Nick Hiltgen
January 11th, 2006, 10:14 AM
Well folks yesterday we wrapped on the first four days of the feature i'm working on called the signal. We're sort of beta testing a work flow for this system so I figure I'd let everyone know how things are working.
First and foremost the image is beautiful. Some of the stuff we're seeing is just mind blowing. Now my criticisms.
The viewfinder is the weakest part so far, not high res enough to resolve critical focus on a mini 35, the image ghosts, alot, and on my particular viewfinder there is a loose connection or some sort of grounding issue at the base of the camera. I think switching to a higher res viewfinder (fu-1000?) would really help, and now looks like it will be a requirenment for me if I'm renting a mini 35. I've switched to B+W mode and turned on peaking, but it's still very difficult to resolve though camera (and sometimes even through monitor). We're using a LANC connector on the mini 35 so the glass is always rolling during takes, but when focus you need the glass rolling as well.
I have a lit pixel and on set we've named the camera "pixely" but there's a whole thread on that so I won't get into it.
We listened to a couple of takes (yelling and stuff) and the sound really held up. We are running through a mixer and line in directly to the camera so I'm sure that helps, but right now it appeasrs the compression really isn't hurting us, yet.
Battery life with the new batteries is really good, the new smaller batteries as long as the old big batteries from the XL series.
So far the HDV codec is holding up really well for what I've seen. I had some worry about it, and there does seem to be a little (very little) break up however for the way this movie works It's pretty good.
The groundglass is really pronounced we can see it pretty readily anytime we shoot, we have a little bit of noise in our low light shots as well, which may or may not be because of the codec and the mini 35 but it's nothing that shouldn't work in post.
The light loss is still pretty bad on the camera with the adapter, the gaffer is estimating us at a film speed of something like 60 asa. The camera EATS up direct light, we probably should have had another couple of days prep for the camera, but well, low budget and you know how it goes. The first few days we were lighting with diffusion and such, but now I think it's going to be primarily direct light.
For this movie, all of the "problems" aren't such a big deal, the gritty, grainyness and even the difficult focus works for this hand held feel. It gives it a little bit of a documentry feel and hard lighting doesnt' hurt us much at all. So for those thinking of making an awesome horror movie this setup may really work for you, but for those thinking of making a romantic comedy, make sure you do a LOT of tests first.
First and foremost the image is beautiful. Some of the stuff we're seeing is just mind blowing. Now my criticisms.
The viewfinder is the weakest part so far, not high res enough to resolve critical focus on a mini 35, the image ghosts, alot, and on my particular viewfinder there is a loose connection or some sort of grounding issue at the base of the camera. I think switching to a higher res viewfinder (fu-1000?) would really help, and now looks like it will be a requirenment for me if I'm renting a mini 35. I've switched to B+W mode and turned on peaking, but it's still very difficult to resolve though camera (and sometimes even through monitor). We're using a LANC connector on the mini 35 so the glass is always rolling during takes, but when focus you need the glass rolling as well.
I have a lit pixel and on set we've named the camera "pixely" but there's a whole thread on that so I won't get into it.
We listened to a couple of takes (yelling and stuff) and the sound really held up. We are running through a mixer and line in directly to the camera so I'm sure that helps, but right now it appeasrs the compression really isn't hurting us, yet.
Battery life with the new batteries is really good, the new smaller batteries as long as the old big batteries from the XL series.
So far the HDV codec is holding up really well for what I've seen. I had some worry about it, and there does seem to be a little (very little) break up however for the way this movie works It's pretty good.
The groundglass is really pronounced we can see it pretty readily anytime we shoot, we have a little bit of noise in our low light shots as well, which may or may not be because of the codec and the mini 35 but it's nothing that shouldn't work in post.
The light loss is still pretty bad on the camera with the adapter, the gaffer is estimating us at a film speed of something like 60 asa. The camera EATS up direct light, we probably should have had another couple of days prep for the camera, but well, low budget and you know how it goes. The first few days we were lighting with diffusion and such, but now I think it's going to be primarily direct light.
For this movie, all of the "problems" aren't such a big deal, the gritty, grainyness and even the difficult focus works for this hand held feel. It gives it a little bit of a documentry feel and hard lighting doesnt' hurt us much at all. So for those thinking of making an awesome horror movie this setup may really work for you, but for those thinking of making a romantic comedy, make sure you do a LOT of tests first.