jax_rox

A lot of adapters aren't built to very high tolerances, and therefore can be slightly off in terms of length, which will totally throw out your FFD (or back focus) and make it impossible to focus to infinity. If you do have adapted lenses that aren't focusing to infinity, try switching adapters before despairing too much. Often it's not even related to price - $10 adapters can be better, as good as, or worse than $100 adapters. There are a few brands that are trustworthy when it comes to adapters, but the adapters they make all tend to be quite expensive.

I guess it's all relative - I've never put a Helios on a RED, and I've never put an SB on an SLR, so I can't tell you how they compare on the same sensor. The set I generally rent is rehoused from BNCR mount. However, compared to the Superspeeds, Ultra Primes and Cookes I usually shoot with, the SBs are definitely softer wide open, and as I say in some cases the edges can be a total blur. It all adds to the character though. I find the longer focal lengths (100mm, 75mm) tend to perform a lot better and more consistently than the shorter focal lengths. From memory, the 100mm is a pretty sharp lens.

You mean like DMX...? I'd like to know what their light output is/some photometrics. I don't mind the idea of 'modular' lighting, but I can't see myself using these. Potentially not enough output, too small (so inherently hard) - I could see myself ganging a few together and putting diffusion over them, but then it defeats the purpose. There'll be some obscure cases, but I don't think it's the second coming of lighting equipment.

I don't own a set of Super Baltars, though I've shot with them quite a bit... They're really nice lenses, I love using them on RED. Gives a nice look. In comparison to the Helios, I would say it's a different look again. Perhaps you might say that it's a look of the same era, but I wouldn't say that they're a super close match. Wide open, Super Baltars are pretty soft, and at some focal lengths the corners can be so soft it's not even funny. The first time I used them I had this one shot were both edges were just a total blur - I took a screenshot and it looked I'd applied a gaussian blur over the edges in Photoshop! Also a bit of vignetting at times. The effect would be reduced somewhat on a S35 sensor, but on the Epic MX @ 5k it can be there. Again, not all focal lengths. Certainly gives a certain look though, one that I really like for the right project. They have an incredible character, and subjects really tend to 'pop'. They flare really nicely. They also tend to come in sets with a 75mm and a 100mm, rather than just an 85 which I love. Hire an AC who's focus pulled on film! I've personally not found focus to be that much of an issue, though I do work with some great ACs!

Bowling for Columbine was shot on F900 and mastered on film. Star Wars Episode II was shot on the F900, with Ep III being shot on the F950. Zombieland, Tron: Legacy, parts of Superbad, Sons of Anarchy, Dexter... shot with Genesis/F35. Most TV shows that are still running that started shooting F35 (Modern Family, for example) eventually switched to Alexa (though some also started on film and switched to the Alexa - The Mentalist for example!). Though, Alexa has somewhat taken off in television because of the native ProRes shooting, so there's no need for dubbing or telecine to get editing, and you don't even necessarily need to do an online/conform if you don't want to. I wonder if that's just our perception of it, as older digital cameras contained CCD chips... therefore if you compare a modern CMOS chip to a CCD, the CCD has an 'older' look to it. CMOS is much cheaper to manufacture than CCD which is probably why it took off. CMOS is also generally not as power-hungry.

Man, the Varicam had nice colours. The (old) Varicam had three CCDs so theoretically it should have better colours than any single-sensor camera as it has one whole sensor for each colour (even they are 2/3" sensors) You would think 3-sensor S35 digital camera is the logical next step, though I imagine it's probably prohibitively expensive.

It's actually not quite correct. All silicon sensors are less sensitive to blue, so the more blue you give it, the better your SNR in the blue channel. Tungsten lights, for example, have very little blue in them, and so your blue channel will be starved much more so than the red channel. It's not really practicable to only shoot with daylight balanced lights all the time, and most modern sensors have reduced the issue a lot (at least compared to initial 3-chip cameras!). Nearly all digital sensors use a bayer pattern, which gives twice as many green photosites as red or blue. That's why digital cameras are most sensitive to green (it's meant to mimic the eye, which is also more sensitive to green), and why the green screen came about. So you've got a digital sensor with half as many blue photosites as green, and it's also least sensitive to blue. So, shooting with daylight lights, or in daylight will give you the greatest SNR. The Sony F35/Genesis used a striped pattern on the sensor, which gives equal sensitivity to all three colours. The different masking pattern means each colour channel is recorded with equal amount of photosites. This mimicks film more as modern film stocks (i.e. post ~1920) are more or less equally sensitive to all three colours of light. The big difference between film and a digital sensor, colour-wise, is that your colour information is split up on a digital sensor (on a bayer pattern, you get 1/4 Red, 1/4 Blue, 1/2 Green; Stripe pattern would more or less be 1/3 Green 1/3 Blue 1/3 Red). With film, each colour is theoretically exposed at full resolution. The only way to get similar colour and resolution information out of a sensor would be to design a three sensor camera (one sensor per colour), with each sensor being S35 sized (for S35 film) and giving you an output resolution of 6-8k.

It's not a global shutter, it's a CCD so doesn't suffer from rolling shutter. The big issue of CCDs at the time was smear, though I've not seen smear in much F35 footage. It was not a bad studio-style camera (I know a guy who broke one back in the day), but it's not a great handheld camera. IMO, it's a camera that could still get you great images if you did happen to invest in one back in the day, and can still get you great images as a super cheap rental, but I wouldn't be rushing out to purchase one.

Odyssey 7Q can do passthrough as well as SDI-HDMI and HDMI-SDI conversion. It can also act as your recorder. However, it depends what you're trying to record. In its current state, the 7Q cannot record higher than 1080p30 via HDMI.

The colour science is not baked in as 'teal and orange' but the colour science is pretty awful. Perhaps that's why this look is so ubiquitous, because it's the only one that looks all that decent.. I won't use a Blackmagic camera if I can help it because the colours are awful, even in ProRes and raw. It takes much more work to get the colours somewhere where they look okay than almost any other camera, especially any other camera shooting ProRes or raw. And I'm still to see someone grade it to a point that looks relatively nice. Seems like the camera's a sucker for flicker - not sure if the lights in the trees would have been flickering like that on the day. Also the sign, and the second last shot, there's flickering on the wall on the left side of frame. You would think with such a humongous screen you'd at least be able to see that end flicker. The biggest problem with this camera is it will be as hard to build up a shoulder rig for as the RED, but with more weight.

The Alexa will be available in 65mm format. I'll be interested to see how many productions shoot on it.. In terms of still photography, sure. But when it comes to cinema, you're using lenses that cost anywhere from $5k-$100k per lens (usually renting). Mostly, they're designed to cover S35mm as that's been the standard for a long time. Very few of the options are designed to cover larger sensors, many don't even cover the RED Dragon @ 6k! Slowly, newer lenses will start to be made with more coverage. Personally, if it's shoot on a 5D with Canon stills lenses and get a 'full frame' look or shoot RED or Alexa with Ultra Primes or Master Primes and 'end up with' a S35 look - I'm gonna go for the latter option (and have, many times). This is a creative question, and sure - if that's how you like to shoot that's fine. Personally, I'd rather ND and I tend to shoot no bigger than 2.0-2.8 when outside, as I don't generally like the look when we go shallower than that. At night, I try to stop down a little as I think it looks much better when you have a bit of depth at night. Adds a bit of production value. Of course you need the lights to be able to do this. Yes. But then, what's the point of shooting full frame if you're going to close down to make it look like S35 anyway? All manufacturers have slightly different sizes for their 'Super 35mm' sensors. It's interesting and kinda odd, however none are extremely different (in terms of full frame vs S35). They're all very close to S35, and the slight difference in measurements is barely noticeable. S35 is also close in size to APS-C. I used to think of S16 lenses as what I would get from S35 if I doubled the lens size - for example, when I put on a 12.5mm I knew I was getting something around a 25mm. A 25mm would get me a similar FOV to a 50mm, though with less DOF. I have no issue with someone using a system to compare to what they know. But there's also absolutely nothing wrong with using a smaller sensor size. We've been using S35 for years, and before that Academy 35. And we've been shooting on S16 for years! There are some absolutely beautiful films shot on S16, and many great commercials were. But you post on some of the forums on the internet and suddenly shooting on a Blackmagic Pocket is insane because the sensor is so small! We also had even smaller sensor for years in video cameras and were able to, in many cases, get beautiful images out of them. I guess I don't really care for the 'snobbery' of sensor size. Use whatever sensor size you want. But a 'crop' sensor (it's not a cropped sensor, the camera still uses the whole image) is not bad simply because it's smaller. Full frame is not inherently better just because it's bigger. If that's the way you like to shoot then that's totally fine, but I and others may not like to shoot that way! And that's also totally fine. I'll judge you based on your work, not the sensor you use to shoot it on. Some of us think that many films shot on full frame cameras are way too shallow for our liking, and may cause some to not get a full frame camera for that reason. And that's totally fine as well! On person's too shallow is another person's 'super cool' - just as one person's 'great lighting' is another person's over-lit. I personally own a full frame camera. But I won't be changing my shooting style because I've now got a bigger sensor. I will have to get my head around the differences in lens FOVs though.

Of course - I've shot at T1.3. I personally think that it's less about the focus pulling (I've worked with some awesome focus pullers, though it is not easy to pull focus WFO even with the latest monitoring options) and more about the look in general. As always, the look needs to support the story. If that means shooting WFO, then that's totally justified. Shooting WFO because you think 'that's what Hollywood films looks like' is a different story - of course, I'm not saying you, in particular, do this, just as a general statement. And yes, if I was unhappy with the performance of a certain dolly, I would not use it on my films. Let's be clear - there were fast lenses for a long time. I think the current trend for shallower DOF comes down to being able to shoot on faster stocks/higher ISOs. In the past, you may have had a fast lens, but as a general rule you were shooting with large lights that gave a huge amount of illumination. You can ND and dim as much as you want, but you're still going to end up shooting around a 4. There's nothing inherently wrong with shooting wide open - many films have done it and have done so for many, many years. A lot of the night scenes in Social Network were shot without lights at T1.3 (Master Primes). I think it would be a silly assertion to say that Hollywood films are shot at 5.6 and home movies are shot wide open. Neither of those statements are all that factual. However, I think it's also interesting to assert that shooting wide open, without lights is a way to 'set a new standard' and create images that look better than Hollywood (to paraphrase). Of course, this is not an attack on you at all, or anyone, simply a discussion of the points being made. Everything we're talking about here - anamorphic, shooting wide open, shooting stopped down... all has a different look, and each one is totally viable and entirely acceptable as long as it supports the story. It's when I hear that someone's shooting wide open because 'that's what Hollywood does' or 'that's what Hollywood movies look like' is when I start to take issue. You make big claims - I would posit that most audiences have no f*n clue that full frame looks different. Indeed, the difference in final look is negligible, apart from slightly more Depth of Field for the same field of view. Most audiences don't notice until something is totally out of focus. I would also suggest that Hollywood has had access to larger formats (65mm film, for example). There's a lot of limitations, however, when it comes to a larger sensor or film frame (lack of good cinema lenses being a major one), and at least in the comparison of APS-C to Full Frame, the difference in look is negligible. Well realistically, that's all that should matter - if the client likes it better, who are you/we to tell them they're wrong! I agree with this point. Too often it seems this razor-thin DOF has been employed to hide the DP's shortcomings in not being able to light a whole set, or the shortcomings of the Production Designer not being able to design the set properly, or in general a lack of budget so that they could not afford a Production Designer to design the set, or lights for the DP. It can be a bit of a cop-out. I've shot at T1.3 on S35 and not had as shallow DOF as a lot of the 5D stuff I've seen. You lose so much depth shooting like that, and it can feel unnatural. However, it depends on the story - if I was given a script that I felt needed to be shot that way, I would certainly do it.

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Funny, I came the other way. From motion picture 35mm. Now I have an A7s and it baffles me when I put a lens on! Every now and then when I used to shoot with a 5D, I would get so confused. I'd ask my crew to mount up a 50mm, and it just wouldn't be a 50mm! It made it difficult for me to get longer shots. I'm generally quite happy with the S35mm/APS-C sensor size, and most cinema lens sets are put together based around that. I rarely shoot around f/1.2 as I think that super shallow, razor-thin DOF is a by-product of cheap SLR filmmaking, and people thinking that the shallowest DOF possible is what makes something cinematic. Of course, I have shot WFO (even on Superspeeds at T1.3!) but it depends on what I'm shooting. I'm happier around T/2.0-t/2.8, but have shot many scenes throughout my career at t/4.0, t/5.6... I find having the shallowest DOF humanly possible is terribly offputting.

You won't see Varicam colours out of this. You will be able to grade it a lot to get it where you want, but you won't be getting Varicam colour science out of a camera 1/10 the price. Not to mention that the gamma curve doesn't change the way the camera captures information - it's still the same colours, and the same dynamic range, it's just mapped in a way that allows you to take full benefit from it.

Having been a Focus Puller for a number of years (and now DP), I can tell you that what I saw was not simply 'part of the IMAX process'. I feel for the Focus Puller - pulling with that kind of miniscule DOF is hard. I always feel for them when soft shots are put into the final film sometimes it's chosen based on performance, sometimes things you can't predict or account for, or it's the DP choosing to shoot WFO on a 200mm lens (or in the case of Les Miserables - the camera not coming off the Steadicam; the focus was all over the shop on that). I bet in many instances there were sharp takes, but the soft ones were chosen for performance. These Focus Pullers are some of the best in the biz, and I know they, more than anyone, would hate to see soft shots in the cut. I'd be interested in knowing the size of the screen your friend saw it at, and where they were sitting - the issue become much less apparent, the smaller the screen gets (and the further away you sit). I saw TDKR and thought it was tack-sharp, but then realised a whole bunch of stuff was soft when I re-watched it.

To me it seems Interstellar was not meant to be a very strong movie plot or dialogue-wise. There's so much exposition, too much perfect dialogue, too many 'convenient' events that happen to move the plot forward... and the deus ex machina at the end. It's all a bit much. However, it is visually quite stunning. I saw it project in 70mm at the IMAX in Melbourne, Australia (supposedly the world's third largest cinema screen). It was stunning. There was softness, though not from the projection. There were a lot of soft shots kept in the film. It surprised me really. The IMAX stuff I can understand, as you're working with insanely long lenses and super shallow Depth of Field just to get within a ballpark of a similar focal length to motion picture 35mm (you're looking at a 100mm lens on 15-perf IMAX to get a matching field of view to a 35mm camera with a 35mm lens). So I can totally understand when there's focus issues on IMAX. I can't understand the softness on the 35mm stuff though (which is where it seemed to be more prominent). As a note, when you're watching 1.44:1 vision on a 1.44:1 screen, it's incredibly jarring when suddenly half the screen goes black to show the 2.39:1 stuff. It was visually stunning, I certainly did not see any issues with colour, as some have mentioned here. Also, the sound mix was loud, sure - though not deafeningly so, and I can think of maybe two lines in the whole film that I couldn't understand because of the mix. There were a couple other times when I couldn't understand what was being said, but it was in 'panic' times when the emotion and feeling were important, not the words themselves. Anyway, I thought it was pretty, and I also think 70mm is the only way to watch a film ;) I think it would've lost something if I saw it in digital projection (or on a smaller screen, probably). That being said, I saw 2001 projected on 70mm earlier in the year, and I did prefer that visually.

You're right - it's another trick in the arsenal. Shooting a CU on a 25mm gives a different look to shooting a wide on a 100mm. If you want to be a DP, you should learn what lenses look like and how they react to objects at different distances, and you should also learn how to light. Because of cheap camera systems, these days wannabe DPs focus all their time and energy into the camera body that they think looks the best, and pixel peep, where the real focus shuold be on lensing and lighting. You have ACs and DITs to figure out the specifics of the camera system you choose (though you should know why you're choosing a particular camera system). Some DPs like to be involved in the technical side as well, but it's nowhere near as important as knowing how to lens something, and how to light something. The audience don't know the difference between lenses - and to some extent don't care. However, it is something that does contribute to the way a movie looks, which in turn has an effect on how the audience feels.

That's exactly right - I've seen absolutely awful images out of Epics, because someone who thought they could be a DP decided they were going to shoot this particular film.. It was worse than stuff I've seen out of SLRs. But then there's films like The Hobbit and Fincher's work which proves you can get good looking stuff out of RED. When the F35 was around, it was a different landscape - if you owned own, you were likely a rental house or an operator with a lot of experience. It was a quarter of a million dollar camera - you didn't shoot on it unless you knew what you were doing. You wouldn't have been offered the job unless you knew what you were doing. It's an easy camera to screw up if you don't know what you're doing. Plus, by default you're going to be putting decent glass on it. The FS7 or FS5 won't give you an identical picture, but it won't give you a bad picture either. With an accomplished DP behind the camera, and an accomplished colourist (both things you'd need for the F35 anyway), you'll get images just as good as or better than the F35.

I've always felt that the Cooke look had that extra feel to it - I'd always described it as if the focus sort of blends out into blurriness and so it feels like the shot has a lot more depth, whereas on the Zeiss glass I was comparing to at the time it was just a really sharp fall away in focus. Leicas are great glass, as are Zeiss and Cooke. They all do a great job. As with film stock (and these days camera choice), lensing is another creative choice DPs have in our arsenal to create a specific look for a film. The infamous 'Cooke look' isn't right for every film. If I wanted something a bit more clinical, I might shoot RED Epic with Ultra Primes. For a drama, I might go Alexa with Cooke S5's (or maybe older Cooke Speed Panchros!). I've shot Super Baltars on Epic before for a funkier look. It's all a personal thing, though - there's no right or wrong look, and no right or wrong lens choice. It's funny, when you've worked with a lens set enough you can start to almost pick the lens based on the bokeh... The one thing I dislike about Cookes is the stop-light bokeh... Though I've seen some Panavision lenses do similar things.

If you're buying a camera in the $5k+ range, you're looking for a camerat that's going to help you book work. Camera purchases are usually bad investments unless you can pay it off within about 18 months worth of work. What sort of work would you normally doing where you'd provide your own camera? Maybe docos and corporates? Is an F35 practical for those, and are you going to make enough from those to cover the cost of the camera (say $10k+), recorder, lenses and also still be able to cover your own living costs and bills? That's the question you sohuld be asking yourself if you're thinking about investing in any camera. If you're doing narrative type stuff, do your clients normally have a budget to hire cameras? If so, why would you not simply hire a camera? If not, do they have a budget to pay you? If they don't, then is it worth buying a $10k+ camera to shoot it on..? The only other way to make money off a camera purchase is via rentals - if you have a RED or Alexa, then sure you're in a decent position to make money off rentals if you price your packages right. If not though, what's the rental demand for F35s? Is there any? It will usually depend on your market, but you should definitely look into it before you commit to buy. It certainly has nice images, that's for sure. But in the grand scheme of things I would say it's a nice option that you can rent quite cheaply when you have a low budget. I don't think I'd be investing in purchasing one. You can grade A7s images to get pretty close. The F3 on the other hand - if you don't care about resolution higher than 1080p; I know of friends/colleagues who are selling their old ones with the Sony primes it came with for <the price of an FS7. Which is pretty decent value if you ask me. An external recorder and you'd be good to go with three PL mount primes @T2.

I like to look at the cameras output before I look into purchasing as I'm more concerned with the image it produces. You can have the highest specced camera in the world, but I'm more concerned with the image it produces. Without owning a 5D to test, I'm not going to buy one based on the fact that it has raw via a hack, and some people like it. I've shot on the 5D before (when I've had to :(), and I've shot Alexa, F55, F5, RED Dragon et al. Each camera has its time and place. If it came down to it, I would much rather have a truck full of lights and a Gaffer to put them up, and shoot on a 5D than shoot Alexa and be without lights. I've seen some absolutely shocking looking RED Epic footage, shot by people who are not DPs. I'm not going to say the 5D is the worst camera out there, but it's certainly not 'the best thing out there' for every one in all circumstances. Also raw is overkill in a good number of cases. I've shot things for cinema in ProRes and even XAVC. Raw is nice, and in the case of the 5D seems the only way to get a not altogether terrible image out of it, but it's not the answer for everybody, and it's not the answer in a lot of cases. Now, I'm not saying the A7s is necessarily better or as good as. I'm just saying you're compromising a lot to get even a half-decent image with any DSLR. Oh, look I don't disagree. I'm not a big fan of the image out of the FS700, but I'm not a big fan of the image out of a C300 either. I'm also not a fan of the plasticy build of the FS700, or the awkward size and ergonomics of the C300. If I have a choice, I won't shoot on either. I've had to shoot on the C300 more than I would have liked, but you can't always be pretentious ( ;) ) about cameras when you're trying to pay the bills. Luckily, I've been able to sway the decsion towards an F5 for almost all high speed stuff I do that would've otherwise been relegated to the FS700. However, you can't say the FS700 is not more feature-rich than the C100. Or that the FS7 is not more feature-rich than the C300, especially if it gives images like an F5, and all at a price point that's $3k less. Well now, that's very different to when you said that the 5D raw is 'THE BEST THING out there' isn't it? I'm sure it's great. I've just never seen it be that great myself, and anecdotal evidence is not enough for me, especially considering the huge amount of misinformation around the web about cameras and Cinematography these days. I need to see it with my own eyes. Honestly, the first test images from the F5 I absolutely hated, and I hated the images out of the F55 more! But when I used it myself, I did a total 180 on my opinion of it. I'm still not sure what I think of the F55 as a camera, but I would sure shoot on the F5 if the budget didn't allow for an Alexa. It does seem like Sony has really spoken to shooters. And not just SLR shooters. Things like built-in NDs that you only otherwise find on a camera like an Alexa Studio. Decent ergonomics on the F5/55 and FS7 and smaller, lighter bodies (finally! I was so sick of the cameras that were almost as big as a car - f65 or f35 anyone?). I think Canon's potential mistake is that they've basically catered their entire line of cameras to SLR shooters. The C(x)00 cameras are slightly bigger SLRs with slightly better image quality. If someone's only every shot on an SLR, then they wouldn't know any different, but I like cameras that feel good on the shoulder, and that can be put on the shoulder relatively easily. I want something that's not ergonomically awful, and I think when you're paying upwards of $5k for a camera, it stops becoming something that's too much to ask. Despite the fact that, in general, I like the colours out of their cameras, Canon have no camera offering that I would consider using as an A cam on a commercial or film at this very moment in time.

I think you'll be a lot happier in Resolve. It's really powerful - you'll be able to isolate the skin tones and take that green out. I've been able to get some really nice colours out of Slog2 and Slog3 in the past, though I haven't tried on the A7s yet so there's probably no point posting any examples up of footage from F3s and F5s. I'll post some stuff up when my A7s arrives.

Looking at the Brandon Li footage, it actually looks super close to what you get out of an F3 shooting Slog2 to an external recorder in 4:2:2. Tim, those clips you posted look like they've had some sort of grade applied to them. Is that correct? What are you looking to get out of the grade? I should be getting my A7s in the next few days so can advise further, but I've never turned up saturation on the log recording in-camera. Might be worth shooting a couple tests without the saturation turned up and see if it's easier for you to get closer to what you want.

Canon aren't even competitive with their Cinema EOS line! Compare the FS700R with the (brand new!) C100mkII. They're both essentially the same price, and yet the FS700 can be adapted to PL mount really easily, it has 200fps HD internally, and up to 960fps in reduced resolution. The FS700 has built-in ND filters. The FS700 can record in 12-bit 2k and 4k raw with optional accessories. Canon just released the C100mkII and its still not really comparable to the similarly priced (there's $500 between them) FS700R. And then there's the C300 and the $4,000 cheaper FS7... I think Canon are relying too much on the popularity of their lens mount, and an assumption that people want a camera with that mount natively.