A few preliminary film look stills posted - comments please

[Scot McPhie]

Hi everyone I've just got a 2x anamorphic lense attached to my camcorder and have tried a few preliminary film look shots - any advice or feedback would be appreciated -- I've put some more notes on the page describing how I got the shots. The URL is:

http://homepages.ihug.com.au/~scotm/filmlook.htm


Thanks

Scot

[Rob Lohman]

I'm a bit confused. Do you want comments on the anamorphic
lens or the color correction you did? Because the anamorphic
lens should only help to increase vertical resolution basically.

[Scot McPhie]

Well everything really - it's all a work in progress but any feedback would be welcome - in my opinion there are five main things that contribute to film look:

Image perspective - hence the anamorphic lense - but the trade off is loss off detail -- did people think there was too much detail lost here?

Colour distribution/film gamma -- something I tried to do here in Photoshop - I thought my results weren't too bad - comments?

Shallow depth of field - something I didn't try here - but will post some examples when I do try using the ND filters and wide appertures

Motion properties of film - well these are stills but when I get the other elements under control I'll try and do what I can about that with different shutter speeds and motion blur effects

And of course lighting - these were all outdoors in existing light with no filling or griffing - some were shot in to the sun too unfortunatley - but I think in all the examples the highlights weren't too blown out - which (if I had them) gives that terrible video look - particularly with sunlight reflecting off leaves (which hopefully the ND filters will eliminate too). These were all shot around 3pm - and the sun position did limit some of the shots I could do - most of what I'll try and do when I'm shooting for real will be in magic hour. But what did people think of the contrast and the highlights?

I guess did these look like stills from a film I guess?

Scot

[John Threat]

To be honest, you need better subject matter to begin to match a film look. To be honest, only in the best conditions will you be able to get detail when trying to resolve a shot with lots of moving leaves and lots of dark areas.

Pick a bright day in the sun and shoot a simple background with a subject in the foreground. Dense dark backgrounds can get lost on film, but on DV they have a very low chance of being maniplulated to look good.

[Martin Munthe]

I don't agree. I don't think you have to stay away from dark areas when shooting DV. You just have to know what you're doing in grading and you have to light the scene to make it more dynamic and have more contrast.

Heres how I do it:
http://www.campslaughter.com/images2/6b.jpg
http://www.campslaughter.com/images2/3b.jpg

But I agree on the details thing. Stay away from woods and lot's of leaves. DV can't handle the amount of detail.

Scot: The lens you're using seems to lack sharpness. All the anamorphics are a pain in the a** when it comes to that. And also: What software did you use to scale the frame horizontally. You have a lot of heavy artifacts from the scaling.

[Scot McPhie]

Hi guys thanks for the feedback - I think you're right about the lack of detail - and I guess that's something you either live with or with out - I was going to try and avoid as many wide shots of landscapes etc as possible - but things like leaves etc I won't be able to avoid too much because of the story I'll be shooting.

I was purposely shooting into the shadow areas to avoid the bright highlights as much as possible - I'm in Brisbane, Australia and summer here is very very bright! and I didn't want those blow outs -- in the actual film I'll be looking at subjects nicely lit in the foreground with darker back grounds for alot of the shots -- but of course it would be boring if it was all like that! - I just need to get to know the efective exposure range of the camera properly.

I used Photoshop to stretch the images - on the computer I've got here I can't use a firewire port so they were captured to a multimedia card first as jpegs and then put into the computer via a usb port - if I could capture them as bmp's from the miniDv tape hopefully the result would be better (I can do that on another computer) -- I think that would explain it - unless photoshop has some kind of problem with this? Anyone know?

Scot

[John Threat]

Not to be picky, but none of those shots have any real *dark* areas. There is light there however slim, is still spilling into the nooks and crannies of the location. Of course that is a matter of perception. Good work however.

But let me adjust what my advice. At a distance, areas that are dark will not hold detail in DV. The shots you have chosen to work with have lots of leaves in the dark at a distance.

If by composition you would like darkness, that is fine. Scenes that fall off into black can make a statement in driving what the image conveys, but DV crushed the blacks and their will be no detail when you go to manipulate the image.

I would select another set of images for your tests. As you see the shots that this gentleman provided, there is a subject in the foreground and the background is not far away and there is enough light in the scene to allow your Color correction program to manipulate.

[Martin Munthe]

Scot: Your anamorphic attachment doesn't seem to be aligned as it should. Look at the geometry on the stones and that house. They are all "falling" to the left.

[Brett Erskine]

What the make and focal length of you anamorphic? How did you mount it? Are you using a "mini35" type adapter, which has some form of grpund glass inside or are you simply zooming in and through the back side of the anamorphic lens?

[Scot McPhie]

Yes I know it's not straight! I'd only just got the set up and I hadn't positioned it straight - the situation was complicated by the fact that none (or hardly any) of the head stones in the cemetetry were vertical - they'd all leant over with time and rain!

Just as an exercise I'll try redoing one of these shots but with a bmp captured from the avi not these which are jpegs - there's about 5 and half times compression here - but I don't know how noticeable it will be though.

It's a Proskar 16A anamorphic lense which is 2X - and I am simply zooming through it. I'm not using a mini35 type adaptor anything - I'll post some pics of the mounting when I can get a second digital camera to mount them!

Anyway this is all a work in progress so I appreciate the comments - I'll keep working in it and post some more soon

Scot