Todd Terry
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COW Coin
Forum Replies Created
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Well obviously those halogen lamps are not ideal, but sometimes one has to make do, especially on a budget.
There are a few things you can do on the ultra cheap cheap cheap… I wouldn’t recommend them for most shoots but if there’s little money they might have to do…
Firstly, take the “cages” off your halogen work lights. BE CAREFUL with these instruments, they get hot enough to fry an egg… literally. You can diffuse the instruments with umbrellas, or even a white bedsheet. Most fabric stores will have translucent vinyl shower curtain material that is actually great for diffusion… but again, be VERY CAREFUL and don’t put any of these diffusers very close to your light source or they will burn and/or melt and/or cause a fire. Watch them like a hawk, and never leave anything unattended even for a minute. You can also bounce the halogens into a white bounce card for a soft look (just a big piece of white foamcore… usually 4×4 but you might not be able to find anything quite that large at just a hobby store). Again, be VERY CAREFUL or the halogens may burn the card.
If you want to go a cooler route, make your own poor man’s KinoFlos… at Lowes or Home Depot you can pick up those cheap fluorescent shop fixtures for almost nothing. You can get either daylight or tungsten balanced (more or less) tubes for them. You can also pick up some cheap clamp-on reflectors and put the spiral flo bulbs in them… they also come in daylight or tungsten color flavors (although the higher-wattage spiral bulbs may only be available in daylight balanced). Run some tests as you might get some “phasing” with these, depending on your shutter speed… you might need to shoot in “clear scan” mode (I can’t remember if the HV20 will do that, but I think so). These cheap flos will probably also have a noticeable green spike to them… you may need to combat that with some minus-green gel on them, or run some post tests and see if you can sufficiently correct it in post.
The flos will not give you nearly the output that the halogens will, but will be a LOT softer and a heckuva lot cooler and safer.
Not an ideal way to light… but it can work.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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The XL1 would be sufficient as long as standard-def is OK, and you have really good pro lighting.
Don’t buy a camera for one gig, especially a low-dollar one.
Is there a camera rental facility in your city? This is one of those instances where it sure seems like renting is the way to go.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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[Jeffrey Venable] “ouldn’t I achieve the same benefits from making sure that we shade the sun from the camera lens manually? Like with a flag?”
Sure. Well, maybe not the same benefits, but it will work.
The matte box is there for two reasons: to keep unintended light from directly hitting the front element of the lens, and to hold filters.
As long as that light is not hitting the front glass, that function of the box is not needed. Sometimes you don’t need one at all. Sometimes a rubber lens hood will do. Or a piece of gaffer tape. Or, as you said, flagging the light source.
The other usage is filtration. Rather than screw-on glass filters, the matte box uses square (or rectangular, depending on the box) filters… which may be glass, acetate, resin, or polyester. Most boxes have multiple slots allowing the use of more than one filter, and most will have at least one filter stage that rotates for positioning the filter (important for polorizing or filters with gradations). These are the advantages of matte box square filters (that, and the fact that you can have a whole case full of different filters that are usable on different cameras of different sizes). If your particular usages don’t need any of that (multiple filters, rotatability), then the matte box may not be needed.
These days more and more you see less filtration at acquisition, since post effects are getting better and better it’s often more preferable to shoot a clean “raw” image and do the “filtration” in post… since once you record with it in camera, you can’t take it back off. I personally rarely use filters at all… usually my matte box is empty, or only contains neutral density filters.
If you don’t use a matte box but are using screw-on filters with your particular rig, they will go on the front of the Nikkor lens, not the camera lens (not between the Cinevete Brevis unit and the XHA1’s zoom lens).
You’ll probably want a polarizer, maybe a UV filter, and a selection of neutral density filters. Since you are using a lens converter the ND filters could prove very important… I’d suggest getting a set that includes .3, .6, and .9ND.
And, not that you asked, but if you plan to use SLR lenses on your DoF converter, you’ll find that a good follow-focus unit is a must-have (and not one of those cheap plastic ones, the gearboxes are too sloppy). Even with real cine lenses a FF unit is highly desirable, but with SLR lenses they are super important since the range of lens travel from nearest-to-infinity is soooo tight (about one-fifth barrel turn as opposed to almost a complete barrel turn with a cine lens) that it makes precise focusing super critical. And, as I’m sure you probably know, with a DoF converter your viewfinder will be almost useless for eyeball focusing since the resolution is so low… a full HD monitor is needed for focusing, or use a tape measure (measured to the groundglass “film” plane, not the front of the lens) and focus by distance using the lens numbers and witness mark.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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[Robert DiVito] “Is this a good head?”
Depends on what you want to put on it. That head is rated for about 17 or 18 pounds, I think… but I wouldn’t load it up quite that much. For a camera (plus all accessories on it) that weight up to about 12 or 13 pounds it should be fine.
Oconnor made/makes great stuff. I have three bigger/older Oconnor heads… they work as well today as when they were brand new, and Oconnor will service stuff forever (and their techs really know what they are doing and are very familiar with even their older products).
Seems like a more-than-decent deal, although part of that would depend on what model sticks the head is paired with.
Make sure the head has a camera plate. If not, you can still buy one from Oconnor, but will probably be about a hundred bucks.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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[Mark D’Agostino] “regarding Mark Suszko’s story about the hydrogen cells…seriously?!”
I was completely convinced Mark was pulling our legs about the hydrogen camera batteries… until I researched it, and sho’nuff they exist.
I’m all for advances and improvements… but I don’t quite get it. They claim to be cheaper to operate in the long run… but, I mean, seriously? I bet batteries (and the power to juice them) cost my company maybe .0001% of our annual budget (which isn’t that huge to start with). I can’t conceive of any long-term cost savings being outweighed by the upfront cost of the filling system and the inconvenience of only being able to recharge them back at the home base.
Not to mention the “hissing sound”… geez. Maybe I’m completely missing the point, but it sure seems like the wrong application for that product to me… espcially when you consider that both NiCads and Lithium ion batteries do work pretty darn well and are a miniscule percentage of the cost of all the other hardware that our businesses require.
I’ll forgo that in favor of my next idea… putting small wind turbines on top of cameras. (only good for exteriors, of course)
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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[Jiggy Gaton] “eat less oil and use better makeup.”
Ha! That’d be a heckuva lot cheaper.
But seriously… you’re dealing with two different issues there… the skin smoothing and the DoF. One doesn’t necessarily have a lot to do with the other. Bad skin is still going to look like bad skin, even with a DoF converter… it’s just that the foreground and background can be soft.
I certainly wouldn’t buy one of these units, even the inexpensive M2, just for a one-time gig. For much less than the cost of the M2 you could rent the much-higher-end Mini35 for a few days, and possibly a nice set of PL mount superspeed cine primes, too. The good thing about your particular camera is that the Mini35s that are available from rental houses are almost always the Canon XL mount versions.
I will caution you — whether you buy or rent — not to get this thing on the day of the shoot. Even the pain-free Mini35 I would never recommend using fresh out of the box. These things take some getting used to, and there is a learning curve with getting truly proficient at it. Video is gone, you will have to shoot, light, bock, and make camera moves exactly as if you were shooting real film, not video. And a good follow-focus unit is an absolute must because the DoF is so shallow (and not one of those cheapo plastic “Fisher Price” ff units… they have way too much slop in them). Focus will require a monitor, too… the camera’s low-res viewfinder will be useless for eyeball focusing when DoFs are this shallow… or use a tape measure. Cinematographers with experience in shooting 35mm motion picture film find these units relatively easy to get used to… videographers who have only shot electronic will find them a little more challenging. It’s not super hard, but it’s not child’s play, either. I’ve found that in my own case, I’ve shot with the P+S Technik converter almost constantly for two years (and a few zillion feet of 35mm film before that), and I still learn new/different/better ways to use it every day.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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No, they don’t. If you want to stay in the Canon line you’ll have to go up at least one click to the XLH1 to get that feature, sorry.
Still, do it in post, not in camera.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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I’d really recommend a DoF search. There’s enough info in various threads on the COW about this to write a book… literally.
All the adapters work in basically the same way. What you are paying for is features and usability. I don’t recommend the lens converter that I use (P+S Technik Mini35) for everyone… since it comes in at about $11,000. It is the perfect tool for cinematographers out in the trenches shooting every day on decent-budget projects… but for weekend warriors or indie shooters on a budget the price just makes it overkill (I will say though that it’s a unit that works absolutely flawlessly).
The much cheaper Redrock M2 comes in at about a fifth the price. I personally have never used it, but hear that it can work very well. One of the downsides is that even if you have a camera like one of your XL series with a removable lens, you still have to use the camera’s zoom lens. Unlike the more expensive units which replace the camera’s lens, these units stick on the front of the existing lens. There are whole bunches of other features that set them apart as well.
The same can be said for the bargain-basement units like the Brevis and Letus.
Again, there’s a lot more than can be convered in a quickie post. Do a COW search, and/or read the COW magazine article here:
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Our business seems to be very good, we are fortunate enough to live in an area and a city that is really quite booming despite the economy elsewhere.
Our usual product is broadcast commercials, and we have seen a couple of the older and well established advertising agencies in our area shuttered within the last year. Initially we bemoaned their loss (because they were our clients), but found that their clients were now suddenly coming to us directly after the demise of their agencies.
We have noticed a bit of change in the type of work we do. We are doing slightly fewer broadcast commercials these days and quite a bit more corporate work than in the past. It will eventually probably swing back the other way again.
We have also seen a slight change in the size/scope of our projects, whether they be commercials, industrials, or whatever. I think we are probably doing slightly fewer total projects than in years’ past… but the ones we are doing are much more ambitious and of higher budgets.
We’re growing, slowly and slightly. We’ve just added another edit suite and are in the process of looking for another editor now.
I wouldn’t mind having a little more work, but frankly we are about at capacity now and I don’t particularly want to get bigger. A couple of years ago a colleague with a similar business had things really take off… and went from a two-person shop to one with 40 employees. He was bemoaning that he spent his entire day managing people now, and never got to personally do anything creative (and he’s a very creative guy). And personally making no more money in the end. That’s the kind of thing I’ve always been wary of. We try to stay as busy as we can, but not let things spiral out of control.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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In that particular case… yes, post. You’ll have a lot more control over the look.
Also in that instance a great deal of making her happy will have to do with the skill of the director of photography on the shoot. Amazing what lighting can do… the right cinematograher can make the elephant man look like a movie star… the wrong cinematographer can make Audrey Hepburn look like a hag.
What camera is he shooting with? Some cameras have features that might help him as well. I shoot with the XLH1 which has a “skin smoothing” feature which actually works surprsingly well (it basically detects skin tones and applies a slight blur only to those tones). I believe several other cameras have a similar feature as well.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com