Bill Stone

Great info, thanks to all.

Hi, I'm looking to use - and convince the director to go along with it - a set of 2 x anamorphic on a production company's Panasonic S1H mirrorless camera(s) for a production down the road. I like Panasonic colour, and this camera can output 12 bit color to an external recorder. I'm a bit confused with understanding the anamorphic workflow, however. First, I should say I don't have access to the camera right now for tests. The S1H shoots anamorphic 3536 x 2656 onto its Super35 sensor, so 1.33. My thinking is that, de-squeezed, I end up with a 7072 x 2656 frame @ 2.66 x 1. Considering the anamorphic is 2.4 x, I'm guessing I'm cropping the image to ~ 6348 x 2656 (losing 362 pixels per side) to give a final 2.39 x 1 ratio. I suppose then we down-scale the 6348 x 2656 into a 4K frame ? I haven't been able to get a clear answer on this. Thanks, BS

Wow ! Thank you to all for this great thread. Super helpful. And Alissa, excellent test. Interesting to see the different responses of each lens. I've been curious about the Smoque and Double Fog (in a different context than the Tiffen test we've all seen), and great to see you checked them out for us. Again - I so much appreciate reading all these viewpoints & expertise. Thank you!

Hello David, Scrolling through these threads about diffusion and was very interested to see here how you increase the strength of your diffusion for CUs. I haven't used diffusion a great deal, and for my upcoming project I'm in the process of doing a bunch of testing. I've settled on using older Cooke Varotal zooms (20-100 & 18-90 Technovision or 18-100), but there will also be a Ruby 14-24mm for (very) wide shots & hand held, and most likely a couple of older Nikon primes for other hand-held. I'm working to figure out how much diffusion I will need on which lenses to keep things consistent. (Regarding your above comment, I am assuming one would, generally, be using a longer lens for close-ups.) My initial thinking was that a longer lens needs a stronger diffusion compared to the wide shot, as the longer lens will 'see past' anything intruding, but very close to, the lens surface vs. a wide, where the diffusion effect - or anything in front of the lens - will be more pronounced. Hence, the elements inherent in diffusion filters would be less pronounced with a longer lens, and a stronger diffusion would be necessary. Yet I came across the idea today that, in fact, the longer lens will magnify the diffusion effect inherent in diffusion filters, so one should be using a stronger diffusion for the wides and a lighter one for longer lens for consistency. Perhaps your reasoning for using a heavier diffusion for CUs is for a different reason altogether. However, I'd love to clear this up if you can offer your insight. Thank you!

Hello Jaron, I'm looking to shoot with both the original Cooke 20-100mm T3.1 and a Cooke 18-90 T2.3 (waiting to see if it's available) for a 2-camera shoot in Hong Kong. It's the lack of extreme sharpness in the 20-100mm that I like, and hoping the 18-90 will match. Your comments are helpful. Regarding what you wrote: "It is not remarkably sharp, it has a LOT of vignette, and I think its sweet spot is around 4-5.6 in terms of overall beauty. But I would never let mine go." Regarding the vignetting - are we talking unusable at 18mm...19mm wide open? Anything you can fill me in on, or images even, would be appreciated. Thanks, Bill

This is great. Thank you David & Ben for taking the time to flesh this out, especially with the links & examples. Extremely valuable!

Thank you David. I didn’t think there was a "trick" ! My question is really about getting a better handle on eye lights in trickier situations with glasses - and, using eye lights in a darker / moodier scenes, where the eye light would not come from the key. This two shots illustrate what I"m talking about - you can see the pinprick size eyesight in Cheney's right eye behind glasses. With Ferrell, the ambient light on his face is slight, and again the perfect little dots appearing - without adding any fill. My confusion about this is: for Cheney, would this be residual from the general lighting on his face, or would this be a specific eye-light addition? And for Ferrell, what kind (ie, size, placement) here so we get the effect without pushing too much fill into his face? A scrimmed-down 300w 10 feet away ? A tiny, dimmable LED on camera? [Understood the is all relative to the illumination of the scene]. I've not the experience with eye lights; much obliged for any help.

Hello, I've been watching the latest Homeland season (8), DP David Klein. This shot of "Saul" summed it up: how does one handle the catch light in a performer with glasses? It's a perfect little pop without a trace of reflection. I understand one moves the sources to different angles, either sideways or higher (or lower) to avoid reflections. However, with actors moving all over the place, I am trying to understand how cinematographers deal with this problem. Perhaps the big answer is...they move the sources to different angles, either sideways or higher. Watching "VICE" almost made me queasy - trying to figure out how Greig Fraser managed, with pretty much every character in glasses, running around, vast windows at every turn. In larger films like this, is post-fixing involved? Or is this part of the deal that DPs have to deal with all the time? Thanks !

Hello, I'll be shooting a film using my Varicam LT, going either 12 bit or 10 bit 4K RAW to my Odyssey 7Q+. At a conference I frequented a while back with Alistair Chapman, he pointed out that it is better to shoot 10 bit RAW in low(er) light vs. 12 bit. [Notwithstanding I get "low light" is a pretty general term, and Chapman is a Sony user]. I would like to better understand the specifics of why, but I am unable to find any info. Can anyone clarify ? Or direct me to somewhere that does? Or have any experience with this? Thanks !