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Stephen Baldassarre

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Everything posted by Stephen Baldassarre

  1. Thanks for the pointers guys. Question; my camera was modded for S16. Does that make it impossible for me to have an optical sound track on a contact print? I would expect them to have gates to prevent exposure into the soundtrack region but I've only shot silent movies on reversal and talkies on negative with DIs.
  2. It's been a long time since I've been involved in an all photo-chemical project. I may be doing a short film this summer and wanted to know if there were any decent labs that can still do 16mm contact prints with audio. To give you an idea how long its been, I was using Alpha Cine most recently and Forde before that. A digital "work print" might be nice but not a must. If I can do everything with the same lab, so much the better. I should probably mention my short will be no longer than 10 minutes, most likely 5. Thanks!
  3. Bear in mind that most theaters were forced to get rid of their film projectors in order to get DCP systems. So 70mm prints will have to be a road show at best, though I'm not sure what the point would be since they'd most likely use a digital intermediary so they can screw with the color for no reason. 4K projection is a compromise at best. Yeah, it's 4x the pixels but also 4x the compression, so the advantage isn't as great as one might hope. Still, I'm always glad to hear about productions being done on film. Alexas are great cameras but nothing beats the real thing IMO.
  4. It seems the buzz is mostly in the consumer market. While some movies are being produced in 4K and UHD (they are two different things; 4K is a theatrical format, UHD is a consumer format), pretty much nothing makes it all the way to the end user that way. One reason as mentioned is a lack of screens that can do it, but it also takes 4x as much compression to stay within the 250mbps limit of DCP. Then there's outlets like Netflix that accept UHD but the compression is so ridiculous at any res... That said, virtually all professional video production is HD and almost all broadcast is 720 or 480, so you are not at all out of date. UHD as a consumer format is mostly hype, particularly considering most viewers don't even notice the difference between 720 and 1080 due to the limitations of the human eye. Absolutely not! I like the IDEA of UHD and 4K, with some caveats. 35mm film is great with 4K because the lenses and medium can take advantage of it, but more important than resolution is scanners in 2K mode tend to have more aliasing. So, it's better to scan in 4K even if you plan to down-res to 2K for release. Also, in theory, single-chip cameras potentially benefit from UHD/4K because the Bayer patterns really restrict color information, so there is potential benefit to recording at high res and downsizing for editing. Many cameras (especially consumer cameras and DSLRs, including Blackmagic) either don't have OLPFs or they are optimized for still images, making aliasing a bigger problem in HD mode than with 3-chip cameras. However, all 4K/UHD cameras have CMOS sensors and thus most (depending on how they resize) have worse rolling shutter in 4K/UHD modes than HD modes. I absolutely cannot stand rolling shutter, to the point where I consider 95% of CMOS cameras to be useless as a serious production tool. Anything I can do to decrease it is far more important than a relatively meaningless number. Finally, more pixels doesn't mean a thing if the optics, which are the biggest determining factor of resolution, can't resolve the extra information. Most cameras I've tested resolve around 500-900 lines ($300-$25,000 range respectively) regardless of how many pixels are being recorded. A GoPro in any mode mode, including UHD, is always lower-res than a decent HD camera because the lens is terrible. I have a pretty powerful desktop computer that will run circles around just about any laptop and I don't even try to deal with UHD. I down-size it before I start editing. I suppose I COULD use proxies and do the final render in UHD, but what's the point when nobody would ever see greater clarity? I'm assuming nobody is sitting 20CM away from their screen of course.
  5. Nice camera! That is less than 20 Lux assuming you shot at 24fps! In the days before everybody shot on DSLRs with built-in noise reduction, lighting was automatically considered part of the job. There is no substitute for light and one of the last weddings I shot on film, I scouted the location ahead of time and found it to be only 30 Lux. I brought in 2K Fresnels to bring the stage up to 300 Lux and shot 200 ISO. I would never do a serious shoot without at least an open-face kit and a clip-on lamp. I actually just got a battery-powered LED array that clips onto a cold shoe, has adjustable color temp and is dimmable. It's not a perfect solution but there's no substitute for light, not in the lab or in editing. On that note, I consider 600-1200 Lux to be ideal for most shoots. Pushing a negative increases highlight contrast but adds cost because they can't develop as much film with the same amount of time and chemistry. You can do that for free in the scan because it's just a matter of adjusting a digital gain. Getting more technical, it takes a certain number of photons to get film to register an image. Pushing or increasing gain won't put photons onto the film, so it doesn't really compensate for underexposure. In the days before "digital everything", you would flash the film (re-expose it to a small amount of light) to bring out more shadow detail, often in conjunction with push-processing. This still isn't the same as more light, but it's better than pushing alone. Kodak speaks against pushing so much because they spent decades creating and optimizing stocks/developers to look as natural as possible. Changing the optimal chemistry because you didn't bring any lights makes for sub-par film, which indirectly makes them look bad. I have never "pulled", but the idea behind it is you effectively get lower contrast in the highlights for the final print than you would simply shooting a slower stock. However, you'd still get finer grain shooting a 200 ISO film than treating 500 ISO film like 200 and pulling it. So the reality is that they simply wanted less highlight contrast, similar to what they'd naturally get in Vision2 if it still existed. Super-8 is incredibly grainy even shooting 200T at its native exposure index, so I never for an instant thought of accepting less than 200 Lux. Even when I shot 16mm, I never used an EI of more than 200 ISO. You can get away with over-rating 35mm a lot more easily because it has more than 4x the real estate of 16mm and thus, grain appears to be 1/4 the size. Super-8 is 1/10th the area of 35mm so the grain appears 10x larger. My favorite thing to do for 16mm and S8 was shoot on 100T as if it was 50T and have it "printed down". The net result was less contrast in the highlights but it also preserved a tad more shadow detail without bringing out more grain. Film is also more forgiving of over-exposure than under-exposure, because there's about two stops more head-room than foot-room. My number one piece of advice, if it isn't obvious, is to always have lighting equipment and not try to fix stuff in post. That applies for video as well. Most decent video/DSLR cameras are natively around 200-400 ISO. In order to get higher ISOs, they increase the gain and use noise reduction to compensate. That causes loss of detail, particularly in the shadows. A lot of cameras have an option to turn off noise reduction, but that's simply post-processing. There's still noise reduction built into the sensor itself on modern cameras that can't be bypassed, so it's always a good idea to find out what the native ISO is and shoot at that ISO as much as possible. I hope that helps.
  6. Hello, I'm thinking about doing a short film (and I mean FILM) on the upcoming solar eclipse and of course, it won't be complete without the eclipse itself. The last time I tried to shoot an eclipse was on video and it was horrible. The contrast is unbelievable, going from pure white and blooming all over the place to almost pitch black, even stacks of ND filters don't work. I know there's metal coated filters for photographing the sun but that would be too dark during the transit. So, how is it done? I assume I'll have to adjust the iris during filming of course, probably as a time-lapse. I'll likely be shooting Kodak 7203, probably with an 85mm prime if that helps. Thanks!
  7. DeSisti 310 Tungsten primarily, but I also have a couple of old Colortrans that take the same size. I realize the Chimera speed rings are high quality machined aluminum and that's partially why they cost so much. I was just wondering if there were any less robust substitutes out there. I don't plan on handling them a lot or taking them on the road, just setting up a small studio.
  8. I got a Chimera soft box for free but it's missing the ring to actually put it on the fixture. Are there any replacements that will drop into the barn door brackets for a 6" Fresnel that DON'T cost a ton? All I've found are at least $130. Thank you.
  9. I also suggest over-cranking to give the truck the appearance of more mass when it moves. I don't know what the scale is but the ideal formula is F√R where F= the base frame rate and R = model scale, like 20/1. So if you have a 20th scale model and plan for 24fps, that would be 24√20 or 107fps. Of course, if people are going to be in the same shot, you just have to deal with the truck's motion feeling "small".
  10. I have a K3 because it's the only actual film camera I can afford aside from Super-8 (which doesn't hold up well in an HD world) and all the current DSLR and prosumer video cameras are too annoying for my taste. I absolutely can't stand the rolling shutter, alias/moire, horrendous CODECs, too many marketing pixels etc. not to mention poor form factor. I have a Canon G20 for home movies because it was the consumer-grade camera that irritates me the least and I got it super cheap. I was actually shooting home movies on the K3 for a while but it is too expensive for that purpose and of course, no sound.
  11. That was my favorite Super-8 camera! It is fairly easy to convert to SD-8 with minimal vignetting, the variable shutter it great and it's probably one of the sharper fixed-lens S8 cams. I sort of regret selling mine.
  12. It's pretty obvious to me. Bricks, fabric, fences, even non-patterned stuff like concrete. That alone makes the BMPCC useless IMO. I've seen a couple with after-market OLPF and they fare much better, less IR pollution too. As far as I can tell, no changes to shutter or whatever reduces the rolling shutter to something tolerable. You're right though, all mirrorless/DSLRs are terrible! That's one of many reasons I still think the best cameras for video are video cameras. They generally have better OLPFs, less rolling shutter, better form factor. It's certainly the least compression at the lowest price, but there's too many things that annoy me about BM cameras in general. I got my start with 3-CCD cameras and film though, so perhaps I've been spoiled. Problems that didn't exist in pro/semi-pro cameras 20 years ago are commonplace now and most people don't seem to care.
  13. The actual contrast ratio (different from dynamic range) is determined by a lot of factors from which projectors (or film) is being used to the type of screen to ambient light in the theater. It's completely possible to shoot a movie with a 12-stop range and see that full range on the big screen, but a spot meter will likely show a 200:1 ratio. The mid-tones can still be pretty proportionate to what was on-scene, it's just that the contrast of the shadows has been reduced by light pollution, maybe the highlights have been compressed by the LCD etc. Needless to say, input never equals output in terms of dynamic range or color regardless of what system you use.
  14. I know this is an older post but I often work around a 4:1 shooting ratio, on film or video. I haven't done a feature-length narrative in a long time but what we did was rehearse in advance to work out the kinks and desired performance, do a master take of the whole scene and get coverage in short bits. Sometimes we wouldn't even have a master take, just a few lines from this angle, a few from that angle etc. I find the editing process dreadfully boring any way, so the movie is more or less done in-cam; it's just a matter of sticking the good takes where they belong. I'm also curious of the outcome of the original poster's shoot. PS I was in Australia (mostly Melbourne) recently and they have a thriving underground film community. I'm glad there's some infrastructure to support film shooters.
  15. Currently, I own an S16 modded Zenit K3, Canon G20 and an old Pentax 35mm still cam. I really don't need to own an excellent video camera because the studio for whom I work has some excellent 3-CCD cameras and I hire a camera op with his own gear when doing freelance stuff. I scaled way back too. I used to have a Canon: ZR65mc, GL1, 814E and 1014E as well as a Yashica Super-60E. All the Super-8 cameras were modded for SD-8. In our "HD" world, I felt these cameras didn't serve much purpose any more so I parted with them a few years ago.
  16. Please don't buy a BMPCC. I know a lot of people think they are good cameras but the reality is that they are simply cheap mirrorless cameras with a better CODEC. They suffer horrible alias/moire unless you buy an OLPF for it, intolerable rolling shutter, are incredibly hard to handle unless you buy a rigging system and it's very hard to get natural color out of them unless you love spending hours grading your video to reference photos taken by a reference still cam. My advice; keep and use the C100 and tack on an external recorder. Money is better spent on glass and lighting equipment any way.
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