A few hacked Gh13 anamorphic grabs

[thisisapocalypse]

From a beach scene we shot this weekend in Maine for our feature in progress - we're 66% done with principal! No CC yet.

GH13 (hacked) avg bitrate on these was really nice and high 45mbps solid or even more.

Lenses:

OTS shots - Samyang 85mm f/1.4
Wide shot against rocks - Canon FD 24mm f/1.4 L
Shots on beach - Zeiss 50mm f/1.4

Panasonic 1.33x adapter

Lots of Nikon ND4 filters (stacked - as many as 3 of them)

 

[tflak]

I thought these looked a bit soft for GH13. Any chance the stacked ND filters softened things a bit?

 

[thisisapocalypse]

These are super duper compressed and downscaled - the avchd looks awesome - anamorphic is definitely a touch softer than when shooting aspherically unless you stop down massively. I did have two shots that I shot without anamorphics on this - here's a couple grabs and I was using stacked NDs here too.

EDIT: Didn't mention the lens - this is the Zeiss 50mm f/1.4 in Rollei SL35 mount (west german made).

 

[thisisapocalypse]

I'm very happy with the Nikon NDs, but I mean, there's no way you can stack 3 filters and not lose any sharpness at all, but I'm really picky about filters and sharpness and I find these NDs even stacked to be quite good and work within my sharpness requirements. I'm also using old glass for the most part so it's not as sharp/contrasty as modern lenses to begin with - this is a narrative work and I didn't want hyper contrast/sharpness - I brought a Canon 70-200 f/2.8 L with me on this shoot but it was just too sharp/contrasty for these scenes so I couldn't use it, would never match the others.

 

[tflak]

Thanks for both of those replies -- explains it all.

Have been following your posts on this and appreciate all the regular updates for us to be able to follow your progress.

 

[thisisapocalypse]

Thanks for both of those replies -- explains it all.

Have been following your posts on this and appreciate all the regular updates for us to be able to follow your progress.

Thank you for following - anamorphic is not for the faint of heart for sure - I've used it maybe 40% of the time on this film - I absolutely love the look it produces but sometimes the lighting requirements for shooting anamorphic are beyond what I can produce on set as we are using a relatively low powered light kit.

It's also tough for me because I am a speed freak when it comes to lenses and I also like being up very close to the subject - neither of which can you do very easily with anamorphics (or at least, the Panasonic adapter - don't even try shooting faster than f/2.8 no matter the focal length - f/4 at least is usually the minimum for good sharpness and I often stop down further than that and shoot in the f/5.6-8 range - and of course, doing that pretty much guarantees deep focus - fine most of the time but if you want to go shallow with anamorphics on this rig it's a tricky proposition requiring just the right subject distance, focal length and aperture - far more variables shooting anamorphically that not - but the framing...I LOVE framing in anamorphic and I hate framing when I know I'm going to crop) - I must say that it's pretty cool though to have a GH13 tricked out with a Zeiss lens meant for a Rollei SL35 and a Panasonic Anamorphic adapter meant for a DVX100 and have it all work and deliver such gorgeous results when you do it right - nothing I use was really all designed initially to be used together - but that's what's just sort of great about the GH13.

In the end it's nice to use it when I can, but I often choose not to if it's going to take up so much time that something else on the project will suffer - the story and acting are far far more important than whether or not I shot with anamorphics.

On my next project I'm hoping just to have one or two jobs on set, right now I'm writer/director/dp/producer/running camera - although all of those jobs put together is easier than the job my soundguy has - holding a boom all day...man, no thanks! Sometimes I even have a guy on set dedicated to the slate...those are great days! I always thought it would be so cool to finally have a reason to buy a slate...and it's just a pain in the butt unless you've got someone who's dedicated to keeping track of everything for that job.

 

[rundavids]

Very nice screen grabs. What settings were you using on your GH13 and what cards. Also, what kind of audio equipment are you using?

 

[thisisapocalypse]

Very nice screen grabs. What settings were you using on your GH13 and what cards. Also, what kind of audio equipment are you using?

Smooth setting - white balancing to the back of the slate, -1 contrast, -1 NR, 0 Color.

Using a Class 6 Patriot card with the recommended 45mpbs settings.

Audio:

Fostex FR2LE
K-Tek Avalon Series Boom
Rode Shockmount + Blimp
Rode NTG-3 for exteriors, NT3 for interiors (hyper)

And a really good boom op with lots of patience and upper arm strength and stamina. That Rode blimp is heavy, the avalon boom isn't the lightest and when you extend that thing a full 10 ft...christ that's heavy.

 

[thisisapocalypse]

Shooting right around golden hour doesn't hurt either.

I must say there is definitely a benefit to shooting anamorphic when you've got lots of female talent - I mentioned before how there is a flattening/compression effect similar to when you use a portrait lens when you shoot anamorphically - that plus the slightly softer look it gives makes female talent happy. Even very attractive girls are not crazy about Zeiss tack-sharpness at 1080p.

 

[Hunter Hampton]

I really like what your doing, the beach seems like a great location. What are your plans for the film once its complete? Looks like a quirky character piece?

 

[Svart]

I kinda like the look of stacked NDs on sharp glass. It keeps the aliasing down while still looking sharp due to the contrasts.

Did you use a polarizer for anything? When shooting around HDR stuff like sunlit rocks/plants/talent you can dial down the highlights using the polarizer while keeping the exposure up. In the shot of the girl in the blue/white hoodie, the shoulder part is blown out while the rest is in fairly good exposure. You might have been able to dial down that blow-out some. Not really sure how it would work with anamorphics though.

 

[thisisapocalypse]

I kinda like the look of stacked NDs on sharp glass. It keeps the aliasing down while still looking sharp due to the contrasts.

Did you use a polarizer for anything? When shooting around HDR stuff like sunlit rocks/plants/talent you can dial down the highlights using the polarizer while keeping the exposure up. In the shot of the girl in the blue/white hoodie, the shoulder part is blown out while the rest is in fairly good exposure. You might have been able to dial down that blow-out some. Not really sure how it would work with anamorphics though.

Thanks - I really like these NDs, I must say, they're older ones - I believe from the 90s...I think B&W may have been making them for Nikon at the time but I'm not 100% sure on that - got a great deal on them at a camera store sale - $20/each - I was originally going to get multiple NDs in different strengths but just decided I'd go for these and then stack them and they've yet to do me wrong!

The real issue you've gotta work with when using stacked NDs on vintage glass + an anamorphic adapter is controlling flare - I'm using a cinetactics matteblox with oversized flag and it works well, but at times I could even use more when I'm shooting with this many pieces of glass!

I have not used a polarizer on this project. As a rule, I'm not a big fan of filters, I come from a straight photography background and I've never liked anything at all in front of a great lens, and I haven't found a polarizer that I really love. Further to your point, a circular polarizer would be very problematic with my anamorphic setup as the adapter would then rotate along with it - it's hard enough that I used it with the Canon 24mm f/1.4 L which has a rotating front element (serious pain to readjust it every time I need to pull focus) - but I love that lens and it pairs so well that I just deal with it

On a couple of shots with the sunlight on the hoody it does indeed blow the highlights in a few parts of one of the takes - then the light changed and it didn't happen again - these stills are from a very rough cut I did yesterday and I haven't had a chance yet to go through over everything and work around some of those issues - but I should be able to in the end.

That said, circumstances being ideal, for a beach shoot I'd be using a really good polarizer in a mattebox setup - but the anamorphic setup I'm using just won't allow for that unfortunately.

 

[thisisapocalypse]

I really like what your doing, the beach seems like a great location. What are your plans for the film once its complete? Looks like a quirky character piece?

Thank you - the beach was gorgeous, and I knew I wanted to do it anamorphically (obviously there was going to be enough light for it - but of course, good beach photography/cinematography is tough, i.e. too too much light and if you're gonna shoot golden-hour time, it'll look great but you've got massive time constraints - there are so many variables and things that can go wrong - during high tide I got splashed on more than one occasion) - great beach though - it was the nicest any of the cast/crew had ever been to on a New England coast (save Martha's vineyard). We definitely drew some stares from the locals when the girl wearing the pink wig had to walk up the street to use a restroom at a motel - this was a very small town in Maine.

The film is definitely a quirky character driven piece, we should wrap principal in a couple months - we're about 60-70% done now, but everybody works during the day so matching up schedules is crazy - all the actors are stage actors and so many of them are in plays while we're shooting so...it's just nuts, but I love working with theater actors, we shoot a little differently because of it - I always shoot a full scene no matter what the angle or the shot as they are so used to working with the flow/momentum of a scene that good/new stuff comes out each time, and short takes/shots tend to be jarring and throw them a bit off their game.

Plans are to finish principal, spend a good deal of time editing and especially doing post-sound, scoring, getting our poster done (a great illustrator is working on it now), building awareness, making contacts and then submitting to festivals for '12 - the actors are just extraordinary and it's a very fun, thought-provoking film and our sort of ultimate goal would be acceptance to Slamdance and Boston IFF since that's sort of our home.