Nuit Blanche - excellent work by Spy Films

A piece by Spy Films with fantastically derived slow-motion clips threading a charming narrative.

Nuit Blanche from Spy Films on Vimeo.

And the making of here

Nuit Blanche- Making of from Spy Films on Vimeo.

Anamorpic adapters... and hacking them?

At 4am this morning after waiting months and setting alarms to be awake in time I found myself lamenting yet another losing bid on an Iscorama 54 Anamorphic Adapter on ebay moments earlier.

My dear partner in crime put up with my grumpy morose phone call at this insane hour, reminding me of my own adapters* which would get me by for a while, and that the one I was looking for would probably come around again eventually.  Incredibly kind and understanding of her! :)

After she had placated my grumblings I settled off to the few hours of sleep I had available before another day at the studio, and I contemplated my current set of adapters:

Panasonic AG-LA7200 (1.33x horizontal width)
Kowa 16-H/8-Z (2x horizontal width)
Sankor 16-C (2x horizontal width)

My favourite of these in terms of visuals is the LA7200.  It has, in my opinion, a very late 70s-80s  cinematic 'lens-flares' - nice blue anamorphic streaks.  And of course being 1.33x actually takes a 16:9 camera to 2.35:1 (and no more, thus not wasting horizontal resolution in the cropping down process).  The thing I loathe about it is it's lack of onboard focusing.  Hence with longer lenses you have to stop down heavily.  This is a shame as a 'focus capable' adapter allows you to potentially have the aperture open fully and still get a nice clean and sharp focus point.

At 6.30am I got up and dismantled the LA7200.  It's actually immensely basic.  Two glass elements held in place with injection-molded plastic and bolted together with thin screws.

I experimented by placing the LA7200 with just the rear element on the GH1 + Canon FD 135mm wide open @f2.5.  I held the LA7200 front element in my hands and moved it forward and back eventually finding a far clearer though not perfect focus point.  Only briefly though.  Any lateral movement or twist in the camera z-axis threw it off hideously.  It could be that the front glass was slightly off axis to begin with, but it does make be wonder if there is a way to make this adapter a focusing one.  Seems like the shorter the distance between the front and rear element the more appropriate it is for long lenses like the 135mm - which is odd as the reverse is true of the focus-capable adapters.  I can only assume it's to do with arrangement orientation of lenses.  Does anyone have any information to back that up, and maybe help develop a focusing have for this adapter?

Time will tell I guess.  Right, back to work now... and back to searching for another Isco-54.

GH1 Canon FD 50mm f1.4 Kowa 16-H / 8Z - test 2

Ok about as silly as the last Kowa video I made, however at least now I've learned how to open the aperture all the way to f1.4 and not have those streaky anamorphic vertical tears on the 'in focus' area. Thought I'd share as I'm pretty happy :)


GH1 Canon FD 50mm f1.4 Kowa 16-H / 8Z - test 2 from Splintersilk on Vimeo.

Galileo - animated film by Ghislain Avrillon

This work of Ghislain Avrillon and crew is gorgeous. I really love it.
http://vimeo.com/8076404

Quicktime gamma fix

Quicktime gamma correction. Might come in handy one day when you want to send something you've been working on ;)
http://www.videocopilot.net/blog/2008/06/fix-quicktime-gamma-shift/

Bokeh effects - petzval lenses

Interesting bokeh effects. Great for pulling the foreground off the background whilst keeping things interesting and engaging. Thanks Benjamin for this link.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/shima11/4358980031/in/set-72157613161961540/


Looks like the Petzval lens used for these great images is pretty intriguing in itself.
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petzval_lens