Mark Smith
Veteran
This past 10days I think I 've shot A to Z with the AF. First thing was short film set in Lancaster Ca- high desert. We had fantastic and consistent natural light over several days and we shot the spectrum of that. Interiors we shot daylight down to candle light with ending at 800 ISO with compact primes and Olympus 35-100. All good so far except that I found myself wanting a 50 and 100 iso setting for bright daylight exteriors.
Then a switch of locations to NYC for another series of shoots for an Ad agency client where the A & B cameras were Varicam 3700's and the C cam was the AF. Barring the DOF differences between the two camera types ( because of the nature of the shot all cams pretty much wide open) these two cameras cut together amazing well. I used the AF in a way that was more telephoto that the other 2 cameras so the DOF diff would kind of be expected. I was really surprised by the intercuttability of the 2 camera types. They weren't perfect matches but they were close enough to say that the remaining differences could be closed up in post without much effort.
I'll add that the shoot with the Varicams was a location shoot but under controlled conditions. In an overexposure situation where you really needed the Varicam Rec 600% option the AF would have failed without a doubt long before the varicam, but since that wasn't the case the AF really proved to be a valuable addition to the production and allowed me to get some shots that would have otherwise been extremely difficult to get.
Then a switch of locations to NYC for another series of shoots for an Ad agency client where the A & B cameras were Varicam 3700's and the C cam was the AF. Barring the DOF differences between the two camera types ( because of the nature of the shot all cams pretty much wide open) these two cameras cut together amazing well. I used the AF in a way that was more telephoto that the other 2 cameras so the DOF diff would kind of be expected. I was really surprised by the intercuttability of the 2 camera types. They weren't perfect matches but they were close enough to say that the remaining differences could be closed up in post without much effort.
I'll add that the shoot with the Varicams was a location shoot but under controlled conditions. In an overexposure situation where you really needed the Varicam Rec 600% option the AF would have failed without a doubt long before the varicam, but since that wasn't the case the AF really proved to be a valuable addition to the production and allowed me to get some shots that would have otherwise been extremely difficult to get.
