Tim J Durham

I accept that, and if T-stops are more accurate, why doesn't Hasselblad (Zeiss) use them on stills camera lenses? Or Leica (Zeiss again) or Nikon or Canon? No one except high end product photographers measure depth of field using any sort of ?-stop algorithm (that I know of, and I know quite a few) so why not make ALL lenses with T-stops? I'm not trying to be thick, I had never heard of T-stops until I joined this forum, being a TV (and stills) guy and all.

I was taking umbrage with your assertion that still photographers were somehow unaware that the lens elements caused some degree of light loss before the film plane. None of this explains WHY film lenses use T stops and stills lenses use ? stops. So why do film cams use T-stops? I have no idea. You need to know how much light a cine lens absorbs as well, right?

What do you mean "overlook the actual loss of light in the lens"? Any still photographer that's been doing it for more than a month knows the relationship between his meter and camera. Plus, nearly ALL 35mm still cameras now meter exposure OFF OF THE FILM PLANE and have for many years. Light loss is compensated for at every step if you understand how your camera works.

Polaroid backs. I've never had a problem shooting to f-stops with my Hasselblad. As for 35mm, they've had TTL metering for 4 decades or more.

I'll name three that I thought were totally original. Being John Malkovich Days of Heaven Eraserhead and I would say "Orlando" but that is a book adaptation.

How the hell did you get interested in THIS website if you don't like to go to the movies? That's like saying you'd prefer to see Renoirs in a coffee table book rather than the Louvre.

Actually, digital super gain on a video cam (SDX900) is a pretty cool feature. I used it some on the documentary I'm now editing. It works just like a slow shutter on a film camera with the same sort of motion blurring. I wouldn't use it A LOT, but it's cool when used sparingly. I could definitely see times and circumstances where I'd use it more.

You're only gonna get that with a longish telephoto.

I believe that you have missed the sarcasm.

This might've been the sort of thing I found out BEFORE spending a bundle. You cannot use DVC-Pro50 tapes in an XL-1s.

The other thing about Nikon-E lenses that film people would want to know is- in addition to the bodies being largely plastic- the bearings were teflon instead of brass, this was the biggest problem with them. This is the reason you won't find many good ones on the used market. The teflon bearings would start to disintegrate after a couple years of heavy use so Nikon stopped making them. I'm suspect they might still use the teflon bearings in the cheapo auto-focus lenses these days.

I think I read that "2046" was being considered for this year, even though it was made in 2004. So if I've got that right, it would be the shot of the girl walking in high heels- the floor level shot from behind- as she (I think it was Zhang Ziyi) takes a few steps and all you can see are her shoes and about up to her knees. Also the way they framed her as she talked on the phone in that round phone nook in the lobby of the apartment house. Then a couple of the dusk/night shots from "Brokeback Mountain". The first one where Jack is stretched out and leaning back on his elbow with the sheep on the moonlit mountainside stretched out below, then later there is a shot of their tent against the moonlight spilling across the lake. Beautiful.

I really think you SHOULD try to attain a position somewhere as social critic. You remind me exactly of David Thewlis' character in the film "Naked". Having some fun with the Scottish guy who's lost his girl. Actually, what you REALLY should do is apply to an American paper as social critic. American trees bear a great deal more fruit for that sort of endeavor. You can tell people ANYTHING and they'll believe it here. "Mmmmm... extra-judicial incarceration and spyyiiiing on our own citizenssss.... thanks for making me feel safe, daddy." Could be good... 'course not too many people here READ the papers anymore.

Oh, sorry (and I think this is a perfectly appropriate forum for a discussion about "Syriana"). Andy, maybe you should have started it off with some comments of your own? Anyway, here's what I wrote the day after having seen it, keeping in mind that I was drawing a commparison to "The Constant Gardener which was a tengential topic of discussion at the time: Then some nimrod said this: to which I replied this: How's that? For the record, I love good political thrillers and I liked this bettter the second time I saw it due to the fact that the stuff I didn't catch the first time around now allowed later stuff to make more sense to me. As far as the cinematography goes, it was fine. It didn't wow me but wowing me with cinematography would have been inappropriate in this film. If you want to be wowed by cinematography, go see "Brokeback Mountain". Amazingly gorgeous. Some dusk/night shots that will stay with me for a long time.

What the h*** is your point, here?

It seems to me that this method would lead to a constant flow of time code breaks which NLEs do not like. Also, if it just dumps frames as it goes, it will also be dumping audio. Are you sure about this? I have done zero reading on this camera.

The Gates of Heaven Why would somebody ever think to make this film? Roger Ebert called it one of the 10 best films ever made but really, what did Morris see in this that no other would? To decide to document the Quixotic attempt by one Floyd McClure to buy (more on that later) a small piece of land only to provide man's best friend the respect of a decent final reward? A Pet Cemetery. The idea came to Floyd one summer day when, as a school kid, he was taken on a field trip to the local rendering plant. Having no idea what a rendering plant was and knowing only that it smelled really foul, he found himself "sitting on the floors of Hell right now." And so it began. Eternal enemies and a life's mission for Floyd. The film opens with a most typically strange Morris shot: a giant, spreading tree in the backyard of an unknown house with a man in a wheel chair seemingly being swallowed whole at the base of it. Then he cuts inside the house and we meet Floyd seated in a chair in the middle of his living room and he lays out his story and Morris let's him tell it straight. As he tells it, it quickly becomes apparent that no matter how great an idea this was or could have been, somehow the wheels of capitalism are not gonna be a mesh with Floyd. He's just too sweet and näive and you sense that he is somehow, you don't yet know how, to be crushed by them. Through shear determination, he gets his pet cemetery off the ground (so to speak) and we discover what Floyd knew all along: People want this and they didn't even know they wanted it until Floyd built it. This fact does not surprise Floyd. Morris interviews the financial backers and clients and even the owner of the rendering plant (the competition) and each is stuck in the same 1970's time warp from which you can't- having looked at them- then imagine any one of them as people of this modern age. But they DO love their pets, even the rendering plant guy, and we want and expect him to be a villain but he just won't have it. His nature was just too easy and friendly and he never belittled Floyd. He wanted people to know that rendering was a needed service, not the atrocity of Floyd's imagination. Anyway, as expected, it all starts to come apart for Floyd as the owner of the land (apparently Floyd never did nail down the contract) gets some big ideas about importing dead animals from South America and stacking numerous animals into the same graves and Floyd's dream unravels and listening to him and his backers and clients tell it is almost Shakespearean. The middle third of the film deals with having to dig up all those buried pets and relocate them to another pet cemetery in the Napa Valley of all places- Bubbling Well. Watching this take place across the street is one Florence Rasmussen and with the camera trained on her she launches into what may be the funniest, most tragic rant I've ever seen. She's a woman who would never have dreamed that someone from "The Movies" could be interested in "settin' a spell" with her but she seizes the screen and uses it to excoriate her shiftless and unseen son (among other things). Her story has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the film and keeping her in the picture would not have dawned on another film-maker but Morris' including her - as the key turning point- is what lifts this story out of the realm of mere oddity and into a place that no one else would have thought to go. And that's just the first half. It was Morris' first film and what a first impression for a great career.

So I guess maybe it ISN'T time to go 16mm?

It's funny you should mention that because while I was watching the film, I was thinking about the landscapes they shot and thought about Eberts comments about your film where he said: That's pretty heady praise and this story really could have benefitted from wide, indifferent skies. What they got as far as exteriors was pretty run of the mill, I think, and a lost opportunity. I appreciated that they resisted the urge to constantly cut away from quiet moments but I had little sense of the lonely landscape of rural Kansas which I think is a central motif to the book as well as Capotes fish-out-of-water discovery of that part of the country and its' people. When they went back and forth between the crowded parties and small apartments of NY to what should have been a much more expansive and alien (for Capote) setting of Kansas they felt oddly similar in terms of setting. I don't know if you can divulge that sort of info, but what reason did he give for NOT giving you the gig? Or were you already commited to something else?

Hi Jim, Were you capturing (trying to capture) with something OTHER than your XL-2? I have one and they are notorious for being shipped out with mis-alligned heads. What that means in the real world is that the tapes may not play back correctly on anytthing other than the camera, which was the case with MY XL-2. Try using the same XL-2 for capture. I suspect this might solve your problem.

10 years ago, here in Washington, DC there were probably 20 more production houses than there are today. I'm not sure what Optex did, but Final Cut Pro killed ALOT of production companies.

This is a good thing. Somewhere, European men got the idea that it's OK for them to wear a thong to the beach. I'd much rather be skiing with a Swede. B) As for Alaska, isn't it massively buggy up there in the summer? Don't get me wrong, I'd love to go but I think too many people in Hollywood saw Al Pacino in "Insomnia" and think that'll happen to them. Like me. I've been to Sweden (Åkersberga- anybody?) in the summer and it was tough to get to sleep for a few days.

Dan, Are those set-screws that hold the gear to the focus ring? http://dandiaconu.com/gallery/UNIVERSAL-SL...-FOCUS/IMGA1582 Don't those f*** up the lens barrel?

http://imdb.com/title/tt0049730/locations It wasn't Vasquez Rocks... although that's very nice.

Here is a list of the films that had portions shot in Monument Valley, Utah: Locations-R-Us Everything you are looking for (well, a lot of it) can be found on www.imdb.com