Clark Nikolai

I just checked eBay. Yes, you can get an original Arri Alexa for less than CAN$5000 including the viewfinder. We live in the golden age of cameras, Kids. Go make your movie!

So true. I assistant edited on a feature shot with a 2K Alexa and they (for some reason) recorded to ProResHQ. I found the files to be some of the nicest, easiest footage to prepare for the editor. The show had a colour grader at the end but before that point, one of my tasks was to colour grade test reels and rough edits and it was so easy and fast to do as the image that it had, even in ProRes was amazing. The image is really nice and easy and quick to make it look good in post. This has budget advantages. Another thing the DOP told me he liked about the Alexa is that the viewfinder shows you beyond the recorded image. This way you could anticipate, say, an actor about to enter the frame. This was something he had missed from the film days. Film cameras' viewfinders would show more of the image than you're getting and would have a frame guide to show you what you would get but you could see more on the sides than that. He also said the menu on the side panel was fast and easy to navigate. Another time saving on set.

What I'd like to see is something the size (or smaller) of the Minolta DiMAGE X. I had one in 2003 or so and it was great! It would fit in your pocket, had internal zoom too. It was 84 x 72 x 20mm. https://www.dpreview.com/articles/8470280799/throwback-thursday-minolta-dimage-x So, if a company made something that small in that form factor but updated the specs; more zoom range, higher megapixel sensor, maybe stabilization, microSD card slot, etc. I'd be into it.

It's rare for an entire movie to be shot at a high frame rate, most of a movie would be at 24fps with the occasional slo-mo shot so this would work out fine then.

Yep. While I'm glad I have a phone on me when a picture is needed to be taken but it's not a good experience. The advantages of a phone camera are: -You usually have it on you. (Best camera is the one you have with you. That old saying.) -You can email them to someone right from the camera (or post to social media or whatever.) without having to copy to your computer first. -The screen is big compared to a compact camera. -Stablization can be very good. That's about it though. There are many problems with taking photos with a phone. (Except for some recent high end models) zooms aren't good. It's hard to see the controls in bright sun. The iOS camera app's text size for the settings (like time and flash) are super tiny (and hidden away) so hard to see when out in the sun. A real camera would have a larger button or dial for this that you can feel and see easily. Part of the reason the stability appears to be so good is that the phone takes a bunch of images then combines them, helped by the gyroscopic data, to create a picture. It looks pretty good for an easy snap shot and is good enough for most things but it's not "real" in the sense that the shutter opened on a sensor/piece of film for a moment of time and captured that. The desire for authenticity isn't new but tends to come from demographics that are surrounded by fakeness.

I've seen it though. I was working on a TV show and was about to delete my copy of the footage as I was finished with that episode and got a call from the producer. Both his copies of the footage went poof! The main copy and the backup copy drives both got corrupted somehow. He freaked out but fortunately I and the editor had copies of the footage.

Remember when people said things like "Oh, it'll be safe in the cloud", and "The Internet never forgets"? All it takes is for a company to go under or be bought out and folded for your files to be gone. We all need to have our own copies of our things on our own drives. Have another copy (for when the drive fails) and ideally in another building (in case of fire). I remember in the 1990s dreaming of having access to a film scanner so I could scan all my negatives to digital files, now I dream of having access to a film recorder so I can put my digital pictures on to real film.

They're still there but hidden behind the "Watch" menu item. No longer obvious by, for example, someone who doesn't know the site. It looks like the main page of a company and you have to sign up to do anything. For someone just wanting to watch some videos it looks from the main page like it's not a site for that.

Yep. So many good things are now just useless. It's almost like it was planned all along. Or it might have started with good intentions but then shareholders or agent provocateurs from competitors get on the board and make it less useful. I remember this video art piece that was aired on broadcast TV. They bought air time to show it. We (the viewers) are the product and sold to the advertisers. The content is just a way to bring in the products.

It might be possible. There are many industrial cameras meant for quality control on assembly lines, in airplanes, etc. These usually have global shutters too. They tend to have Camera Link as the output standard so there would have to be a way to record the signal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera_Link It's probably all possible though. Maybe the guys at the YouTube Channel Alt Cine should look at repackaging an industrial camera with a recorder and monitor and make a cinema camera. It may or may not be worth it though compared to just getting a used Blackmagic Production Cinema camera off Craigslist. (They going for less than CAN$1000 now.)

I read about him meditating and how that helped him organize his thoughts better as well as get him in touch with his inner self and inner ideas. He also would trust his dreams and intuition. There's a story told (on YouTube) by the musician who did the theme for Twin Peaks, Angelo Badalamenti. Lynch described the mood and Badalamenti did some initial improv. Lynch said, great, record that. Badalementi wanted to work on it more, that this was just a start but Lynch said it's perfect. He was into the first thing. Much like beat poetry, stream of consciousness ideas I guess. I'm impressed by him being able to do that because some times when I'd worked intuitively it turned out to be a social faux pas so I tried to avoid that after that. I remember seeing Eraserhead at a repertory theatre. Someone who had seen in Vancouver told us that all the vampire punks (later called goths) go to it so we had to dress like vampires to watch it. So we did. Later we went for doughnuts so there was a table of vampires having doughnuts. A young woman came to ask us if there was some event going on or something. We played dumb and said that, "no, nothing was going on." The movie just created a mood that was depressing, stressful and entertaining at the same time. The line "Strangest darn things, but they're new!" I repeated for years. (The old guy says that about the mini chicken.)

Just the other day a friend posted his painting of one of these on his blog. https://geraldsaul.blogspot.com/2025/01/running-out-of-cameras-again.html Interesting how the camera is held horizontally but the film still goes up and down normally. It's almost like when DSLRs first started to be used for video. People assumed that you were shooting stills because of the camera shape. Back in the day, one of these would've looked like a bulky still camera.

I'd love to see this too. One could probably just put in an order for them to make some. There would of course be a minimum order quantity. For a small lens company it might only be 100 or 500. Some existing lenses might only need some modifying of the back elements and mount to work. (I'm just speculating here, I really don't know how it works.) I speculate also that maybe one of those companies that rehouse vintage lenses into modern housing could also rehouse new lenses into c-mount and for a Super 16 size sensor.

They're different?

Some years ago I took at course called Career Exploration (or something like that.) One thing I remember is that they said that you could do any job for awhile but eventually you won't be happy if it doesn't suit you personality type. They said to learn what your personality was (we did Myers-Briggs personality tests), and your tastes and interests and then from that you could go two different ways. One was to choose a career that fit your personality then you would make money and be satisfied at the same time, the other was that you could work at a job/career that didn't fit your personality but you could work at that and make money but then have your hobby on the side which would fulfill your personality desires. For me, currently, I'm doing both. My job that I make money at is closely related to my interests (but not exactly), then with that I make money and with that money I pay for my life and I pay for my hobby/art form. It seems to be working okay so far.