stills of movie shot with Brevis35 and HVX200 SD mode

[CLD]

here are some stills I captured right from the camera from a short film, "The Dinner Date" shot last week..

no color correction, nothing, right direct from the camera..

50mm a little vignetting..

50mm zoomed a bit more got rid of most vignetting

85mm focus on character

85mm rack focus

with a 35mm on a glidecam

35mm wide glidecam shot.. I had a 2K and a 1K Light on them. the 35mm was 2.8 and it was picking up some light in the background..

85mm shot

85mm shot

thoughts:

-I like using the 85mm lens the most..
-50mm is good, but some reason that lens has vignetting.. its a 1.4 as well..
-its not that hard to glide with the brevis. stay with a wide lens and make sure you are in that range of focus..
- all these pictures are 16x9, some reason its shown as 4:3.. oh well..

comments are appreciated.

 

[Matthew Bennett]

Not impressed by the bokeh at all. Very dusty and guassian looking. The shot of the guy with the turban has a nice look+dimension. Good composition there. The dinner shots are very flat. Have more fun with your lighting next time.

 

[CLD]

You know, I thought about playing with the lighting.. but then its a comedy.. not a horror/drama..

so I wasnt going for stylized lighting in the restaurant. just a regular restaurant scene.. like the ghostbusters restaurant scenes...

I might darken it a bit though..

maybe the gaussian / dusty look is because of the picture compression? It was captured right from the windows explorer capture..

is there a better way to capture stills from video?

 

[William_Robinette]

I'm gona say the bokeh is directly related to the lighting in the clips which is flat as a board.

 

[TimurCivan]

NO. the bokeh is related to the Lens. Period. However a VERY thin GG can bleed some of the image through.

The Dof on your 85mm is peculiar. an 85mm at F2.8 should be like 1 foot. The background is bleeding detial though. youre using that "low" light screen right? that thing had a tendancy of leeching details though creating that strange bokeh look.

 

[Zak Forsman]

as a proponent of intended aspect ratio, i give you....

50mm a little vignetting..

50mm zoomed a bit more got rid of most vignetting

85mm focus on character

85mm rack focus

with a 35mm on a glidecam

35mm wide glidecam shot.. I had a 2K and a 1K Light on them. the 35mm was 2.8 and it was picking up some light in the background..

85mm shot

85mm shot

 

[CLD]

ok.. I took a still right from the avid system.. does it look better?

same thing.. no color correction or anything.. thoughts?

 

[janusz]

to me it looks like you wasted your lenses and the adapter. i'm pretty sure the DOF seen in your shots could be achieved with the stock lens.

your 85mm compositions should have gorgeous bokeh and be composed from just below the neck up to cutting off top of head/hair.

how far are from the subjects and what are you exposing at?

grab 2 is very nice though, very nice. reminds my very much of Bunuel's 'Belle du jour'.

 

[CLD]

you mean shots like this:

my exposure is F4 on the camera, and the lens is 2 stops from widest opening.

is extreme shallow DOF all there is to the adapter? I got it so I can shoot like im using 35mm film cameras again, not to acheive extreme DOF. And also to eliminate zooming 50 feet away to achieve shallow DOF.

does it make sense? I just got it so I can play w the focus more..

 

[janusz]

playing with the focus how? depth, pulling/racking? problem with 35mm SLR lenses is that they are not designed to pull/rack b/c they are designed for still images. so when you rack/pull, here can be significant breathing.

that last grab has very nice depth. to get the most depth, expose your cam at open (about 3 stops over your f4) and open your lens to its widest (and use your NDs of course) so you can get the beautiful shallow DOF that everyone loves about big formats and long lenses (which is one of the reasons these adapters have been engineered).