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A recent HP commercial which I'm extremely impressed with


Karim D. Ghantous

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I watched this all the way through. That's not something I would usually say about commercials, especially those which are over 5 minutes long. This is an excellent commercial not just because it made me watch it to the end, but because it was very well lit.

I really love the style here - I'd describe it as a whole bunch of small lights in the scene as opposed to just one large light. I love the mix of sources - probably because mixed lighting vaguely resembles Christmas lights. And I love the amount of (apparent) practicals, which IMHO are the most interesting and important part of lighting. I think you could almost light entirely with practicals these days. (Don't send me hate mail!).

It's obviously digital, but the image manages to remain rich nonetheless. And it's so close that some people will call it a win for digital. The post processing was very well done, and it doesn't draw attention to itself. I do not like low contrast, washed out images, which seems to be in vogue these days for some reason. Anyway, from what I'm seeing, digital hasn't caught up yet. Maybe that will change, but right now, film is still king.

The lenses that they used for interiors could have been anamorphics, but I don't know. Selective focus was used responsibly and allows the viewer to appreciate the background, instead of obscuring it in a defocused fog. There's noticeable pincushion in some shots which I would have corrected, but at least the image is pleasant and the bokeh has character which isn't too obvious. I wonder though why people spend time in the colouring suite and not actually, you know, correct stuff. At the end of the day, the image isn't clinical, which is the main thing.

I don't think that ads can make you buy something you don't already want to buy, but that doesn't matter. This ad is terrific.

 

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Very nice, a bit long but impressive writing, directing, and execution. Glad projects like this are still getting funded.


Re: pincushion distortion

I love Cooke lenses in general, but those Cooke Anamorphics with their extreme pincushion are just awful to me. Their next anamorphic set needs to be based on Panchro Classics, as small and light as possible, and with redesigned cylinders and focusing system.

To my taste, a little barrel distortion and falloff in anamorphic is a good thing - it emphasizes symmetrical and centered framing. It feels natural. Pincushion on the other hand is terribly distracting, it’s like you get both diverging and converging verticals simultaneously, even though the camera is level. 

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4 hours ago, Phil Rhodes said:

Pretty as hell, of course, but I find the lionisation of suit-wearing corporate culture a little hard to stomach given the recent behaviour of big business on the world stage.

True ,but lionization of the lowly IT department and its dowdy looking members ,rather than the suited alpha males, who it seems from the ad had been losing money.. until saved by the nerds ..and a women no less! who then claim, literally a chair at the table .. I means it is an ad but at least done well.. 

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On 9/27/2020 at 1:51 PM, Satsuki Murashige said:

I love Cooke lenses in general, but those Cooke Anamorphics with their extreme pincushion are just awful to me. [...]

To my taste, a little barrel distortion and falloff in anamorphic is a good thing 

1. With all the time spent in post, you'd think they would fix the distortion. But NOOOOOOOO.

2. No thank you! Straight lines should be straight, and the image must be consistent.

On 9/27/2020 at 6:49 PM, Phil Rhodes said:

Pretty as hell, of course, but I find the lionisation of suit-wearing corporate culture a little hard to stomach given the recent behaviour of big business on the world stage.

I don't see it that way at all. In fact, as Robin pointed out, it actually shows how the IT department saved the company. In fact, it showed how basically one person saved the company. The only thing I would do is change HP for Apple. Heh, heh.

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21 hours ago, Satsuki Murashige said:

Yes, well if you feel this way then you should avoid anamorphic lenses! ?

We'll see about that!

21 hours ago, David Mullen ASC said:

There are a number of shots in "2001" made on a Curtis-Fairchild 160 degree super wide-angle lens with quite a bit of barrel distortion.

2001_wideangle5.jpg

That's one step away from being a full frame fisheye. But, I would never correct it now, because that would change the film. Kubrick could have fixed it, but he chose not to. And besides, if you correct it, you're going to change the framing.

I'd be tempted to correct shots like this, which have very little distortion, and therefore the frame would only be altered trivially:

1345741128_10(1188).jpg.de5dceb98ea91b4aeabc9aab82ba424c.jpg

 

IMDB says that Cooke and Zeiss lenses were used so I have no idea which lens this was. If I'm using fSpy correctly - and I don't think I am - the focal length for 4-perf S35 is indicated as 12mm. 

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2 hours ago, Karim D. Ghantous said:

1345741128_10(1188).jpg.de5dceb98ea91b4aeabc9aab82ba424c.jpg

IMDB says that Cooke and Zeiss lenses were used so I have no idea which lens this was. If I'm using fSpy correctly - and I don't think I am - the focal length for 4-perf S35 is indicated as 12mm. 

Re: aesthetics

Personally, I think the slight barrel distortion and vignetting in this shot helps emphasize the symmetrical framing and draw the eye to the girls in the center of the image. In my opinion, correcting these 'flaws' would undermine the purpose of the shot, making it less effective.

'The Shining' shot is probably the 18mm Zeiss Super Speed. Here's Shelly Duvall talking about Kubrick's love of the 18mm:

The website ShotonWhat lists the Super Speeds and Cooke 20-100 zoom, although some of their other listed tech specs like 3-perf Super 35 are suspect: https://shotonwhat.com/the-shining-1980

Kubrick/Alcott also apparently used a 14.5mm lens for some scenes, don't know the make or model:

Joe Dunton gives a tour of Kubrick's lens collection:

Lens technician Jorge Diaz-Amador notes the distinctive triangular bokeh visible in some scenes from 'The Shining':

http://cinematechnic.com/resources/zeiss_super_speed_f1-2_lenses/

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19 hours ago, Satsuki Murashige said:

Re: aesthetics

Personally, I think the slight barrel distortion and vignetting in this shot helps emphasize the symmetrical framing and draw the eye to the girls in the center of the image. In my opinion, correcting these 'flaws' would undermine the purpose of the shot, making it less effective.

[...]

Kubrick/Alcott also apparently used a 14.5mm lens for some scenes, don't know the make or model:

1. With respect, I disagree completely. Vignetting and distortion have no place in photography IMO.

2. Ah, that does make sense. The shot of the corridor could have been done with the 14.5mm.

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1 hour ago, Karim D. Ghantous said:

1. With respect, I disagree completely. Vignetting and distortion have no place in photography IMO.

That sounds like an arbitrary rule. All cinema involves photography and to say that all movies must submit to the same technical standards no matter what the story, style, or artistic intent is seems rather reductive.

What about a distorted POV of someone under the influence of drugs, waking up from an operation, or undergoing a stroke like in "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"?  What about dream sequences? 

What's wrong with Expressionism in cinema? Why does cinema have to be strictly realistic? What about Deakin's use of distorting lenses to suggest both 19th century photography and a memory, as in "Assassination of Jesse James"?
 

Screen_Shot_2020-09-30_at_8_41.01_PM.png

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4 hours ago, Satsuki Murashige said:

I think this is a much more interesting debate than film vs digital! ?

I agree! 
 

2 hours ago, David Mullen ASC said:

That sounds like an arbitrary rule. All cinema involves photography and to say that all movies must submit to the same technical standards no matter what the story, style, or artistic intent is seems rather reductive.

What about a distorted POV of someone under the influence of drugs, waking up from an operation, or undergoing a stroke like in "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"?  What about dream sequences? 

What's wrong with Expressionism in cinema? Why does cinema have to be strictly realistic? What about Deakin's use of distorting lenses to suggest both 19th century photography and a memory, as in "Assassination of Jesse James"?
 

Screen_Shot_2020-09-30_at_8_41.01_PM.png

Pretty on point!

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I think the maze sequence was shot with a 9.8mm Tegea, remarkably rectilinear but with a lot of corner softness and CA, but the hallway seems likelier to be the 14.5mm Angenieux to me. 

To me, chromatic aberration is the cardinal sin of lens design whereas vignetting, if anything, is desirable. But I think it's the Super Baltars that have some CA and while I've never used them I think they look good, so I suppose it has its place.

To play devil's advocate, if you look through Renaissance paintings, including those likely using cameras obscura, not only is there no barrel distortion, there's no perspective distortion, either. Straight lines remain straight, as if photographed with a tilt/shift lens. (Well, to some extent they arguably were...) 

During my too-brief tenure with a large format camera, I corrected for perspective distortion in landscapes with shift rather than by panning up. So trees, etc. would have straight lines (assuming they were in the first place) and for this kind of photography I think distortion is generally not desirable. I also shot at deep focus, I suppose there were no painters who considered depth of field, either... (and used apochromatic lenses that I probably should have held onto given their recent increase in value).

On the other hand, I generally prefer slight barrel distortion (and loathe pincushion distortion). I think there's a Shane Hurlbut video where he prefers the slight barrel distortion in S4s over the straight lines in Rokinons, and I agree. The eye is drawn to the center of the image if it's just a bit larger than the rest of the frame. And arguably the effective focal length in the center is less so faces are not only more prominent, but suffer less from wide angle perspective distortion, too... at least if they're toward the center of the frame...

But I can't think of an instance where second order distortion or pincushion distortion is desirable, so as much as I want to dismiss blanket statements about distortion being undesirable, I have my own firm biases.

Edited by M Joel W
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38 minutes ago, M Joel W said:

 

I suppose there were no painters who considered depth of field, either... (and used apochromatic lenses that I probably should have held onto given their recent increase in value).

 

There are some examples in painting where the painters used depth of field to draw attention to what they wanted you to focus on. 

https://www.reynoldahouse.org/collections/object/orchid-with-two-hummingbirds

Or Turner or many of the impressionists just to say a few ? 

Edited by Miguel Angel
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6 hours ago, Satsuki Murashige said:

Karim, 

I’m curious why you feel this way. Is it because you feel that photography should be strictly realistic? Something else? 

Photography by definition cannot be anything but authentic - once you alter an image it becomes something else. Which is fine for narrative work, like dinosaur movies, as narratives are not documentaries. You can also mess with documentary imagery as long as the audience knows what they're looking at, and you are obviously not trying to deceive anyone.

However, you asked about realism, not authenticity. I don't know about that. You can film something in Super 8 and get the exposure right and the colours right and the lens could be consistent and well corrected. But is Super 8 'realistic'? I'd say, no. It has character, which adds an innate aesthetic to the scene you captured on it. If you don't like this aesthetic, then that's cool. We can do 35mm or 65mm if you prefer! Even they have character, although subtle.

Vignetting is dumb. Distortion is lazy. That's how I see it.

4 hours ago, David Mullen ASC said:

What about dream sequences? 

What's wrong with Expressionism in cinema? Why does cinema have to be strictly realistic? What about Deakin's use of distorting lenses to suggest both 19th century photography and a memory, as in "Assassination of Jesse James"?

You could argue that there can be and should be exceptions. You sometimes need to delineate between states, such as past vs present, or dream vs reality. There are different ways you can do that.

The first time I watched Fire Walk With Me was on a 10 year-old pan-and-scan VHS tape on a 48cm National Quintrix TV. It was so worn that I had to turn down the contrast - quite easy to do on analogue TVs, as most of you may recall. It wasn't desirable but I just put up with it. I do miss video stores but you really did not want to rent old tapes if you could help it.

1 hour ago, Manu Delpech said:

So Karim, are you against anamorphic lenses then? ^^

Some of them are poop, some of them give you 80% image quality with 80% character. That balance is hard to find. Now that anyone can afford a decent digital camera with good video, you have to separate yourself from the crowd, and anamorphic lenses are one way to do that.

29 minutes ago, M Joel W said:

 but the hallway seems likelier to be the 14.5mm Angenieux to me. 

To me, chromatic aberration is the cardinal sin of lens design whereas vignetting, if anything, is desirable.

Oh, man. You had me at "sin" but you lost me at "desirable"! Anyway, I think you're right about the 14.5mm. I'm sure that detail is buried in the production notes somewhere.

Speaking of DOF, I really cannot believe some people when they go on about how selective focus is "cinematic". For goodness sakes. Do people actually watch movies or nah?

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12 minutes ago, Miguel Angel said:

There are some examples in painting where the painters used depth of field to draw attention to what they wanted you to focus on. 

https://www.reynoldahouse.org/collections/object/orchid-with-two-hummingbirds

Or Turner or many of the impressionists just to say a few ? 

That does not look like DOF to me, that looks like a combination of contrast and slightly receding detail. A very effective technique, to be sure. But not quite the same thing as defocusing. 

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10 hours ago, Karim D. Ghantous said:

Speaking of DOF, I really cannot believe some people when they go on about how selective focus is "cinematic". For goodness sakes. Do people actually watch movies or nah?

I mean fall off rather than mechanical vignetting btw. Mechanical vignetting I think is ugly, I can understand why you wouldn't want that.

Also I meant the effect focal length feels longer in the center with a fisheye lens or with barrel distortion.

Anyway I think its all subjective… I still can’t imagine someone wanting pincushion distortion. 

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13 hours ago, Karim D. Ghantous said:

Photography by definition cannot be anything but authentic - once you alter an image it becomes something else.

....

Vignetting is dumb. Distortion is lazy. That's how I see it.

....

You could argue that there can be and should be exceptions. You sometimes need to delineate between states, such as past vs present, or dream vs reality. There are different ways you can do that.


‘Photography is truth. The cinema is truth 24 times per second.’ Jean-Luc Goddard

‘The camera lies all the time. It lies 24 times a second.’ Brian DePalma

Surely vignetting and lens distortion is just another type of ‘image character’ or abstraction though? Just like black and white, film grain, lens diffusion or spherical aberration, and contrast/saturation manipulation (whether thru flashing, silver retention, or color grading techniques)? 

If photography is authentic and altering it is inauthentic, then surely fixing lens aberrations like vignetting and distortions in post is the latter?

I don’t see how these attributes (or we could think of them as effects) of lenses could be described as ‘lazy’ or ‘dumb’ - unless you simply mean that the people who employ them are. These are value judgements, but they still don’t explain why you think they’re aesthetically wrong. That’s what I’m curious about. Surely it’s how the effects are applied in the work itself that is the difference between ‘sublime’ and ‘dumb’? 

My feeling is that all photography is an act of interpretation, not authenticity. By necessity you choose to edit by creating a frame. You’re translating 3D space into a 2D image, using focal length and subject distance to compress or foreshorten perspective. You’re selecting a moment in time, and deciding how that moment is rendered with your choice of shutter speed, exposure, film stock, processing. There’s nothing essential or authentic about that, it’s all manufactured reality.

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7 hours ago, M Joel W said:

I mean fall off rather than mechanical vignetting btw. Mechanical vignetting I think is ugly, I can understand why you wouldn't want that.

Also I meant the effect focal length feels longer in the center with a fisheye lens or with barrel distortion.

Anyway I think its all subjective… I still can’t imagine someone wanting pincushion distortion. 

I'm not sure about point 2. I'll take your word for it. Got any examples?

5 hours ago, Satsuki Murashige said:


‘Photography is truth. The cinema is truth 24 times per second.’ Jean-Luc Goddard

‘The camera lies all the time. It lies 24 times a second.’ Brian DePalma

Surely vignetting and lens distortion is just another type of ‘image character’ or abstraction though? Just like black and white, film grain, lens diffusion or spherical aberration, and contrast/saturation manipulation (whether thru flashing, silver retention, or color grading techniques)? 

If photography is authentic and altering it is inauthentic, then surely fixing lens aberrations like vignetting and distortions in post is the latter?

I don’t see how these attributes (or we could think of them as effects) of lenses could be described as ‘lazy’ or ‘dumb’ - unless you simply mean that the people who employ them are. These are value judgements, but they still don’t explain why you think they’re aesthetically wrong. That’s what I’m curious about. Surely it’s how the effects are applied in the work itself that is the difference between ‘sublime’ and ‘dumb’? 

My feeling is that all photography is an act of interpretation, not authenticity. By necessity you choose to edit by creating a frame. You’re translating 3D space into a 2D image, using focal length and subject distance to compress or foreshorten perspective. You’re selecting a moment in time, and deciding how that moment is rendered with your choice of shutter speed, exposure, film stock, processing. There’s nothing essential or authentic about that, it’s all manufactured reality.

The camera neither lies nor bears truth. It's a recording medium that gathers data. If you record something, then it's authentic. If you alter it, like adding a bird or a dinosaur, it's now not a recording, but a work of art based on a recording.

One of the oldest audio recordings I know of is supposedly of Queen Victoria. It's authentic if it's actually her. Is it realistic? I guess, apart from S:N, it is, although this isn't a candid recording we're talking about.

On image character: I reject poorly exposed images, or images with rubbish colour or lighting. That is not character. I suggest that CA and distortion are not character either. They are aberrations, and distracting ones. But, some people think that grain is an aberration, too. In which case, there are affordable digital cameras that exhibit next to zero noise. 

Correcting distortion or vignetting is simply correcting the obvious imperfections on a mechanical device. Frame averaging, a technique used rarely in motion pictures, is also a way to correct the flaws of the recording medium. In fact it results in more authenticity and realism, not less.

The only grey area I can think of is frame interpolation. You aren't altering anything, you aren't taking or adding anything in the scene, yet at the same time you are creating a new frame ex nihilo. It's a technique that has innate contradictions. Interpolated frames are technically not authentic - it's actually the opposite of frame averaging. Frame averaging is both authentic and realistic, whereas frame interpolation is technically realistic but not authentic.

Photography is a capture medium, and is therefore inductive. It is not creative, and therefore it is not art. But, good photography requires good craftsmanship which you could say is 'artistic'. History and medicine are not branches of science, but you can be 'scientific' about them.

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I don't see a big difference but the 21mm cooke has more barrel distortion and pulls the center of the frame forward.

A lot of this territory has been covered by Rudolph Arnheim and Andre Bazin. My take on it is do whatever works for you. It would be dishonest to do anything else.

Edited by M Joel W
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14 hours ago, Karim D. Ghantous said:

The camera neither lies nor bears truth. It's a recording medium that gathers data. If you record something, then it's authentic. If you alter it, like adding a bird or a dinosaur, it's now not a recording, but a work of art based on a recording.

Correcting distortion or vignetting is simply correcting the obvious imperfections on a mechanical device. Frame averaging, a technique used rarely in motion pictures, is also a way to correct the flaws of the recording medium. In fact it results in more authenticity and realism, not less.


I guess I’m not seeing the distinction you’re drawing truth and authenticity. Is sounds to me like we are both talking about a representation of objective reality, one that’s widely accepted enough to be used as evidence in a court of law. Can you clarify? 

Re: frame averaging/image correction

I guess you are getting at a kind of essentialism, beyond the capture device or medium. However, at least when it comes to motion pictures I think you are disregarding temporal ‘authenticity’ - if you remove or interpolated frames or alter the frame rate, isn’t that also now ‘a work of art based on a recording’? Why do some types of manipulation increase authenticity while other types remove it?

Edited by Satsuki Murashige
Typo
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