Freya Black

It might be best if he learned how to use his digital camera first! I mean white balance! duh! ;) Freya

My chance to be horribly pedantic. Those aren't the Dolby tracks. :) I had to look up what they were as I totally forgot but the green tracks are SDDS: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Dynamic_Digital_Sound The Dolby digital audio is the digital stuff that is very cleverly put out of the way between the sprocket holes! The DTS timecode is the morse like dashes right next to the optical analogue soundtrack on the right. Freya

Roger Deakins? This Roger Deakins?... ;)

I also really like Super8. I like the fact it is somewhat different. I really like different looks in films and being able to create a different feel through different formats and cameras, as well as filmstock and lenses etc. I'd actually rather shoot Tri-X in Super8 than 16mm to really make it more grainy and punk looking. I feel that shooting in Super8 is embracing the strength of that stock in a way....

I can't remember the name of the transfer house. It was a low budget transfer house in London. It's not great which I'm sure is what you are implying but they normally get some quite good results considering. Personally I wouldn't want to shoot colour neg and then cheap out on the transfer but I might feel different about Tri-X! ;) The big problem with this footage however is the first bit of your post. It really is quite badly shot and thrown together. The edit isn't especially cut to the soundtrack unless it's a sync problem on my netbook and the framing is generally poor. The should have been more daring and gone wide more too. Anyway I think it's okay but a bit of a missed opportunity what with the robot stuff. It could have been something more for sure. Freya

I took a peek on e-bay and you are right the 10mm isn't that rare at all, although these days it would certainly appear to be quite expensive and back in the day I couldn't even afford a Bolex let alone the lenses but it sounds like there was a great scene in New Zealand with people lending each other lenses and everything! It's nice to hear another perspective on things. My point though was more that while there were some much wider focal lengths available for the Bolex they were rare on other 16mm cameras like the filmo. The side finder on the filmo used to max out at 16mm in fact. I wasn't assuming the particulars to be global so much but I'm in Europe like the orignal poster.

On the Bolex, people used to get very excited about an expensive wide angle lens that had a 10mm focal length but again it was rare and expensive. I'm guessing it was hard to make the wider focal lengths. You are right thought that 25mm is n't that wide at all but a typical lens set for shooting 35mm movies would start at 18mm and not there are often people shooting wider than that with full frame digital cameras! I think the meteor zoom is kind of cool. There are often compromises made with zoom lenses anyway. 17-69mm seems like a good range. It might be nice to go a little wider but I suspect that would mean a much more complicated and expensive optical design with poorer results. I'm sure you will be able to do some really cool things with your setup there. Freya

Yeah no worries, just post once and if after a day or so people are ignoring you then give it a bump and say "hey what's up?" or something like that. Sometimes it takes a day or so for people to pick up on a thread anyway. Freya

Most of the three lens turret cameras tended to top out at 25mm to be honest. If you were lucky you might get 20mm lens. Of the Cooke C-Mounts, the widest I ever came across was 16mm and it was very, very rare. It's just that fashion has meant that people now shoot more often with wider focal lengths than before and 25mm wasn't that wide back then either but it was uncommon to find even 16mm focal length lenses on a lot of 16mm turret cameras such as the filmo. You can find 20mm lenses in M42 mount but you are right they are expensive and not getting any cheaper to boot. On the upside M42 lenses are some of the cheapest around so if you wanted to experiment with another kind of lens perhaps for a specific effect, then it would be a good way to go. You are right though, there's not as much wrong with the meteor zoom as people might have you believe. ;) Freya

I thought you had a K3? Is yours bayonet rather than M42 mount? Because there are so many lenses available in M42 mount!!! :) Freya

Where we differ slightly is that I like really nasty grainy film. However... and this is the bit I think you are missing about what I am saying... I would prefer a film with much more subtle grain that doesn't draw attention to itself for most things. The trouble I have is I don't feel Double-X is that film for me. I really liked Plus-X but it is no more and hasn't been around for some time. I'm just not drawn to Double-X that much although I have seen people do really interesting things with it from time to time. So it's less that I have a great love for Tri-X but more that I don't have that much love for Double-X. In a way I don't like double-x that much because it is too grainy and I'm not keen on the grain pattern. I think Tri-X is probably suited towards certain things. It is such a specific look that it lends itself towards certain kinds of projects. The things I like about it are that it is cheap and it has a kind of punky atmosphere to it. It's gritty and nasty and that is what it is about. It isn't the kind of stock that you would shoot anything on but that is the thing about having different film stocks... it gives you choices you can make about the way the film might look. I know there has been a kind of meme around in more recent years of shooting everything on a single camera or even sticking with a single film stock. For instance to shoot everything on a red camera and to try and grade it to be whatever you want. However even cameras such as RED MX series cameas and Alexa cameras have something of a look to them. One of the things that really impressed me that someone did a few years ago that really worked well was they made a feature film with a sort of urban dance and music story as the subject. They shot it on RED MX and it looked perfect because so many music videos of the time were being shot on RED MX too. These days people are very focused on lenses to give a look to a movie but I personally like that combination of the look from the camera or filmstock with the lenses and the lighting etc all together. Like the ingredients of a cake or something. I want to be careful about how much more I say on this subject because I once was nearly banned from this forum for comparing cameras to chocolate (everybody has different tastes and their favourite chocolate and it's all good) and I'm not looking to annoy people. In any case I wouldn't want to have to shoot everything on Tri-X but I think it really works for some things, especially if you embrace the grain instead of trying to fight it. Freya

I actually only have my little netbook here and I'm getting more codec noise than grain when I play back your video. Christian, I think you mistunderstood what I was saying. My point was that I think Tri-X is a VERY grainy film. It's famous for that, and if that is all I have to shoot (because there is no Plus-X anymore) then I would rather shoot it on Super8 where it will be even more grainy and nasty and to just embrace that look. I actually also have found double-x to be a bit too grainy for my liking too. I'm just not that keen on the grain pattern in that stock but I might be open to swerve. I think it looks better in 35mm too. Freya

I really used to like Plus-X a lot! Now that is gone it's hard for me. I like Tri-x in Super8 because it is so grainy, I just feel you should embrace the grain and go all the way. So that would be my fave right now. However it would need the right transfer to get it right like with all these things. Freya

I'm not a huge fan of double-x. It was always my least favourite B&W stock... ...but I like the halation! Freya

It might be because it was a recan and something damanged the film before you got to shoot it. Freya

You are right there is no rejet on the black and white stocks from Kodak. I'm surprised you had trouble removing the remjet during machine processing as all colour neg has the remjet. The machines are supposed to remove the remjet in the first stage before it goes into the first bath. Maybe this was some kind of budget setup someone made rather than a full scale lab? Freya

The copyright date might be for the artwork of the packaging? Certainly the film itself is not copyright in anyway... that would be more the realm of patents and the like. If the film is old then it will depend how it was stored. If it has been kept stored correctly in very low temperatures... like some kind of freezer or something then it can keep for a long time. Black and white film tends to last longer than colour film too. Freya

Well... I like the Alexa.... I guess if you end up having to use the Alexa then you could use the Blackmagic as a sort of B cam for as much stuff as possible to try and minimise the days of expensive Alexa rental. Freya

It's a good point although "Warner Brothers" is a division of Time Warner and "Warner" on it's own is something else in the UK... or used to be at least so yeah. They aren't really seperate companies as such either as one is a part of the other but I'm sure you know that and I get your point and think it's worth keeping in mind for sure. Freya

I should try and explain a bit more. It's not a problem with the FFD as the adaptor is made for the right FFD and the lens is made for the right FFD for M42 but in order to achieve this the adaptor is recessed into the mount a little! Like a tiny saucepan or something. If you file of the edge of the base, might be best to use a needle file if you are worried about getting too close to the thread, then it can fit into the saucepan so to speak but the base of the lens is normally too wide to fit in there, once it is small enough however which it almost is to start with but not quite... then it's just a matter of screwing the lens into the adaptor. The RAF adaptor is at the correct FFD and the M42 mount should be correct for M42 and it all comes together. Hope that is a bit easier. The helios is the easiest to get in there because it is the narrowest at its base but other M42 lenses would probably need much more heavier machining if they could be made to work at all. Freya

I didn't say anything about the thread. The thread is fine. It's the bottom of the lens... in particular around the edges of the base because the lens needs to be thin enough to fit into the adaptor because the adptor for M42 lenses with the correct FFD has to be recessed. This means that if the lens is too wide in the base it is hard to get it into the adaptor because the adaptor is like a little saucepan or something and so it only has a certain amount of width. The big problem with this adaptor is that there are hardly any lenses that can work with it unless you flip it over and use it in macro mode but the helios lens CAN be made to work. That's mostly about it though so it's not so much the cost of the lense but what is basically a one time adaptor. You can probably pick up a lens fairly easily that has already been adapted in this way anyway. I hope that makes it a bit easier to understand. It's hard to explain unless you have done it but it's more that the edge of the base blocks it from going into the adaptor properly unless you shave a bit off somehow. Freya

Sorry I probably wrote that badly. I just meant machine off a little from the bottom of the Helios lens. Probably you could even file it off. The lenses aren't that expensive so it isn't that big of a sacrifice in a way but I think they also aren't that exciting lenses for a lot of people either! ;) Freya

Thanks for the update on that Tyler. I'm interested to hear more if you hear more! ;) Aren't they still called time warner: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Warner What am I missing? Freya

So I wrote an article about the use of 70mm formats on Dunkirk which you can read here: https://www.redsharknews.com/production/item/4729-shooting-christopher-nolan-s-dunkirk-in-65mm Freya

It's a really good point that you and David make and TV's are likely to get even bigger I suspect. I also like the way that everyone neatly stepped over the really awful and horrible thing I said or implied at the start of that post... but lets not go there! ;) Freya