City Lights with the XHA1 and Letus Extreme

disjecta

disjecta

Lucky Duck
I don't know what it is but every time I go to Brackendale in Canada to watch the bald eagles up there, I always end up doing some weird city at night piece. I guess it's one of the few trips where I actually go through a city so it gives me an excuse to shoot something different. In this case, it's Vancouver BC.

Anyway, this is a pretty similar opening to another film I did, also called Brackendale but I can't help myself :)

I may or may not use this as an intro.

The shots with the long light trails and long blurs were shot with the shutter set to 1/6th, with the native lens, no Letus. The rest was with the Extreme. All at 24f. Lenses used: Nikon 50mm f1.8 and Nikon 100mm f2.8

EDIT: Made some changes and uploaded a new file.

Also, I realized that my batteries were pretty weak in the Extreme so you may see some gg in one or two shots and I think I was just out of juice.

Some pretty heavy color correction done in Premiere Pro CS3.

Enjoy.

Windows 720p version:
http://www.pinelakefilms.com/XHA1/citylightsintro.wmv

MP4 720p version (should play in Quicktime player):
http://www.pinelakefilms.com/XHA1/citylightsintro.mp4
 
Last edited:
Your posts are never a letdown, this is AWESOME footage. The opening shots taken earlier in the day could be from a movie trailer downloaded off of quicktime's site.

Did you export this footage from PPCS3 as well? I have yet to export something remotely this good looking from the software and it's been driving me nuts. May I ask what your settings were?

Thanks again for sharing!
 
downloading...

Wow, that was very cinematic. Thank you for showing what this setup is able to achieve.

Just curious, did you capture with vividrgb? The grading is fantastic.
 
Last edited:
im curious, now that you have the whole adapter thing setup. what zoom settings do you generally use with ur A1? And are you now shooting with any db gain? Or keeping it at -3? sometimes y 1k's aren't cutting it.
 
Shot using VIVIDRGB but did a lot of grading in Premiere to achieve that look. I'll answer your other question later.
 
Agreed - the opening shot was sick.

It stopped 75% of the way through with an error though; it's probably a download issue.
 
so? feeling like sharing that info now? :)

not trying to be too persistent or anything, just very curious. :P
 
Last edited:
PaPa said:
im curious, now that you have the whole adapter thing setup. what zoom settings do you generally use with ur A1? And are you now shooting with any db gain? Or keeping it at -3? sometimes y 1k's aren't cutting it.
Click to expand...

I shoot with the Academy FOV which I believe is around z78 and I rarely engage any kind of gain. I usually switch between 0 and -3 depending on available light. For the shots in this piece, I had it set to 0.
 
disjecta said:
I shoot with the Academy FOV which I believe is around z78 and I rarely engage any kind of gain. I usually switch between 0 and -3 depending on available light. For the shots in this piece, I had it set to 0.
Click to expand...
How do you measure the academy or vista vision frame for your own set?
 
Here's a quote from Barry Green that best describes how to do this:

"Having read many posts by various users about the struggles they have with many different adapters when trying to achieve good edge-to-edge sharpness and minimizing vignetting, I’m becoming convinced that lots of people (users and even some of the manufacturers) may not necessarily know what the proper configuration should be for one of these adapters. The goal should be to mimic the depth of field and field-of-view of a 35mm movie camera – that’s what the mini35 does, and that’s what you want to do to have a constant frame of reference and predictable results. A 35mm movie camera has a frame size of about 22mm x 16mm, not the 36mm x 24mm size of a still camera. What you want to do is zoom in to the ground glass far enough that you set up your field of view to match what a 35mm movie camera would see, using the same focal length lens at the same distance. An easy way to do that (and get pretty darn close) would be to use an 8.5 x 11” sheet of paper, taped to a wall sideways (i.e., “landscape” orientation), and set your camera about two feet away from it. With a 50mm lens, focused at 2’, you should be just cropping off the edges of the paper (ideally you’d have about a 10.5” wide field of view from two feet away when using a 50mm lens). If you configure your zoom such that you’re just cropping off the edges of the paper, you’re basically matching the field of view of a 35mm movie camera at that point."
 
Shot in 16:9? Only reason I ask is I went onto your website where you say you don't shoot in 16:9 but adjust in post.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top