[Matthew Romanis]

So around 1825 full use cycles.
I guess the question is do they stop working when the meter runs out, or is it a bit like video heads, depends on how they are treated, a bit of luck, and if the robot making them was having a bit of Monday-itis? (Ha-Ha)

[Matthew Romanis]

It may just be my paranoia, but it’s interesting to see that so much of the written information on these cards refers to a timed “5 year lifespan” rather than guaranteed use of cycles like previous cards. Do they have a used by date?
It may just be a terminology or marketing thing.
Has anyone heard or read anything that gives info on read/write cycles?

[Matthew Romanis]

I think I remember something from when I was a kid. My father bought his 1st video camera in 1984 which was a JVC camera head that looked like a Super 8 camera, but had a VHS portapack recorder (I had to carry it and there wasn’t much “Portable” about it!!).
I can remember another version of the camera that had two lens’s on a rotating barrel, I think one was a mid range zoom, the other a longer range zoom.

[Matthew Romanis]

Found this one
https://www.labguysworld.com/Museum008_025.htm

[Matthew Romanis]

I don’t know where you would get some test material, but technically you need FCP 6.0 or later, an Intel equipped MAC, and P2CMS software from Panasonic.
You don’t render vision, you need to transcode it. FCP can’t use AVC intra 50/100 material natively yet as it has no way to interpret the 10 bit stream natively. A function in FCP called LOG and TRANSFER will transcode all the AVC intra 50/100 MXF files into QT Apple Pro Res 422/HQ material. Depending upon your processor speed, this will work at close to real time up to 2 times longer in some situations.
The P2CMS software is good for problem solving the MXF files in the FCP environment.

[Matthew Romanis]

Depending upon your budget and where you are, you could try a low cost option. Fibreglass fly wire (the kind used in some flyscreens for windows) can help to create the diffuse look you are after. It comes in 1.5m widths by 10m drops. Cut it to size, mount it on a wooden or aluminium frame and place it mid distance in the background so as not to resolve the mesh. As mentioned above, keep ambient light off the side facing camera.
It creates an artefact of “two point source interference patterns” where the mesh creates an interference gate through which the light waves pass to interfere with each other on the other side of the mesh. Because there are lots of intersections in the mesh the interference patterns are overlapped thus creating a soft focus effect. The thicker the mesh the more the effect, but you will start to resolve the mesh above a certain size and focal distance.

[Matthew Romanis]

I remember a thing called the “Duo-Cam” from Samsung. It had a lens for the video CCD above a lens for the stills CCD.
My old Super 8 film camera has a 3 lens barrel that rotates. Very retro.

[Matthew Romanis]

USB 2 may not be allowing enough data throughput on your Mac for Log and Capture to function properly.
When you say formatted on PC, do you mean a Windows OS?
Matthew.

[Matthew Romanis]

“With those cameras you usually adjust other things since there really isn’t much of a shutter opening time available at the higher frame rates.”
Hi Gary,
That’s the point. The lack of time means that the use of an electronic shutter is pointless, hence the fraction of time that the imager is exposed to has no other light limiting feature in use.
The 250fps film we used to shoot had a rolling drum shutter that in effect was as open as mechanically possible. Any thing less and the exposure times were not enough.
Matthew.

[Matthew Romanis]

You won’t get playback like that from just 60 fps.
There are some software plugins for FCP that can build frames to place between the shot frames. Twixtor has one for example. I found when using it with footage generated by Varicam that it really only worked on locked off shots, camera movement tended to ruin the results. On some examples I could achieve a look consistent with 150fps. Processing time was long, but that was with an old G4 Mac. Intel would be much quicker.
In that situation using 120deg shutter worked well, very little motion blur.