[Todd Terry]

If the tracks are sampling hit songs I wouldn’t touch them with a ten-foot pole.

I think this is a case of someone saying something is cleared when it actually isn’t.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

[Bob Cole] “What about repurposing used optics, that were developed for film cameras? Is there a technical reason that they wouldn’t be useful for a large sensor video camera?”

Nope Bob, there’s no reason at all… in fact just the opposite. If you are talking about a 35mm (format, not focal length) PL mount cine glass… well then a lens is a lens is a lens. It doesn’t matter what you put it on, it’s all the same thing.

My lenses are superspeed cine lenses and have probably shot a few zillion feet of stock, not just from me but those before me. Previous owner was Bojan Bazelli, and awesome DP who shot everything from “The Ring” to “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” (and most recently, “The Long Ranger.”) But right now I primarily shoot with the C300PL with those same lenses…. the ones I also use with my XLH1 and P+S Technik Mini35 converter. And when shooting 35mm film with the Arri 535B. I’ve yet to put them on an Alexa or a RED, but they’ll work.

[Bob Cole] “I too have been surprised by the high price of new PL zooms.”

Then you might be surprised by the price of used ones, too…sadly. Ten years ago, it was easy. You could find a great set of matched PL mount primes for $10-12,000 (maybe twice that for superspeeds). Then a few years later something happened… they broke out of their film-only mode and people began snapping them up for use with DoF converters, and the few large-sensor cameras like the RED ONE. And now the bunches of different 35mm-sensor cameras. The used market was quickly decimated, it just dried up and prices shot through the roof. Five years ago that $12K set of lenses quickly doubled in price, if not more. And they’ve gone up at least 50% more yet again… if you can find them (I searched for six months to find the set we finally bought, and that was about six years ago now).

A decent set of older Cooke Speed Panchros (S2 or S3) will still cost you many tens of thousands of dollars. Not quite the $100K of a brand new set of Cooke S4/i’s, but still a big chunk.

The excellent Russian LOMO cine lenses were, for a while, the best kept secret around. They are stunningly good (I’d compare them to 80-90’s era Zeiss… warm, very sharp and great contrast). For a while you could buy a set for a few hundred dollars. Yes, hundred. But, people discovered them and ripped through the used supply in no time. Now they command pretty high prices… again, when you can find them.

Now, we were talking about zooms, though. They’re even worse than primes, because fewer of them were built and they’re even more in demand (especially fast ones, which were a rarity).

The good news though is that if you already have cine lenses, they’re a good investment. Virtually every piece of gear we own has depreciated like a rock, some so fast it would make you wana cry. Except the glass… my lenses are worth a lot more today than when I bought them.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

I have that exact same slider, but I don’t tripod mount it quite like that… or at least not only like that.

A lot of it has to do with how much camera weight you are putting on it. My camera body (C300) only weighs about 4 lb, but rigged out with everything I put on it brings it up to about 13 pounds. Plus my tripod head is 10 pounds so thats a fair bit of weight.

We use an Oconner tripod that’s a bit beefier than that Manfrotto. I think that Manfrotto would work, though… but if you put much weight on it I’d do what we do, which is not mount it in the center of the slider but mount it on one end of the slider. Then screw in a monopod in the other end to brace that end up. We’ve also held the “free” end up with a short-riser C-stand. It works well and is pretty sturdy.

I still wouldn’t walk away from it or leave it unattended.

I think you’ll like that slider, though. We got the K3 basically because it was dirt cheap, it was for a pretty specific job and I didn’t want to make a big investment. But I was pleasantly surprised… it’s built and works quite well, and I use it all the time.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

[Craig Alan] “Anyway the combo of seeing the set up and watching the shots is a great learning tool.”

I agree… I wish more people here would post samples. I almost invariably learn something (even when that something is what not to do… ha).

Wow, yeah that AT mic is a steal. The 416 is about double that. We have radio mics too but I can’t even remember the last time I used them. I hate putting a mic on talent, either wireless or hardwired. Even the best laviliers in the world just sound so cold and sterile compared to a good boom, which sounds so open and natural.

I almost never use HMIs in studio. There it’s almost always tungsten and flos for me. I will use them on location interiors though, especially in big rooms, or outside though windows. And I use them a lot for exteriors, to give some punch or fake magic hour when it’s not. I don’t use big butterflys like that 12x often, but I do use a lot of 4×4 silks. And while we have lots of the “pop up” kind of reflectors, I almost never use them either. In my opinion a white 4×4 foamcore bounce card is just about the prettiest bounce light there is. Also cheap, and a lot easier to mount and position… just a stand and grip head with a quacker (duckbill) clamp.

Actually since my last camera change my lighting design has radically changed too. We went from the XLH1, which is not the greatest in low light, PLUS I was using a P+S Technik Mini35 converter which ate a lot of light. With the C300 I only need a tiny fraction of the illumination I did before, so that has really changed everything. Doing much more subtractive light now rather than additive. I’ll often light a location scene purely with LEDs now. And my favorite part of that is that all of ours are battery powered with small AB bricks, or even smaller camera batteries on some of the smaller ones. No more hunting for outlets or running stingers. Aadyntech makes a bigass LED fresnel that’s the equivalent of a 1200w HMI that will run for several hours on a battery. I’d love to have one, but it’s still about $6K I think and can’t quite justify that.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

Patrick… that is a very easy mistake to make… learn from it, but don’t be too embarrassed about it.

I’ll have to admit I’ve done that a couple of times. See, I used that feature all the time with my previous camera, the Canon XLH1. But with the H1, magnification only worked when the camera was paused. As soon as you pulled trigger the viewfinder would pop back to normal. We retired that camera for the C300, which does not function that way… with the C300 you can use magnification when it is recording. So.. a couple of times I accidentally shot an image much much wider than I intended.

As Craig said, any NLE can blow that back up. If your finished project is in 1080HD you will significantly lose resolution though if you blow it back up to the size you were seeing when magnified. If you happen to have shot HD but are finishing your project in standard-def (say, for a DVD release), then you’re golden… you can easily make that size change with no ill effects. If the project is staying in the HD world, you can blow it up 150% and still technically stay HD, since 1080 lines blown up that much is still 720 lines of resolution.

Just don’t do that again 🙂

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

Thanks Craig…

Getting off track of Trevor’s original thread, but I hope he doesn’t mind (I think his issues were long since addressed by now).

As for audio… I’ll use a boom operator if my talent is moving or walking around, but if they are just sitting or standing I’ll usually put the boom on a C-stand. On that white set, I hung it from a couple of grip arms from the lighting grid primarily to free up floor space since our puny little stage is so small. I almost always use the same mic, the Sennheiser MKH416. They’re not cheap, but some of the best money you’ll ever spend. Highly directional… obviously we usually try to mic talent as close as possible, but if needed I can mic even fairly quiet dialog from 4-5 feet with no problem. That mic can do double duty, too. Once when I had a problem with the usual AT voiceover mic in our audio booth I threw the 416 in there on a lark, and it sounded great. Only after that did I learn that a lot of top narrators use it as a voiceover mic because it has a really warm and open sound. It does require 48v phantom power though, so your camera has to support that (fortunately now most higher-end cameras do).

Backgrounds were all practical, nothing keyed.

I’m not sure if by “soft look” on the talents’ faces if you mean lighting or actual sharpness….

I do tend to light large soft sources… the white set was medium-size softboxes and umbrella (tungsten). The interior car set was 12×12 silk and 4×8 white bounces, all HMI lighting (except the talent’s key which was a Diva, and his backlight which was a Switronix TorchLED). The exterior car scenes were HMIs through 4×4 silks, some LEDs (usually for back/side lighting) and some white 4×4 bounces.

If you were referring to actual sharpness… none of that was post, all in camera. My primes are pretty fast (f/1.3), so especially with the longer lenses (and depending on the distance) if I open them up all the way I can get a DoF as shallow as an inch or even less. If you can do that and keep eyeballs razor sharp then the rest of the facial features can fall off just a tiny bit soft, which can be a cool effect, when appropriate (and is usually very flattering to talent, too). As long as the eyeballs are pin-sharp, the softness on other features doesn’t look “wrong” to your brain. I don’t choose that for everything, but occasionally it works. Though sometimes focus pulling can be a royal biotch.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

Some horizontal banding during dissolves (and if the talent moves quickly), which lets me know this is interlaced. Maybe there’s a way to output a progressive signal instead, since this is only for viewing on a computer monitor?

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

Just started, Steve… looks good, sounds good, good sync, no buffering or lag.

The only tech issue I saw (or rather heard) was that I only had one channel of sound… only coming in on LEFT only.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

Thanks Craig…

[Craig Alan] “Sample clip?”

Any of this…
https://fantasticplastic.com/portfolio/news082.html
https://fantasticplastic.com/portfolio/news081.html
https://fantasticplastic.com/portfolio/news083.html

[Craig Alan] “When you shoot studio style do you have someone pull focus? “

Sometimes, but I usually pull focus myself when on sticks, jib, dolly, or slider. Actually when I go handheld with primes that’s when I’m more likely to have someone else pull focus… my AC puts a 12″ or 14″ whip in the focus wheel port and pulls with that. Sadly, he can’t with zooms (my zoom isn’t geared, as you can see in the above shot), so if shooting with a zoom handheld, then I pull my own focus.

[Craig Alan] “If so, what do you use as a monitor? “

In studio I have a about a 14″ (I think) 1080 monitor for focus that is fed via HDMI. It’s not an expensive piece of gear, basically just a TV monitor. I made sure to get one that is actually 12v (a lot of them are) so I could put a goldmount on the back to battery power it on location. It is well within the “good enough” category since I’m just using it for focus.

[Craig Alan] “Is the built in monitor good enough for sharp focus? “

Yes the various focus-assist tools work really well. I usually turn on the red-line peaking and switch the LCD to black and white if I’m focusing via the LCD. Works quite well.

[Craig Alan] “How well balanced is the run and gun set up? Are you able to stay focused with that set up?”

Not great. It’s serviceable, but not the world’s best, easiest, or most balance handheld setup. It pales in comparison to a true shoulder-mount camera as far as balance and ergonomics go… but fortunately for me I do very little handheld.

[Craig Alan] “I’d guess it takes a good bit of practice and skill to pull that off?”

Yup. And it’s a bit tiring. But I’m already old and tired.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Todd Terry]

I’d take Warren’s advice and try them both.

But barring that… I can certainly make a quick knee-jerk recommendation…

If you are primarily shooting stills, go for the 5D. If you are shooting motion video, go for the C100. That’s what each of those was made for. They are both great tools, and they will both certainly do the “other” thing… but I have long contended (and still do) that using a DSLR for motion video is using a really nice screwdriver when what you really need is a wrench.

I’d think you’d be really happy with the C100. I use its big brother the C300 every day, and it’s my favorite camera ever (and the C100 has many identical features). Stunning images, full S35mm sensor, unbelievable low-light capability… and it works like a video camera is supposed to, not something that you have to hack and add on to in order to make it kinda convenient to use. You can also paint the image in camera to just about any look you want, or shoot flat C-log to add a LUT in post and grade it however you like. If you like the 5D look, you can bake in a Canon EOS DSLR color profile as well. All of the C-series cameras (100/300/500) look very cinematic and filmic to me, whereas the 5D looks very, well, “DSLRy” to me. Not bad… in fact the images are really great. But they definitely look like DSLR-originated images to me… and look neither like video nor real film.

I’m not totally sure why you need the Atomos, though… especially since you said this was for lower-end projects. I’d almost guarantee you that your eyeballs wouldn’t be able to tell which images were recorded externally and which were recorded on the camera’s CF cards. Maybe if you were planning a lot of greenscreen work then it would be worth recording those shots externally, but otherwise I wouldn’t bother.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com