Adam Frisch FSF

I'm getting one - just haven't had the money yet. Soon......

Yes, I think the 5-blade shutter is calculated to work with 30fps NTSC cameras. If you're in Europe, I don't think it would work. Haven't transferred that way, but I see no point in it not giving quite good results, since that's basically how a telecine works. I'd probably aim the DV cam straight at the gate (remove the proj optics), or do an aerial image. In the first case, you need to flip and rotate the image in post. All these transfer boxes with those dodgy condenser lenses they sell to super-8 home transferrers degrade the image horribly.

Jack, that was my point. More layers does NOT automatically equal softer light, if you mean stuck together. I often bounce into walls or ceilings if they're white (and ceilings often are) to create an instant softlight. It can be hard to control, but is very useful at times. Have you tried it?

The trick with soft light is actually very simple. It's got far less to do with what's in front of the lamp as the SIZE of the source. If anybody could stand sticking their head 1m in front of an 18K, they light would be horribly bright, but not very hard (BTW, don't try this at home). It's RELATIVE SIZE to the object that matters. Which means that your soft frame could be a soft light if your object was close, but would make a rather hard light if moved away some distance. With the risk of sounding like a broken record - this theorem can be proved by trying to flag a source - almost impossible to do close, but getting easier the further away from the light you get. Or another little chiaro scuro trick to prove the same point is to try to cast shadows on a wall with your hands: close - nothing happens, far from the source - the more defined (hard) the shadow becomes. So to answer your question: the litle frame is useful as a soft light for close ups and maybe medium shots (that's pushing it). But it's not a soft light solution for wide shots. The only way to have a source far away from the object and still get a very soft light, is to, yes you've guessed it, have a very BIG source. That's why you frequently see big silks and bouncers on sets. Lighting a close-up in soft light is easy technically - the source doesn't have to be big nor bright. It's the wide shots that need the big stuff rolled in. I often pass student shoots (and even some professional ones) on the street and see they've got like a Blondie standing 10 meters away with a 2 tiny layers of frost clipped onto it. And it just ain't going to make that source soft, no matter how many layers of frost you put on - all it'll do is reduce the intensity of that lamp. Which leads me into another point: there's often a misconception that soft light has to be a low key light. Maybe because it's easier subliminally to judge such a light. But there is no correlation. One of the best guys at soft light is Emmanuel Lubezki, ASC. He shoots using huge sources, often bounced two, three times before it gets out. All that bouncing BEFORE it hits the silk, isn't really doing anything except making the light more even so that when it hits the silk it has no hot spots. But if you could fill the same silk without hot spots in any other way (bouncing just happens to be an easy way to do that), the exact same softness would be achieved. My point? It's not the fact that Emmanuel BOUNCES his lights so many times that makes it soft - it's that his sources are so big and lack hot spots. So, size matters. Or, relative size, that is. For precisely that reason, I stick to petite, short girls ;)

Nah, Dan. I'm a cinemascope man, 3-perf is for TV- movies :D

Worry, but don't over-worry. This could very well turn out to be just fine just like the guys here say. A tightly wound film roll isn't that easy to penetrate as one would think. An AC I worked with on a music video some years ago took the mag out of the tent and we both immediatlety realised the lid wasn't closed properly. It was bright sunshine. I informed the director, but there's was no time/money to do it again. We didn't see a thing in telecine the day after. Also, even IF the light has hit the image area, it can still be saved in Inferno or any kind of an advanced image processing program by bringing down the overexposed area. You'd be surprised what can be achieved. Not cheap, though.

Good little camera, only shot with it once. Very small and nimble, but the mag can be a bit awkward to load until you get a hang of it. The good thing is that when you've finally gotten a hang of it, they're instant change and are very quick to swap. When I become a millionaire, that's the camera I'd like to own - it's so versatile: small, light, nimble, silent and has a good, bright viewfiner. It fits every occasion.

I'm very sorry to hear that. It felt just like yesterday I answered or read one of his posts - which to me almost is a little bit like knowing that person here on the forum... I also heard today that an old childhood girlfriend had died from cancer at the age of 32 - leaving a little daughter 3 years of age.. Sad day. R.I.P. Neal and Leonida.

This is a good place, for sure. Check out the members posts and websites to form a rough opinion and then contact them for further enquiries. I can only speak for myself, but email contact is fine by me, at least initially - just as professional as anything else. There are no "rules" - whatever does the trick, really.

Also, most older zooms and even some newer ones do NOT cover super-35. This is true for both the Angenieux 17-102mm and the 25-250mm. The new Optimo does however cover it.

downix2K@aol.com or @mac.com or or is it just downix2k?

Eric, I think you misunderstood me - it was the 535 I was referring to when I said it wasn't very well balanced for handheld. A bit unclear on my part, sorry. I agree that Aaton's are very well balanced - that's always been their forte.

I was pleasantly surprised, actually. I though there were some brilliant allegories for humanity, uprising and even fascism in there. But I do agree that Will Smith is a bit wrong for it - the film has some serious and interesting themes, but they're just hard to focus on when there's a comedian in the lead. The look was also very slick and commercial-y. A bit too much car commercial at times and some annoying camera movements here and there. And I just have this thing with 3/4 sidelight and a backlight on the opposite side - it just looks artifical to me...

Old Rank's are also notoriously prone to break down and misbehave. There's millions of stories about them simply refusing to work or having some weird artifact on even tuesdays or or odd fridays or something. The guys at the state run television in Stockholm couldn't open the window to let the heat out because then the old Rank would start to misbehave... They're just fiddly, individual machines that can show varying quality.

It'd be interesting to see. Please post here if you ever get around to doing it.

Matt, haven't really tried them. All I remember hearing is that "real photographers" don't use Canon - they're toys. But I don't know anything about still equipment or Canon, it's just something I heard someplace years ago from a Nikon fan.

Nope. Not at all these days. Hell, people can't even tell the difference btw Fuji and Kodak. Besides, there's just as much risk that one roll could be heat-, pressure-, or X-ray damaged within the same batch as from another batch.

Do you really need a complete walk-in darkroom? Wouldn't a very spacious changing box (like a big, hard glorified tent) be more space saving? Besides, I always prefer having my head in the light - why sit and rot in a dark room with your irises pumping for light when only the hands are needed?

Check your settings - that's the correct one.

Hi. I'm a Mac user and have iChat which I use all the time to keep in contact with friends all over and share files. I was just wondering if anyone else uses it? If so, maybe we can add eachother as buddies? Also works with AOL's AIM adresses (version 8.0 and later, I think). My adress is adamfrisch@mac.com

Fuji's 400T is a low con stock, you might want to try that one for educational purposes. It's Fuji's equivalent to Kodak's 320. It was some time since I shot on it now, but I remember it as a quite pleasing stock, a bit soft and "pre-flashed" in appearance. I liked it.

I shot a short in brightest sunlit exterior on the 800T because Kodak had sponsored us with it. Can you imagine the amount of filtration I had in front of the camera? Through the viewfinder it looked like a night shoot! But I agree, the 800 wasn't the best of stocks. It was even grainy in telecine, which not many film stocks tend to be. That said, I do welcome the prospect of maybe a 1000T Vision2 or a 1600T Vision2 down the line for exactly those shooting times Michael Mann talked about in his latest film Collateral. You just can't overexpose a city nighstcape at night enough - it just gets better and better. Incidentally, there are some fabulous night scenes of a flying chopper silhouetted against the LA cityscape in Mann's seminal film Heat. That was shot on 5298 (pushed one stop, I believe) and anamorphic lenses and it looked just great.

You can wind it up yourself. I've done that with Fuji film a couple of times at my local lab. It's horrible to sit in a pitch dark room and hand wind film onto the plastic cores, but it does save some money.

Jim Cameron said once "I think we should just bite the bullet and double ticket prices to ensure that the quality evolves", thereby giving himself carte blanche to produce his next $400 million movie, maybe.. I disagree. You work within the contsraints the business offers. Adapt, evolve, or get out. The film and music industry have been such sheltered cash cows for so many years, they get really pissed when the status quo is upset. Let's not forget that the whole reason people download music in the first place is that it costs a fortune to get an album that cost nothing to produce. Now, 10 years down the line when internet has eroded the record companies bizniz (mind you, they can life off the cash they ripped from your parents for decades still), albums have STILL not become any cheaper. And they keep on whining and bitching. Today a movie on DVD that has 2 hours of entertainment and costs a fortune to make often costs less than $10 to buy. The CD costs a fraction of that to produce and make, yet still is more expensive. Man, they had it coming. You can fool some people sometimes, but you can't fool all the people all the times. Same goes for films. Would it kill them to differentiate ticket prices? I think a small DV feature with no name actors should be cheaper than the Bruckheimer elefantiasis summer buster. There will always be people who are willing to pay to see Will Smith and Martin Lawrence flash guns (me, I'd pay big money to never have to see Martin Lawrence again on the screen ever). Let the audience decide. I find myself having a very hard time paying upwards $20 (yes that's what it costs to go to the movies in London) to see a film. Which is such a pity because I love going to the movies. So quite often you fall into the old blockbuster trap: Since the prices are the same for the small and the big movies, I more often than not see only the big-ish movies 'cause at least then I get to see someone spend a fortune on the screen. It's such a pity, because that's not the kind of cinemagoer I want to be. I want to be varied in my diet.

This has been asked a million times before, but it has never been answered. Because there is no correct answer. Both are fine makers of film. Kodak has just introduced their new Vision2 series which is finer grained and more desaturated. Very nice set of stocks. I've shot a lot of Fuji because it tends to be a bit cheaper and I'd rather shoot 35mm than 16mm. I also happen to like the look of Fuji. Most DP's prefer Kodak, though. But in some areas Fuji isn't a player at all, and there it can sometimes be more expensive to shoot on Fuji than on Kodak if they have to fly it in. Here in Europe, Fuji's network is a bit patchy - smaller countries have no rep. So you have to adapt to the regions.