Marek Stricek

OK, nevermind - I have got info from a guy who worked on the BD authoring - since it was not a big budget production the movie did not used the top notch optics, other cause was that some scenes were probably zoomed in the negative during the original edit of the movie, so all this resulted in picture softness and worse focus feeling.

In our country (Czech republic) an audio/video magazine issued Capricorn 1 movie on a Bluray disc. Technically the release is quite OK - like: there are no scratches in the picture, but the first half of the movie looks quite soft, especially in the interiors - with some wide shots it looks like only the center of the picture is in focus while loosing it gradually to the edges. Second half - the exterior shots in canyons (lots of light presumably), there are no such problems. Does anyone know what stock sensitivity they have used for the movie? What about the lenses used? (Panavision is mentioned in the credits)

as far as I know this is a fixed value, so no there is no chance to change it

Perhaps on this link you can find the asnwers to your question.

I have a recent experience of shooting in white room. It was a hall in a former castle nowadays used as a museum. I was shooting material for a documentary about a blind sculptor. So I used grey card to white balance and setup the exposure, then I shot all day long with the same setup. The scene was lit by wall lights - it was plenty of them in there. Then when I was looking at the result in computer I was shocked how much white is in there in compare to other footage. Nevertheless in this case it can be used in this movie as an illustration of bright spots in everydays life of a blind artist (even if, as she told me, sometimes this kind of sculpture modeling in public place could be quite tiring, when explaining how the sculpture is done for the 20th time). And here is yet another picture. My try to fight the different color of light coming from outside, I hope that this way it will be less distractive then if the window was left in its original blue as can be seen on the right side of the previous picture.

I just tried to download it as I was curious in which format do you have the files, I was successful with the first one, but while trying to download the second one the Geocities server informed me that your site transfer limit was exceeded. Maybe you can convert the file to black&white and store it as a .PNG file. Or I can do the OCR for you so you will have the article in the text form again. Otherwise access to your article will be very limited. (here is the first page after conversion in HTML Sync1.html and DOC Sync1.doc format)

I think that "Hero" from Zhang Yimou may fall in the same category.

you can check if the mov files on the DVD are OK by simply copying them from DVD back to the harddrive and then play them from harddrive - if the copying procedure went smoothly and the files play OK from harddrive then the DVD ROM is not fast enough

If you want to set the gain to 0dB then first you need to move the AUTO LOCK switch to center position, then you must activate manual gain control by pressing the GAIN button (the gain value will appear on the screen) and select the GAIN SELECTOR to L position. You also need to assign the gain level for the L position in GAIN SETUP itme of CAMERA SETUP menu - default setting for the L position is 0dB. Also make sure that you did not activate the HyperGain function (+36 dB) - but then the noise is clearly visible on the screen. (all this can be found in operating instructions booklet, page 30 I think)

The main difference between professional (HVR-A1E, PD170) and consumer (HDR-FX1E) is that the professional have features which are of no use when shooting home video - like the microphone XLR connectors, DVCAM format support, timecode settings - and these features rise the price of the professional equipment beside of the fact that in the price there is calculated also cost of support. And since the FX1 is a consumer camcorder the User Manual can be downloaded at http://support.sony-europe.com/ - select User Manuals from top menu and enter model number HDR-FX1E

Just looking into User Manual (http://www.chaterfilm.com/Manuals%20/HDWF9...ps%20Manual.pdf), starting at page 3-9 (page 69 in PDF) there are described procedures how to avoid breaks in recording during various situations.

I pulled out Jaws out of my bookcase and checked out the making of (50 minutes version). The barrels were on the line which went through eye hook attached to the Orca below water surface and then to the motor boat which was pulling the line (I suppose that the motor boat could be hidden behind the Orca in first shot, and then on the side in the second). This was mentioned in the documentary mainly because this shot ended up with the Orca starting to sink. The problem was that the motor boat was going too fast and pulled out the plank out of the hull of Orca and the water rushed in. (as said by Mr. Spielberg)

Even if this was sunny day it might happen. The problems can start when you move camcorder from cold air conditioned room to hot outside. (Or if you step out from your air conditioned car). It happened to me few times like this, and right now I was asked to shoot a wedding where the ceremony will be in the building, then people will go outside and then they move to a restaurant by cars. I am located in northern hemisphere so we have winter now. Thus shooting the ceremony will be OK, if I will come early enough to stabilize temperature in my gear, after that the move outside will be OK again, because I will move from hot to cold. But what I am afraid of, is the step after shooting the cars outside and then moving to hot restaurant - that might be a challenge. So I am thinking now to have prepared second camcorder in the restaurant to avoid such troubles.

Hi, I am just a hobby documentarist, shooting video for 2 years (I was doing editing only for 3 years before that), so maybe my experience is nothing when comparing with professionals here. Anyway just from the start I was looking for the HD to come. I was checking the specs of the JVC's first HDV camcorder but I was disappointed from the results shown in reviews (September 2004 if I remember well). Finally the SONY HDR-FX1 hit the market, showing quite good results and the Z1 was around the corner. I was checking the specs of both, being still undecided which one to buy - in the end I went for Z1 to not regret in future that I am missing some important feature. And so what might be interesting for you on the Z1 is its capability to use 50i beside of 60i. If you shoot in HDV 50i then you can easily do deinterlacing by removng one field, and by scaling you can get real 25p in standard resolution, then you can slow it down a bit to get the 24p - thus no need for DVX-100. I am using the HD resolution for 95% of my material, and I really like the picture when compared to standard resolution when shown on LCD projector. As I mentioned at the beginning, I do video just as a hobby, but I thought it might be worthwhile to publish bit of my experience with Z1.

Sure, it can be switched to 50i - the only difference between Z1 variants around the world (i.e. Z1U, Z1E, Z1N, Z1P) is the set of supported menu languages, everything else is the same, as far as I know. To switch between standards you go to the OTHERS menu where the last item is "50i/60i SEL", you confirm that, camera will reboot, and then it will indicate 50i on display (or 60i if it was in 50i before).