What camera would be best for me when it comes to color grading?

[Brian Drysdale]

Please read up on optics and lenses, because your last sentence doesn't make any sense, given the information you've been given.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay, what am I missing on the optics?

[Brian Drysdale]

Go back through the thread.

[Pete Cofrancesco]

Ryan if the optics are confusing then you should only concern yourself with how the shots should be framed. When you film the scene then pick the proper lens based on the situation.

Use the tried and true practices:
- Establishing wide shot: wide angle lens 24-35mm
- Medium shot two people having a conversation: normal lens 35-50mm
- Closeup for head and shoulder to face: telephoto lens 70-100mm
3 prime lenses is all you should need.

Stop with this compression stuff. Prove that you can walk before trying to run. Maybe you should try filming a silent 2 minute short every week until visually storytelling becomes second nature.

[Paul R Johnson]

Why do you constantly read up on clever camera trickery and try to incorporate it into what SHOULD be a very simple part of the production - this is just madness, and you cannot cope with it, and it's overpowering you.

You are also now obsessed with this opinion that you have shallow DoF as a consequence of all these things and if you are having difficult with a workable band of acceptable focus, you're doing it wrong!

I very rarely shoot with DSLRs, but when I do, with a modest camera and modest lens, I have NEVER had issues with sharpness. I suspect you just confuse all these people you bounce every idea off and they are starting to just get fed up and deliberately give you false information.

All of this is easily available information. The notion that you believe fast lenses makes it worse is laughable! For goodness sake - study a little of lens optical theory and try to understand it.

If you have a fast lens and a sensitive camera - your available depth of field can be varied a huge, huge amount from mm to many metres, in good quality, high definition. Your constant assertions that are wrong are now getting very annoying - you don't listen and ignore our comments and advice, then you fire it back at us and we have to repeat it, over and over.

If you were one of my students, by now you would have alienated the entire class, lost their respect and they would probably let you sink. We've persisted here, but you either cannot, or will not believe us.

You have so many negatives these projects are I am afraid, doomed.

BAD ACTORS
BAD SCRIPT
BAD AUDIO ABILITY
BAD CAMERA ABILITY
BAD PLANNING
BAD BUDGETING
BAD UNDERSTANDING OF BASIC CINEMATOGRAPHY
BAD LEVEL OF BASIC SCIENCE

AND WORST OF ALL

BAD ATTITUDE TO OTHER PEOPLE TRYING TO HELP


Sorry Ryan but can you really not see how your video world is a trail of disasters that didn't need to be if you could follow basic simple movie making practice?

Remember the old maxim - KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid, and the military 6 Ps - proper planning prevents piss poor performance.

Frankly Ryan, I'm now of the opinion that this is not the industry for you to effectively work in. You are the movie version of a trainee Doctor who can't quite understand how to identify the common cold, but intends going heart surgery tomorrow.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay, I just that that a very shallow DOF would be a nightmare for the focus puller. How does shallow DOF make things more advantageous?

[Brian Drysdale]

Unfortunately, you seem to be totally unaware that you can stop down fast lenses, so that you can achieve a deeper DOF.

No one is forcing you to use fast lenses wide open. In fact, unless you're willing to spend thousands of dollars on each lens, you're better stopping down them down a couple of stops because the quality improves.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh I know you can stop down fast lenses, but then what's the point of using a fast lens if they are stopped down? Stopping down slows down the speed of light coming in, so doesn't that defeat the purpose of using a fast lens? But let's say I just stop down to say f3.0. That's still really shallow though to pull focus on, isn't it?

[Pete Cofrancesco]

Ryan if you're up for doing a little of your own work, search for an online dof calculator. Select any MFT camera and experiment. Keep in mind 25mm lens be equivalent to 50mm on a MFT.

Longer lenses are used mostly when subjects are standing still having a conversation. These closeups are wider framing (head and shoulder) than yours. Most moving shots will be shot with a wider lens.

If you're lazy and don't want to take the time for blocking, you don't buy proper cinema lenses, and you insist on using long lenses, then yes you will have problems pulling focus.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay, well I only wanted to use long lenses, for the chase sequences, so I can pan with the actors for a long time. But thought it was worth pulling focus in order to have those pans. Most of the other shots will be done with wider lenses though.

[Paul R Johnson]

Ryan - I really despair.

The point of any product you buy is that it is more capable, and less likely to halt your production flow. Fast lenses probably spend most of their working lives not remotely wide open, but when they need to let more light through, they can, effortlessly.

It also occurs to me that you have never discovered that skill allows a single cameraman to maintain focus throughout a pan, even with shallow DoF and a long lens - with practice, and a decent head. A panning shot is NOT a super clever complex shot. It's first week of cameraman training stuff. You need a focus puller when the focus requirement goes beyond what a single person can do properly - maybe the focus change suddenly needs to stop at a certain point, leaving the street sign in sharp focus, or you have marked spots to hit that require eyes outside of a viewfinder to make accuracy vital. Once the working stop closes to 5.6-maybe 11 on many lenses there is no need to focus at all - the mid point sharp focus point is deep enough that the focus puller, if you have one has nothing to adjust.

With a decent viewfinder - you should be able to manage those panning shots, with a long lens perfectly well.

If I saw a list of shots, that one simply doesn't jump out and ring alarm bells. Personally, I always find wide angle, close in shots that need very precise start and finish points for moves far more challenging. Horizontals slip, little things pop in and out of the edges, distracting the viewer, and making sure the close objects don't become prominent keep me far busier. I also find "most of the other shots will be done with wide angles" puzzling? Why?

The lens that most closely follows how human eyes see real life are in my view, the most transparent to watch - and can immerse the viewer in the scene because when you pan around, the perspective matches well in your brain - the subject settles, being easily able to process it. Wide and tight lenses compress or expand reality, and that in most cases is an effect because of the subconscious 'tweaking' effect it has. All these artificial attempts to reproduce it create unease, or the impression the viewer has been manipulated. Do you wish to create this tension? If not, use a normal lens, and move the camera and the actors so it fits!

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay, sorry to make you despair, I am trying to come up with the best of ways of doing this that I can see for the shots.

So your'e saying I don't have to shoot wide open, it's just good to have that option whenever I need it pretty much?

As for panning with a running subject in the example I posted before, she stayed in focus the whole time, but that was at a more closed aperture in the day, compared to wide open of course. Thought that would be trickier.

Oh when I said I would use a wide lens for most of the other shots, I didn't mean for the while movie, I just meant for the chase sequence. Unless I shouldn't use wides for most of that?

And yes, the shots where I wanted to use a longer lens, I wanted to create certain feelings or tension perhaps, with it.

[Greg Smith]

Hey Ryan, here's a concrete suggestion for you.

Buy the BMPCC 4K camera you have talked about. The Micro Four Thirds one.

Add the Panasonic 20mm F1.7 prime lens. Cheap, reasonably fast, and sharp.

Get a decent but inexpensive fluid head tripod (Sachtler Ace, maybe).

Now, script, storyboard, block and shoot your entire scene using only this lens and camera. (Obviously, you'll need to add some sound and lighting equipment, but use only these items for the visuals.) Move the camera in and out, up and down, and all around the action to get all the shots you need. Don't even think about whether it would be easier with a different lens. You only have one. Emphasize appropriate cuts over long static shots or camera movements.

Edit the scene and show it to us here. My hunch is that it will look a lot better than if you tried to do all the fancy stuff with long lenses, narrow DOF, focus pulls, night shots at F11 and the rest.

Repeat for additional scenes until the movie is finished.

(I read that the recent film "1917" was shot with 40mm lenses exclusively. On their full frame Alexa Mini LF cameras, that's the exact same angle of view as a 20mm lens on a M43 sensor, just a smidge wider than a so called "normal" lens, but not enough to cause any noticeable perspective distortion. Despite the limitations, that seems to have won them an award or two if I remember correctly.)

I sometimes think that having too many choices to make tends to paralyze your planning process and leads you down an endless maze of details and "what if" questions. Remove as many variables as possible and you'll be better able to concentrate on the story and performances.

Let us know how this works out. If you do well I might let you buy a second lens for your next film. :-)

- Greg

[Brian Drysdale]

Originally Posted by Ryan Elder

Oh I know you can stop down fast lenses, but then what's the point of using a fast lens if they are stopped down? Stopping down slows down the speed of light coming in, so doesn't that defeat the purpose of using a fast lens? But let's say I just stop down to say f3.0. That's still really shallow though to pull focus on, isn't it?

I'm not sure where you get this all this from. With most lenses it's not a good idea to shoot with them wide open, especially the cheaper ones. I had a set of Zeiss Super Speed Distagons which are T1.3 and most of the time they were used at T2.8, where the quality was excellent. The quality dropped of wide open, but it was good enough to be used on a professional production and was way better than the Schneider f1.4 lens that I also had at the time.

The speed of light is a constant, it doesn't change, the stop changes the amount of light going through.

T3.0 is a pretty standard stop used on feature films, it allows you to use a modern zoom lens slightly stopped down and you're not making life too difficult for the focus puller, with the older Cooke zooms you might have gone to T3.5 to T4 because they had a slightly softer look when wide open at T2.8.

This isn't a shallow DOF, which comes in at f2 and wider. It becomes even less shallow if you;re shooting with a MFT camera,

Just because you've got an f1.4 lens, you don't need to use them wide open, most of the time they won't be wide open. However, they tend to be the higher quality lenses in a manufacturers range, so are worth buying for that reason if you're a demanding user, and they fit in your budget.

When I first started making films, the 8mm camera only had a 12mm kens, but you could still tell a story with it. I worked on a Super 16 feature film that only used a 16mm lens, restrictions can work to your creative advantage.

[Paul R Johnson]

Most college and university course do a very early film making 'test'. They give you a simple camera, with a fixed lens and ask you to go and tell a story with it. No editing outside of the camera. You plan and then shoot each scene consecutively One mistake wrecks the entire thing. It forces you to plan properly, rehearse and then follow the plan. Very often the results of the lack of technology are poor at first - but usually the second version is miles better. You have your 'rule book' but so many of the rules in it are context driven, and you use it as absolute - as in 'always' or 'never' do things.


So much of your content makes me think you have read, attempted to understand but never actually tried.

Greg's idea to buy that camera and that simple but decent lens is solid. You get a product with so much capability, yet few distractions to go wrong.

If you want to persist with your zoom. Go somewhere close to a road, or maybe an airport with light aircraft (because they're slow) and practice filling the frame and getting the focus sorted. even with servo zooms, you can learn how they react, and learn to adjust on the fly - so you can focus forwards, then smoothly focus back again as objects drive or fly across the frame. Roadside, or maybe using railways is always a good and repeatable learning session. Shooting a train approaching, gradually widening, then panning, then zooming in again while holding focus is a great thing to do - I bet you have never spent time honing your skills like this. Busy roads can be tricky because you can be a distraction to them, but airports and railways are used to people taking video - so stress is lower. Zooming and focusing at the same time will soon become second nature and you might even wonder why you even need a focus puller for your simple stuff?

Back in my Broadcast TV days, our studio viewfinders had so much better resolution than the home TVs that you could see something start to go soft and fix it before the home TVs would ever notice it!

Think too about outside broadcasts where for baseball, cricket and golf, a single cameraman with a VERY long lens can fill the frame with a ball, in sharp focus, flying through the air. No tape measures, not focus puller, and no chance for a second try. Just a feel for focus rate of change, so you know which way the focus wheel has to move, and your skill assists you with how fast. Outside broadcasts make all your trouble with panning shots look quite foolish. They are not problems to the typical cameraman or film maker who has practiced.

Why not spend a few hours with your existing camera and lens getting to know it better.

Read a few lens books with diagrams and the maths on optics. It's all perfectly understandable. Do not ask people. Do this yourself and repeat till it sinks in.