Andrew Reid

Nobody blamed the directors on Oscars night.

  It was the right platform to complain on. Got people's attention didn't it?

Actually Seth MacFarlane was so heavily watered down he was almost turning translucent. The main problem was that he wasn't very funny, and that he was crass and not very likeable. I don't find the frat boy humour very cleaver to be honest. If only more stage time was given to the people the ceremony was meant to be celebrating, and less to him, singing and dancing. It was like the Tonys.   He was a bit like a slightly insipid glossier version of Ricky Gervais. At least when he's offensive, it's funny.

  Again... It's his creative license.   Vampires don't exist Mark but you're making a Vampire film!   It is what makes us filmmakers... creating our own stories. Why chastise Tarantino for doing the same?

So convert the DNG to CineForm on your $600 PC. Hardly a big ask??!

So Hollywood sees VFX artists as 'cheap labour'? Maybe. It's all about money. Why blow something up for XX amount when you can do it for slightly less.   Life of Pi did well at The Oscars. What sickened me was cutting the VFX guys speech off. They're allowed to suck the ass of the academy but when it comes to their own rights, and their very survival it is... Jaws theme.

Joaquin Phoenix on the Oscars - "Pitting people against each other...It's the stupidest thing in the whole world. It was one of the most uncomfortable periods of my life, when Walk the Line was going through all the awards stuff. I never want to have that experience again."   This year, Oscars host said he hoped Joaquin was 'on his meds'. Very sensitive considering his brother River Phoenix died from a drug overdose.   Rain, Leaf, River, Liberty and Summer - you live up to your names. Seth you live up to yours.

Yes it made me feel a bit uncomfortable too, realising that a good part of our advanced western civilisation is built on suffering and human sacrifice.   I felt the film was holding up a bit of a mirror to the audience. I didn't feel guilty for the slave trade but I felt guilty having been born into a privileged country and a privileged society relative to the people who had to suffer to build such a thing in the first place.   We're still abusing the poor today in order to get our iPhones made cheaper.   This kind of shit never ends.   Django really brings that home to roost. Whilst the upper class imperialists in the film are chinking the Chinaware and having a jolly good old time, the slaves are out in the fields dying and suffering so that the English can put sugar in their tea back home. That's history.   If anything Tarantino's portrayal of history is 100% HONEST. Brutally honest. That is why I liked it.

Man... this guy.   That 'fancy pants writing' won an Oscar.   So what if most of the white people in the film are racist. That's the story. It's his creative license to do it this way.   Regardless, the issue of slavery is impossible to deal with without showing the brutality white people carried out in the name of business. You'd be ignoring a whole chunk of history if you DIDN'T show it.   What you're forgetting is that Samuel L Jackson's character in this is a black guy, who happens to be one of the worst racists in it!!   The biggest supporting role in the film, if not the lead role, is Dr Schultz - a white guy - and his character is an icon of fairness and principals.   The wrongdoing of the racist characters in this film ACTUALLY HAPPENED in history. It isn't painting 'the entire white race' as ignorant and evil at all, because the 'entire white race' didn't run the slave trade. A very small sub-section of it did. Seems you don't understand that!? Read a history text book and you'll read far more extreme race wars than Tarantino depicts here.   It is a massive and powerful statement this film makes against racism.   And don't forget that slavery isn't just about race - it's a class war waged by the rich on the poor and it still happens today.

  Me too. I also have a 16mm anamorphic baby Iscorama which would go nicely on this. It is c-mount.

The D16 Digital Bolex - pictured above in the hands of the biggest 16mm advocate of all, Darren Aronofsky Roald Christesen recently got in touch, to share some footage shot with the CCD in the upcoming Digital Bolex. He's a developing new Cinema DNG transcoding software and has been testing the sensor as part of that process. The image this camera produces is looking superb.

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/60863477[/vimeo] Discussion of the prototypes on the EOSHD Anamorphic Forum Many anamorphic lenses especially the affordable ones require the prime lens to be set to the same mark as the anamorphic on the focus barrel, making a focus rack during a shot impossible by hand and shot setup awkward. Now an ingenious electronic follow focus by Markus Houy has been created making our dual-focus anamorphic glass single focus like high end Iscoramas or LOMOs. EOSHD interviews Markus and finds out more about his plans for the device.

The lens is 23mm on the Fuji X100.   I don't mean equivalent.   I mean 35mm F2.0 on an APS-C sensor. More like equivalent to 50mm on full frame and therefore more versatile.   Wide angle for me is a special purpose lens not an all rounder.   Yet the ridiculous thing is - APS-C DSLR owners have been crying out for faster 18mm lenses for years and neither Canon or Nikon have provided one.

One of the main advantages of large sensor - shallow depth of field... So they put a wide angle 18mm on it with a relatively slow aperture. Doesn't make much sense to me.   Nice design otherwise. Just that lens is really restrictive. I'd have rather it had a 35mm F2.0.

High sensitivity has no advantages for bright light shooting. It just forces you to use very strong NDs and narrow apertures, or else the highlights look rubbish when pulled down to ISO 400 and under.   Leica discussed this with me at Photokina when I talked about a possible ISO 25 setting or a digital ND.   http://www.eoshd.com/content/9060/the-new-leica-m-as-a-filmmakers-tool-an-interview-with-leicas-jesko-von-oeynhausen   Look at the 'digital pull' image to ISO 25 for an example of the image quality problems when doing a very large pull from a high sensitivity & over exposed image.   Think of it in terms of dynamic range. At ISO 800, in bright light you're gonna get a lot of over exposure unless you shoot at a very narrow aperture, etc. etc. You can pull that raw data down to ISO 100. The camera does it with the image processor which is why it can offer the low ISOs. But to pull a native ISO of 3200 down to 100 is harder. Think of an over exposed raw still shot in daylight at ISO 3200. You can only pull it down so far in post. At ISO 3200 the exposure is going to be even brighter all else being equal - that requires even more latitude to keep hold of highlights. The roll off to highlights will become very steep when you pull the exposure down on that ISO 3200 raw, and some areas will be completely burnt.

"Sony intends to defend itself vigorously in the Red lawsuit. Sony looks forward to prevailing in court, thus vindicating the Sony engineers"   http://filmmakermagazine.com/66162-sony-responds-to-red-blackmagic-fix-and-avid-continues-to-decline/   http://www.sonyalpharumors.com/sony-doesnt-care-about-red-and-ships-out-the-f55-and-f5/

  When you pull a sensor down from a very high native ISO of 3200 for example to 400 it is true that your lower ISOs compromise the image. I.e. dodgy highlights, banding, etc. We see this on the low light kings FS100, 1D C. This is a problem waiting for a fix. Of course what you describe with F32, high shutter speed, stack of NDs is not the answer and you're right to point the issue out. This sensor probably isn't a general purpose one!   Red Dragon is rated at 2500 native I think.   I think some stuff is already looking too plastic and too clean. I actually WANT a bit of grain. But there's no denying how excited I am about the low light possibilities.

The largest CMOS sensor, I think went into a telescope.   I too expect this to go to a very small sector of the scientific market.   All it is really is a low megapixel count full frame sensor.   There's no place for it in Canon's current DSLR or Cinema EOS line-up.   This is a shame as I'm really into the creative possibilities of ultra low light shooting.   I am currently writing a script which involves a scene shot entirely by moon light at ISO 12,800, T0.95.   Imagine being able to stage a scene on top of a mountain with the milky way as the backdrop.

This is the show where the prototype is on display in Japan from Tuesday - Security Show 2013 (www.shopbiz.jp/en/ss/)   The original press release - http://www.canon.com/news/2013/mar04e.html

Full frame 35mm 16:9 format Hyper low light sensitive - even larger pixels than 1D X sensor Prototype to be shown in Japan between 5th-8th March If you think the C300's low light sensitivity is impressive, here's Canon's new image sensor for digital cinema cameras.

  Canon know they need to do something to shore up this end of the market and DSLR video. It has been a bit of a disaster. Their overall profits have plunged 40% and that is mainly due to the low end of the market.

It is odd that we've had to wait until nearly NAB 2013 to get it.   So could be big.   If not, I'll consider it somewhat a slap in the face as clean 1080p HDMI is something that should have been there in version 1.0 and they said "the hardware couldn't do it" even though the cheaper 7D could.

Make sure sharpness is turned down to the minimum in-camera (slider all the way to the left - but select '0', not 'A').   I use the Sharpen filter. Unsharp Mask gives the same results to my eye, but Sharpen is more straightforward - just slide it up to between 20-70 depending on how much you think the shot needs.   Also make sure noise reduction is turned off in camera and that the 1080p mode selected is on High quality.   When rendering out from Premiere, I suggest to use H.264 with a VBR target of 24 and max of 44.

Full screenplay for Django Unchained http://twcguilds.com/assets/screenplay/django/screenplay.pdf

Do you realise how good value the British passport is? All these beautiful countries on our doorstep and the EU giving us free travel without a visa. The European Union also saves us a fortune in import tax when buying from within Europe and importing to the UK. Sure there are downsides. What relationship doesn't have those? But if right wing politicians had their way I'd not be living in Berlin that's for sure. UKIP is really just the same old xenophobia with a fancy 'independence' dress on.   Happy for political discussions but the anti-EU rant has nothing to do with the thread topic and the violence debate so no more please.