Michael Collier

IF you act now you can recieve all of this for the discounted rate of $5,992!!! But wait, theres more. we'll throw in this cheese grater/juice maker at no extra cost, but only to the first 50 that call. Give him a bowtie and a scottish accent and I think I have seen that infomercial. I am excited about the JVC HD-100U, Im excited about the GVG Infinity (trying to get my station to buy some) but damn, I would never talk about a camera with such scripted enthusiasm. oh and Haakon, I think the real advantage to the interchangable lense is the ability to add a mini35 addaptor without the stock lens. Other cameras with fixed lenses end up passing the mini35 look through a cheap and distorted lens. Light loss, chromatic aberations, and barrel distortions await a P2 user who wants to shed the 1/3 or even 2/3" chip look. the ENG full size P2 cameras look nice, I will admit that, but P2 doesnt make sense for anyone who wants an affordable prosumer HD camera. (and 3P2 cards, the camera and accessories will be more expensive than the HD100U with a mini35 adaptor. anyone with a good set of primes or even still photography lenses should apply.) FOR THE LIFE OF YOUR CAR!!!! (see the quip about the scottish guy and hopefully I have sparked some flashbacks.)

Sounds amazing. Think carefully what to do with those tapes, your probably have all kinds of awards locked up in them. I would recomend documentary format, but if that doesnt fly with you, then what about this: Have the lead charecter of the peice watching tape that was shot, it would explain the quality and give a cool feel to it, so instead of flashbacks he puts a tape in to remind him of something. could be a good hook

wow, didnt know that. I read somewhere it was CMOS, but maybe I was looking at a different camera. If it isnt CMOS, then the CCD does have provisions to drain excess charge in a pixel because even with really bright spots well above IRE100 it doesnt bloom very much, and verticle smear is almost non-existent. Thanks for the correction Peter

I like to aim for IRE 90 for a white object in my scenes. reason being is that upper 10% can capture detail in the highlights, and give you some headroom for color correction, which is almost a nessecity on any video project. the Z1 has 2 zebra patterns. zebra and clipping. go into the menu and set the zebra to 90IRE. then when your exposing the shot, switch back and forth, try and get the box to be covered by zebra, then make sure nothing is clipping other than maybe hotspots of in frame lights, etc. Dont worry too much about the blow-out effect. That is mostly limited to CCDs, the Z1 is CMOS. we shot a scene on the movie I am working on (also with the Z1) and caught a nasty hightlight from the sun reflecting off a table directly into the lens (we were using bounced lighting, so the scene definatly was not exposed for this reflection) and the Z1 handled it beautifully.

35 mm resolves more resolution. the picture is softer to begin with on 16, so a little (key word a little) out of focus doesnt register as much. also since the 35mm has a larger target area, depth of feild is crushed. That property alone tends to exagerate a soft focused lens

He is with pany. If your not then whats a downside to the HVX? if your not with pany you should have several reasons, I know I already have a few good reasons why its not the best camera. thats an absurd way to choose a camera. camera manufacturers put money into different features to get to the price they want. Sometimes one portion suffers more than others. Say a manufacturer wants to add XLR audio, well to do that they may have to drop the expensive prism and CCD block for a cheaper version, or maybe the lense doesnt get that extra coating it needs to increase resolution and color. Its a give and take situation, and given that there are several cameras at any price point, its absurd to say they would all look the same. specs are important because if you know what they mean, then you know what you are giving up for a certain feature. I have seen SD cams that dont even get to the full SMPTE resolution standard with their CCDs, but upres before compression. i know i only have 8 years experience to your 25, but come on, whos foolin who around here? and Häakon, tell the boys at panny to start a user input forum. I would like to have a say in what the next camera they push on us would have, I know many others would too. maybe we can put an end to cameras designed to be used by professionals, but shapped and presented as a consumer. the prosumer look = hard control over a simple device like a camera.

Ok, so I know target size affects angle of veiw at a given focal length. Heres my question: I am so used to using lenses marked for 2/3" CCDs that in planning which lenses I need for a mini-35 setup is making me a bit uneasy. I am looking for a range similar to an ENG news lens, something around 7.5-110mm (calculated for the 2/3" chip) but need that to work with the 35mm target of the mini-35. I think we are going with some primes so this is all the more important for me. is it a linear conversion? IE if the diagonal is aprox twice as big on the 35mm to the chip, does that mean that a 25mm 35mm prime equates to a 12.5mm chip? If anyone knows how to calculate that I would be very thankful. (not looking for actual focal length, just equal angle of view. these wont be anamorphic or anything complicated like that, just standard round lenses.)

the $3,000 units arent; complete, just the fuel cell. after purcase they would ahve to be regulated then inverted to give the 120v or 240v or what ever is needed. I was thinking about starting a rental company, like panavision, where you pay for the units and recieve all the hydrogen you would need. Its all calculatable. Take the total watts need, figure out how much hydrogen will give that wattage for 8 straight hours, then add 10% buffer. any aditional needs just means an extra tank or two of hydrogen. They also dont give 12v regulated out, I think its somewhere around 50v unregulated. but with a good regulator circut I can get 12v out easily to power lights and cell phone chargers (actors.) and whatever else is needed.

If you are just planning on TV veiwing you are fine. Every NTSC monitor has about 10% saftey area, depending on the setup at the factory and TV wear. If you do plan to project it or print it to 35mm then your framing will be different than what you saw on set. If that is the case you should turn the monitor to underscan and frame with that. beware though if you use underscan and then have a DVD release a portion of the image will be cropped. If it is for projection and the framing is off a little, you can import the footage into Affter Effects and 'pan and scan' to get the frame right. be careful wit the pan though, done poorly it will be more jaring that the empty space around the picture.

It depends on what your planning on doing. The vectroscope is good to check you saturation in various channels. If you over saturate you get bad colors, and colors will spill to other pixels. The real one you want to pay attention to is the waveform monitor. This one basicly will show you the IRE of every pixel. Its great if you have it on hand to set exposure with, or to make sure highlights dont blow out and bloom. If you set it up with your camera and pan left to right you will see how it works. every pixel in each verticle line gets grouped and displayed over eachother. If you have a really light waveform at a particular IRE value it indicates only a few pixles are at that level. If its bright that means there are several pixles of that value. The easiest way to use this information is to set things that are supposed to be white but not blown out to IRE 90. You want at least 10% headroom to cover color correction later. its ok if things like windows or the hotspot of practicles clips at 100% IRE, because even if you color correct you still probably want those parts of the image pure white. now if you want to use this to set a camera up, I am not an engeneer so I wont go into that part of it, but as an on set tool to guide you with exposure you can ensure the most picture information and make sure your not overdoing it. iris up until what you want to go white is at IRE 90. usually there is a pretty wide gap from your midtones to highlights, so its easy to eyeball.

I like the lighting in that shot. Now as an avid photoshop user I can tell you photoshop has no place in DP. color correction asside it should be all in camera to get the blur you are looking for. Look at his shirt, it has varying patterns of softness and solation. If the image were moving I assume it would look like the lord of the rings effect when he puts the ring on. Whats more, having the camera naturally blur the background is so much more pleasing, because its real and our eyes register it as real.

Dont mix lighting unless you want the blue look. The cannons seem quite adept at holding their white ballance and having a limited range in terms of color temp. (as do most cameras I suppose, my GL1 seems more sensitive than my beta tho) so choose a color temp. and stick with it. also I would recomend using an 85b filter for outdoor scenes, the chips are balanced for tungsten and have to attenuate or boost (gainup) the individual red/green/blue channels within its own color matrix to ballance daylight. with the 85b you will have a sharper image. Light every scene to a 1.4 (I think thats the lowest setting) you have 1/3" chips so everything will be in focus, not as astetically pleasing as a 35mm animorphic picture. If your outdoors and cant get to a 1.4 naturally, then apply ND until you get close. also some diffuser on the lense (very light) will soften the harshness that the pixel shift induces. be ready for slightly redish images, not sure if they fixed it with the GL2, but my GL1 responds to red too much, I always have to color correct it after the fact (dont do any in camera CC other than whitebalance, you loose information every time you color correct, quickly leading to a noisy picture.)

I shoot everyday with a video camera and fujinon lens (7.5-110mm, 2/3" chips) and can guestimate resonably well, but like anything I hate to do it. A little confidence will put that edge into your shot, so if you can rig something up to show you what you are shooting, even if its reletive then your ahead of the game. I wouldnt recomend building a frame to mock a veiwfinder, I would rig something up so you know the reletive center of frame. If you are used to the lens and you know where center is you can base everything off that. it will give you better results than trying to line one charecter up on the side of your mock frame, only to find your frame was off and your charecter is not cut off at the nose on the extreme side of frame.

For the ultra-wide angle fish eye the director wants, you can probably drop the mini-35 for those shots, and use the standard lens (assuming its also included in the rental) and add a death lens or something like that, just a nice fisheye adapter. (this is all assuming several things such as: the standard XL1 lens included in the rental, fish eyes not working with the mini-35 (not sure it would create a problem or not) and assuming the fish eye attachent is a cheaper rental than a PL mount fish eye) The reason I say drop the mini 35 is because the idea of the mini35 is to crush DOF, but with a fish eye the focal length is so short that you probably will have a large DOF, even with the mini on board. You can save yourself weight and reduce the amount of elements/GG which will make your image sharper. as for no light shooting, I would recomend ballancing in the shadow so they wont go blue, especially if you are working with a bald sky. Try to avoid really hot pockets of direct light, as the contrast between shadow and light will completly blow those highlights out. If you cant avoid the direct light, or like the shadow pattern they throw, get some silk or netting or chease cloth and a ladder, place it as high up as you can so the netting doesnt cast its own pattern, but will drop the level of light so its more in range with the shadow. I would avoid all unnetted direct light unless you want to shoot detail in the highlights and let the subject sillouette, which is always cool and a great fall back if you cant controll the highlights at a certain point of the day. also I am assuming the ally walls will be perpandicular to the suns travel (ie, the highlights will be on one wall of the ally in the morning, and in the afternoon it will be on the other side, just an assumption) I would shoot everything in the afternoon, so shaddows dont move around too much, but you get a lot of shooting in. If lighting becomes a huge issue, find the guy with the coolest car, park it in the ally, turn the driving lights on and make sure to incorperate the car into a few shots. Its cheap and clece to have a car in a music video but if you need light, theres light for you.

If you take into account the time it takes the chip to clear itself and set its black its something like 330, but you have to find data on the chip itself to find what the exact angle would be. The data sheet should tell you how long in ms it takes to blank the chip and reset it for another exposure. once you have that take 1000/(framesper second)=Frame duration (in Ms) take Frame duration/(blanking time)= percent of time blanking take 360 - (percent of time blanking * 360)= max shutter angle.

I would recomend 1/2 CTO on the lights inside the doors, so when people open them up they look warm and inviting. Get a lot of quick shots of action with crisp sound. The best way to spice up boring is with interesting sound and periods of motion (like david was saying, cam movement would be key.) think requim for a dream montages, but not as quick cut. Get every sound you can to build a world out of the storage facility, like it has a life of its own. Also I would focus on co-ordnating the motion to an insane degree. IE as the camera dollys through the hallway you see at each bay someone doing something short and spacific that would create a noise. One person opening the door, dolly too a girl putting her (albeit very noisy) teady bear down on some boxes, dolly to a guy walking his motorcycle into his bay. Something new at each location so it seems like a world of life in the place. Definatly put some neg green on the lights (cool, greenish light doesnt sell the space for me, its so boring that ugly lighting will kill any sense of life.)

If you are proficient with digital video editting it shouldnt be a problem. I have gotten pretty good results from After Effects. All you do is import the video into the timeline and when you are outputting set the frame rate to 25fps and compress it to DV pal. Then take that file and find someone who does DV to beta transfers. At least you wont have to worry about their conversion. Just make sure you click the blend frame mode so instead of dropping frames it interpolates the frames. Keep in mind that you will have a little motion degredation just because you are dropping 5 frames every second

I think it was a lot of planning and rotoscoping, if you look closely at the kids jumping from post to post, you can see where the rotoscoping overlaps and one 'walks through' another one. little errors like that but given the complexity of the project it is still amazing. I love the part where the 4 (or maybe 5) minouges cross at the lightpost. amazing timing. still my favorite one he has done is either the Foo Fighters video (still a favorite song for me to play, made me pick up a guitar in the first place) and the video with the two japanees girls in splitscreen.

Flag EVERY light you have in front of the lens. I dont know if this is nesicarily the 'proper method' but it always works for me. If you have a zoom on your camera and can pull back any, pull out until you can see all your lights. then put the flags in front of those hotspots, making sure they are far enough forward so as not to affect lighting on your actors. if you cant pull out any get a ladder and put your eyes basicly where your light will be. then have an assistent adjust the flag until it completely blocks the lens in your veiw. all you are trying to do is to put a block the direct line between the lights head and the lens. if it still flares your flags are not big enough to cover the whole hotspot. cover the area of the light and at least 25% more, to cover the glow. **edit** sorry, I just read Davids post. yeah if its in frame your out of luck, if its out then use my method

you could shoot HDV 60i. if your looking to finnish in SD you will still have full resolution and more than 2x slow factor.

If you have lights on set (and with most lighting you probably will) that let light fall onto the glass of the lense a couple of things happen. most obvious and recognizable trait is the flare. It begins to flare (depending on focal length) just before that light enters frame. Sometimes its wanted and is allowed to flare, sometimes its not and a matte box is used to keep it from flaring until it actually does get in frame and is unavoidable. the other thing that happens is a reduction in contrast. Think of old scooby doo cartoons where their flashlight brightens up everything you can see within the beam (not just where it falls). this (sort of) happens with the lens. when light falls on the front glass it begins to refract around the glass, eventually getting to the film or CCD and 'flashes' the chip (sometimes a DP will 'flash' the film with a small light in the camera to reduce contrast) also if there is even a little dust on the lens it will be illuminated, and will be photographed out of focus, causing a slight haze over the image reducing contrast. matte boxes also have stages for glass filters. they are usually just sqare peices of glass, unlike camcorder filters that have the thread ring to mate with the camera face. their stages also rotate to speed the setup (like in the case of graduated filter) or (though I have never seen or heard of this) you can spin your filters as you shoot if there is an effect your looking for.

So I had this idea and I wanted to see what other DPs thought, if they would use it. If you have been keeping up with recent developments of fuel cells they have made them cheap (under 3grand for 5Kw) and able to work in a range of environments (down to -20) and are totally silent. I was wondering if someone were to come out with a line of generators designed to run either a whole set worth of lights, or smaller cheaper units designed to run just one light (elimnating long chord runs, long setup times, and the possibility of pulling a light over by the cable) do you think it would help us work quicker. I mean no sound, so they can be placed on a hollow floor with no padding and still not make ambient sound, enough power to run a blonde. In a tow-behind unit they would have enough to power the whole set. I think that just not having to park an expensive generator far away to cut sound factor, then run LONG cables all around the set, up flights of stairs etc. would be a huge time saver. and you could build them directly into an HMI ballast, so those would be even easier to setup. They output DC which would have to be converted to AC for certain lights, but since that would be done internaly you can sync the phase of each power supply to a master one, eliminating flicker and hum, as the cycle doesnt have to be 60hz.) Its my understanding taht a canister of hydrogen about the size of a colman lantern would last about an hour on a blonde and would be very affordable (as apposed to paying an electrician to tap the power.) This would also help because a 5KW unit measures less than 2' x1' x1' (plus electronics to turn the 50v DC into 120v AC) and would easily be able to be carried a couple at a time by a grip. so if you had to shoot in the woods with no road access you arent running cables all around. you could drop in by helecopter on Mt. McKinnley and shoot with artificial light. (which for all of you in the lower 48, please refer to Mt. McKinnley as Denali from now on, we were not a state when McKinnley was president, and that was the true name of north americas tallest mountain) Do you think this would increase saftey? reduce the cost of doing business? make things any simpler or easier for use?

not that i would question Mr. Mullen. If he has seen it it must be so, but I remember one time I was designing a digital tachometer for a class and had a little microcontroller that i was programming and the crystal was like 4 bucks. 20 MHZ it would loose on clock cycle (+/- 1/2,000,000 of a second) a day. I would be surprised that in a thousand dollar dat they would not have a crystal involved. There are even cyrstals in my X-box controllers. I would also wonder just how efficient can charge-loop timers be, or even TTL given that temperature can affect the speed at which they clock.

if your a real bigginer than you just need to worry about getting the light to do what you want on the cheap. I once shot a greenscreen sequence on 2 lights i built totaling 1500watts, a greenboard I made out of old gybsum board, and a dolly i made out of plywood, angle iron and skate wheels. one light I made that I always like was basicly just a 2x3ft peice of 1/2" plywood mounted to a 2x4 that sat in a milk crate (lots of weight was put in the milk crate to hold it up.) on the board was 6 200 watt incandecent (almost household lights, but balanced for 3200) I had 6 standard ceramic sockets taht I mounted to the board and 3 switches at teh bottom. it was wired such that the first switch would turn the top row of 3 on. the second one would turn the two outside lights on the bottom row and the last switch turned on the middle one on the row. This way I could choose anything between 200 watts all the way up to 1200 watts. on both sides of the light was long metal with right angle bends, similar to the type that holds up shelving. At the end I hung a frame I fassioned out of 1/2" square woodstock with silk-like fabric covering it. this way i had a soft box which could be removed if nessicary. I also built another light which was nothing more than a security flood light in a scocket that was attached to a wood clamp. I had anoter milk crate with a 2x4 so I had a standard mount for it, but if I needed to I could hang it on a door or something like that. Things to keep in mind: if you can wire a lamp you can wire a tungsten lighting device. kinos will be harder because the ballasts they use are at a special frequency and require different electronics than switches, you need to be an engeneer or electronic hobyist to be able to build one. make sure the wire you use is a heavy enough gauge to handle the most power your unit will use. make sure your sockets are able to handle the light you intend to use (if its not built to that wattage it will melt, short, catch fire and kill everything withina 5 mile radius. well maybe a bit of an overstatement, but it would be bad.)

I would recomend the JVC HD-100U only because it actually does 720p (in true progressive fassion) it does true 24p and you can get more lenses out of it. in fact with the mini35 and a couple of good primes I think you can get somewhere close to film (although it will look a little soft, a little harsh due to most consumer sensors dynamic range.) it will have the focal qualities of 35, then jsut be careful with your lighting.