Adam Paul

Just curious. What did you end up doing?

OK, I took some photos. I sent them directly to you, so they can be large enough to see the details. I hope it's ok to reach out directly. I sent to your gmail account. Thanks.

Yes, it has the LDS contacts. But I don't care if they get damaged to be honest. Don't use it. I took all rings which had screws off. But they were just covers of sort it seems. The iris ring itself still won't come off and I see no more screws on it. Good news is I can see what the problem is inside through the gap. If I can take the iris ring off I may be able to repair it. I will try to take pictures but it's hard to show it.

Thanks for the reply. So you have specifically worked on a few Sony F3 PL lenses? You think they are difficult to service and work on as compared to other PL lenses?

In my case I don't have much to lose. The lens was damaged during transport. The iris ring is cracked on the external. It was working when it arrived but not smoothly. Then it just kind of clicked in place and got stuck in the fully closed position. That happened as I was testing it once I saw the ring was cracked after I took it out of the box.

Since the seller ended up refunding me the money and telling me I could keep the broken lens, I don't have much to lose in trying to open it myself and see if I can repair it. As it is now it's just a big paper weight.

If you have experience with these lenses and could guide me to at least get to the iris I would appreciated it. I took the surface crews off but couldn't get in the lens and decided to screw it back and ask for hep instead.

Like I said I don't have much to lose and could even learn something in the process. Thanks.

I have a Sony PL lens which has a stuck iris ring. I tried opening it but it's a strange thing. I didn't get far. I know this is a long shot. But has anybody tried servicing them? I'm talking the ones which came with the F3.

Yes, sure. I know Allen's dialog is different. But it was a period piece. It took me out of it sometimes. But like I said, my main problem was the image.

I'm not saying it looked bad. I agree with you that it looked good. The problem I found was that it was not fitting to the story or time period. It is not the lighting though. It is the image as a whole. Many classic films have stylized lighting and they still fit the time period. It was not the lighting. This is why I think digital is to blame. And when it comes to digital looking, the F65 is on the top of the scale. Only Red comes close to it as looking very digital. Alexa, F35, Genesis etc don't look as digital.

So if the lighting wasn't the problem, the only thing left to "blame" is digital. Maybe it would have looked more fitting if it was shot on film. I just never bought it that it was set in the 30's/40's because of how it looked and felt.

No idea why the title says only Caf.

It was meant to say Café Society. But it seems I can no longer edit the post. Could a moderator correct it please?

I finally caught Café Society on blu-ray.

I must say I didn't care for the cinematography. The lighting was obviously inspired by classic Hollywood. But I think the digital look didn't really fit that style. At least not the F65 look. I just couldn't get into the mood I was watching a story set at that time period. I kept having to remind myself it was set in the past. When I car showed up or something I was reminded of it. But in general it all felt too modern. It felt like people wearing costumes and playing theater. The dialog also made me ask myself sometimes, "Did people really talk like that back then?".

But all together I think it might have been the choice of the F65. It just looked all so digital and the cinematography itself felt forced in my opinion. I had to keep telling myself, "But it's Storaro!"

What did you think of it?

On a side note, on the same day I also saw Billy Lynn and didn't care for the image either. I saw it on blu-ray so no 120fps. I avoided seeing it in 120fps on theaters on purpose. I knew how it would look and that it would take me out of the story. I had enough of that in The Hobbit with 48fps.

But even conformed to 24fps the image looked very meh.

It's like a really fantastic war reenactment. Imagine the movie "Titanic", but lose the Rose and Jack characters, open with the ship hitting the iceberg and recreate what all the key players did with some rapid fire action and pulse pounding music.

 

It was pretty awesome.

So in other words, like other IMAX films before it, such as films about nature or whatever, it is not really a movie but rather a "presentation"? It just happens to have name actors in it and a big budget. This is how it is sounding to me. I should see it soon enough though.

There are plenty of dead bodies on the beaches, there are plenty of bodies thrown up into the air from explosions.

 

It's just, they didn't need to 'Saving Private Ryan' the beach scenes, there was no reason. You weren't focused on the action as much as the characters, so what's the point of having a limb fly in front of them, only to get an R rating?

 

It's far more important that people feel safe watching this movie, so the word about what happened at Dunkirk gets out to the public. I've told dozens of people about this movie and NOBODY knew about the Dunkirk invasion of WWII. This film's whole purpose is to educate the masses, that's the only reason Nolan made it.

 

So if it were rated R, it wouldn't have as great of a mass appeal, thus common people who may know nothing, may have not gone out to see it, which is a real shame.

 

I think Nolan did the right thing as documentary wouldn't have nearly as many eyes on it.

But surely properly conveying the terror they went through would be part of this education? I haven't seen the film yet, so I will reserve full judgement for when I have. But the article seems to be complaining of lack of realism too, which to me means holding back on that education you speak of.

But I will still see it on theaters anyway. After watching The Hateful 8 on a theater screen and being amazed and then watching The Revenant and a year later Rogue One on a theater screen, shot on the Alexa 65 and being totally disappointed with the image in comparison to The Hateful 8, it is clear the only way to get the experience I got from The Hateful 8 is watching 65/70mm film on theaters. Digital 65mm didn't look any better than digital 35mm to me based on Rogue One and The Revenant. The Hateful 8 was astonishingly great. I kept asking myself why we are moving to digital. So I will watch any movies shot and released on 65/70mm film . Never know for how much longer we will be able to do that.

Sure it is not a documentary. But a PG13 war movie is a bit like a PG13 horror movie. It will be watered down any way you look at it.

On another note... I really liked this review of the movie:

 

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-07-20/-dunkirk-and-the-great-films-that-won-t-be-made

 

The reviews coming out are so overwhelmingly positive and excited that I can only imagine that some people are going to be dissapointed with the film. It can't be all things to everyone and when something has that much traction behind it then it can start to be hard to live up to the overwhelming hype.

 

I'm wondering how long it will be before the word "overrated" gets used.

I think it's clear that Christopher Nolan must have achieved something special to get this much excitement for a movie about the second world war that doesn't feature any super heroes. Well other than Harry Styles of course.

However people may well get overwhelmed by the excitement about it and expect something it can't do or be.

 

Anyway we will see.

 

Freya

I haven't seen it yet. But I have read a few reviews, which as you say have been all positive. But then I found this:

"My Father, Who Survived Dunkirk, Would Not Have Recognized Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk"

http://www.thestranger.com/film/2017/07/19/25297266/my-father-who-survived-dunkirk-would-not-have-recognized-christopher-nolans-dunkirk

Interesting point of view.

I will still see it though.

I can't say for sure. But I would think they are new. The image and effects don't really look to be from 2009. Have you seen the movies?

I'm sure most of you are aware of Blomkamp's short films he has been posting on youtube.

They are professionally produced high concept works. He has posted 2 so far.

Now youtube is full with interesting stuff. But what made me start thinking is that Blomkamp is an established filmmaker with several studio features under his belt. Yet here he is, posting shorts on youtbe that to me look like job applications of sorts.

He doesn't seem to be working on any studio projects at the moment and these shorts look like he is trying to show what he can do, or that he has ideas. In other words they look like a pitch. Again nothing new. Youtube is full of that. But not from an established professional such as Blomkamp. Even though the fact he has no projects announced is not a guarantee he is not working on some studio project, it seems he is not working on anything now or he would neither have the time and maybe also not the motivation.

I understand his last few movies didn't do well. But is that enough to push him out?

That got me thinking. If a established filmmaker such as Blomkamp has to start putting his own money and time to try to get studio work, what hope is there for all the other people trying to have their first crack? Is that the current state of the industry? With the firing of Lord and Miller from Star Wars and now a established director making youtube movies which look like job applications, the tide seems to be shifting somehow.

I may be reading too much into this. I know directors do passion projects all the time and also work on shorts. But the way these Blomkamp movies are being presented to the public, it makes me feel like he is only doing them because he is somehow out of work. Either trying to get a studio interested in him or his ideas or trying to sell himself or his movies in an alternative way outside of the studio system. Which again could only mean he is not getting any studio work.

What do you think? Like I said, if a guy like Blomkamp can't get work, what about new directors? Or it's just a case of the supply gotten so much higher above the demand that studios are not giving much chance to filmmakers that strike out only a couple of times? With digital it's much easier for people to show what they can do and get the attention of the studios. So many newcomers are being given big movies these days after just one semi successful indie project. But are studio then less forgiving? Are directors becoming expandable? All interesting topics to discuss.

I'm not sure how that's relevant. it can output true 4:4:4 from a single S35-sized sensor. With a proper OLPF, it can composite more cleanly than most Bayer sensors, which are natively *close to* 4:2:0 regardless of how you encode/capture.

 

 

I always try to light as if I'm working with reversal film. That is, set up all the exposures to very tight tolerances so it holds up well on video. Except of course when I'm shooting on actual negative film, which is a lot more forgiving. I still use aim for exact exposure but I can have a lot more contrast in the highlights than video. I love when I light a set before the camera arrives and it just WORKS! I get the occasional "How'd you do that?" :)

 

 

Yes, exactly. A lot of current CMOS cameras that claim 13 or whatever stops don't really achieve that unless you're shooting outdoors in 70 degree weather and PLAN to use noise reduction in post. Under realistic conditions, you're lucky to get 11-12. The F35 towards the end could reliably do it and with much truer color.

 

 

At my studio, we always bought all the tapes (and lamps) budgeted whether we needed them or not, so we had (still do) plenty unopened boxes of tapes despite not buying any for most of 2011. We also didn't abandon tape entirely till 2014 or so, when we switched to Hyperdecks. I hate those things with a fiery vengeance because they're so unreliable, but they're so cheap we can record everything with multiple redundancies. Still, you have no idea how many times two decks failed at the same time (with or without any indication something is wrong), making the third all the more valuable.

I was just pointing out the Genesis/F35 sensor is not designed for composite. It is indeed intended to be a general purpose sensor. You seemed to be implying it was designed for composite work or saying that Panavision had implied that. I just wanted to clear it up it was not.

Lighting for reversal was needed for the DV days where we had 6 or 7 stops max. of DR. Today with cameras doing over 10 stops I don't find it necessary. With the F35 because of the great way it deals with highlights I basically approach it as I would film. Just slight adjustment.

There are many F35 users online who point that the camera is capable of even more than 12-stops. I never tested it but in using it I never really felt much limited by the DR. Because you can be pretty relaxed with the highlights and they will look nice, you don't have to be worried about it like with other digital cameras.

Yes, I've only used tape on the Genesis and F35. The early SSD solutions were not practical around 2010 when I did that short film, and after that, you had cameras like the Alexa.

Even the last Genesis movie I can think of, "Heaven is for Real" (2014) used HDCAM-SR tape. So did "Captain America" (2011) and the Sony F35 movie "Red Tails" (2012).

 

In the spring of 2010, I did the pilot for "The Chicago Code" on the Red Epic after doing the pilot for "The Good Wife" the year before on the Genesis with the same director ("The Good Wife" used the Sony F35 when they went to series in NYC, I shot the pilot in Vancouver, and later switched to the Alexa).

 

This pilot was an early use of data recording for a TV show and on the first day we ran three cameras on a police crime scene and that night I got a panicked call from the producer because the data wrangler had spent three hours after wrap that night in the camera truck trying to back up all the data and hadn't finished, had to do more back-ups the next shooting day. We had a big car chase scene planned with a second unit, and I was trying to figure out how I was going to get a separate unit working across town to back-up their data, did they need their own DIT, their own RAID, etc. or was I going to be shuttling drives across town, etc.

 

Then another pilot for the same network wrapped and they were hired to shoot our second unit day, and since they were using Genesis cameras to HDCAM-SR tape, the data problem went away.

 

Now of course, dealing with data is no problem.

 

Panavision made an expensive SSD option for the Genesis but it didn't use separate memory cards, so you needed multiple SSD units per camera, the whole unit needed to be downloaded and if you didn't set up a system on set, that meant shipping the SSD units to a post house. So it never really caught on.

 

The only reason that the TV industry abandoned the convenience of HDCAM-SR tapes was the 2011 Japanese tsunami that wrecked Sony's tape manufacturing plant, causing a worldwide shortage of HDCAM-SR tape. Suddenly the industry had to embrace data recording and data vaulting in a big way. But by then, new cameras like the Alexa and the Red Epics were taking over.

I understand that for TV work the storage and easy of use advantages of tape count a lot. But for feature work I would rather go for solid state and get 12-bit 444 for better quality.

By the way, how did you rate the F35 for the short?

And what was your approach to lighting? Did you ETTR, protected the highlights, or what was your workflow?

I know the F35 is cleaner than the Genesis so I was normally not very worried about noise. And the highlights hold very nicely, at least in S-log. So I normally approach it like I would film basically.

I never used the Hypergammas or Rec.709 with the F35.

Tara and Wife were probably shot to tape right?

The short looks nice, considering the Rec.709 recording and 480p post is not doing it any favors. Your skills show through. I know it's not easy to work with it in Rec.709.

My favorite shots are inside the gas station. Really like the look and lighting.

 

That depends on your criteria for "better". You can get a camera with smaller sensors that don't have as much rolling shutter or alias distortion, more natural color etc. They used to be common place before the "DSLR revolution".

 

 

I agree with you on crippled CODECs, but i refuse to modify a camera just to have alias/IR free images. That argument can be made for many traits.

 

 

 

Both those cameras have much better rolling shutter and the top-tier Alexas have mechanical shutters. They also have better color, dynamic range etc. I'm not a fan of Reds, or anything with rolling shutter for that matter, but we were talking D16 vs BMPCC and the BMPCC loses in all my criteria for what makes an acceptable professional tool while the D16 s really only lacking in form factor.

 

 

I wonder if that has to do with it being designed for composite work. According to Panavision, they didn't intend it to be a general purpose camera, just something meant to speed up blue/green screen work while still allowing conventional cinema glass.

 

 

CCDs shouldn't have pattern noise, unless you're referring to the stripped nature. Still, I noticed that noisy muddiness. As I said earlier, a lot of people used it as an excuse to not light professionally and it didn't work because it has little/no internal noise reduction. At its native ISO, it does quite well.

 

 

That would really eat into the latitude of the sensor. It's not just that, but also the data through-put.

 

 

Marketing people will make up all sorts of stupid reasons for something being a certain way, especially if it's misleading. The noise in the F35 is just a natural artifact of "dark current" and column/row shifting. CMOS cameras get around the issue with built-in processing while CCDs are completely passive and would require external processing to do the same. If you look at the native engineering specs of equivalent CMOS sensors, they don't natively perform as well as marketing people claim.

 

 

You'd also need multiple analogue amplifiers, ADCs, clocking and processors to handle the data. With a CMOS sensor, all of that is printed into the substrate at little additional cost. You could expect about a 10-stop native DR by shrinking the pixels that much. That's why Arri stuck with 2.8K until they came out with a "65mm" version.

 

 

...A very common tail. Of course, some times stuff like that is intentional to get people interested in buying the latest hardware. A lot of the CCD cameras of old were capable of MUCH better performance than most people know, but they were programmed to clip the highlights and shadows to maintain only a 7-8 stop range even though the sensors natively handled more like 10-11. Then there was the nasty compression. Any former Panasonic/Andromeda users here? Panasonic's answer to people tapping into the DVX100's full potential was to create a phantom company to buy their shop and bury it.

The sensor was not designed for composite work. It's a Sony sensor. If Panavision said that they were wrong or trying some marketing thing.

Yes with the F35 you have to light like film. If you try to use it as a video camera it gives you trouble. I think you are right. The video looking stuff from Genesis is because they shoot high gain or messed with the shutter. If you light like film to ISO 500 the F35 looks great and is not really noisier than film at all.

But of course if underexposed everything is "noisy". Even film. Or especially film.

But as I said the F35 has a very good built in noise reduction function. You can also clean it up in post for even better performance.

Speaking of clipped highlights this is another thing the F35 is really good at. Nice highlights.

I think the combination of 35mm sensor size, CCD, full RGB for great color and skins, global shutter and a good 12 stops of dynamic range with great highlights is what makes the image so nice.

Cost is the sole reason CMOS won that war.

Yes, agreed.

There were some downsides to the RGB striped approach -- true, you had roughly 2.2MP equally of red, green, and blue photosites so the color was nice, but the striped approach this required created color moire problems due to the two-row gap between, let's say, a green row and the next green row. And for whatever reason, maybe related to the striped sensor, the OLPF was fairly weak so you had a lot of sharp but false edges -- I had moire problems with almost everything in the frame that had a pattern: rough fabric on a corduroy couch, horizontal rows of shingles on a roof, etc. Every piece of wardrobe had to be tested for moire issues.

 

And it was not the cleanest of signals for whatever reason, and that noise combined with the compression of HDCAM-SR, though mild, gave the image a unique texture in underexposed areas -- some people thought it gave it a film-like grain texture but sometimes to me it just looked unpleasant, just depended on the lighting. When you had plenty of light, the image looked pretty good with rich colors. But in warm, underexposed light like in a low-lit interior at night, there could be a noisy muddiness. Probably some of that was pattern noise.

 

To create a 4K version of that sensor, it would be something close to 8MP per color for a 2:1 sensor, 12MP for a 4:3 sensor, so either a 24MP or 36MP sensor in a Super-35 form (unless you wanted to go larger with a full-frame sensor.) Something like the 8K S35 Helium sensor except dedicated to outputting 4K per channel.

 

But I also think that one can oversell the idea of "full RGB" -- what does that exactly mean in real-world scenarios? After all, color negative can be scanned at full RGB... but that doesn't mean that each color layer resolves detail equally. The old 3-strip Technicolor camera recorded three separate b&w negatives but the red record was always the softest and grainiest. So the fact that on a Bayer sensor, there is "better" green information than red or blue doesn't mean you can't resolve color information well. And as sensors get higher in resolution, the color channel limitations of a Bayer sensor matter less because you are oversampling in general.

Naturally there were compromises. Even a 3 chip set up has compromises as anything when it comes to engineering. But what I was trying to say is from all the solutions the F35 sensor was the best approach IMO. The least of the evils if you will.

The particular problems you mentioned were greatly reduced with updates. Especially the very last update which also increased the dynamic range and opened up 12-bit 444 recording. Unfortunately when that update came was a little too late already.The F65 was already out, or at least announced. But it greatly reduced if not completely illuminated the problems you point out. Not to mention you can add filters to help it too.

You are right though that it was not the cleanest signal. But Sony and Panavision's intention was to imitate film. So I think it was never meant to be super clean. The grain is a part of the look there. I'm pretty sure this is the reason it is there. I have actually seen it mentioned when promoting the camera. But there is a noise reduction function which works really well if you need it. It was again further improved with the very latest firmware. But I particularly like the grain and think it looks less like video noise than the other cameras.

Your complain about the noise in combination with HDCAM-SR compression is another sign which tells me you are basing this on the early release F35. This is the problem since most have only used the camera with the tape recorder and limited HDCAM-SR tape format. Once Sony opened up 12-bit 444 recording, which you can record either at 880mbs which is about 2:1 compression or fully uncompressed , any compression problems disappeared. The noise is very fine and free of artifacts. S-log 12-bit 444 at 880mbs and 2:1 compression for HD is very high quality. Uncompressed even better of course.

Yes, a 4K 35mm sensor using the same technology would be around 36MP. As it is the F35 sensor is 12MP. That sensor would also be extremely expensive to produce if a CCD.

In real world scenarios full RGB means better overall color. When grading something shot on the F35 compared to grading something shot on the F5 for example the F5 image will break first. I also think the color in the F35 looks so nice because of the full RGB. Especially the skins.

The fact that most movies shot with the F35 never got to use the 12-bit 444 format shows how it was never really used at its best. Most movies or people who tried it did so with the HDCAM tape recorder. A wasted chance for Sony really. They should have updated the camera earlier. If I remember right the update came in 2011 or 2012.

 

A major problem with single-chip design is that the green channel only has 1/2 the sensor resolution and red/blue are 1/4. You can interpolate the values on the fly at low quality, like most cameras do, or you can do it as an offline process with much greater quality, but you can't restore information that was never captured.

Yes this is a problem with single sensor. But I think Sony's solution for the F35 and Genesis is the most elegant and works the best. It definitely produces better color than CMOS cameras and bayer. It gets you "full RGB."

Agreed, but if CCD was that much better, Panavision would have continued with Sony to develop a solution that kicked everyone's ass. However, they moved onto CMOS and they ain't looking back. Panavision is the only company who could have made a specialized solution work and even they gave up on the idea. I don't think it had anything to do with money.

 

 

I'm fortunate enough to have graded raw Digital Bolex footage and I thought it looked like crap. It has a forced look that can't really be manipulated in post that is trying to hard to look like film, it forgets what it is. Plus, it was super noisy, latitude was like 8 stops at most and it had harsh highlight clipping. I'm not a fan and that's part of the reason they went out of business, where Blackmagic still sells Pocket cameras like hot cakes. No, I can't make the pocket look like the Bolex Digital camera without manipulation in post, but honestly in most cases, I don't WANT it to look that way either. The benefits of shooting digitally go out the window if you're stuck with a very particular look from your digital camera.

 

 

I never liked the Viper.

The main reason CCD was replaced by CMOS is cost. It doesn't matter that it was better. A 4K CCD presents very expensive technical challenges. CMOS was good enough and much cheaper.

This is a discussion for another thread cuz we could go on about CCD's vs CMOS all night long! :)

 

Suffice to say, nobody has made a CCD look as cinematic as CMOS yet, artificial or not, the high resolution cinema camera version doesn't exist. So until it does, it's all theory and discussions.

 

I will have to strongly disagree here. The F35 looks much better and more cinematic than the F65 or F55. It looks much more cinematic than anything from Blackmagic, Red or Panasonic too. I think the reason is mainly the CCD. The other is that it has better color because of the sensor design. Then it is a global shutter which helps with the cinematic motion. It's a pity that the whole 4K hype brought on by the release of the Red One made many overlook it. Today when you compare Red One footage to F35 footage it's so obvious how superior the F35 is. But back then the 4K koolaid clouded the minds.

Thinking a little longer, like you said, the closer the subject is to the lens the less you see the smoque. But you would still see it in the background. Even if just haze in case light sources are not visible. But the subject would look cleaner. I guess I understand what you said a little better now. It makes total sense of course. I guess that's the biggest give away with the filter.

I understand what you mean. Although I think the reason you see the smoque at all in those shots is because the light source is visible, or the light shafts.

Maybe I could manage to smoke the sets with consumer fog machines. Problem with fog machines is that they are not as controllable as real cinema grade smoke machines. They just blob up instead of evenely spread and it's harder to get good covererage. The warehouse is also quite big. But maybe if I place them far in the background they would hang in the air enough to give some dimension to the background and the Smoque filter would do the rest. Are there any specific tips for the use of consumer fog machines? The budget wont allow for the real thing. Thanks again David.