Game over

So it has come down to decision time…  after much deliberation I have had to make the unfortunate call of moving away from the 5D anamorphic format in favour for the RED one with the same lenses.

It all came down to this final and simple fact….  The 35mm and 50mm were not up to standard compared to the image quality that we would achieve with the red.

This was soley due to the fact that the 35mm and 50mm lenses didn’t cover the sensor of the 5D enough which created vignetting which we had to crop into in order to get full coverage.

This caused the 35mm especially to have a far lesser quality resolution compared to the longer lenses eg 75mm and 100mm.

Although I say that about the 35mm and 50mm….  it just happens that the 75mm and 100mm look absolutely beautiful.  Many people have commented saying that it is easily the best 5D footage that they had ever seen.

But I was not prepared to shoot on the 75mm and 100mm alone fro the entire job as you could imagine.

So this brings me to the end of our journey…  I’m sorry that it wasn’t a fairy tale ending but it was certainly an adventure. In a final comment I would say that you can shoot 5D anamorphic with a 2:1 squeeze and with a focal length of over 50mm or you could get your hands on some 1.5x squeeze hawke anamorphics.

I will post examples of the 35mm, 50mm,75mm and 100mm footage soon so you can se the difference.

We've created a monster

We’ve created a monster

Once again I apologise for not being in communication as much as I had initially set out to be in my original post. 

Things have been a bit nuts for me lately with a whole bunch of commercials all coming in at once before Christmas.  Then on top of that I’ve been I pre production for two jobs, “The Sellers” (which we are shooting 5D anamorphic on) and another short film “Night Storm” for which I am currently sitting on a plane bound for my hometown Wellington, in order to start shooting tomorrow afternoon.

This has certainly been a massive learning curve for me and everyone involved. Olli my camera assistant has been pretty much living in the test bay at Panavision here in Sydney for the past week.  I believe one of the guys there said that he had “become part of the furniture.”

All the guys at “Heckler” in Sydney have been working hard at getting us all on the same page with post pathway as well as devising the best  “compressor droplets” for cropping and pro res conversion.   The compressor droplets are necessary because we have to cut off or crop in on the left and right hand sides in order to keep a true 1:2.40 widescreen ratio, otherwise we would be left with a long and skinny image that resembles more a ratio more likened to 3:1.

We are also now working with Dave Gross at Definition Films in Sydney, where we will be editing; in their final cut suite as well as creating/outputting all of our batch converted pro res files for editorial, via Hecklers compressor droplets from our daily H.264 rushes.

We have managed to do most things right so far or at least it feels like we have done.  I must say I have been a little too quick to jump on the net and buy things that I believe we would need.  Like for instance I am now onto my 3^rd mattebox!  I started off by buying an original LOMO anamorphic mattebox from America…

 Not only did this first mattebox stink to high heaven of what could have easily have been 30 year old dog shit and toe jam, it also didn’t fit together at all.  So after about 4 beers and a packet of sandalwood incense, I decided that the box it came in was about as useful as the stinky mattebox that it contained.

Then came mattebox version 2…this time brand new and shiny with pretty finishing’s and lovely custom made pelican case.  However after about a day I realised that my massive 35mm Lomo lens didn’t have a chance in hell of fitting into the back of it’s retainer ring.

So out came the big guns…  I had to go and buy a second hand Arri MB14 from my old buddy Ken Rich in LA who had originally sold me the Lomo’s in the first place a few months earlier.

It was at about this point that Olli began to show minor signs of anxiety related illnesses like rashes and twitching. 

You see Olli had to somehow get a 16 x 9 image that had been squeezed horizontally by a ratio of 2:1  into the correct viewable aspect ratio of 1:2.40 on 3 monitors.  One for me which I would operate off, then one for himself which he would be checking critical focus with, and a final larger monitor for our Director Maia.

On top of all that Olli had to deal with 2 more obstacles:

When in normal viewing mode the Canon 5D mk 2 out puts a lovely 1080 HD image, however once you press record the camera can’t handle outputting so much resolution as well as recording in high definition so it reduces the outputted viewing image to a more manageable but smaller image of 420 pixels across.

Most monitors can’t handle this and simply display a much smaller image size, however some other more dedicated DSLR monitors like the “Small HD DP 6”  has an inbuilt automatic upres capability which kicks in as soon as you press the record button, so that you stay looking at the same image size that you had just set up your shot with.  For this reason Olli and I bought one of these Small HD monitors each.

So that part is all good and what ever but we still had many rivers to cross so that we could reach the port of “correct aspects on all monitors” during filming and rehearsals.

This may sound like a plug but the DP6 monitor really is awesome…  You see each of my lenses have a varying degree of vignetting on the Canon 5D sensor.  The 35mm is the worst see image: 

And the 100mm is the best with no vignetting at all. See image:

Because of this vignetting we had to figure out a way of cropping each lens so that we achieved the best possible results in the final product as we had already lost about 36% horizontal resolution due to the excessive 2:1 squeeze on a 16 x 9 image.

By shooting grid charts for each of my 4 lenses and then getting the guys at Heckler to come up with the best compressor droplet for each lens we would all be on the same page, from my monitor to the editors monitor we’d be seeing the same recorded/framed images. 

This is easy to say but how the hell would we be able to change the monitor to suit the lenses every time we changes lens???  Well it just so happens that the DP6 has 10 pre set settings available.  Thank god! 

Although it took a long time Olli simply calibrated my monitor to match the cropping and squeezing settings for each lens that Heckler had devised earlier that week.

Our first shoot day was yesterday, and everything was working perfectly.  We simply pressed 2 buttons and the field of view would change slightly in accordance with the lens, which is on the camera at the time.  “Pre set 1” being the 35mm anamorphic 2 is the 50mm, 3 is the 75mm, 4 is the 100mm and 5 is a setting we have for spherical lenses which just crops the 16 x 9 image to our shooting ratio of 1:2.40.

We have a 150-600 century zoom on set as well because I felt we’d want a longer lens than a 100mm, which has proven to be the right decision.  It won’t match perfectly but it was better to have it and not match than not have it.

Inner city stuff looks awesome on a really long lens, especially with the doubler attached giving us a 1200mm. We got the long zoom so that we could shoot the general public, or our actors amongst the public without them being aware of the camera.

The other issue Olli had was to be able to get a directors monitor that could handle the down conversion once we rolled the camera…  This was impossible we soon figured out however there was a little box called a “Blackmagic HDMI to SDI converter” which we have attached to the camera at all times now.  This box handles the down conversion buy up rezzing the images again.  This now allows our director to be able to view in the correct format.

Enough about monitoring… 

So our first pre shoot day was a couple of days ago.  If anyone thought that Canon 5D’s are light weight they should try holding onto my rig for a 10 minute scene…  I’m 31 years old now, I’m not exactly a perfect picture of health but I’m not a 2 pound weakling that has to run around in the shower to get wet either.

That camera weighs a tonne man!  With a 6x6 mattebox, 35mm lens, preston, 2 monitors, down converters and a counter weight at the back…she’s bloody heavy.  I’d say the same as an Arri BL with 1000’ mag and a reasonable size lens.

Testing testing testing

Hi everyone,


First of all thanks for all your comments and emails.  It's certainly been quite an interesting week of testing since I wrote the initial first few pages of this blog.


I've got heaps and heaps to talk about, as I have learnt a hell of a lot about all kinds of stuff that's related to shooting on the 5D with anamorphic lenses recently.  Some bad, but mostly all good.


The main thing is that this whole crazy idea is working... I have even managed to get some "ok" pictures out of the camera.


However there is a long way to go before my focus puller, the post house, the director and myself are going to be totally happy enough so that we can start shooing some real drama on a real set.


I will go into finer detail about all of this soon, but for now I thought I should put up a little bit of vision.


Here is a really quick test that I shot a few days ago on my 50mm Lomo in my apartment and on the way up to get a coffee at my local.  It's all handheld and pretty on the fly.


I freaked a few people out too cause it kinda looked like I was carrying a gun.... one early morning jogger even thought I was an undercover cop trying to bust speeding motorists with some new fan-dangled portable speed camera.


I have also shot a whole bunch of more boring tests like ASA / Noise tests, aperture tests, Grid tests for checking distortion, etc etc.  I'll put up the relative and more interesting versions of these tests soon.


Please note:  This movie was 3GB when I output it originally in Prores 4:4:4.


Now it's down to 36MB which has introduced a lot of noise, banding and pretty much anything else you see that is bad.  


Obviously this is not ideal when trying to show something off, however I have tried everything I know of to get a better picture on the net.....vimeo links etc etc and can't find a way to upload something that is big enough (700 MBs +)  that will do the footage any justice.


Does anyone have any great ideas on how to show large video files on the net?  here's a link to the vimeo version of the same file:


Please do not expand this file as it totally turns to shit....

Click here to see the tests on Vimeo

Righto....

Well first of all I would like to say that this has definitely been an interesting few weeks of learning and jumping logistical hurdles. For instance I had no idea how to run programmes like compressor or final cut, and I had no idea that my 35mm lens (once it arrived) would be the size of Antarctica: see image.

Also my poor 3 year old macbook computer nearly caught fire the other day as it tried desperately to de-anamorphasize a single RAW still image that I had shot on the 75mm Lomo.  Luckily I've managed to get hold of a Macbook pro with a whole bunch of RAM, which has been a godsend.

Now last time I left you I was about to embark on a week of testing, which myself and Olli (1st AC) have now done.  We tested all the kinds of stuff that you'd want to know about before shooting a film on a new format; like noise levels at high ASA settings and resolution tests at wide open apertures etc etc.

What we first had to do was to figure out the exact amount of cropping that would need to be done in order to achieve the best resolution images, yet have no cut off. (vignetting) 

This process took forever but we finally managed to come up with the right settings for the left and right crop.  In case you are interested here is a screen grab of the compressor settings...  I would have killed for this the other day.

Because my Lomo's are not really the worlds best quality when it comes to modern standards, the images that they create are relatively degraded and slightly soft at wide open apertures.

This is a common occurrence in old zoom lenses as well as in many anamorphics, due to the high quantity/quality of glass involved in their design.  

I knew that I would need to shoot at around T4 in order to achieve a suitable image quality.  So an important test for me to do was to find out how far I could push the ASA in the camera before the images became too grainy.

Here are a bunch of them that we did.  They are ungraded and still in their original anamorphic ratio.

Here is a vimeo link to the asa tests that we shot:

ASA Tests Link

One of the more interesting tests that we performed, was a distortion test.  We did this by putting up a large grid in front of the lens that was exactly centred and level to the focal plane of the 5D.

We then cropped and resized the footage for a scope aspect ratio of 1:2.40.  We figured out that we are loosing about 35% of our horizontal resolution.  Not great .....  but that's the downfall of 16x9 anamorphic for you at 2:1 squeeze compared to 4x3 anamorphic.

Once that was done I took it over to my mate Garry Jacques who runs a post house here in Sydney www.heckler.tv  where he put it up on After Effects.

I didn't know this but 3D graphics people can't work in an anamorphic world as all Anamorphic lenses tend to have some amount of distortion (depending on quality) and it just so happens that my 1980's Russian Lomo's have a shit load of distortion.  

So what Garry wanted to do was to come up with a formula in After Effects that would counteract the distortion which was inherent in each of my lenses so that the images would become flat or undistorted.  (This is mainly apparent on the edges of the frame)

I also found out that each individual lens has varying amounts of distortion in various areas of the image.  Therefore once I had done the distortions tests for each lens, Garry could then provide me with the perfect formula to counteract the bendiness...is that a word?  hmmmm.....it is now :)

In other words he could turn my cheap arse Lomo lens with all it's beautiful aberrations, into a brand new $40'000 Hawke Anamorphic with the press of just a few, well selected buttons.

Here is the original un-squeezed anamorphic 50mm footage: Remember do not expand the player into full screen....total crap

Here is the same 50mm footage, cropped and de-squeezed, but before being "Flattened" in after effects.

Garry is sending me over the flattened footage soon....  I'll put it up as soon as I get it....  sorry about that.

While I have been off playing around with test footage, Olli has been trying to get his head around just how to accessorise the 5D with the Lomo's in a way that is fast and reliable on set.

One of the main issues with the lenses is that the focus wheel is usually found right up at the front end of the lens.  See picture:  

Not only that, but the whole front of the lens also breaths in and out as your pull from far to near and vice versa...  sometimes there is up to an inch or so of movement. 

This movement creates a large gap between the mattebox and the front element which is right where you need to have your follow focus!

We are still sorting this issue out but it looks like neoprene (wetsuit) doughnuts are the way to go.

Even more annoyingly, I have had to ditch my brand new Redrock micro mattebox and replace it with an Arri MB14, as my enormous 35mm lens wouldn't even come close to being able to fit into the Redrock mattebox.

So if anyone wants a brand new "Redrock Delux 15mm Mattbox" plus a custom built pelican case and a brand new 15mm Redrock Follow focus you can bid on it now....

Here's the link:  http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200550632158&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT#ht_500wt_1156

Here is a picture that Olli sent me from the test bay yesterday, showing the 35mm lens with a preston attached. I will upload some high quality images of the camera rig once we have sorted everything out accessory wise.

I can't thank the guys at Panavision here in Sydney enough, as without them and their support, we'd be totally screwed.

ok...there's heaps more to talk about but that's enough for now.  

Back soon.

Anamorphic 5D

Hey everyone,

About 3 months ago I decided that I wanted to buy some lenses so I could start to become a bit more self sufficient financially. After a whole bunch of research I decided to get a set of Russian Lomo Roundfront Anamorphics.

Although I felt this was a brilliant idea I soon realised that most of the world had already had that same brilliant idea about 5 - 10 years before me. Getting my hands on a set of Lomo's would have been simple back then, however since those carefree days of "16mm and light meters", new lower cost digital formats like: RED One, Arri Alexa and the Arri d21 have been introduced to the market.

Because of these cameras, the cost of shooting anamorphic has been greatly reduced and in turn the popularity of these lenses has risen greatly, creating a higher demand.

Luckily for me I managed to find a guy called "Ken Rich" who owns a second hand film equipment brokerage in Los Angeles. http://www.cineused.com In the late 80's after the collapse of the USSR Ken travelled to Russia and purchased as many Lomo anamorphics as he could. Smart guy huh....although they sat in a cupboard gathering dust for over a decade, Ken soon managed to sell them all off for a bloody good profit.

I was one of those peeps that helped Mr Rich become slightly richer, but only just, as Ken sold me his very last set of Lomo lenses. So lucky me. :)

During the time that I was waiting for my lenses to arrive, I started doing some research into wheather or not I could possibly get them onto a Canon 5D mk 2. I have a low budget tele feature coming up in January, so I needed a way of creating a cinematic look without the cinematic budget.

There was next to nothing on the net that was worth looking at except for a couple of Vimeo links that I found from a guy called Hunter H Richards and a friend of his in Asia. See below:

http://vimeo.com/9116034

http://vimeo.com/9763086

I was pretty impressed by these two spots. I was also impressed by the fact that I couldn't find any other examples of proper 5D anamorphic footage anywhere on the net what so ever... footage that was visually enticing enough to earn a mention that is.

I say "proper footage" because there are many ways to create an anamorphic look but I wanted to do it properly.

So that day, I decided to look more in depth into the world of 5D anamorphic.

Here's what I have learnt/done so far:

My first challenge was to work out how to put an anamorphic lens onto the Canon 5Dmk2 Body without "destroying" the mirror, as the back element of the Lomo lenses protrude much further back into the camera housing compared to a standard Canon lens.

After more web searching I managed to stumble across a website that belonged to a guy called Steve Morton from Melbourne, Australia who works as a scientific photographer at Monash University. See Link:

https://www.alumni.rmit.edu.au/NetCommunity/Page.aspx?pid=962

After speaking with Steve for a while, he put me onto a company called "The Camera Clinic" in Melbourne to gut it. http://www.cameraclinic.com.au/

I soon realised that the only way to get full coverage on my 5D by adding a PL mount, was to "destroy" the mirror. I was apprehensive to do this at first but by the time I saw the photo's of what has to be done, I agreed with the mirror removal.

Here is a link to Steve's 5D gutting website: http://www.cinemods.com/

I have heard of all kinds of crazy prices being charged for the PL mount conversion for a 5D...sometimes up to $5000 US with the body included...however Camera Clinic's price was $700 USD and only took 1 week door to door.

The pix of the 5D in pieces are by Patrick Tong in Hong Kong

No you don't get to keep you warranty from Canon! Here is a pic of my 5D after it had be gutted by the guys at the camera clinic in Melbourne.

So I now had the ability of shooting anamorphic images on a Canon 5D, but I was no where near ready to take this new fangled gear on set....

There is a whole bunch of stuff that I need to talk with you about, regarding the post pathway, in order to achieve a final image in it's proper 1:2.40 (widescreen/scope) ratio.

However I'll take you through the additional gear that I needed to source first as it's a bit easier to digest.

I've owned 5Dmk 2 gear since it came out on the market in mid 2009, however I have always fought buying any extra gear that pushed my 5D kit into the realm of "normal production style shooting", like a mattebox or follow focus.

I strongly feel, that the 5D shouldn't be used on shoots where the client/director expect a normal approach to filming. The 5D is an awesome camera, yet my best advice for anyone considering shooting an upcoming project with one would be; to know when to say to the producer that the 5D and it's massive sensor and heavily compressed H.264 codec is not the right format for the job at hand.

Usually this would have to do with tricky focus or the need to be able to manipulate your images more than usual when in post.

This is why I'm going to test the hell out of this new format, as I have no doubt that you may now feel I'm slightly mentally challenged for considering using this format on a drama. At least Oliver Scott, my focus puller does... (Hi Olli)

Anyway....I was going to need to get hold of some support for my camera body, as without it the camera tends to float about on a tripod, especially when using longer heavier lenses.

My original 5D kit that I half own with my friend Garry Jacques from Heckler Post, in Sydney see Link: www.heckler.tv is supported by a cage from Viewfactor in the US. They make a few cages that grip the camera perfectly both at the bottom and top of the camera so you don't get any lateral movement what so ever. Garry and I bought a non powered cage for the 5d/7D. See link: http://www.viewfactor.net/index.php/products/cages/contineo-5d-7d-non-powered.html

The non-powered cage was great but I need to have as much of the new camera and it's extra accessories, like a monitor to be powered by one single heavy duty battery. So I decided this time to go for the 5D powered cage See link: http://www.viewfactor.net/index.php/products/cages/contineo-5d-powered.html

This would allow me to not only power the camera but also provide me with the use of 3 extra 12v Lemo accessory plugs, which are included in the cage housing. See Picture Below:

Next we'd need the usual stuff like Mattebox, Follow focus, Filters, Batteries, Baseplate, Monitor and Rods.

Mattebox: I bought from Redrock micro. I got this one because it was constructed really well and would also cover the massive front element diameter of my 35mm Lomo round-front lens. (still to be tested however) Plus it was pretty damn cheap, compared to buying an Arri MB14 or something similar. After some basic testing it looks like I will have to extend the side mounted support rods because they are not long enough to cover lenses as long as my Lomo's.

Follow Focus: I also got from Redrock, as well as a pair of 15mm carbon fibre long rods. It looks like I may have to get a whip for this follow focus as the range on the Lomo lenses is quite large.

Batteries: My powered cage came in a kit which included an Anton Bauer gold mount plate, for which I was supposed to attach a super expensive Anton Bauer battery to...however I managed to find a company here is Sydney called "Sonytech".

See link: http://www.stpro.com.au/products/list.asp?cid=7&category=Battery

Sonytech import their gear direct from China, which means big savings for "same same" equipment. I bought 3 x Anton Bauer replica batteries and a duel charger for less than a third the price that I would have paid going direct through Anton Bauer. I just hope the house doesn't melt after the batteries explode in the middle of the night...

This totally happened to me once on a job in New Zealand. We opened up the camera room in the morning before work, to discover that one of the 24v camera batteries had exploded over night, completely destroying the walls and carpet. Acid tends to have that affect on hotel rooms. :)

Anyway talk to Peter at Sonytech....he's a good man. He is also going to make up my accessory cables for me once everything has arrived.

Next we needed a monitor, but not just any monitor. I needed to be able to view in the best possible format, so it had to be HDMI compatible, seeing as how that is the native output for the 5DMk2. Then on top of that we were going to have to be able to view our anamorphic (Horizontally Squeezed) images in a correct looking, de-anamorphisized (love that word) format.

To be able to do this we were going to have to be able to de-squeeze the image by a ratio of 2:1.

2:1 being the amount that my Lomo anamorphic lenses squeeze the image horizontally.

Anamorphic lenses do this so that they can achieve the desired effect of a scope/widescreen image within the constraints of a 4x3 sensor or gate. This is why we get the extra resolution compared to just vertically cropping (letterboxing) our 4x3 sensor or gate down to 1:2.40.

Notice in the picture below that the glass seems to be in an oval shape. This is what squeezes the images...just like at a fun park with those mirrors that make you look really skinny and tall.

I didn't mean to get into this yet but once you start to talk about monitors it's hard not to be sucked into the whole ratio spiel... There's way more to this 5D anamorphic journey though, mainly because the 5D only records motion pictures in 16x9, and not 4x3 which causes more problems/fun but that's for later on.

Five common aspect ratios

So I need a monitor that will de-squeeze our images by 2:1... in other words flatten them into a long and skinny image rather than a short and fat one. see images below:

This is a short and fat "Anamorphic Image" This was shot full frame on my 5Dmk 2 with a 75mm round front Lomo at T= 4, 250 ASA in Raw CR2 Capture format. This image you are looking at is now a jpeg. Double Click to see full size images.

4x3 anamorphic image:

This is the same image after i photo shopped it into its correct ratio by extending the width of the image by x2. The vignetting on the left and right edges is due to the sensor not being totally covered by the projected image from the lens.

Ok back to monitors: Not only did we have to be able to de-squeeze the image by 2:1 we also had to be able to zoom in a bit as the images we were going to be looking at weren't going to be 4x3 squeezed but instead 16x9 squeezed. This was going to create an image that would be even longer and skinner that what we needed for our 1:2.40 final delivery.

So to be able to do this we would need to zoom into the centre part of the image. see image below:

You'll notice that it is slightly less skinny with the left and right hand side not extending as far out as the other image above. This keeps the 1:2.40 ratio.

So after all that I decided to get the Small HD, DP6 monitor as it has the zoom function available, as well as the 2:1 squeeze.

See Link: http://www.smallhd.com/Products/DP6.html

So that's about where I'm at right now.... I'm just awaiting the last of my gear to arrive like the monitor and extra cables, then I'm gonna go out and test the shit out of all this.

Here's hoping it'll work. Stay tuned. Remember to sign up if you want to get email notification when I add stuff. I think it's at the top right of this page.