Adam Frisch FSF

All lenses are potential macro lenses without modification. Medium format still cameras like the Mamiya RZ67 works exactly like that with the bellows - bring a lens far enough from the film plane, it'll be a macro lens. The extension rings you get for SLRs work in the exact same way. Maybe I'm a bit irreverent, but I don't believe for a second that macro lenses are "especially modified to handle macro better". It's all bull***t I think. All they've done to them is make them focus closer. Also, with the shallow DoF on macro, and the size of the object in frame, that's the least quality-needing end of the spectrum of a lens. I'd take a lens designed to be sharper at infinity and softer at macro any day over the opposite.

I tend to light big greenscreens with space lights - they just create an even, soft light that needs little tweaking. Trouble is they also light your subject, so you have to overpower that and model the light on the subject more. I just recently did a commercial where we lit a smaller greenscreens with green Kino tubes - a first for me. They were very good and created a bright, even key. So bright in fact, that I had to seriously ND the single tube Kinos to get them to where I wanted them to be. Funny how light of the same wavelenght really gets enhanced and "pops" the screen. I'd stay away from hard lights. I have lit greenscreens with 5K's and such, but the effect is never very satisfying - you always get hotspots. Another tip is to bring along a Polaroid filter - some painted greenscreens have a glare at certain angles and one way to get rid of that is to use Pola's.

What's much more serious on the 2C's is their internal flaring. For some reason, incoming hotspots bounce off the mirror at certain angles and flicker the film. It can be very serious. If I recall the tests I saw correctly, it's mainly on the right side. I hear this is due to the removals of the baffles across the ground glass. It was particualarly visible on the SL Cine lightweight rebuilds. So however tempting - don't remove the baffles across the ground glass!

Like David and the guys say: an unsupervised telecine - best light, one light, whatever they want to call it - ALWAYS look like poop. And it does so because the goal is evenness, not a look. Just like the holiday snapshots you get from the lab - they also always look crap because they get evened out by a bored technician.

As a comparison Eyes Wide Shut was shot on the old 5298 and pushed two stops. It was quite grainy on the big screen, but hardly noticeable on the small screen. What's your end format? Also, the Fuji 500T is probably a tad less grainy than the old 5298 too, which should help you. It was comparable (some say even a bit sharper) than 5279.

I didn't start lighting until I was 29-30. Your years ahead of me!

It is hard for everyone (except for Tony Brown :D ). I'm barely scraping by at the moment. It'll change - I'm still arrogant enough to know that I'll work out in the end as long as you never give up. Never give up. Ever. Do good work - quality DOES matter in this business, even though it's hard to see at times. But there are days when you say; I've been in the business since 1996 (first years combined with a regular job), when can I look myself in the mirror and say "I make my living shooting films"?Hasn't happened yet. It's from hand to mouth still. At other times you think I've reached very, very far in the few years I've been lighting on my own (since 2001). Depends on what mood you're in :) But at the same time you have to do a little Jedi mind trick on them, too. There's this peptalk-line that goes: "Project The Image Of Strenght At All Times". And it sounds f***ing daft, but it's not such bad advice, actually. I remember a meeting from hell just a year and a half ago where I went in, showed my reel to all the directors at the same time (nerve-wracking!). As they gathered around the monitor I got so nervous and blabbered all over the reel, excusing this, excusing that, "we only had one light", no dolly and so on. Blalala. Basically trashing my own work pre-emptively. Finally one of the directors kinda said that I should just shut up and let them watch the reel! I learned an important lesson that day: never trash your own work. You have a responsible job, they want to feel they can trust you. If you feel you're the best bloody DP in the world, chances are they will to. It's a fine line, never be arrogant - just Project The Image Of Strenght At All Times. Be secure in your own abilities. I've met you in person, Phil. And you're a nice, positive guy. But your net persona is a very negative one. I don't have a problem with that - I have friends that I always argue with on the net because they're gits, but when we meet IRL, we have a blast (i'm not saying you're a git). Just make sure your net persona stays on the net. In fact, we wouldn't want to have anything else here on the forum but it :rolleyes:

A friend of mine is just starting production of a 2-perf feature with a british DP. So the format is still alive. It's got great potential for the future if you could just convince Arri and Aaton and Panavision to make movements for it...

Get the Zeiss High Speed T1.3 series and shoot wide open, and you'll probably be fine unless it's a very, very dark city (or a blackout). In my limited experience, you can't really overexpose a nightscape too much - it just get's better and better.

Is there any way of programming the ramping of a 435? Slave it to a time code somehow? I know Arri has a software that one can use to connect to the camera and gain extra controls - would that be a way of achieveing this? Anybody tried this?

I don't understand - I always though interlaced had half the resolution, but twice as many times per second, i.e. the same resolution as progressive just at a different interval. Please explain how 1080p 25fps has more resolution than 1080i 50hz? It's the same, no?

The interesting question is WHY do people still shoot Academy when they're going to telecine? It's madness. It's gotta stop - and by letting the cameras "live" in super-35 centering you'll force people to do the right thing. Film people are to conservative and need a kick sometimes...

Yeah, were can one get a hold of the ArriScope's today? Haven't heard or seen anything about them for years.

Talk to Hawk in Germany - stuff get sent across europe all the time and they are a nice company, I've heard (the owner Peter Martin regularly posts here) with lots and lots of nice lenses. You can also find anamorphic lenses in Prague. Or Munich. Or London. Or Paris. No problems. Panavision I think have a presence in Prague, but generally Europe is Arri-land. There's this notion, I find, that anamorphic is "impossible" to shoot on anything else but Panavision, which of course isn't true. There's a wide range of lenses available.

3-perf is gaining more and more ground with made-for-TV and DI. It makes sense. I just used it for the first time now on a promo with the Aaton 35III. We did have some registration problems actually, but that was due to a faulty mag.

Apparently they had huge problems with the 3-perf cameras on Panic Room. There's actually a funny shot on the Special Edition DVD where there's smoke coming from the innards of an (ex) Arri that seized up... :blink:

Orwo still does B/W motion picture stock. In fact, the factory was bought by a german investor and has had a lot of investment put into it. A Danish feature (shot in scope) was recently done in it and a friend of mine did a short with it last year. They tested against Kodak, but said that Orwo won hands down as a more contrasty and snappier stock. You can find them here: Orwo

It is also horrifyingly expensive. The developing is also very much more costly, so it's not a cheap little solution, unfortunately. Put this way: it is almost as expensive as shooting 65mm per foot when you include developing. And having to choose between those two formats, I know what I'd go with... :D

They're here. Nice range. Master Primes

I forgot who it was who said that "there is no such thing as a 3 stop push". Beyond a certain point it is diminishing returns - you can only go so far. That remark was however coined before todays better stocks, so who knows, maybe today you could get away with a 4 stop push? Anybody tried?

Yes. Aga is a swedish company that dabbled in optics in the 50's. They mainly made anamorphic projection attachements, but during a short period they manufactured a series of primes, mainly for the national market. I think you could get them in both BNCR-mount and DeBrie (french camera). For some reason a lot of these lenses ended up in Hungary and the Czech Republic when they went out of fashion. You can still rent them from Barrandov Studios, I think. I'm sorry I don't know more about them technically, but they were rumored to be quite good, actually. Not extremely fast, but not slow either. Swedish schlock- and actionfilmguru Mats Helge who made a whole slew of cheap direct-to-video actioners in the early 80's shot on them. He still owns a set. Check out the film Ninja Mission - that was shot with Agascope and has the most blue, sharp flares I've ever seen in an anamorphic movie. Aga still exists, but today they sell gas (!) and welding equipment.

Anybody shoot with them? I'm using them this weekend for the first time and would like to know if they need special attention? How do you do backfocus on them (or do you do that at all?)

Two problems: Smoke is never even and never stays in place in real life - it just blows away, even on windless days. Besides, a fog like that is virtually impossible to do on location. So you have to go for the real thing, more or less. Secondly - those practicals are very overexposed and probably done with long exposure times. In film, you don't have the luxury of long exposure times (unless you can undercrank), so you have to increase the speed of the film instead. I'd probably push 7218 2-3 stops (that's probably the absolute limit) to get closer to that look and then lift it a stop in telecine as well. A Varicon or a pre-flash might even be useful to lift the "foot" of the film, too. It will be grainy on 16mm, so if you could do just those shots on 35mm, that would help much and intercut better. Not impossible, just very hard. I'd say, go for it :D

Just shot with it this weekend in 3-perf and it was dead silent. Lovely cameras. Just the simplest things: when you pop the mag on, it connects with the mag and tells the display how much film you've got in. On Arris you have to reset the counter and the mag doesn't "know" how much is in it electronically. The menus are also much more user friendly than Arris, with a simple knob to toggle thru the crystal speeds. The only complaint I have is that the mags don't lock on perfectly unless you apply some force. They jumped out and disconnected on quite many occasions when I hadn't popped them on with enough force.

I'd let it ride and maybe just fill (if even) from the camera slightly. That white wall is going to bounce back so much daylight anyway, you'll be fighting every inch. It's hard as DP to NOT light because you don't think you've done your job properly. But sometimes it's not only the best thing to do, it's the only thing to do.