Sean Cunningham

From the FAQ:

The D16 will use one of the standard SpeedBoosters. The BMPCC and BMCC models, with higher speed boosting, are physically designed to work with those cameras and all the extra room they have compared with "normal" MFT cameras. Given that each D16 mount is purpose built for that camera and only that camera it's theoretically possible someone could make a mount that was built around mimic'ing the physical design of either the BMCC MFT or BMPCC but unless you have specific references to offer this is just wishful thinking. If they can get up to more than three or four units shipping per week perhaps Metabones will make a D16 Speedbooster to the same spec as the BMPCC option. It doesn't offer 4x3 shooting. The D16 shoots 16:9, even in 2K mode (2048x1152)

Render to some flavor of MP4 for upload. It's best to render your project to an uncompressed file and then use something like MPEG Streamclip, Compressor or Adobe's Media Encoder. For best results, however, you shouldn't use the later two's presets (or follow advice on the internet suggesting 5-10Mbit for upload) as they're too close to the bitrate that these sites use to stream. They're going to re-encode and re-compress, there's no getting around that. Regardless of how good it looks on your desktop, cut that in half after you upload it. You want to give them far more data than they'll actually be streaming, so their re-compression has room to work and your steam is somewhat "future proofed". Uploading a version that's a much higher quality, higher bitrate file than what they actually stream means you get a better re-compress from them, which you cannot avoid. Additionally, they retain this larger "master" file and as their capabilities increase, as new, higher quality standards emerge, your streams get upgraded.

Love the "ignore" function.

Besides the edges, both the SLR Magic and Letus adapters also allow faster stops across a more broad range of focal lengths, before benefitting from diopters. Unless you're shooting a wide, daylight vista, being stopped down more than f/4 begs the question "why shoot anamorphic?"

As an applied effect there's likely no way for it to access the clip's metadata. Notice how for each clip the WB never changes from default when you add it. You should only tweak this parameter if the footage looks off or if you wish to add cooling or warming to the clip (ie. shooting outside with tungsten setting or inside with daylight setting). In practice, the WB parameter (in Film Convert) is an offset not an absolute setting. For instance, with AVCHD footage, if you import a clip that was shot with the tungsten camera preset WB and you shot in tungsten light, giving you a balanced result, you would actually wreck your clip if you then dialed the Film Convert WB parameter over to 3200K from it's default position on Daylight. The FC plugin makes a load of assumptions, on the WB setting it assumes you shot with daylight WB in daylight (which is why tungsten light shot with the tungsten WB camera setting passes through just as neutral).

Well, I don't have actual experience with the LA7200 admittedly, but I've watched practically all of the "how-too" videos when I was evaluating lenses a couple years ago, deciding which I was going to buy. It's not hard to see the writing on the wall though. They're still commanding a good price on ebay (though who is to say whether what I see is actually selling or if it's loads of re-listings, I'm not tracking) but soon there won't be any reason at all to put yourself through the gymnastics this thing requires to get a decent image. It or Century/Optex adapters. The new adapter offerings shouldn't really effect LOMO and Iscorama prices but they should make the DV era 16:9 adapters worth about $100, if that.

Sell it while there's still a market for this model. That will be changing soon.

The folks shooting without soft edges are using diopters, like the rare Foton. There's a fairly comprehensive list in this forum of various models available. The large front element makes it harder and often more expensive to get good results. Look here, go to youtube or google and you'll find various combinations of mods and diopters folks have used to get decent footage out of the la7200. If you're shooting with a 5D, however, a better solution is to just shoot with an oval iris, a streak filter and post crop. Less hassle and comparable results. I'd only make this suggestion for the 1D/5D though.

It doesn't mean you don't have to control exposure on the BMD cameras. It means you're treating them like you would a film stock. Best results are lighting to the sensitivity of the camera, like with film. You know your sensitivity and you determine what stop you want to be at for the action, for aesthetics. Based on that you add light or take away light, whether that's turning more on, turning more off, stacking ND, using flags or adjusting the position of your actors with respect to the lens and time of day.

There was initially (corrected with firmware a month ago or so, I read) issue with 180 degree shutter. The solution before this was to run at 172.8 like you were shooting PAL (even when shooting film some British DPs default to this shutter).

Yes, there's not accounting for taste and choice. For instance, I've been going back and watching Season 2 of Game of Thrones the last couple days and the overcast, daylight exteriors would cut very well with the "worst" examples up there with its weird, often dingy salmon flesh tones, ugly browns and pale blues. You have to figure, HBO isn't hiring guys working out of their basement to color such an expensive show so, at some point, either a producer likes that look or simply doesn't dislike it enough to change it. It's certainly not baked into the Alexa footage.

Problem is, then you have these wankers that come out and complain that the color is too rich and the contrast too intense. They've seen so many films shot with modern low-con stocks that they have the impression that "film" is both desaturated and low contrast. Kids these days.

They're actually coming out with two, the +.33 and +1.3 as achromat designs. When they went looking at what was out there they saw, basically, nothing, as you can see from this list compiled at Fuzzcraft. My understanding is that they intend to offer these as separate products, for photographers who have no interest in anamorphics as well as folks using non-SLR Magic lenses. There's a finite number of the Tokina doublet out there and, obviously, not enough to really go around. Also, it will be interesting to see what, if any, improvements are gained stacking two doublets versus doublet and single.

There are a couple new, "large" diameter doublets coming to market soon. They might not impact the resale value of this little gem at all but they'll offer alternatives where currently there aren't any. Where the current price is based on scarcity, later on it might be based on vintage or its position in a still small market relative to the new lenses which, I believe, will be +.25 (Redstan) and +.33 (SLR Magic). So neither one outright replaces or supersedes the Tokina in all applications but they'll offer alternatives and new stacking configurations.

Those examples are mostly due to limitations on the part of the person grading. Using canned or popular LUTs found on the internet is going to proliferate the same look and/or mistakes. Color is a more difficult subject to master than operation of the camera itself. Professionals have been struggling with it since the arrival of the earliest raw cinema cameras. Look at early Red and Alexa and you see looks and mistakes repeated again and again, creating the false assumption in a lot of people there was a "look" for them. That lie lives on but now we have, as colorists have become more sophisticated and specific in their handling of these cameras along with improvements in color pipelines, films that share no similarities with the early footage and radically different aesthetics from the same camera.

Yeah, you're gonna want 16mm lenses for a Bolex until (I'm betting) Metabones makes a Speed Booster that's equivalent to what they're doing for the BMD cameras. If they are able to make one like their BMPCC model it will be especially useful, not only for opening up more lens possibilities but to offset the lower sensitivity of the Bolex sensor (400iso).

Hah! I've still got mine too, saved all these years. I always loved the way it looked, the design of it, and have kept it around to one day use as a prop or dressing, or maybe just shelf decoration along with some other old cameras in my collection.

Yes, the beauty of anamorphic isn't just about flares, though the LA7200 flares will likewise be influenced by both the type of light source being photographed as well as the taking lens, same as all adapters. Watch any anamorphic feature length motion picture, which is the ultimate reason for this enthusiasm and why all this bent glass exists, and you will see shot after shot that are impossible with any projection lens(*), decent, excellent or trash. Waxing poetic about the sublime beauty of a single shot, the bloke who designed the glass or some historical bit of trivia might be all some folks are interested in. Other people need solutions that are actually functional and useful. (*) unless you're one of those two, three maybe four fellows now that have designed little, laggy robots to slowly spin two lenses at once at pre-calibrated ratios that may or may not allow lens swaps + re-calibration shorter than a crew's meal break.

For me the Sony heritage in the GH3's chip reveals itself in how it handles highlights as well as biasing towards a "cold" image compared with other sensors. You can remove the cold feel or any color bias in your grade but there's nothing you can do about electric, harsh highlights. Both the GH1 and GH2 don't feel as harsh and electronic. Pre-grade, the color and tonality can feel quite photographic and decidedly not camcorder-like. For almost a year before ever purchasing my GH2 I reviewed shoot-out after shoot-out, with the GH1 in the mix with 5D2, 7D and other cameras and my eye always favored the image of the GH. I lusted after the ridiculously sublime shallow DOF you could get more easily with the 5D2 but it's color (we're talking pre raw here) never spoke to me and even on YT/Vimeo streams it was easy enough to see other cameras didn't have as much detail as the GH. The GH2 only seemed to improve Panasonic's position compared to all comers. When I saw the GH3, before finding out Panasonic had outsourced its sensor, I could tell right away that something was rotten in Denmark. The secret sauce wasn't there. Detail, sure, but that's it. The Sony revelation made everything clear. Top to bottom, from the VX1000 to today's F65, I just don't really like the way their sensors look and top to bottom it usually has to do with electric highlights. Anyway, Driftwood-patched (take your pick) GH2 is still king of the hill AFAIC if you have to shoot compressed.

I'd never suggest a 7D instead of a BMD camera (any of them) but if you already have it, yeah, Ebrahim's suggestion is very practical. No two ways about it you should run ML and/or Tragic Lantern to get an all-intra codec. You'll still have more issues to clean up than if you had a GHx but it'll be a lot better than the stock AVCHD. If you're already comfortable with the 7D-ML raw workflow then you should have no issues with the more streamlined BMD path. You also aren't required to use DaVinci and could grade your BMD files as you have raw 7D footage.

As long as you can get the same results going forward and backward through the calculations, yeah, you're good. You rounded the wrong way in your 2.39:1 examples, however. 1720.8 would round to 1721 and 1147.2 would round to 1147. It likely doesn't matter to the image but if your desired intent is to reduce "rounding errors" it's counter-productive to add them yourself.

V * AR * 1/SQ V= Vertical Resolution AR = Aspect Ratio (flat) SQ = Squeeze Factor So, for instance, if your target was 1080 lines of vertical resolution you would multiply that by 2.35 to get 2538. That would be your target, flat, widescreen image (2538x1080). To get to the squeezed horizontal resolution you multiply this by the reciprocal of the anamorphic lens compression ratio, 1/1.5 (use full precision on calculator) so that's 1692. 1692 x 1080 Knowing this squeezed aspect ratio makes it theoretically easier to arrive at a shorter calculation but you'll find that the mix of single, double and greater decimal precision at different steps can alter the result by several pixels, introducing quite a bit of slop. For instance, the above resolution works forward and backward through the original calculation, proving it's correct. That's not the case, however, if you were to use the aspect ratio of the frame we know to be correct. If you were to use the aspect ratio of the squeezed frame and the common accuracy of only two digits of floating point precision you would get the following: 1692 / 1080 = 1.57 ...a 1.57:1 aspect ratio for the squeezed frame. But that aspect ratio does not give you correct results, even for our starter 1080 lines of vertical resolution example: 1080 * 1.57 = 1696 ...and... 1696 * 1.5 = 2544 ...but... 2544 / 1080 = 2.36 Not a huge deal but it's something to be aware of, particularly if you're doing something for a client or for eventual DCP or any other application where "close enough" isn't good enough. When you really want to know use as much real information as you can like actual pixels, known compression ratios, aperture measurements, etc. and stay away from aspect ratio and crop factor short hand.

They won't be as sharp either. That may or may not be a decision making factor, depending on what and how you're shooting and personal preference. "Soft" from a 35mm stills perspective may be perfect for motion pictures and a desirable trait in some instances and by certain DPs (Cooke S4 on Red, for instance). I'm curious if there's a linear relationship between a lens being "soft" at 3K-5K versus 1080-2K or if it's fairly consistent between the two if you're dealing with similar aperture sizes.

Yeah, I've got the kit zoom, 14-42mm which is a good, if flavorless lens. It's just rather slow. Normally I'm shooting with my Century Optics anamorphic adapter which helps the 24mm out some and I can shoot f/2.8 acceptably sharp. Eventual upgrades including SpeedBooster and SLR Magic 50 anamorphic will improve everything all the way around. For wider than 24mm, post Speed Booster, I'll likely be getting the 18-35mm, dumping the 24mm altogether and crossing my fingers that Dog Schidt Optics releases a companion wide for their FlareFactory 58.