[Bruce Greene]

Name: Chris Bell
Date: May 29, 2007 at 7:54:39 am
Subject: Re: Cinema Lens Experiences

Mike,

I have used both the Fujinon C and E series lenses. I own a pair of C series: the 13×4.5 and the 15×7.3. Both of these lenses are quite superior to their ENG brothers. Specifically, there is no vignetting at the end of telephoto range and the stop remains consistent. The images are sharp and luminous. I fine ENG lenses dull in comparison.

The E series are in a completely different league. You would not believe how much detail it is possible to resolve in 720p until you use these lenses. Color and flesh tones are spectacular. The 10×10 is enormous, as big as an Optimo. You are going to need a good assistant.

Chris,
I own the c series 13×4.5 and it takes very nice images. I’ve noticed a few things though.

1. It does not have a constant iris and stops down past about 40mm.
2. There is significant light fall off towards the edges of frame at stops wider than 5.6 but this is normally not noticeable.
3. There is little to no focus “breathing” (good!) But there is significant chromatic abrasions evident in shots that show it off. (not so good)

I’ve also used the e series 10×10 and it is a superb lens that surprisingly inter-cuts very well with the 13x. For most real life images it’s hard to tell which lens was used, unless an a/b comparison is made of the same shot. Of course the 10×10 is a very, very large lens!

To my knowledge all the compact zooms are available as cine style and ENG style and are in fact optically the same lenses. From my experience, if using a focus puller (camera assistant) the cine style lenses are preferred. If pulling your own focus (hand held) then I prefer an ENG lens. The ENG lens also comes with a zoom motor (which is also good for holding the camera handheld) and the cine style lenses do not. The cine style lenses are also more expensive.

One further note about the cine style zooms: Both the Canon and Fujinon compact zoom lenses I believe have fluorite elements which change the distance scale as temperature changes. This is a different issue than back focus. To accurately focus by distance, the witness mark must be adjusted as the temperature changes. To do this, one needs to pull out a focus chart, measure the distance and remark the witness mark on the lens. FWIW the panavision zooms for the f-900 don’t seem to have this issue. I believe that the prime lenses do not have this issue as well.

Mike, best of luck with your purchase.
-bruce

Varicam/Steadicam Owner
Los Angeles, CA
http://www.brucealangreene.com

[Bruce Greene]

I have the Birns & Sawyer grips, and have been pretty happy with them. Mine fasten to rosettes mounted on the base of the camera, but that requires some extentions to get the handles comfortable for me. They have a bracket that can mount on the mini rods that should well also. I also have it set up so that I can use my microforce zoom control as one of the handles.

I will say this though. If I were shooting with an ENG lens (mine is cine style), I would probably skip the handles and just hold onto the lens at the zoom motor strap.

-bruce

Varicam/Steadicam Owner
Los Angeles, CA
http://www.brucealangreene.com

[Bruce Greene]

Wicket,

I recently shot a picture in the US for a PAL (mostly) release and shot in 23.98fps for ease of use in FCP, to stay at 60hz for lighting purposes, and for NTSC release as well. How post production will deal with this, I don’t really know yet.

As for filters:
ND 3 (The camera ND filters are 2 stops each, an in between filter can be helpful)
85 filter (the ones on the filter wheel are too much or too little to use with the preset white balance)
Polarizing filter
ND grad filter(s)

I don’t think the camera is so sharp that you’ll find you’ll want to diffuse the image unless you want an obvious special effect. Contrast can be controlled through the camera settings or in post production. I avoid misting filters in general, except for special effects. Of course these are just my preferences.

-good luck with your project.

-bruce

Varicam/Steadicam Owner
Los Angeles, CA
http://www.brucealangreene.com

[Bruce Greene]

Firstly, I think you were on the right track originally sort of. If done correctly, the squished video should play back filling a widescreen tv, or the dvd player will letterbox it for 4:3 TVs (it’s a setting in the dvd player menu that you set when you first set up your dvd player). This method will give you the best quality on widescreen TVs which are ever more common now.

Yesterday I needed to make a mini dv copy of a DVCproHD 23.98fps project. We wanted letter-boxing without squishing. Here’s what I think (if I remember correctly) we did:

Duplicate the DVCproHD timeline. Change the settings to DVntsc pixel dimensions and such. I can’t remember if I checked 16:9 or not, sorry. Probably not.

For each clip, go into motion tab and change the size to 75% and set distort->aspect ratio to -50. I believe this will fill the frame with correctly proportioned letter box framing. To avoid having to do this for each clip separately, copy the settings and choose “paste attributes” to paste them into the remaining clips. When done, check all titles and other FCP generated clips because they may be shaped differently the the DVCproHD clips. The simplist way might be to export the the project into a DVCproHD quicktime, and then just open that into a dv timeline at 23.98 fps.

Good luck,

-bruce

[Bruce Greene]

Thanks Stuart,

We got it all working and everything was looking great until….the tape would not eject from the machine (error-20).

I do have one more question: Is it possible to output the timecode from FCP to the tape? If so, how?

Thanks again,
-bruce

[Bruce Greene]

I just came to this forum to ask the same question.

In particular, my project is dv 23.98fps 720×480 pixels.

Is there anything I need to do regarding the pixel dimentions? Is digibeta 640×480?

Can I just plug in the SDI out to the digibeta deck and get audio and video?

If I want to make a PAL version of this project, what must I do?

Thanks!

-bruce

[Bruce Greene]

[Shane Ross] “[bruce alan greene] “Unfortunately, Colorista requires that I buy a new computer, so that’s out for the moment.”

How so? It works on all Macs…with FCP 5.1…which is Universal…powerPC macs and Intel.

I use it and love it.
Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net“

The colorista web site lists the requirements, and they require a faster graphics card with more memory than the one on my g4 dual 1 gig machine.

Despite this, I tried to install the demo and got a warning about the graphics card from the intsall software.

At this point, I don’t think it’s worth upgrading such an old machine.

Varicam/Steadicam Owner
Los Angeles, CA
http://www.brucealangreene.com

[Bruce Greene]

Thanks for all the suggestions!

Unfortunately, Colorista requires that I buy a new computer, so that’s out for the moment.

Color Finesse demo seems to work well, but it’s just too expensive for casual use, and it runs a bit slow on my old g4dual 1gig.

So I guess it’s the big box of tricks, though the demo would not display the graph of the curve, I think it will get me in the ball park without breaking the piggy bank.

-bruce

[Bruce Greene]

[Evangelos] “We are working with MG at .35 DL at 500% and EI at 640 all this in -3db. Off coarse nothing in the menus left without tweaking but with measurements taken with http://www.imatest.com, http://www.babelcolor.com and McBeth Colorcheker to measure noise and latitude and after all this, we using Silicon Colour FT to do reverse Telecine.”

From my tests, and the tests of others, setting the Dynamic Level at 500% and -3db can set the camera beyond the light sensing ablilties of one or more of the chips. Depending upon your white balance settings and filtration, you may well see a color shift in the highlights as one or more chips is no longer able to register changes in light level. I have seen this clearly on the waveform. The solution is to shoot at 0db while at 500% dynamic level.

-bruce

Varicam/Steadicam Owner
Los Angeles, CA
http://www.brucealangreene.com

[Bruce Greene]

Recently I rented a 2nd “H” body for a project and went to prep the 2 cameras to match. I set up the DSC chart and set both cameras to preset white balance and turned the matrix and color correction off. Much to my surprise, the cameras matched really well on the waveform/vectorscope. When I loaded my saved matrix/color correction settings from one camera to the other, they continued to match.

While I don’t know if all Varicams are so consistantly aligned, the idea, in this case is not so crazy I think. I have no idea if an “H” body will match an “F” body though…

Of course, the only way to see how close the match is is to aim all the cameras at the test chart and observe the result on the scope.

If you have no scope, then the best alternative I think is to start by entering the same set up by hand in each camera, put them side by side, aim and switch the monitor back and forth and see if the match is acceptable by eye.

Often, I think, the most difficult part of matching is to get the exposure on each camera to look perceptually consistant even though each camera is looking at the subject from a different angle. This is where having an engineer compare the cameras live on the set really makes a big difference. Perhaps the best match, might not be a match at all?

-bruce

Varicam/Steadicam Owner
Los Angeles, CA
http://www.brucealangreene.com