[Todd Terry]

For ulta-lightweight and high portability, MicroDolly makes some pretty good stuff in the dolly department. I’ve found some of their gear to be a little bit pricey, but that’s true of all well-made cine gear.

As far as jibs go though, I swear by the Losmandy Porta-Jib Traveler (www.porta-jib.com). It’s a little on the pricey side too, in fact it is probably one of the more expensive small jibs out there…. but it’s great and worth every penny. Unlike most other small variable-length jibs you never have to assemble or disassmble it or add or remove sections… it simply telescopes in and out. I’ve had mine for pushing 10 years and have used it with everything from little DV cameras to heavy full-size 35mm film rigs. It has paid for itself 100 times over… and I know several other Porta-Jib owners who are just as happy with theirs.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

[Raymond Motion Pictures] “no replicating house will replicate unless the music copyrights are paid for and clear.”

That’s interesting, indeed…. I’d never thought about that.

I can say though that although our music is always paid for and with clear copyright, the particular replication houses that we use (including what I think must be the largest one on the world which happens to be in my hometown) have never once even asked us about music clearances.

Maybe we just got lucky…

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

I only know of one guy who had a Letus35 and he was not happy with it at all. He bought it because it was so darn cheap, and found he got what he paid for.

He said it was very “homemade” and wasn’t happy with its results, either. I never saw any of his footage, but I did see a few stills from it and they were indeed pretty poor.

I don’t want to knock the company, maybe he just got a lemon… but in general I would steer clear of these very bottom-end converters and save up for one a bit farther up the food chain.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Bob, have you looked at the little Brevis35 unit? It is very inexpensive and the results I have seen from it seem pretty incredible, especially for the price. Also sometime in early 2008 they are releasing a “flip module” which will correctly reorient the picture… so you are not having to flip pix in post or mount cameras or monitors upside down on location, like you have to do with the Redrock and the other lower-priced lens converters.

I only personally know one person who has tried the Redrock DIY kit, and found it quite challenging. I think he is still probably tweaking on it trying to get everything just right (last I heard he was having some backfocus issues that he was struggling to resolve).

I personally think I would steer clear of a DIY kit… there are just so many variables and the work must be sooooo precise. Again, I’d give the Brevis35 a good hard look. Personally, I use the P+S Technik Mini35 with my Canon XLH1 (a great piece of equipment, the only downside is that the Mini35 is about the cost of a new Hyundai), but I also have a little Canon HV20 that I bought just as a crashcam and have been thinking of buying a Brevis35 for it…. I’ve seen great footage using that combination.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Well, I won’t continue the “he said / she said” argument past this post either (while wondering who is the “he” and who is the “she”)…

But I will observe that I did look at that guy’s website. I will say that he does appear (just looking at the gallery) a pretty darn good photographer. But judging from his technical explainations he is also one that has a fairly, um, unusual grasp on some of the technicalities of photography.

The simple fact is that anyone who says that DoF is unaffected by focal length is simply flying in the face of well over a century’s worth of proven photographic and optical theory. No two ways around it.

Just keep in mind that in this day and age anyone can throw up a website… but that doesn’t mean the information in it is correct. I haven’t looked, but I’ll bet you ten bucks that within ten minutes of Googling I could find some sites purporting that Elvis is still alive and that professional wrestling is real.

If someone wants to believe that however, well, they can knock themselves out.

I think our UK photographer is partially basing his observations on the fact that he seems primarily to be a digital photographer, where small imagers result in DoFs that seem less affected by focal length change.

[Bob Cole] “I was just trying to keep someone from believing that he could fix a 1/3″ camera’s shallow DOF by moving the camera back and using the tele”

But that would be trying to keep someone from believing something that is provably true. You can indeed reduce DoF by using longer lenses. You may not get the field of view you want (probably won’t) and perspectives may be flattened in an unwanted way… but the DoF will definitely be reduced.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

[Steve Wargo] “my accountant started to 1099 non paying clients”

Oh THAT is bordering on brilliant!

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

[Bob Cole] “You’ll get a narrower slice of the background, but it will be virtually as sharp”

Sorry, Bob… not to be argumentative, but that simply is not true. If you, say, shoot a subject 20 feet away with an 80mm lens, and then shoot the subject from 5 feet away with an 18mm lens (or whatever exact distances it takes to keep the subject the same size), not only will the field of view be different, but the degree of focus on the background (or foreground) elements will be radically different, assuming the same f-stop for both lenses. Yup, RADICALLY. It’s just the way it is. The same would apply when using different focal lengths for a zoom lens. This is, of course, assuming you are shooting a shallow DoF format (such as 35mm film, or video with a lens converter)… a little 1/3″ camera has such deeeeeep DoF almost everything is going to be in nearly-sharp focus no matter what you do.

I shoot every day (and have for the last 20 years) with camera formats ranging from Super35mm film down to video cameras with little 1/3″ sensors, and can attest that this is simply the way it is. If I had the inclination I could probably spend an hour on the phone and easily find dozens of cinematographers to back that up.

You can test this easily yourself… probably NOT with a small video camera since the depth of field is so deep, but if you don’t have access to a 35mm motion picture camera you can test it with an SLR with a zoom lens (NOT a digital SLR, it will suffer the same “small chip” deep focus as the video camera… use a real 35mm film SLR). The change in depth of field should be readily evident, just by looking through the viewfinder. You don’t even have to take any shots.

If you can’t do a test, DoF/f-stop/focal length comparison charts are readily available… I think there is one in the American Cinematographers Manual (I don’t have mine handy, it’s at the studio and it’s after hours now).

[Bob Cole] “What I’m wondering about right now (as a Sony Z1 owner), is whether there is enough of a DOF difference to make a difference, between the 1/3″ imager and a 1/2″ (as in the new Sony EX).”

Nah, probably not. If you want to compare it to film, your Z1 with its 1/3″ chips has roughly the same DoF as Super8 film (very deep). A “full size” camcorder (Cinealta, Varicam, etc.) wit 2/3″ sensors will have roughly the same DoF as 16mm film (somewhat shallower than 8mm, but much deeper than 35mm). The EX with its 1/2″ chip will fall somewhere between 8mm and 16mm… closer to the 8mm DoF… in other words, still extremely deep. I doubt there will be any noticable DoF difference in the EX compared to 1/3″ cameras.

Personally I would love to use te EX with a lens converter and cine primes. However, I really only like to use that setup with cameras with removable lenses…. and unfortunately to take off the EX lens it requires a hacksaw. And I’m betting the results wouldn’t be too good!

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

[Bob Cole] “Somebody correct me if I’m wrong, but I think this is a common misconception. If you go far away and zoom in to, say, a head-and-shoulders shot, you’ll have as much DOF as if you stayed close and zoomed out for the same head-and-shoulders frame.”

Sadly, no. DoF is a function of a number of things including f-stop, size of image (film frame or chip size) and lens focal length. In the 35mm world, just as an 80mm prime lens has a much shallower depth of field compared to, say, a 28mm lens… by zooming in you are increasing the focal length of the lens and correspondingly decreasing the depth of field.

The other suggestions (shooting wide open, etc.), are legitimate, but unfortunately in practicality don’t have too much effect. The little 1/3″ sensors are so tiny in small camcorders that even a wide-open iris will have DoF almost as deep as one that is significantly stopped down.

If one desires a truely shallow depth of field with a small camcorder, the only real solution (barring shooting everything with as looooong a lens as possible… i.e., zoomed in) is to use a lens converter.

[Bob Cole] “Well, not so new, Citizen Kane.”

Yep, extremely shallow DoFs are a bit of a modernism. DoFs in Welles’ day were indeed often very deep (Kane’s cinematographer Gregg Toland especially was an advocate and deveoper of “deep focus”). These were aesthetic decisions accomplished by wide angles, stopped down lenses, and even special multi-focal (“cut in half”) lenses and attachments that would focus part of the frame for foreground and part of it for background. Also, this was before “superspeed” days and maximum f-stops on lenses of the day weren’t as large as presently available.

Times, they are a-changin’…

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

Walter is right on the money with his phrase “The client owns it unless otherwise specified.”

Key words being OTHERWISE SPECIFIED. That’s why we are careful that it is always specified.

Our contracts always carefully stipulate that the client owns the finished production to broadcast/present as they wish in its delivered form. The contracts also stipulate that our company owns the footage and elements (writing, graphics, animation, rights to voice talent, rights to on-camera talent, music rights, etc.). The verbage also stips that the client may not take a finished product and recut it or reuse it in another or different project.

We haven’t been around nearly as long as some of the guys on this forum, but we have been around for ten years… and produced scads of industrials, maketing and training films, and literally thousands and thousands of broadcast commercials. Never even once have we had a client question our ownership. Only a few times have clients come to us and requested footage after the fact, and we have gladly sold them the rights to reuse and provided them the dubs they needed (under a new contract, of course). Most often they simply come back to us for additional production, during which they of course can use the previous footage at no additional charge.

That may not work for everyone, but it’s never given us a lick of trouble.

Bottom line, if you want to retain ownership of the footage, make sure it is spelled out in writing in advance. It saves all the trouble and debate that has been going on in this thread.

T2

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

[Todd Terry]

What a nice video… watched it all, that will be priceless to you and the other kids.

Two observations… first, he certainly wasn’t afraid to work hard as a kid and young man. Don’t see that nearly as much and more.

And secondly… he had great taste in cars. 🙂

T2

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