Ken Minehan

hello guys, i had a shoot for a short film the other day where i had a lot of trouble matching lighting from shot to shot. It is a 10 minute short film where the 8 minutes of the film is a conversation between 2 people sitting on deck chairs by the side of a swimming pool. So we do the wide shot first. When we shot this it was very overcast, and quite gloomy. Due to budget constraints we didn't have any big lights to fill up the shot. we only rented reflectors. The cloud cover looked like it will be consistent for quite a while. Once we finished with the wide shot it started to rain. So we had a break, and when we came back to shoot, the sun was so hard and hot. We didn't have a butterfly with us. But even if we did, the difference would have been quite alot from the wide shot to close ups. After that for the rest of the day it was cloudy, raining, sunny. I felt that alot of my shots had differences in lighting. I was shooting with the HVX202. What would you guys have done in this case. Would be good to hear what options i have in this kind of situation.

hi Guys. Has anyone on this forum worked with film gear lights before? How do they compare with arri lights? regards ken minehan

hey guys, have anyone on this forum used the product from reflecmedia. The product i refer to is the grey screen that reflects green or blue back to the camera depending on the light placed in front of camera. I recently saw it at Broadcast asia and was very impressed by it. Do you guys think it's a good product? What happens if i want to put a mattebox in from of the camera? Where can i put the light? or doesn't it have to be directly in front of camera? Will it still work if the screen is 30ft x 20ft? Will film still read the reflected light as green or blue? Whats the colour temp of the light? sorry for all the questions. Hope some forum users with experience with this product can help me clarify. ken minehan

does it use a special adapter? Because the HVX lens is not detachable. so what do you set the zoom and focus on? Also does the mini35 have nikon lens adapters? regards ken minehan

my question is pretty much whats stated in the topic description. Is it possible to attach the HVX202 with PS techniks mini35? thanks ken minehan

ok thanks guys. So do you think it's possible for the varicam to have as little noise as the f900. Basically what we need for the shoot coming up is the best opf both worlds. We want to be able to shoot at a higher frame rate, but at the same time have the good details of the f900. The noise will be an issue to. Mr. Nash from your experience would you say that if i keep the colour controls neutral, dont push the black stretch and dont use gain, i should have minimized noise. How should i set the gamma to reduce noise. Thanks again ken minehan

Hi guys, I have a shoot coming up that requires us to shoot in HD. Yesterday i tested the F900. I loved it, very beautiful images and very low noise level. So far i have noticed that the Sony cameras generally have less noise. Am i right in saying that? Though the newer panasonics (HDX3000) have very good noise control. I haven't tested the Varicam yet but i just wanted to find out about the noise level of the varicam. Let me know of your experiences with this camera thanks alot ken Minehan

i have never shot at any other shutter angle other than 180 deg, so i am interested in finding out the compensation when shooting at different shutter angles. when you shoot at: 90 deg is it 1 stop of compensation? 45 deg is 2 stops of compensation? is this right? regards ken minehan

When you have SO many lights behind, pointing directly at the camera, how do you control the incredible amount of flare that you would get. A little bit of flare would be nice i assume, but with so many lights, is there anything you can do ? regards ken minehan

have a look at Bourne Ultimatum. It has a great chase sequence. ken

Are the candles as seen in the above still frames a special type of candle. I have heard of the 3 wick candles been mentioned in this forum. Would that have been used. ken

Andrew Lesnie in Lord of the rings. ken

Hi Guys, speaking of lush period films, one that i enjoyed very very much was Elizabeth: The Golden Age. I was blown away with the cinematography when i watched this. The lighting was so soft, the camera movement was subtle and very creative. I had never heard of Remi Adefarasin before, but after watching Elizabeth i went to look at some of his other works. He is an amazing cinemtographer. It's a pity he wasn't nominated. I have only seen Atonement out of the list of nominated films want to try and catch the others before the Academy Awards Night. Ken

Hi David, Just wandering what lights did you use to give the frontal fill for the people in the audience. Seems like a very even ambient fill, lighting up a large area. Was the lights in shot all you used for the kicker? ken

i usually go to www.gettyimages.com or other online photo libraries. I can usually find photos that come close to the composition and lighting and art direction of the shot that i want. I find this is the best way to explain to clients how i intend to shoot. ken

link720p50P work flow have a look through the above link. Hope it helps Ken Minehan

It's been awhile since i shot 50fps with HVX202 and fire store but if i remember correctly the trick is to set your sequence setting correctly your 50fps. Even when I placed the clip on the time line i still see it as 25fps, but when i adjust the speed manually even down to 50% you will get a very nice slow mo. There is a bit of motion blur so shooting at a slightly higher shutter speed helps. I will mail you something that i downloaded from DVXusers.com It will explain step by step on how to achieve the slow mo effect with HVX202 regards Ken MInehan

i saw this on the PS technik site. http://www.pstechnik.de/en/optics-lensset.php They call it the digital 35mm lens. The mount is the Nikon F mount. Could your rental guy have meant this. So far i have used the Redrock and the Nikon lens quite regularly. The redrock comes with differnt mount options. EITHER, PL mount, F mount, EOS mount and i think there was a couple of others. The good thing about Nikon is that they haven't changed their mount for a very long time. I think you can buy a 60 year old nikon lens and still fit it on a new Nikon DSLR. Canon however did go through a mount change. Anyway to answer your question The nikon mount is the F mount and it will fit any nikon lenses.

HI guys, i was wandering, is there a slide film equivalent for motion picture? If so has anyone used it and how are the results? thanks Ken Minehan

Hi Bill the picture looks great. i love the mood very much. I am a user of the redrock and nikon lenses too and i am wondering how did you get that exposure with out additional lights on the face. How strong are the bulbs on the mirror? from what i've worked out the HVX and redrock give you an ASA of roughly 80asa. everytime i shoot with this setup i have to work very hard to light the subject to get the expoure to an acceptable level. But your picture looks perfect. How do you do it?? ken Minehan

Another option if you dont want to ND the window, is to bring in enough light, to light the subject. If you bring in enough light you might find that it would be easier to reduce the light then to ND the window. I often have to shoot corporate videos where the client wants to have an interview against a big window with the skyline in the back ground. I have tried NDing the windows, but i found that when it comes to interviews, sticking ND on the window takes takes too much time, and after viewing the rushes i notice the ND starting to bubble and coming apart from the window. So my question is how do you stick ND on the window with out it peeling away every 15 min. I have always used a wet rag to moisten the window and the ND will stick on, but when you have the sun on the window it dries very quickly and starts to peel away. Back to the topic at hand. So what i would do is keep your back ground over exposed a little bit (maybe 2 stops) and light the subject to exposure. Bring in the biggest light your location would allow (assuming you have no gennie) light the subject with some form of diffusion, and always have a back light. I have made the mistake before of not setting up a backlight when the back ground is over exposed. You will find that with out the backlight it will look like a bad green screen job. hope it helps ken minehan

Hello guys have any of you used the red eye wide angle adapter before? Personally i dislike most wide angle adapters because of the distortion that most give. So far my favourite is the canon j11 lens. Very wide with no distortion. So since i shoot a lot on the p2 camera, i am looking for a wide angle that can give me a similar wide shot. I came across this wide angle adapter called the red eye adapter. I went to the website but there is no gallery that shows the image captured using this wide angle adapter. Any users out there that would recommend it? regards Ken Minehan

hello, can you post some pictures up of the footage shot with the hvx 200 and the Brevis cine adapter? I've been shooting with the redrock and i would like to see the difference. cheers ken

Is the 35mm adapter your talking about getting the red rock? I have been using the redrock with nikon lens quite alot recently and it will eat alot of light. Roughly you will be working with 50ASA. The reason why i rate it at this ASA is because you shouldn't shoot below 2.8 because the focus will get too shallow and it's very easy for you to lose focus. I normally will shoot it at 4 or 2.8. You still get the nice DOF, but the compromise is that you will have to light it more. So if you want to get lights to meet your needs using the redrock, you may need to get bigger and more powerful lights. 650w will not do very much unless close to the subject. The normal package i get is 1.2kw HMI, 2k blondies, 1k arri, 650w arri, 300w arri, dedo. But once i use the redrock i dont usually use anything under 800w unless the shot is close up. hope it helps Ken MInehan

Hi guys. I am doing a helicopter shoot of Tokyo city on the 18 sept. The helicopter is fitted with a camera on the nose, and there are decks inside the helicopter where you do the recording on to tape. The system is NTSC. They have told me that all i need to bring is the tapes, and everything else is sorted by them. This may sound like a silly question, but is there a difference between NTSC tapes and PAL tapes? So can i buy the tapes here in Singapore (PAL country) and use it for the recording of the helicopter (NTSC system) shoot in Japan? thanks Ken