Shooting with 35mm adaptor and without on shoot

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Young Gun

Member
I shot once on a HVX and I asked my D.P. if I can shoot some shots with the 35mm adaptor AND some shots without the 35mm adaptor.

The D.P. told me you can tell right away the difference and he suggested to shoot with the 35mm adaptor ONLY.

My question is....

....Has anyone ever "mixed up" the shots??? Couldn't you do something in post (color correcting) to blend the 35mm shots and the regular 24p shots???

I would appreciate if if someone could tell me if it's possible.

Thanks
 
Young Gun said:
....Has anyone ever "mixed up" the shots??? Couldn't you do something in post (color correcting) to blend the 35mm shots and the regular 24p shots???

I would appreciate if if someone could tell me if it's possible.

Thanks
Click to expand...
It is possible. I've done it, but in post had to make some mattes and use gaussian blur on parts of the image to simulate shallow Depth of field on the non-35 adapter shots. No one ever made a comment, and the film played at over 30 festivals.

It's not color correction you need to match it as much as creating the look of shallow depth of field. This can also be accomplished by shooting the bare HVX with the lens zoomed in as much as possible, but where that's not feasible, you can fake it with some success with blur filters (applied to parts of the image) in post.
 
would that basically require a lot of animated masking the subject and then blurring the background? about how long would that take for about a 2 or 3 minute scene on average?
 
You can mix up the shots. If you watch movies and look closely you will find most wides will have most everything in focus so you don't need an adapter for them unless you are going wider than the camera can go normally. Also stedicam or glidecam shots can be without and no ones going to notice. Macro shots can also be non-adapter shots. You would be surprised what you can get away with when you have a good story.
 
Sweet! That's exactly what I wanted to hear. Cuz I do want some handheld shots, wide establishing shots, etc., where I don't really need much shallow debt of field.

Plus, I told me D.P. that how come I see some real 35mm movies that have some shots without the shallow debt of field and it wasn't a big problem getting that film in the can.

But he was adamant about it, that it will not look good, so I left it alone.

Anyways...

Thanks everyone!
 
Young Gun said:
I shot once on a HVX and I asked my D.P. if I can shoot some shots with the 35mm adaptor AND some shots without the 35mm adaptor.

The D.P. told me you can tell right away the difference and he suggested to shoot with the 35mm adaptor ONLY.

My question is....

....Has anyone ever "mixed up" the shots??? Couldn't you do something in post (color correcting) to blend the 35mm shots and the regular 24p shots???

I would appreciate if if someone could tell me if it's possible.

Thanks
Click to expand...

If you can get away with not taking the adapter off it would be ideal. It's not jus tthe shallow field but with the current crop of adapters (excluding the Letus Ultimate) the difference in image clarity is VERY apparent. Also, color rendering, highlight handling, etc etc.

It will undoubtedly throw your image for a loop. Beyond just adjusting sharpness by softening the naked camera footage in post to match the 35mm Adapter, you then must figure out how to deal with the different highlight handling, color matching, etc etc.

The DP is not incorrect, he's just trying to protect the footage and the headache you will incur in post.

With the Letus Ultimate sharpness between naked HVX200A and with the adapter on is barely noticable, the color rendition is very close but you can't escape the handling of highlights by naked lens and the adapter. The adapter, in my opinion, looks a lot better where highlights are concerned.

That's my two.
 
I think DOF adapter is not the best name for these. True, it creates very shallow dof, that is very noticeable, but that's not all they do. Because they project the images onto a ground glass that the video camera is shooting, it gives the picture a whole different look. The difference between the look of film and video is not just dof. Video appears to be much sharper. Film lenses will pick up more detail, but on video it looks sharper (harder lines). But because the video cameras are shooting the ground glass (when using an adapter), it gives the over all image a more pleasant/subtle look that more closely resembles film. Wide shot or not, a film wide does not look like a video wide
 
FilmBoy77 said:
would that basically require a lot of animated masking the subject and then blurring the background? about how long would that take for about a 2 or 3 minute scene on average?
Click to expand...

Totally depends on your footage. If there's a lot of movement, you might have to do a lot of keyframing to keep your mattes looking ok. As others have said, if it's a wide shot, or on a steadicam, then you don't need to do the shallow focus look.

Kholi makes a great point about highlight handling, and how adapters help with that, and OUinLA is right about the nice softer feel an adapter gives you... but it is still possible to mix it up and get good results, just takes extra work in post. It's not ideal, but it is do-able.
 
The softening effect will vary a lot depending on the adapter. The Letus Extreme, and evidently even more so the new Ultimate, seem to be the best in this regard, giving away relatively little sharpness vs the bare camera. The RedRock M2 appears to be the softest (and most light-hungry).

With high quality lenses it should be possible to intercut adapter and non-adapter footage if one chooses the two circumstances well. I'd say go adapter on except for:

-Steadicam or handheld
-Most low light/night shots (exceptions being where very shallow DOF is desired)
-Some wide shots
-Long DOF shots

You might need to do some post softening of the bare camera shots, or maybe not.

The funny thing about 35mm adapters is that while 1/3" CCD cameras tend to have innately long DOF, as soon as you slap an adapter on them they tend to have less DOF than you might want. Light loss is a part of that reason. So you tend to have a lack of a middle ground - adapter off = too much DOF, adapter on - not enough, especially in lower light.

It's tricky...
 
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