Satsuki Murashige

Cool, thanks Jon. Also, just wanted to revise: The actual error message is: "Auto Off, Unloading Lock." Just in case anyone's seen it before.

Thanks Keith, that was a fun read. Work is a bit slow at the moment, eh? ;) Oh great and wise moderator, please sticky this thread for posterity.

Why do you want to use Plus Green on the backlights when you're shooting blue screen? Is it just for the look? Also, how big is the area you need to light? How wide you are shooting? I see DPs often use large soft frontal keys for this type of look, as close to the lens axis as possible, maybe with an additional eyelight. Perhaps something like an octodome or Breise light would work. The fresnels as backlights may be too spotty if the talent is moving, maybe you can rig a grid of 4 bank kinos instead. You can also lay down large bounce boards on the ground to fill in the lower half of the body.

Yes, I've used Fog in a Can. It works okay for small enclosed spaces. You do have to use a lot of it to get the same effect as fogger or hazer and it dissipates pretty quickly. It sure is cheap compared to renting a real fogger.

I've done this sort of effect with the camera on the end of a stinger jib arm, with two grips shaking the hell out of it. It works very well when timed to the actors' movements. You can also augment the movement with a lighting change, maybe a flicker effect, to help sell it. Also maybe a puff of compressed air from below so the actors' hair blows upward. There's all kinds of things you can do.

Thanks for responding Jon. No, the camera won't let us do anything like that - a few seconds after the camera turns on, the blue screen of death (henceforth BSD) pops up with the flashing error message for about 20-30 seconds, and then the camera shuts down on its own. I've tried beating the BSD by pressing play immediately, but the camera is still "booting up" and won't respond. So the camera can't play back, can't record, can't shuttle forward or reverse, and can't stay on for more than a few seconds. I was hoping there was a secret mechanical latch inside the tape mechanism that would allow us to disengage the tape heads and pop the tape out. I'll forward this to Ben and see if he has any better luck though. Thanks dude!

I would prefer less noise and less resolution over more noise and more resolution. That's why I always try to shoot RC36 and will switch from 4K 16:9 to 2:1 when swapping from drive to cards. I avoid RC28 as much as possible. I'm usually downscaling to 1080P anyway, so loosing that extra little bit of resolution hardly makes any difference. But I've worked for DPs who insist RC28 is perfectly fine and that they can't see the difference. +1 on the Element Technica arm, which is great. As for EVF freakout, I hope you didn't accidentally bump the user buttons on the side of the EVF, which is ridiculously easy to do. I've seen HD-SDI freakout, with the image turning green/yellow on playback. I switched the output to 720P and the problem went away. As for the hard drive, I would suspect a battery issue before the drive if the camera is powering itself off. I've seen that happen with two cameras on a regular basis and both packages were privately owned which means they may not have the newest hardware mods. One definitely had separate battery issues as well. Also check that you're not nudging the drive or power cable in your handheld configuration. It happens a lot.

Hey guys, So I shot a short on a friend's DVX about a week ago, and at the end of the last day the tape got stuck in the camera. The camera owner and I have been doing everything we can think of to get it out since, but now he's talking about sending it out to have it fixed. So before he drops a load of money to fix it, I'd like some other opinions. What happened: I pushed the blue tape eject button on the top of the camera. The camera was on (not recording, just on). The outer tape door opened, and I could see that the tape heads were still spinning. WTF, I know. They then stopped spinning and a blue screen popped up on the LCD with an error message saying, "Auto turn off, tape error" or something very similar. The camera then shuts off on it's own after several seconds. I've tried power cycling the camera, removing the battery and power cycling, opening the tape door with the battery off, pressing the record button, but I just get the same blue screen of death when the camera is turned on. My friend the camera owner tried to take apart the tape transport but couldn't get the tape out. He reports that the tape is not broken or mangled in any way. There's 10 minutes of footage on this tape and we did not roll a safety at the end. The tape was a Panasonic brand (as was the previous tape we used). Does anyone have any ideas? Has this happened to anyone before?

http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?sh...hl=sam+chandima http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?sh...hl=sam+chandima

On the 8GB cards, you can only shoot 4K 2:1 RC36 (as of Build 17). I'm pretty sure the 16GB cards can do at least 4K HD RC36, not sure about 4K 16:9. RC28 definitely is noisier than RC36, but it's not too bad. I would rather sacrifice a little resolution and shoot 2:1 in RC36 than shoot 16:9 in RC28 though.

I agree with DJ, you're just spreading your fingerprint oils over the glass by not using lens cleaner. Panchro and Ultra Clarity are very good lens fluids that won't harm the coatings. Oh, BTW Chris, my old Panchro that I complained about many months ago works fine now. I think now it was the tissues I was using, before I switched to Kimwipes.

I might be mistaken, but I seem to recall reading that the Master Primes are very easy to convert from imperial to metric and vice versa. All the rental house has to do is flip the front housing which has metric scales engraved on the opposite side. It would be worth calling them and asking if this is possible since rescaling the lenses yourself would be a pain. Separate issue, but the Master Primes may not actually fit on an SR. I've never tried to do it but it would be a very tight fit because of how close the SR viewfinder is to the lens mount.

What is your experience with HD cameras? Have you only used prosumer cameras like the small sensor HVX200, EX1, etc.? Have you used low-end 2/3" chip cameras like the HPX500? Mid and hi-end 2/3" cameras like the F900, Varicam, F23, etc.? 35mm sensor-size digital cinema cameras like Red, F35, Genesis? There's a whole range of HD cameras out there, many of which are very capable of producing clean images. In general, the larger the sensor, the better the signal to noise ratio. So larger chips will usually produce less noise than smaller chips under equal lighting conditions. Higher end cameras have better sensors and better processing in-camera to maximize the information coming off the sensor, and they record to less compressed codecs, resulting in a cleaner image. Beyond that, it's up to the DP to light well. Several problems often come up with beginning shooters: one, not lighting to a sufficient light level to expose properly; two, using a low contrast gamma setting like the HVX's "Cine D" without color correcting properly in post. One is often compounded by the other. The less light the sensor gets, the more noise it produces instead of signal. That's just the nature of video sensors. So you want to be conservative with exposure - light brighter and with lower contrast than you want it to look. This ensures that you are capturing as much signal as possible and therefore as little noise as possible. Darken and increase contrast in the color correction process at the end of post production. With low-con gamma settings, the image you are looking at has raised midtones, raised shadows, and lowered highlights to show you the maximum highlight and shadow information off the sensor. However, the shadow info is not all usable - it becomes increasingly noisy as the tones get darker. The idea is to leave the decision of how much shadow detail is usable and how much should be pushed down into pure black to post production and not to production.

Could be the battery contacts. There were several threads either here or at Reduser.net a while back about this. A lot of people were having issues early on with the Red batteries not powering the camera, so one guy opened one up and noticed that the plastic cradle for the metal contacts on the inside had bent. So although everything looked fine from the outside, the inside contacts had lost connection with the outside contacts. I think what he did to solve this was to bend the plastic back into place and then shave off some plastic around the outside battery contacts for a better connection. Could be worth looking into - I had some trouble a few weeks back with some privately owned batteries that wouldn't charge which I suspect may have the same problem, so there are still batteries out there that haven't been fixed.

Hey, don't forget about reciprocity failure! Useful information 19.576% of the time, +/- 15%. :rolleyes:

Is your 558 a Cine or non-Cine? The Cine version can read footcandles. Or just calculate in your head: as Tom says, f/2.8 @ 100ASA = 100fc. That's usually what I end up doing, as I'm too cheap to buy a footcandle meter (I have an L-508, non Cine). But if you're set on getting one, I'd just get a used Spectra Cine meter (the current version, IV). Then you've got a great backup meter too. Digital meters are so much more sensitive than their analog counterparts that I don't see the point in getting an analog. Well, those little aperture slides in the old Spectra are fun I guess. *facepalm*

Hey guys, no need to make this personal! Different strokes for different folks, that's all this is. Thanks David, but all I can say for myself is that I try, I don't always succeed. I don't want to create shock waves or anything, but I actually agree more with Tom in this case - what really matters is what the dailies look like. If it's soft there, then by all means fire your focus puller. But I personally feel it's unfair for a DP to fire the AC because he peeked at the lens and saw it was off during a take. I do think it's perfectly legitimate to cover yourself with depth of field for expediency in certain cases - it's a tool and it has its place, but it shouldn't be abused or used a crutch for laziness or incompetence. The lens scales are not always correct either. Especially on lenses with backfocus (or on the Red, where the backfocus is on the camera mount), I don't always trust the focus scales and often trust the monitor more. I'm always paranoid that the back focus is shifting and I double check it as often as I can. For example, I just got off a three day industrial shoot with an HPX500/6-24mm Digizoom and 1.4x extender. Totally bare bones package, no follow focus, no matte box, etc. The DP comes from an ENG background and wanted responsibility for pulling her own focus a lot of the time. We were moving very fast, no rehearsals, no retakes, grabbing shots. We also had a steadicam flyer rig that we used from time to time. No wireless FF. The DP was operating, but she didn't have much steadicam experience, so I was called on to balance the rig and make it work as best as possible. At times I was asked to pull from the barrel and I did, even though we both knew it was a compromise. A lot of times, we went hyperfocal because that was the better compromise. And sometimes, the DP would unscrew the backfocus ring on the fly and throw it way out to get macro effects (at least she always told me when she was gonna do it)! But I don't take any of this personally - I just see it as the nature of that particular job. So much of what we're talking about has to do with the expectations of a particular job and the working style of the particular DP. When I work with someone like David R., I try to work in his style. If it makes him more comfortable to see that the lens is always "on", then I'll do my best to live up to that. I'll let him know beforehand that I may need more time, an extra rehearsal, or another take from time to time in order to achieve that. And if I get another job like the one I just got off of, then I'm not going to slow down the whole shoot and wreck their schedule in order to accommodate my need to always be "on" when it doesn't affect the end product at all. Ultimately, what really matters is that the footage looks sharp and the clients (including the DP) are happy. That's all I really care about.

Hi Paul, Check these pages out: http://www.digitalcinemasociety.org/TechTi...101+Lesson+Plan http://www.digitalcinemasociety.org/TechTi...amera+Checklist They are a little over the top for a low-budget shoot with a prosumer fixed lens HD camera, but very thorough and helpful.

Hi Jean, Have you seen these articles yet? http://prolost.com/blog/2009/1/20/5d-crushing-news.html http://prolost.com/blog/2009/1/22/quicktim...-5d-movies.html Sounds like a workaround using Apple Color and Quicktime 7.6 instead of using Cineform.

Thanks Peter and Hunter for the reporting. Hunter, your footage is poignant and hilarious and beautifully shot!

Are you doing silver retention to the negative or the print? Silver retention to the negative will add density (making the image brighter) so you should be underexposing a little to compensate. Doing it to the print will make the final image darker so you should overexpose slightly to compensate. David Mullen is the resident expert here on silver retention processes so I would do a topic search using his name - you'll probably find at least 20 posts that will give you more specific information on what to do.

Good to hear Mike. Is there a data manager on set who is checking focus for you in Redcine as well as looking for clip errors?

Most Arri viewfinders have a little switch that slides a metal iris over the glass. Don't know about Panavision, I don't have much experience with their cameras. It's more of a problem that you would think. It really does need to be closed unless you're in a dark studio. Outdoors I often put a piece of 2" paper tape over the chamois in addition to closing the iris if the operator is not using the finder for the shot. It makes the DP feel better too, since he can see from a distance that there is no light getting in there. Someone told me that the little Panavision hook on the back of their cameras is meant for the operator's glasses. That's pretty sweet.

Since it's mostly the lens coatings that suppress veiling and flare, I don't think there's much you can do besides having the coatings on every element stripped and recoated with a modern formula. That would require total disassembly and would be really expensive. A mattebox with hard mattes would help keep stray light off the edges of the frame and reduce veiling glare until you had a point source in the frame. Those are really old lenses, and lens coating design has come a long way since. Anything more modern would give you less glare.

Hi Sreekumar, Try contacting Jonathan Bowerbank, Jaime Metzger, Alex Worster, Ben Casias, or Ryan Thomas. They're all members on this site, you can find their info by searching through the "forum members" link at the top of the page. (Apologies if I forgot anyone on the forum, I just can't remember who's on and who's not).