False 1:85.1 frame guide on C500

[Marcus Allemann]

I might be heading into early senility here but does the 1:85.1 frame guide seem wrong to any C500 users that can confirm?

 

If I'm not mistaken, the camera shoots in 1:78.1 (16:9), so the 1:85.1 guide should be slightly letterboxed but on the camera I'm currently toying around with, frame guides appear on the vertical edges and that seems like it shouldn't happen.

 

is this a firmware bug or am I missing something?

[David Mullen ASC]

Some people extract 1.85 inside of 1.78 all-around and others keep the sides common.

[Marcus Allemann]

thanks for the quick reply. now I'm just curious, why would someone want to extract 1.85 from 1.78 instead of there being a regular letterboxed 1.85?

[David Mullen ASC]

Well, for one thing, it may help in terms of the 1.85 inside 1.78 being more accurate for things being transferred to film for projection -- the area recorded to film will be slightly outside the projection aperture 1.85 gate so ideally you'd record 1.78 but frame for 1.85 just inside that to compensate for any slight loss of the sides from projection and screen masking, though you'd be smart to keep the full 1.78 safe anyway. But with most things being digitally projected, this may be less of an issue, you can use the full 1.78 width for the 1.85 DCP image.

 

In other words, you'd almost want an outer and an inner 1.85, sort of "projection safe" 1.85 inside a slightly bigger max 1.85. But I suppose the outer 1.78 area is sort of your outer frame lines anyway, you should shoot so that the image works in full 1.78 because it is likely to get shown that way on broadcast HDTV.