens and telecine test, I got it to be around 1300 x 800 "pixels" resolution, that was scanned at 1920x1080 DPX log, granted I had old superspeeds that would range around 1000-1300 x 600-800 pixels, depending on the aperture and specific lens. For example the zoom lens that was available from school, fully open and at full telephoto would have a resolving power of 600x400 pixels. So in my case I am pretty sure that it was the lenses that was the limit for resolution. The HDCAM stuff was all about as sharp as the format allowed it to be, so the lenses weren't lowering the resolution. That said. The film stuff is just so great, and I really love shooting film, highlights aren't an issue, they just roll off. Overexposing one or two stops didn't hurt that much. Underexposing is a bit trickier, I felt that I would lose usable shadows when it was 3 stops under. The 750P is fairly similar that shadows gets to noisy to grade well when they are 2-3 stops under. The 750P don't handle highlights that well either (compared to film), the F3 is very nice with shadows and highlights. However, I think both the 750P and F3 behaves very well with clipping highlights compared to other digital cameras like AF-100 and DSLRs, but they are obviously not the same price range as well. But the bottom line is that one of the films fitted for digital camera, the other for film. In general I would say that film is great for outside shoots, where there are usually large dynamic range. Digital is great for indoors with low light and smaller dynamic range.

Yeah, the gaffers I've meet in Sweden have also all been "electricians" (Chief Lighting Electrician/Gaffer and Best Boy), however I worked as a "electrician or assistant electrician" and I have no "electrician" qualifications (and thus wouldn't be able to climb the ranks). Basically I hauled lights, and would strike em, gel em, and whatnot. Then it seems somewhat that moving up the ranks in the "gaffing-department" requires lots of qualifications, where as a camera assistant doesn't need to worry about being certified to perform tasks. The problem I see in camera assistants that wants to become DoP's is that they get to handle lenses, reload magazines, and pull focus, maybe camera operate, but it ends there. I know some that are really good at their job, they get to work on A level films, but they won't get to do any DoP work, not even second unit. I am not trying to belittle any job or any person, but it doesn't seem that weird to me, because most camera assistant stuff seems to just be technical mundane things that doesn't prove your ability as a "cinematographer". There doesn't seem to be much "creative" stuff going on there. Which is the same early on as an electrician, all you do is haul gear. But at the end as a gaffer, you more or less decide or try different approaches to lighting a scene. For me its been when I've done low level gaffing, I talk with the DoP what lights he wants, and I make suggestions for this and that. But when doing camera assistant stuff, I haven't said anything in "try that lens, or we should shoot this on a more open stop, etc". Granted I haven't been on a big budget project as a camera assistant, but I have as an electrician, and what I saw was just a lack of ability for camera assistants to prove them self "worthy" to become DoP's but potential for gaffers to show creative ideas to solve problems. As I said before, this doesn't mean I think camera assistants are bad or anything. If I am wrong and off, please let me know :)

I'm working on a essay in which I basically have to answer what the difference is in, Sweden, USA (Hollywood preffered) and Australia for a person to become a DoP. There are two parts to the essay or my question really. Which one is better for becoming a DoP, gaffing or assistant camera. I sort of wanna find out what is the "traditional route" in each location and if for example DoP's look down on a person for taking gaffing over assistant camera or vice versa. Personally, I prefer doing gaffing over assistant camera, and I feel that gaffing is helping me more to grow as an DoP than assistant camera, but thats me. I worked a little bit as a gaffer in Sweden and Australia, but very limited experience in the US. Thank you!

I tend to start with the master shot, so I know what lights sources I need and how to justify the lights. On my budget, it is also good to know at a master shot level what lights are strong enough to light the scene, would be crap to start with a CU that then won't match at all with a master. Getting master first then helps for CU's because then I know if there is a "natural kicker", etc. on them. The last short film I worked on I had some scenes in which I had to work against clouds and sunshine coming back and forth, in one scene the master was cloudy, so then in the other shots I would frame objects/people so that I could block the sun out. The shots where blocking wasn't feesible I would add ND-filters to get a shallow depth of field, and make the background less noticble, also then I would frame things and cheat characters to hide the sun. For example we were shooting out thru a shop's window, across the street. The ground was way to bright to match, but the other side of the street had parts that was in the shade. So I could frame and cheat so that really all the objects in the frame are all in the shade... The thing is that there are lots of tricks to work around problems, but the thing is that you might lose certain things doing so. For, example, lets say everything is framed in a certain way, and then the only way to work around a sunshine/cloudy problem is to use a different style of framing might be more of a problem for the audience than having bad lighting continuity. Just as going between deep focus wideangles to shallow telephotos might look weird. To me it is just about trying to find the lesser of two evils. Personally I don't really notices in film shadows moving around, but I do dislike films that constantly go from a high contrast shot in the master and then in the CU everything is super soft and "beautiful".

I am hijacking this thread a little to ask: Who decides the shooting ratio and using what? By that I mean, I am working on a short, and our budget allows us only to have 9-1, which is fine. But now that I will order stock, I need to decide how much for each scene. What is the norm, to use a timed script, or shotlist/setups? For example there are some scenes I know will need more coverage. Establishing shots of a house and the like, will probably only need 2-1 ratio, if even that. So, who comes up with the figures (DoP?, Director?, First AD?, Producer?, etc), and using what system?

Flares are, but not CCD blooms, and blooms I guess can be affected by the iris blades as well. Yeah, I have only seen it debated about long exposure photography and not motion photography. Here they talk about blooming. http://www.digital-photo-secrets.com/tip/1175/how-to-avoid-blooming/ Anyways, I need to get a hold of a still camera, and test to see if shutter changes anything in bloom/lens flares, and obviously keep the f-stop the same. Because I realize that usually it is the f-stop that is closed down and the shutter is lowered to compensate, and people might then give the "shutter credit for the bloom/flares", when it is the lens that should get credit. But, when I can grab a hold of one, i will try to test and see.