[John Sharaf]

HI Kyle,

The best solution is 4′ Kino Flo’s set vertically, either or four banks depending on the distance and illumination level you need. It’s also worth considering the 4Banks even if you only use one or two globes as they are very versatile lights to use for other location purposes. You can consider lamping them with KF Green Tubes to get the best green saturation.

Next best fix is diffusion to make the light less sourcey and to cast a more even field. This might require backing the lights up (if you have room) and shielding the spill onto your foreground subject. This is the beauty of the Kino Flos; they are soft proximity lights with built in barndoors to control the spill.

There’s lots of good advice on the Kino Flo website regarding green/blue screen photography, check it out.

JS

[John Sharaf]

Terry,

Rule of thumb for multi-cam shoots: use the same cameras, use the same recording format.

JS

[John Sharaf]

HI seth,

I’m glad that the Canon Cine Zoom is working out for you, but honestly the quality of that through the B4 Adapter on the F5 is going to suffer. It’s all relative though; as long as you are just shooting one camera and stopping down a little bit to get to the sweet spot of the lens you’ll do OK, but if you A-B’d that rig with a proper 4K zoom lens like the Fujinon Premier 24-180 you’d see a night-and-day difference and especially if you did it in the lens lab with a chart.

It’s been more than a few years since you bought that lens from me, so you clearly made a good investment in terms of the life cycle and making your money back on what I recall was a very fair used price. In the 2/3″ world, that lens is still as good as it gets. The equivalent purchase of a PL mount zoom lens does not really exist. The closest is a used 24-290 Angenieux Optimo which might cost about $60K. In that realm I’d suggest the new 25-250 Optimo at about $45K, except that it won’t be available until next fall at the earliest, but take a look at that if you get a chance at the next trade show you attend. One lens that is similar and available now is the Canon 30-300 which is very sweet at about $42K (with 0% financing I think).

JS

[John Sharaf]

Hi Seth,

This is a very common and now more frequent concern and question, especially with the increasing number of choices in larger imager, PL Mount cameras and their availability at price points that are much more attractive.

Once you are considering this type of camera purchase, you are immediately thrust into the choice of lenses dilemma. It kind of breaks down like this; at the low end is using still photo lenses (they are cheap and readily available, but often require kluggie adapters, and do not have proper focus gearing or wide range of focus markings), then there are the low cost PL mount lenses like the CP’s you mention as wells as the Reds, the Sony’s and even the EF mount Canons, etc. and finally the high end legacy and new PL mount primes and zooms some of which are specifically designed with large CMOS imagers in mind (offering telecentricity and contrast more appropriate for digital capture).

Like most decisions these days, your ultimate choice will be driven by economics. It’s natural to want and to assume that the highest price lenses, like the Summicrons, the Master Primes and the Cook 5i’s are the best. For the most part, this is true, but if your end product is for the small(er) screen or even internet, then the expense of the “best” lenses is clearly overkill. The exception is of course if you also intend to use dry hire rentals as a way of recouping your investment and/or as a business in itself. In these cases, I advise buying the best lenses as they are what the rental community wants and will have a much longer life cycle.

You ask specifically why the CP’s are so cheap by comparison, the answer is quite simple and obvious; they are made from cheaper materials, in an assembly line fashion, and have less stringent quality control. Furthermore, their design incorporates the interchangeable mounts which opens the product up to a larger market. This is not to say that they are “bad” lenses. Clearly for the price they are very good, and with the Zeiss name attached come with a certain confidence of quality.

One thing to consider is that all individual lenses are unique. That is to say that if you take any two examples of the same lens and project them in the lens lab it’s quite possible that you can objectively see differences in edge sharpness, contrast and chromatic aberration. If it is possible when you buy lenses this is a good due diligence to preform. It presumes however that the vendor has a stock of multiples of what you want and the projector setup to actually view them on. Sadly, this is not often the case. When you buy expensive, top of the line lenses you can often insist on this process.

There is nothing wrong with buying used lenses, but if they’re older style film lenses they will not have the clean, contrasty look that the newer ones have, and it’s likely they’ll vignette at the corners at the wide focal lengths because they’re not telecentric (parallel light transmission). In this case however, you should really take the lenses to a lens shop and have them evaluated on a projector. The lens expert will point out any specific issues and advise you if it’s just a matter of adjustment or repair or whether its a chronic concern.

As I say, buying lenses for your move to a larger format camera is an agonizing, time consuming and expensive project, but the reward can be many years worth of beautiful images. Try to think in the long term, not just about the project you need the lens for next week!

Good luck,

JS

[John Sharaf]

Hi Spencer,

One trick I picked up from the manufacturer of the slider I own, known as the Original Slider (https://www.theslider.com/) is to use “painters sponges” on both ends as bumpers; they really work!

You’ll see on their website they make a motion controlled version which you operate with a Preston Microforce, which is a very precision controller, but my guess is that it’ll be beyond most folks budget.

Good luck!

JS

[John Sharaf]

Hi Bob,

I’m not real familiar with the EX1/3, but I do know that, on all cameras that Audio is turned off when the frame rate is 24 (not 23.9), 30 (not 29.9) or 60 (not 59.9). Perhaps the rest sets the frame rate at 24. It does this on the Alexa for example and you must change to a frame rate that allows Audio before you’ll see (or hear) it!

JS

[John Sharaf]

Hi Dylan,

I’ve always found what I needed quickly on “Sound Dogs”

https://www.sounddogs.com/

JS

[John Sharaf]

Paul,

It seems that questions about “white balance” will never end on this forum. I suppose a book could be written on the subject and it could be an interesting read!

The thing about it is that WB is a subjective thing; at it’s core it is meant to set the camera to reproduce a “colorless” white object in the picture by adjusting the red and blue gains of the camera based on the “color” of the dominant light, but doing so it eliminates whatever deviation from the preset that would otherwise give some “character” to the color. This is especially noticeable at dawn and dusk where presets exhibit the pure beauty of “God’s Light”.

To WB in mixed lighting means choosing which light source you want to be dominant, or at least which subject in the scene you want the color to be most accurate. When the subject travels from one color light source to another you’re S.O.O.L unless you resort to a dynamic AWB function, but I don’t recommend that (or any auto function for that matter).

Most cameras provide at least two WB memories (A and B) in addition to presets and some also offer several CC filters (either glass or electronic). Knowing how to use these to your creative advantage is an acquired skill worth having. To gain it, you must test and experiment when you’re not actually in the heat of battle so that you gain confidence in the various permutations. Observing on a Vectorscope is a particularly useful tool. In addition, most cameras now have color viewfinders which again makes it easier and provides that confidence.

It has always been my practice to use presets in conditions where we’re lighting with tungsten, or in sunlight and/or lighting with HMI’s. In fluorescent lighting I’ll always white balance in the B memory to eliminate whatever green spike is present.

Using the presets has an additional advantage in that scenes will match better day to day and location to location so timing your finished project will be easier and possibly accomplished with an overall correction.

There are many more chapters to this topic as you can probably now realize, so I suggest you search the subject here on CC and also devote some time testing all the permutations in the different lighting conditions you expect to encounter, observing the results on a properly setup professional grade monitor.

Good luck!

JS

[John Sharaf]

Todd’s been very gracious in explaining the reasons that using a 2/3″ lens through a convertor on a 35mm sensor cameras are not sound. I’ll add a few more negatives:

1. 2/3″ lenses are designed for CCD prism cameras with 1920×1080 sensors. The color focusing takes into account the path of the prism, without which there will be error.

2. Most 35mm sensor cameras have more and smaller pixels requiring a smaller circle of confusion for proper focus. These lenses will exhibit no where near the sharpness of cine lenses.

3. The additional flanges involved in inserting the adapter increase the chance of backfocus and other alignment issues.

4. The additional length and weight of these ENG lenses without proper means of lens support will stress the lens mount on the camera both short and long term. Many of these less expensive cameras have notoriously weak lens mounts (as opposed to the Alexa for example).

Finally the Brits have an idiom, “Horses for courses”, essentially meaning use the right tool for the job; in this case this is re-purposing the wrong tool for the job with a rather expensive adapter. Going forward, as Todd suggests, your lens collection is what will survive and have value. This adapter scheme will only look worse on a 4K camera.

Fujinon makes two Cabrio lenses which mimic the ENG design, 19-90 and 85-300, These are ideal for hand holding and run and gun. Yes, they’re expensive but will be amortized over 20 years. I have the 19-90 and use it every day. It’s very functional and user friendly with the built in motors, no need for lens support, Cooke i lens metadata and powering in some cameras, etc. But honestly, it is not as sharp as the bigger, heavier but half the price 18-80 Alura, which I also own. Based on the need for HH or quality I will choose one over the other.

I am aware that price and economics is involved in and actually determines many creative decisions in the image making process, but at some point, if you aspire to be a professional and are making equipment ownership part of your practice, you do yourself a disservice by buying anything but the best kit possible.

JMHO

JS

[John Sharaf]

Hi Todd,

I’m fairly certain that the globes for both the 800 and 1600 Jokers have the UV filter coated on the globe itself, unlike other HMI globes, so there of no danger of UV exposure.

JS