Eamon Colbert

Thanks Satsuki, appreciate the response  and as things are looking now I think I probably will just bite the bullet and schedule to rent everything from Adorama in case I run into problems (and find an AC to help me prep or make certain my current one will be able). And re your statement Thomas, I definitely may begin to look into a new AC, I gave them a few weeks to get back to me re the gear so I'm hoping they'll have a little bit of time to figure it out/ see if everything works (I'm not really sure of their competency but just from our interactions so far I'm a little bit dubious,  but I could be being presumptive and they may very well blow me away haha, just in this micro budget realm I've found ACs vary a lot in ability/ knowledge and some really are more just focus pullers and have limited experience with anything more highend than a nucleus M). Re the 90w batteries I did want to rent bigger batteries, but according to adorama the  anton bauer sharkfin plate is only to be used with the 90wh dionics because of something about size (not sure if this is just the manufacturer rec they're adhering to and other batteries will work fine? I do recall seeing the sharkfin plate was rated for more than 180wh I believe) also it's my understanding that yes, using smaller capacity batteries with a power hungry set up like this will make them drain quicker, but I guess what I was confused about was if the batteries work in circuit (for a combined 180wh) or if only one is being used until its drained, then the next one is utilized with the sharkfin plate. Also good looks on the L-bus cable length comment, that's actually not what I was referring to, and hadn't even thought of that, I was personally worried about the follow focus motors reaching the gears of the different sized lenses I would be using since the distances will likely all be different. And in regard to support, I think I have that figured out pretty decently (pretty standard cbp1 set up with mvb 1, rab, map 2, msb 1s, all the different plates, rods, spider grips, sachtler head, legs, baby legs, etc.)  If I'm ever out in LA shooting and need an AC I will definitely be messaging you, really appreciate the advice.  I didn't really get a chance to start focusing on cinematography until my 2nd to last semester of school, then covid hit mid semester and we were forced to go remote before I even got a chance to get my hands on any of the high end gear so I've been filling in as many of the gaps in my knowledge as I can online so all of this has been incredibly helpful. 

That's what I figured, and thank you for the offer Satsuki, I just recently graduated  from school and this is a bit of a low budget passion project so I think those people would probably be out of my budget, unless maybe they'd be willing to offer me a consultation of some sort for a reasonable price? I have a first AC, but for the budget I'm working with it seems they don't have as extensive of a knowledge of some of the higher ender/ specialized gear as I'd hoped. I would love to get in for an additional prep day but with sharegrid it's a pain/ not really doable. Worst case I figured I fork over the extra amount of money just to rent everything through Adorama that way issues arising will be less likely and more manageable. 

Hi all, I was wondering if anyone could give me a few answers in regard to some upcoming gear rentals I had planned? I've never shot with the mini before and have limited experience with wireless follow focuses, cages, bridgeplates etc.  I'm renting a large portion of my gear from adorama, but a friend is renting me their mini for a deal, and I'm getting my lenses off of sharegrid, so I really need to make sure everything goes off without a hitch as I'm picking up/ testing my rental at Adorama on a Friday and then shooting that weekend, so I won't have a ton of time to scramble if I overlook anything (I'm also planning on picking up all the other rentals first then ending at Adorama to test all of the gear together with my AC). This may be a lot of info to expect anyone to be able to help me out with but I'd really appreciate it and if it is asking too much I'd even be willing to pay someone to look over my gear list in depth and help me out. Right now I'm planning on renting an alexa mini with an evf, cbp1 set up (with a d-box) , zeiss mk2s, an angeneuix 25-250, wcu-4 wireless FF w/ 2 arri c force mini motors,  2 small hd monitors, a teradek receiver and transmitter ,and a bunch of goldmount batteries (some core hyperslims that come with the alexa, and a bunch of the 90w AB dionics with a sharkfin plate for hot swapping). I calculated my max power draw for the alexa, evf, and motors would be 125w and divided by the voltage of my batteries, 14.8v to get an amperage of 8.5ish , 1.5 under the max amperage of  10 the batteries, d box, and sharkfin plate are rated for (I'm wondering if I can attach the sharkfin plate to the d-box w/o issue? I'm also wondering if dividing by the 14.8v for the batteries is correct or if I should be using 24v since that's what the alexa uses internally?). I'm also assuming the batteries work simultaneously on the sharkfin plate so they will have a combined power of 180wh, but I'm worried about the camera potentially shutting down while hot swapping as it will drop to 90W momentarily, is this something I should be concerned about?  I am planning on running my small hd monitors from their own goldmount batteries (they come w/ gold mount plates), but wasn't sure if I'd also be able to power my teradeks simultaneously using the dtap on each monitors respective goldmount battery. Then the only other thing I was worried about was with the lenses I was renting, I just wasn't sure of a way to confirm the cforce mini motors will reach properly from the 19mm rods on the cbp1 to all of the lenses I plan on using? The angeneuix also appears to come with all the proper lens support needed and I think it should work with my set up without a hitch (17 inch 19mm rods, an 18 inch dovetail arri style dove tail plate, arri ls9 support,  and duclos 3/8" lens support riser). Just in case I was going to be renting a 15mm follow focus that I could run by extending the 15mm rods on the top of the alexa if worse comes to worst and for some reason I'm unable to run motors or a manual follow focus on the 19mm studio rods. Any help with these questions would be greatly appreciated, I know it's a lot to ask. Thank you!

With this in mind David, is it common practice to just shoot achieving the highest dynamic range possible, and then proper exposure can be achieved in post? Let's say I have a scene where there's a bright sky, but no dark shadows, I underexpose the image, or raise the ISO, so I can retain more highlight information in the sky, but now my actors skin is not exposed as desired, is this fixable in post by a colorist (assuming the skintones still have enough data/ aren't noisy) ? I haven't really had experience working with a colorist on log images and will be for the first time, so I'm unsure about the best way to approach setting exposure (always shoot at native ISO with proper exposure, or pick an ISO that retains the most dynamic range w/o clipping or excessive noise)

Hi, I've been doing a lot of research lately on best exposure practices and ran into a few questions. My current plan for setting exposure is to set exposure using my eye on a log c image with a rec 709 lut applied to it, then check the wave form (toggling between rec 709 and log c image) to confirm my highlights aren't clipping and that I have an acceptable level of noise. Going from shot to shot within the scene I then plan to use an incident meter on the actor to keep the lighting consistent. Where I got a little bit confused is the idea of exposing to the right. I know this is a practice that has generally been phased out, but I still had a few questions. Let's say I set my exposure, but when I go into the waveform see I have a lot of room left in the highlights before clipping, thus it would make sense for me to "over" expose the image to get more information in the shadows, and the image can then be brought down in the grade, correct? I also understand I would want to keep exposure consistent shot to shot. I then wonder, switching from one angle to another, what if my "over" exposed image suddenly becomes problematic because say the bright sky is more present in the image,  and now parts of my image are actually clipping that weren't before, so I am now forced to decrease the aperture of this image. I understand exposing to the right for every image in this way doesn't make sense as matching the shots in the grade would be a pain, but I guess I'm asking what practice is more typical? to "properly" expose from the get go, or to attempt to retain the most dynamic range by lighting the scene as much as possible? Additionally, if it is the latter, how do you predetermine you won't run into any problems going between the different camera positions?

Hi Phil, thanks for the explanation, I understand there is no linear relationship between bits and stops because of your comment, but I still am failing to understand why, when there are more bits, the added dynamic range is typically gained in the shadows instead of the highlights? I understand we can't gain any additional dynamic range past the whitest white because of sensor saturation, but couldn't we get another shade in the whites? why does it go to the blacks?

I was recently reading an article explaining how for every added bit of information the dynamic range increases by one stop. This makes sense to me as I understand light is perceived logarithmically, but the one point of confusion for me was in the article it stated that the added stop of dynamic range would always be in the shadows. I understand the last stop of light in the highlights will always take up half of the data, and the dynamic range of the sensor isn't changing (the photosites wells aren't getting any bigger or more sensitive), rather there are now just double  the values to record the data, but I don't quite understand how the added dynamic range always goes to the blacks versus say the midtones or highlights? Any clarification would be greatly appreciated.

The past week I have tasked myself with better understanding camera sensors and chroma subsampling and have run into some points of confusion, and was hoping someone could clarify for me. So I understand the bayer sensor patterns allows photosites to measure the number of photons produced by one particular wavelength of light: either red green or blue. I understand RAW is a non debayered image where the Red green and blue color channels info is recorded with little modification. Where I begin to get confused is with chroma subsampling. I understand chroma subsampling is denoted as Y'CbCr where Y'= luma= the weighted sum of the R,G, and B color channels. I also understand that for luma engineers chose a signal that is 21% red, 72% green, and 7% blue. I also understand that for chroma subsampling there is no Cg as it is inferred using the other channels (luma and chroma). Where I begin to get confused is how the green channel is calculated and how this relates to RAW images and the bayer sensor pattern. So images that use chroma subsampling are never actually recording the green channel just calculating it? do RAW images utilize chroma subsampling or do they record Cg? What are green photosites actually measuring/ how are they used? and then the last point of confusion for me was with the signal percentage for Y'. Is the  Y' signal always composed of the same percentage values for the different color channels (72, 21, 7), or do the overall percentages of the signal change based on the different signals of each photosite? for example if a red and a green and a blue photosite all register 100 photons the luma value will be 100, but if for example the red photosite has a photon reading  higher than the other 2 photosites will it now proportionally represent a larger percentage of Y'? Sorry if this is confusing but I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around these concepts

Hi all. I was looking for some clarification regarding shooting and storyboarding for music videos. I'm currently in pre-production for a narrative music video I'm planning on shooting, directing, and editing in a couple of months. I have the concept dialed in and have begun the process of storyboarding. The way I'm doing things right now is I have the song dragged in to premiere and have  created cuts where I think logically I will want to cut while editing (based on certain sections of the songs progression as well as bars and beats). I have also assigned certain aspects/ parts of the narrative to certain sections of the song, so as things are now I'm basically thinking along the lines of "Ideally in this section of the song there will be 20 cuts, that means I need 20 shots. Also during this section of the song XYZ happens, so I have 20 shots to convey XYZ happening". While doing this the one thing I have become worried about is timing and blocking and how to achieve/ get the shots I need on set. For example, let's say I have 2 shots that based on the beat/ bar length are ideally 4 seconds long each, where the artist opens his backpack and checks a map (going from a medium to a close up), how do I time these shots on set to make sure I am able to convey what I need in the appropriate amount of time while maintaining continuity of movement so the cut is clean?  Another example would be the performer walking from point a to point b in and out of frame (enters on left and leaves on right) do I need to have them walk precisely the right amount of time for a clean cut? I'm also just wondering if I'm over thinking things and I should just shoot every shot I need and worry about it in the edit? The two scenarios I am most worried about are I shoot the entire narrative, and it is much too long, thus I end up cutting out essential information or have awkward jarring cuts, or I shoot much too little. If anybody had any recommendations or insight to how to approach this in the best way possible with all of these considerations or how they or others have done it I would greatly appreciate it.