Todd Terry
1
COW Coin
Forum Replies Created
-
[Daniel Boza] “What is a 60i wrapper?”
Well in simplest terms that just means the footage will capture as and behave as plain ol’ 60i NTSC footage, with 30 frames and 60 fields per second. You’ll edit it in a 60i project, not a 24p project. However, if you step through the video frame by frame, you’ll see that it is made up of the proper 3:2 frames/fields. Note that this applies only to standard-definition Canon 24f footage. Canon 24f footage in high def comes in as 23.976 fps progressive footage.
[Daniel Boza] “Which pulldown method is better 3:2 or 2:3:3:2?”
Typically 3:2 is the better choice… yielding footage that has the same frames/fields order as real telecined film.
[Daniel Boza] “What exactly does the Magic Bullet Frames plugin do to make the conversion?”
No idea. Red Giant Software might be able to answer that. But likely what they are doing is taking the first three frames and squashing their fields together to create a progressive frame, then leaving the next two alone. Or somehow they are taking the first three fields (all of the first frame and the first field of the second frame) and using it to build the first progressive frame, then using the next two fields to build the next progressive frame…and then repeating that over and over 3:2:3:2:3 etc.
[Daniel Boza] “You mentioned Magic Bullet Looks, but is not better to use Colorista to color correct a video?”
Well, I just said Magic Bullet Looks was a great plug-in, I didn’t recommend it for color correction. Yes, Colorista will be the most powerful Magic Bullet tool for color correction. It’s very powerful, but also takes a fair bit of skill and practice (just like Apple Color or any other higher-end color correction). I frankly never use it, because our suites have Matrox AXIO LE machines, and Matrox has pretty powerful color correction filters itself (they are almost just like Colorista) so I just use them. I don’t really know my way completely around Colorista yet, but it seems like it would do the job. Magic Bullet Looks, on the other hand, do a bunch of other types of image manipulation that allow you to apply layered effects that simulate different things that you do at various points of shooting and post… just as different filters in the camera’s “virtual matte box,” or lens effects, or in-camera things such as shutter effects, or post things like bleach bypass, etc.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
Hey Ryan…
[Ryan Mast] “I’ve never been happy with its sharpness in HD resolution”
Well, like most anything else, you get what you pay for. I think if you tried a really high-end converter you might be pleasantly surprised. I use the 400 series P+S Technik Mini35… and it is absolutely razor-sharp. I’ve shot with it married with the Canon XLH1 every day for two years, and have yet to have the first problem, tweak, or adjustment required (I like this combination because the converter fits right on the camera body… doesn’t use the camera’s stock lens like most others). I know that with a lot of the less expensive converters people spend so much time tweaking them to death or wrestling with them to get a good image… spending ten times as much time fiddling with the gear than they do shooting. I never have to think about it. Of course, on the downside, this converter is expensive. Some would say wildly so… much costly than the camera itself… so I don’t recommend it to everyone… not for weekend warriors or folks trying to produce an indie on the cheap. But for cinematographers out in the trenches shooting real projects with decent budgets every day I think it’s the way to go.
[Ryan Mast] “it’d be nice to be able to control it more than I can with the stock Fujinon lens.”
That’s right, exactly. The real use of a DoF converter is not to give you a shallow DoF, but to give you a controllable one. 35mm naturally has a lot more of that range for you to control than 16mm does, since the frame area is five times bigger.
[Ryan Mast] “SLR lenses are designed to require less turning to adjust the focus, whereas film lenses have to be turned further, making it easier to precisely follow focus. Is that correct?”
Right. A typical SLR lens requires about one-fifth of a barrel turn to go from nearest to infinity. With a real cine lens you have to make almost a complete barrel turn. When dealing with a shallow depth of field and a moving subject and using an SLR lens, you’d only have to make extremely precise and very very tiny turns to the focus ring to keep the subject sharp. Those moves can still be pretty darn hard even if you have cine lenses, a good follow focus unit, and a skilled AC as focus puller turning the knob. Using SLR lenses really magnifies that difficulty level. Can it be done? Sure. It’s just a fair bit harder.
[Ryan Mast] “And and lenses designed for video/film production usually have gear teeth on the side to use with a follow focus unit, right?”
Generally speaking, yes, and most of the rings have the same gear pitch, which is slightly different than for the gears you sometimes see on video lenses. But not all cine lenses have gear rings… I have a couple that are gearless.
[Ryan Mast] “What is the difference in the quality of the glass or the body of a PL-mount lens and a lens designed for an SLR camera?”
The quality of the glass itself can be just as good. My primes, for example, started life as Leica still camera lenses before they were rehoused and remounted by Panavision. The glass in them was great to start with… as it is in a lot of SLR lenses. The difference lies in the rest of the lens. SLR lenses are made by the thousands. Cine lenses are made individually by hand. If you had a Cooke lens in your hands from 1993, you could literally call Cooke and very likely be able to get the guy on the phone who put it together. The tolerances are very tight, everything is very precise. Plus, almost all SLR lenses “breathe”… that is, the image size changes slightly when the focus changes. This makes no difference of course when shooting stills, which the lenses were designed for, but can be very noticable and annoying with motion footage. Cine lenses typically do not breathe.
There are a couple of places that offer SLR lenses that have been converted for motion picture (or DoF converter work). Some of these just change the mount, and maybe screw or glue on gear rings. The better ones actually re-house or re-barrel the lenses, so they operate and focus like a real cine lens.
[Ryan Mast] “I’m finding a lot of 16mm lenses with C-mounts …Can these be adapted?”
Good question. I’m not sure. A C-mount is tiny in comparison to a PL mount, so it theorectically seems like it might be possible… but I’ve never heard of anyone doing that.
[Ryan Mast] “does the C mount indicate that it’s old enough that it’s not worth using in HD?”
Not necessarily. A lens’ vintage doesn’t necessarily indicate its quality. There are some very good older lenses. My personal primes are quite a few years old. And it’s darn near impossible to find the Cooke SpeedPanchro lenses from the 1960s (and some even earlier) because they have all been snapped up by bigshot ASC cinematographers who wouldn’t part with them for their lives, because they are so beautiful. There are big-time Hollywood movies shot every day with lenses that are probably older than you are. So, old doesn’t necessarily mean bad.
[Ryan Mast] “Who would you recommend that I go to for re-mounting lenses if I go with that option?”
Paul Duclos of Duclos Lenses in Los Angeles. A genius, great guy, super helpful, pretty fast, and works relatively cheaply. Saved my bacon once when some idiot (ok, it was me) dropped my favorite 50mm onto a concrete stage floor. Yikes. I thought it was a goner, but he fixed it better than new for like $500 or so… about a tenth of replacing it.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
Can the dulling be permanent? If so, easy breezy… pick up an ordinary can of Krylon “Matte Finish/1311″… you should find it with the spray paints in the paint department of any bigger hardware store, Lowes, Home Depot, etc. Sprays on easy, dries within a minute or two.
If you don’t want it to be permanent, go to any bigger photo supply store and you’ll find the dulling spray that you can wipe off after the shoot.
You could also sand or buff the aluminum (I’d suggest starting with steel wool) to permanently knock off some of the glare.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
Shoot 24f.
There’s no reason to apply the Magic Bullet plug-in… the footage is already 24fps.
That would be a bit like applying a color desaturation filter to black-and-white footage… it already is what you are trying to get it to be.
[Daniel Boza] “24f is the Canon’s solution for “film-look”, but it’s a trick,”
Not really. It’s much much more of a “trick” to simulate 24p footage by appling a filter (Magic Bullet or otherwise) to 60i footage.
There really is no trickery to Canon 24f, despite what a lot of people think (if Canon had only been willing to pay the trademark licensing fee they’d be calling it ’24p’ instead of ’24f’ and people wouldn’t be worrying about it). If you are shooting high-def, the footage will import perfectly as 23.976 fps progressive footage. If you shoot 24f in standard-def mode, the footage imports in a 60i wrapper, but has a perfect 3:2 pulldown already applied. People assume that “trickery” has to do with the fact that Canon uses an interlaced sensor to create the progressive frames… but the fact is that a lot of other cameras do that too… they just call their footage “24p” and people don’t worry about it.
Since you have a camera that can already shoot 24fps, do it that way. Use Magic Bullet for other image manipulation (it’s good software, especially Magic Bullet Looks), but not for this.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
[Ryan Mast] “What lens mounts adapt to the Arri PL mount?”
Short answer, not many.
Longer answer… the PL mount is fairly proprietary, and camera bodies (or other devices such as the JVC CA13U) that have native PL mounts have a bit of a tough time adapting to other mounts, and definitely are happier with lenses that are PL mounted.
There are a couple of adapters… there is an adapter that will allow an Arri Bayonet mount lens to fit a PL mount, and I think there’s an adapter that will allow BNCR-mount lenses to work on PL mount… and it’s possible to attach some Panavision lenses to PL mounts. There’s also an OCT19 adapter that will allow the great Russian LOMO cine lenses to be PL mounted.
BUT… I’m guessing you’re trying to find a solution to attach relatively inexpensive glass (SLR lenses, maybe?) to your PL mount… and those mounts I mentioned are all on high-end real cine lenses that are going to cost as much (or more) as lenses that are already PL mounted.
There are Nikon-to-PL mount adapters… which will allow a Nikkor lens to fit a PL mount camera… but they only work well for certain specialized uses.
The problem is a mechanical depth measurement on a lens known as the “flange distance.” That measurement is 52mm for a PL mount, but on a Nikon lens that distance is quite a bit less.
Ergo, although the lens will fit, it loses part of its focus range… and the lens will no longer focus to infintiy (and the distance scale will also be incorrect). These adapters are used by people who want to use Nikon lenses for close-up macro work, since the lenses still focus adequately within the close range.
I think there is a similar adapter for Canon lenses… with the same focusing restrictions… but I’ve never seen one.
I think your two best bets are either to just buy PL mount lenses…. or have each of your non-PL mount primes professionally remounted. You can buy the PL mount (usually about $120 for the part), but it’s not a do-it-yourself job. It needs to be done by a professional and qualified lens tech who can remount, get the flange distance precise, and collimate (and projection test) the lens. You’re probably looking at a couple hundred bucks for labor for each lens.
The good news is that you only need primes that will cover 16mm, and they are a lot more plentiful (and much much cheaper) than PL mount primes that cover 35mm. Well, they’re still quite expensive, but nowhere near 35mm. The lens market has really dried up… not too long ago you could get a decent set of matched 35mm cine primes in the $10-12,000 neighborhood. Prices have at least doubled now(when you can find them), and even more if you want superspeeds. But, as I said, 16mm lenses will be a lot less… probaby about half the price of 35mm.
I’m really not sure why JVC designed the CA13U with a PL mount only. It seems very limiting and counterintuitive… they’re making an inexpensive adapter so lots of people can afford it, but then forcing the use of lenses than many budgets can’t afford (plus it only gives 16mm depth-of-field, not the much shallower 35mm DoF that people seem to want). My lens converter has a PL mount and I use PL mount primes… but I also have a Nikon mount for it, and several other mounts are also available from P+S Technik for it (both SLR lens mounts and cine lens mounts). JVC, on the other hand, seems pretty intent on forcing the use of PL mount lenses only. On the upside, you’re going to find the best lenses in PL mounts… but on the downside the price of them puts them out of reach of a lot of people who would need them for the CA13U adapter.
My other question would be, are you married to the CA13U? You might be better off going with a 35mm converter instead. You’d get the 35mm depth of field, and have an infinitely more plentiful selection of lenses that will work.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
No, J2, we haven’t done bupkus…. yet.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
Yeah, I hear ya Jason… and it makes sense.
It’s just tough though, as that’s not really the way I’d like to see this work. I don’t really want to have to rely on putting our stuff on YouTube. For watching our pieces our own self-hosting should be more than sufficient, and we can control its exact look and presentation. And no disrespect to them, but I think that portfolios etc. that reside on YouTube just make the operation just look a tad, well… cheap. A bit illegit. And I can’t think of anything I’d remotely want to blog about… or expect people to read. I sure don’t want to come across as one of those blog-happy people that think they are so interesting that other people need to read about the minutiae of their day…ha. I know far too many people like that.
I really can’t imagine any of our clients wanting to link to us either. They don’t have links to any of their other vendors, and I can’t think of any reason to convince them it’d be something they would want or need.
I see several other production companies in our area (none as nearly prominent in the area as we are, or prolific) who pop right up high on searches…. without any external links or blogs or YouTubiness.
There’s got to be a way…. grrrrr.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
[Daniel Peters] “Is all that footage worthless because I recorded it to MiniDV instead of HDV?”
Nah… while there might be some minor differences (quality control, etc.), basically tape is tape. People shoot HDV footage on regular DV tape all the time.
The issue is format. You say you “filmed in HD” but yet you are “trying to capture the footage playing back the miniDV tapes through my work’s XL2.”
In short… you have an HD tape (well, HDV) but are trying to play it back out of a standard def deck (or rather, camera).
It doesn’t work that way. Standard-definition decks (or cameras) will not play back HDV footage. You need to get an HDV deck or camera to play the tape.
AND…
If you shot with Canon’s version of 24p (24f), then you must play back out of another Canon camera which supports 24f, or from a Sony M35 deck. The average HDV deck will not play the tape.
Don’t worry (or fret with a screaming bride), you just need the right playback device. All of this has nothing to do with the fact that you shot on MiniDV tape rather than HDV tape… you’re safe there.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
[Bipop Upreti] “could i attach this lens to a DOF adaptor and atach the adaptor to a video camera?”
Well, I guess you could use that lens with a DoF converer, at least in theory. But I personally wouldn’t, for a number of reasons…
* It’s a medium format lens. I.e., it covers the area of a medium-format film frame. It’s overkill. You only need to cover a 35mm film frame, which is much smaller.
* I’m not really familiar with the Mamiya lens mount, but I’ll bet a dollar that mount is not one that is available for the DoF adpapter. Most DoF adapters will have PL mounts (for real cine lenses) or Canon or Nikon mounts for SLR lenses. You’d have to have an adapter to convert the Mamiya to whatever mount your DoF adapter takes (if such an adapter exists), or have the lens re-mounted, which probably wouldn’t cost quite as much as they are asking for that lens in the first place, but close.
* That lens is pretty slow, at f2.8. DoF adapters like really fast lenses, because the adapter itself eats up a fair bit of light. The f2.8 lens would be fine for daytime exteriors, but would not be all that useful indoors… unless you have a really powerful lighting package (when using a DoF converter you don’t want to have to kick up the camera’s gain unless absolutely necesary). And I mean really powerful… HMIs and such. Superspeed lenses (f1.4 or faster) are really what works best with DoF adapters.
* And lastly, for what you would be getting and for what you would be using it for, the price isn’t that great. For the same $250 you could get a decent 35mm SLR lens that is faster and already with a mount that will work on the adapter.
I’d take that same money and see what you can find in the way of decent (and faster) Canon or Nikkor lenses.
[Bipop Upreti] “in general how would i know what lenses to buy for a DOF adaptor.”
It just depends on what you need to shoot, and what kind of shots you like to get. That 45mm lens is pretty wide for medium format, but for 35mm that is just about “normal.” In the 35mm format a 50mm lens is considered a normal mid-range lens. You’d likely want a vareity of primes in different focal lenghts. The primes I normally travel with are 8mm, 18mm, 35mm, 50mm, 80mm, and 200mm. I’m really desparately in need of another medium-longish lens, something in the 120mm neighborhood. I also have a 37-140mm zoom, but zooms are tricky with DoF converters… because most zoom lenses are quite slow… a lot slower than fast primes. Reasonably fast zooms are available, but a real cine lens that has a decent zoom range and is fast is going to be expensive… we’re talking in the quite-a-few-thousands-of-dollars range. Zoom lenses can be useful with a DoF converter, but mostly for daytime exteriors or in well-lit interiors where you have a pretty darn bright lighting plot.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
-
[Phillip Wnuk] “they got their 80 million in overages from the city.”
Shoulda asked for a percentage on that one!
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com