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Short film on Eclair ACL


Jason Hinkle RIP

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I just finished a short film on the ACL and posted up a trailer. Thanks for checking it out!

 

I ran into a whole mess of difficultly due to some lens flare problems that caused a blown out spot in the center of the image and horrendous flickering on about 25% of my footage. Correcting it took forever and the results are not that great, but I'm happy to have it done. I didn't think it would even be usable for a while. On the bright side, I now have some tricks for completely eliminating really horrible flickering from footage.

 

I used a variety of nikon 35mm lenses on the camera and i've decided that I'm never going to use them again on 16mm film. I can't seem to reproduce it every time but there seems to be something with the rear element being really big and the mirror reflects light back onto the film. It mainly seems to be happen when there's a bright light source in the frame.

Edited by Jason Hinkle
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  • 1 month later...
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Jason, i also think that it looks cool. I don't know the Eclair but flickering can occur when the camera design has a 90 degree ground glass. All the older Arriflex (2C) have this problem so ghosting images or flicker can occur on your film. To prevent that little metal bars were manufactured in front of the ground glass. The 16ST doesn't have this problem and Arri later changed that rectangular design also on their 35BL cameras. In your case I can imagine that your ground glass or viewfinder could be slightly out of alignment and reflect a small amount of light back onto the film.

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Thank you guys for the compliments and the info. I've heard it may be related to the mirror as well, I don't know for sure.

 

Anyway, if you have the misfortune of some similar footage, I posted a how-to of my whole process:

 

 

it probably seems overly elaborate, but i must have tried every possible flicker removal solution i could find that didn't involved so much labor. They either didn't work, or else they worked but caused noticeable side effects such as blur or a trippy-looking frame blending "echo". If you're really patient, my method will get rid of any amount of flickering and the footage still looks sharp.

 

I'd love any comments if you have a better technique because my solution is obviously a huge pain in the neck!

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Sweet! Looks nice. I have used Nikon glass on my ACL and never had any problems with it. I wonder what is causing your internal flare issues, maybe a combination of what you and Oliver talk about . . . Where did you transfer the footage?

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  • 2 weeks later...

Sweet! Looks nice. I have used Nikon glass on my ACL and never had any problems with it. I wonder what is causing your internal flare issues, maybe a combination of what you and Oliver talk about . . . Where did you transfer the footage?

 

thanks, i really do appreciate the kind words. astrolab/filmworkers did the transfer here in chicago (in the former corner office of one hugh hefner!) i was in the lab for a good part of it and saw the footage right off the film - the hot spots are definitely there. the colorist did his best to give me something to work with which was fantastic but a few shots were beyond repair.

 

i guess i'll send the camera in at some point. in the meantime, i don't know what to think, i'm paranoid about using the nikons at the moment because i can't duplicate the problem in test shots and i don't want to get burned again on my next shoot!

 

Oh, i did use a matte box with french flags. taped up the mags. some shots had 1 stop of ND filter, not sure if that is part of it. I don't know I can't figure it out!

Edited by Jason Hinkle
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