Anamorphic Primes on the Mini 35

[Mizell Wilson]

Charles,

It's an interesting sub-topic. As I understand it the "video" industry is working towards 1" chips, which technically is not the same as the Acad35 taking frame...close, but no cigar.

That being said, the Dalsa Origin is a new digital cinema camera that is in the pipe that does have the full size frame (actually larger) and will take PL lenses natively. It is single chip though. This will be a high end camera i.e. expensive!!!!

In general, from conversations I've had, the 2/3" isn't going to go away so quickly. From discussions with Canon, on why they haven't done 24p 16x9 yet, it seems that all the issues with syncing 3 chips together becomes exponentially harder as the chip size grows and you want it do more things i.e. the aforementioned 24p 16x9. That's why we have multi-mega pixel single-chip cameras and no multi-mega pixel 3 chip cameras.

So while they are working on larger chip cameras, they are, for the moment, going to be specialized and rather expensive beasts.

There is a new technology in the pipe, CMOS I believe, that is intended to replace CCDs but can do more in the same space, so as these chips become readily available I think we'll see cameras with larger and larger chips.

Mizell

[Nick Hiltgen]

Mizell thanks for entering into the discussion, I do feel like a hypocrite talking all of this up without having used the pro 35 first hand.

I have definitely heard that HD is so sharp it's almost unforgiving, but that's where I believe that using filters (both in production and post) come into play. I have heard of the Dalsa cam and some of my coworkers have seen it first hand (ooh ahh) I think the downsde to it was that it was a collossol piece of equipment, The funny thing was in order to actually view it you have to downconvert everything. But that's off topic.

I think i see where you're going with the advantages of a pl mount, but I don't know enough about the future of HD cameras and ccd chips to contribute to it. And I was trying to make that same point as far as the pro 35 is concerned that your older film based rental houses have everything to gain in renting out the pro 35 where as the ones that are more video based -like us, sim video located convinently across the street from paramount;), would be more likely to carry the hd lenses. I think that the pro 35 provides a much needed bridge into hd for people who are used to shooting 35 and just can't imagine using anything but the old cooke primes they had grown so fonf of. But I still believe with a 1/4 promist in front of an HD lens you'll have a softer more forgiving image if that is in fact what you're looking for.

As far as rental houses making money, the people at birns I was talking to said they've been renting the mini35 non stop for the past few weeks., at 900 bucks a week it seems like that might be a good investment!

[Nick Hiltgen]

and one more thing, would somebody(like myself) be able to achieve as shallow a depth of field with a pl mount adapter and some primes as he or she would with a mini 35? Or is there just something about that marvelous ground glass that brings out the depth in the lenses? Forgive me if this is a stupid question.

[Charles Papert]

Nick,

Please forgive me, but I feel like you have been fed information and opinions from people who are invested into a single technology and are predjudiced against another. This happens both directions: there are plenty of film folk ready to embrace negative mythology about HD, and HD people who see anything film-related as hopelessly old fashioned.

The Cookes are not "old". They are maybe five years old in general release. They are fantastic, modern lenses.

The PRO35 is not merely a stepping stone to keep the "film people" happy, it's a conduit to allow every cinematographer to use decades of available lens technology regardless of their shooting platform. Cinematography is not just about using the newest, sharpest glass, or even the highest resolution. It's about finding the right tool for the job, the best brush for the canvas. That may mean 30 year old lenses with the coatings stripped off to allow for amazing, organic flares that would be hard if not impossible to create in post. Or it might mean using a snorkel lens, or swing-and-tilts, or a mesmerizer, or anamorphics as you originally posted about. Most of these things will never be built specifically for a 2/3" HD camera, and even if they were mechanically adapted, the field of view would change.

Speaking of which, and regarding the depth of field issue--with the 7.2 focal length magnification in DV, it's a wrestling match. The ground glass is not what creates the depth of field, it's the target size and corresponding field of view of a given lens. You have to use a wider lens to get the same field of view (same image size) on the much smaller DV imager, and wider lenses inherently have greater depth of field.

So (I know this is confusing), using the exact same lens on a PL mount adaptor as well as the mini35 will deliver the same depth of field, but a much different image size. A 50mm lens on the mini 35 will deliver a "normal" field of view, which will magnify 7.2x with the PL mount adaptor, simulating the field of view of a 360mm telephoto lens. You'd have to use a 7mm lens on that PL mount to get you back to the field of view of the 50mm on the mini35 (whew!), which would be a near-fisheye.

[Nick Hiltgen]

Charles I appreciate your reply, I definitly think taht I've been fed one sided information, but everyones opinion is going to be slightly biased. I didn't ean to discredit film lenses or film at all. As it is I think it would be great to shoot on film, unfortunately I don't really see that in my future. That doesn't mean film is better or worse then HD, at least not to me.

I think as far as lenses are concerned that the zeiss ones are really freaking awesome, perhaps as Mizell pointed out a little too awsome, I think this is a good problem too have as I think it's much better then the opposite. Of course this is again my opinion, I believe that these ae both comparable in price, personally I'd rather rent a set of digiprimes and some softening filters over a set of (old, well at least relative to me, though since the world doesn't revolve around me-yet- I should say newer) cooke primes and a pro 35, of course this is only dude to the type of lok I typically go for. Don't get me wrong obviously some people really like the pro35 and perhaps if I see it up close and personal then i'll like it to, but until thaty day comes I'm jsut going to go off what I've heard from teh folks that've used it.

That being said I'm still slightly confused about depth of field. I'm often confused about it though so it's not to big a deal. I finally am beginning to understand why the ef adapter gives me a magnified lens, does the p+s effectively reduce this? I thought that pl mount would magnify the lens by a less extreme number. I think as soon as I get my hands on a mini 35 I'll be able to answer a lot of my questions, in addition to trying to establish a some what accurate asa, I've wanted to try something like that for a while so maybe it'll be a cool thing to try.

Finally does anyone know a good place to get a cheap PAL version fu1000?

[Mizell Wilson]

so.....two of the most difficult questions to answer without diagrams.....and i'm sure it's been covered somewhere here at dvinfo but I'll give it a quick shot. I do know that there is a post that goes super technical into depth of field but I'll try a simpler answer.

first off...angle of view:

Focal length is focal length is focal length. A 50mm lens is a 50mm lens no matter what format it's placed on. What we have to consider, and the current subject, is the relative angle of view of that lens as interpreted by the taking format.

Now you will hear people talk about a 50mm for 35mm and a 50mm for 16/S16. They are both 50mm lenses, there is just a "shortcut" taken in the S16 lenses to make them smaller.

So try this exercise. Draw a big circle on a piece of paper. Now draw the biggest, approx 1:1.85, rectangle you can without breaching the borders of the circle. This represents the image circle of our imaginary lens with the rectangle representing the 35mm film frame. Go ahead and compose a shot i.e. draw a subject matter. I tend to use just a stick figure or a stock person in powerpoint. Once you have your shot composed, in my case it tends to be a person shot from waist up with their face in the center, draw in a smaller rectangle, approx. 7.2x smaller then the original rectangle, centered on the circle. This represents our 1/3 CCD. As you can see, the composition within the smaller rectangle is vastly different. In my slides we go from a medium shot to a close up of the face.

The image circle of a lens remains constant no matter what format it's put on so as we can see from our example, if a 50mm lens was put on an Arri 35 and put at a given distance we get one composition but if we took that same lens at the same position but used a mechanical adpater on an XL1s we would get a vastly different composition, having to either move the camera back or switch lenses to get the same frame as that of the original camera. This represents the "conversion factor" that everyone talks about.

second off...Depth of Field:

There are many factors that control depth of field and much physics and mathmatics involved. I think it can be agreed that most of us got into film to avoid those two subjects :) so the easiest thing to say is that the greatest factor in creating a shallow depth of field is the size of taking frame.

It's not impossible to create a shallow depth of field with the XL1s or other 1/3" CCD camera, it's just so difficult to do so that you've often degraded your image significantly once you've done so.

The 35mm frame is so large, compared to other formats, that it's quite simple to create a shallow depth of field and in many cases (Charles can verify this) you're often doing something to increase the depth of field in 35mm.

Where the Mini35 comes into play is that it is an optical adapter rather then a mechanical adapter. The ground glass is placed at the film plane so that the lenses are throwing their image circle onto a true 35mm frame size, and then optical transferred and reduced to the 1/3" CCD (or 2/3" in the case of the PRO35). This allows us to maintain all the 35mm filmic characteristics of the given lens, including the angle of view and the corresponding DoF.

So, now that I've written that epic post I'm not sure if I answered all the questions that are on the table. We can start here and move forward :)

[Mizell Wilson]

ps...used will be only place to get a PAL FU-1000 cheap. I can get them for you out of England, but they are the same price as the NTSC.

[Charles Papert]

Nice explanation Mizell!

[Nick Hiltgen]

Mizell that was an excellent description, of how the 35 works, and cleared up all the thigns I was asking.

As far as the fu1000 I'm not to worried about getting it used (I kinda figured I'd have to) but I would like for it to be in good shape. Short of that I think I have nothing else to add.

Oh off the top of your head does anyone know what the fastest anamorphic primes available are? Would we be talking soemthing like T4 or T2.3 I don't have nearly enough light as it is and I want to see how much more I would need to look into getting. Also does anyone know of anyscreen samples available of the mini 35 with anamorphic lenses? I want to get the sample DVD I'm just in the midst of moving ad don't know where the shiping address is going to be.

Thanks
nick

[Mizell Wilson]

Nick,

You can see web examples of the Mini35 demo here on dvinfo.net at http://www.dvinfo.net/media/mini35/

Projekt Mini35 was shot with Hawk V series anamorphics. These anamorphics are T2.2 through 100mm, T3 for 135,180, and 250mm and T4.2 for the 350mm. You'd have to check Panavision's website for their anamorphics, or Charles might know off the top of his head.

I could always send the Mini35 DVD to you at work. Drop me the address to mizell@zgc.com if you'd like. I'm in the middle of burning new copies so you'd get it some time next week.

mizell

[Charles Papert]

The Primo Anamorphics, which list for $135 a day each, are T2's. There is a high speed series which range from 1.4 to 1.8, but I've never used them myself--they are more like $92 a day. There are other series like the C's and E's which are slower.

[Rob Lohman]

You guys are talking so easily about T2's, T3, slower, faster...
That's really hard to follow in my brain. I'm just not used to
thinking in those ways. Especially the slower/faster thing with
lenses. I need to network more! <g>

[Barry Green]

T-stops can be thought of as another way to say f-stops. T-stops are an accurate calculation of the lens's actual light transmission factor, so a T2 lens transmits light at the rate you'd *expect* an F/2 lens to do so. (f/stops are the actual mathematical ratio of aperture to focal length, but t/stops take into account light losses within the lens itself; t-stops are always the same or slower than their corresponding f-stops).

"faster" means able to admit more light, "slower" means not so capable. So a T2 lens is "faster" than a T3.

[Rob Lohman]

Thanks Barry!