Mitch Gross

Abel Cine Tech has a videotap for the LTR54 available for rent. It is a replacement for the viewfinder and handle assembly that includes an incorporated videotap.

Abel Cine Tech no longer rents the SI-2K camera. Nothing against them, we simply no longer carry that model in our inventory.

You can get the free software from Vision Research or whatever camera house you rented the Phantom from. The software will alow you to convert the files so that they can be read. Best way for your test is to convert them to DPX stacks and then import into After Effects to turn into Quicktimes.

The steel mill scenes were shot by Haskell Wexler. Memory tells me that they were shot in Pittsburgh, but it's been a very long time so I could be mistaken.

I think you may find this helpful. http://blog.abelcine.com/2010/08/18/35mm-digital-sensor-comparison-chart/ Hal, I think you have a couple of things wrong in your numbers. The RED One Mysterium-X sensor is the same size as the original Mysterium sensor, or at least the active area of it is the same when it is mounted in that camera. It is on the yet-to-be-released S-35 EPIC that is will be a larger 5K sensor.

Big question is how fast do you plan to roll? Nothing eats up the T-stops faster than rolling crazy fast frame rates. You will need a LOT of light if you plan on shooting 1000fps (that's 5.25 stops loss compared to 24fps).

The house lights will almost definitely NOT work. They will flicker like mad and color shift as they do. With the size of an arena, the lights will be on different legs, which means phases, which means the color shifting flicker will roll in waves across the different areas. Trust me, been there / done that. Won't work. HMI lighting that uses high frequency electronic ballasts will not "flicker," but they can be prone to another artifact. This would be Arc Wander, where the hot spot of the electrical arc that travels in the plasmatic glass within the glass envelope moves back and forth between the two cathodes. The effect is more of a shimmer than a flicker. If there is one big light it is quite obvious, but if many lights are mixed together or if the light is punched through diffusion then Arc Wander often cannot be seen. Mind you I know what to look for so it's obvious to me. It doesn't really matter what size HMI you use in this regard. Don't know what kind of frame rate you're going for, but you will definitely need a lot of light. Most people treat the Phantom HD Gold around an ISO 250 or so. Using a 360 degree shutter gains you a stop, but remember that every time you double the frame rate you half your exposure time. Let me know if I can offer any additional assistance. As the North American distributor for Phantom products, it is our business to support them.

Tim is correct. Daylight spool on feed side only.

It uses line skipping, pixel binning and downsampling to derive the 1920x1080. If it really took just the center of the image then it would not have the shallow depth of field look so many people like from these cameras.

Jonah, give me a call on Monday at Abel. 212-462-0100

Abel rents this camera and we can ship anywhere.

That's the Phantom HD Gold, and I believe it came from Abel Cine for the shoot.

Yes, they will cover. I can't recall the exact size, but I know that the sensor is somewhere between 16mm and S-16, and slightly larger than the RED @ 2K.

Not at all -- I work for Abel and it is our company that published the chart.

My old baby -- come home to papa! I certainly would put in a claim, but good luck on actually collecting much. There's usually a deductible and I'd hope that anything you'd need would fall below that cost (often as high as $2500). It can be very hard to get productions to pay out directly. I've asked someone in our Services Dept. to reach out to you directly.

I'm the one who made that chart. Modern cine lenses are designed to cover the 28.5mm circle of Super-35 3-perf. Many cover a good bit more than this, up into the mid-thirties. The image circle required for the Canon 5D in HD mode is 41.3mm, which is much larger and most cine lenses do not cover this.

I would not try pushing the camera beyond 54fpw. It was never made for this and the movement could have steadiness issues. Also, running a 30 year-old camera beyond its original parameters can induce excessive wear that can mean louder operation at normal speeds as well as an increased chance of failure of mechanical and electronic components that may no longer be replaceable.

Nathan, I'm not sure where you are located, but if in the US then you could send the camera to our office in either NY or LA and we could get it off without causing damage. We could also check to make sure the camera's mount had not been torqued out of place and could perform other service on the camera. Feel free to contact me directly. Abel Cine Tech is the dealer and service center for Aaton in the US.

The ARRI and OConnor follow focuses will absolutely work with the stills lenses.

Well I guess if someone is a donkey you can try training him all you want but in the end he's still a jackass. :)

FF4 is designed for cine use. FF5 has a different gearing ratio and a longer swing arm, which is more appropriate for stills lenses and ENG video lenses that do not rotate their barrel as far to go from close focus to infinity. OConnor CFF-1 is also designed primarily for cine-style lenses, and allows clearance for the fattest lenses possible. My company sells this stuff so I don't want to be in the position of pushing one over the other. Just starting what their design concepts are.

Lots of today’s cameras feature a “35mm-sized sensor,” but what does this really mean? They all vary slightly in size, and some are shaped differently so that, when used for HD shooting, the usable size is dramatically reduced. Our clients frequently ask how to compare these different cameras and how sensor size affects field of view and lens coverage. A picture is worth 1,000 words, so we decided to produce a graphical chart to better compare them. Tons of info on this chart and it is not a better/worse comparison and doesn't compare quality, recording media, resolution, etc. It is simply about sensor size and relative field of view. We made it as a poster and it's available as a free download from Abel in .pdf form. For complete information on the chart and a link to the download, please click on the link below. http://blog.abelcine.com/2010/08/18/35mm-digital-sensor-comparison-chart/ You can also feel free to repost this wherever you like; all we ask is for proper credit for the work it took to create it.

The sensor size doesn't matter. It would be the photosites on that sensor, how they are constructed, CMOS v. CCD, microlensing, read/write cycling, driver orientation, fill factor, and a host of other variables in sensor design that can directly or indirectly effect Dynamic Range capabilities. The size of the sensor means nothing in this equation, as a large sensor can be made up of many small photosites while a small sensor could have fewer but larger photosites. And then it still might be the smaller photosite size that has better DR, as there are still many other factors.

I could comment but as the dealer I think my views would appear biased. They are very nice lenses and I'd like to hear others who have tested them comment. So far there are a few demo sets in the US and abroad. Anyone who wishes to test them can contact me directly.

These lenses behave extremely well wide open. Here's a link to a short movie we produced for Zeiss shooting with the Compact Primes. The two-part interview with DP John Inwood is full of great info on the lenses. http://blog.abelcine.com/2010/04/12/testing-zeiss-compact-primes-on-the-bicycle/