Too many menus.....

petermullett

petermullett

Well-known member
A small rant, wonder if anyone else gets to this place too when they are faced with far too lines of menus...
Not to be misunderstood right off I am really happy with the F3 as my second choice of digital camera, ( the first one was an EX1-R, sold to trade up to the F3 ), BUT I am really missing working in film, it was for me so so much easier.
No menus, get the lighting right, ( you have to do that with digital too of course ), get the exposure right, then concentrate on the framing and the action through the viewfinder...a real viewfinder that is.
Then there was the magical transfer to tape and the joy of working with a good colourist who, if they were that good, would lay their own interpretation on your work and make everything sing.
I still shoot with my S16 Aaton Xtera whenever I can and it's a pure delight to be able to run a camera without messing with too many confusing set-ups and more menu options than a Chinese restaurant in NYC......Again, not bemoaning the F3 in anyway at all, it's a great camera and the results I am getting are better than I could wish for. I've shot with all flavours of RED, and with the Alexa too, the F3 is as good as any of those cameras for most of the work I do.
I did consider buying a RED before getting the F3, and I am happy I didn't join that cult. The Alexa is a great tool, designed of course by Arri with decades of great film camera pedigree behind it. Oh yes I'd love to be able to own an Alexa, but it would have to be the Alexa Studio, the one with the real viewfinder and the spinning mirror/shutter, but of course that's out of the question as I could never justify that purchase simply for my own work. I've never rented my own gear out.
I just miss the simplicity and the discipline of shooting with four or eight hundred feet of film stuffed into a mag'.....Anyone else miss those days or are they really receding into the dim and distant past?
 
The only dim and distant past I have is with a 16mm wind up H16 Bolex, and the world of PS Technik mini35 adapters where you're working with an effective ASA of 60.
I miss nothing there - that's for sure.

As for menus on the F3, during a shoot I am mainly using my picture profiles to quickly dial in the curve I want using a preset, and then drilling down into "white" and dialing in the specific color temperature I want. Before a shoot I double check my shutter speed or shutter angle, shooting mode resolution and frame rate, and can usually tell what gain settings I am going to need to program into Low Med and High.

That's about all the menu diving I need and use.
 
while i've grown pretty comfortable with the xdcam-series menu system, a few minutes with an alexa is enough to spoil anyone for life.
 
Jason Davenport said:
Remember pulling your eye away from VF and blowing a shot due to the reflex.
Click to expand...


actually Jason that's never happened to me with the Aatons, perhaps never had a reason to take the eye from the finder while the camera was running, why would I?.......but sure, I know what you mean. Every system has it's quirks and problems of course, I just miss the discipline that shooting film requires....knowing that you've only got X amount left in the mag' and every-time you roll film goes and money flows. Makes you think more about rolling camera.
I have a close friend who's the best colourists I've ever worked with in the 30 odd years I've chalked up working with motion picture and he was more than troubled when REDs started to be bought and used by pretty much anyone in this game, ( hell I even had PA's on shoots who's parents had bought their little darlings a RED kit thinking it would propel them instantly from fetching coffee and supervising crew parking to the DP's seat on the dolly ). He was troubled by the fact that film usage was falling away dramatically so what would he do then with his million dollar investment in telecine gear?.......As it happened it's been good, he has had plenty of work since because without the discipline of taking care of not using film-stock wastefully too many people just shot and shot and shot on sets with digital cameras and media, after all "it's cheap", right?.....Sure, until you come to colour correct and time all the recorded footage it is!
He's spent hours and hours of chargeable time looking through and correcting clips most of which will never be used where the DP's and directors just continued to roll and roll, because it wasn't film, because it didn't "cost anything, so we might as well roll".
Anyway, I guess too I still like the mechanicals of the film cameras, how the best of them were, still are, just fine pieces of work.....also it was great to know that essentially the cameras once purchased were good for as long as you needed them. My Aaton Prod' that I bought around 1998 was upgraded five years ago by Aaton to the latest version of the camera, the Xtera, and for as long as there's film and process this will be as good as anything out there and there's no reason to change it. We can't say that with our digital gear of course, everything gets outdated within a couple of years or less, we itch to "upgrade" and dig into the pocket again for the $$$ to do so, like with anything electronic. Mice on treadmill.
Again though.....This F3 is a great tool and again I am more than happy with it despite the itch for film which in my case I'm sure will never go away. I still have two Aaton outfits with a good collection of the best glass in zooms and SS primes, all of that I will keep and still use when I can.
What I was bemoaning was menus in all digital cameras that seem to go for ever, and are for me too complicated. Too many options to consider and to ensure are set correctly for whatever purpose is needed from shoot to shoot. I'd love to have a digital camera that has an extremely simple menu tree rather than what most have now, like the difference between my Leica M9 and my Nikon D800. Both are great cameras that make superb images, but the Leica has by far the easiest and simplistic menu of any digital still camera out there. That I like, and that's what I was remarking on.
 
Im sorry but I come from a film background, both 35mm 16mm and alike... I developed my own stills photography and did my own blowups...

I also own an F3 and have worked with many other cameras...

There is no complexity in the F3's menu at all... I dont see where your rant is coming from. If you're playing around with the settings that much, then you're doing something wrong.


Simple fact is, I shoot with the F3 and dont change anything other than ISO and shutter angle... I keep it on 1 of 2 curvess, either Techincolor wide, or S-log. And thats it... Never needed to change anything. So i have no idea what you're doing that you need to make so many changes and dive into the menu so much.

The alexa is the exact same way, there is hardly any difference. All I do is dial in ISO or shutter angle and done. So im not sure what you're doing with other digital systems but film was WAY more of a pain in the ass than an F3 in my opinion.

Who the hell wants to reload mags in a helicopter, or call cut on an amazing acting scene because you rolled out, or hear back from the dailies that the exposure was too hot, or that small scratches showed up and needed to be expensively removed or you'd have to reshoot?

Sorry there's no winning argument for me and film vs digital. Love the look of film, and thats about it. Digital will surpass that soon, and the ability to shoot for hours on end without a single cut is more than enough reason to switch.

Sure if you dont have clients, then playing around with film is fun. But when you've got 10's of thousands of dollars of a shoot on the line, and you MUST know you've got it in the can, digital is the only way to go.
 
FilmDude said:
Im sorry but I come from a film background, both 35mm 16mm and alike... I developed my own stills photography and did my own blowups...

I also own an F3 and have worked with many other cameras...

There is no complexity in the F3's menu at all... I dont see where your rant is coming from. If you're playing around with the settings that much, then you're doing something wrong.


Simple fact is, I shoot with the F3 and dont change anything other than ISO and shutter angle... I keep it on 1 of 2 curvess, either Techincolor wide, or S-log. And thats it... Never needed to change anything. So i have no idea what you're doing that you need to make so many changes and dive into the menu so much.

The alexa is the exact same way, there is hardly any difference. All I do is dial in ISO or shutter angle and done. So im not sure what you're doing with other digital systems but film was WAY more of a pain in the ass than an F3 in my opinion.

Who the hell wants to reload mags in a helicopter, or call cut on an amazing acting scene because you rolled out, or hear back from the dailies that the exposure was too hot, or that small scratches showed up and needed to be expensively removed or you'd have to reshoot?

Sorry there's no winning argument for me and film vs digital. Love the look of film, and thats about it. Digital will surpass that soon, and the ability to shoot for hours on end without a single cut is more than enough reason to switch.

Sure if you dont have clients, then playing around with film is fun. But when you've got 10's of thousands of dollars of a shoot on the line, and you MUST know you've got it in the can, digital is the only way to go.
Click to expand...


Film Dude, I'm not disagreeing with anything you're saying here....maybe "rant" was too strong a word for me to have used......and no I too don't mess with the F3 settings too much either. I was just saying that there's a lot about working sets and shoots when film was the only choice that I miss. Bigger crews, better budgets and so on and so forth. You seem to have had the same period of time in this business as I have been lucky enough to experience so I guess you can recall those days when productions had more leeway in them. Producers and clients seem to have come to the mindset that as digital is easier and cheaper "..then why do we need so many people on the crew, surely the DP can do sound too, why not?"....etc etc.
I've worked movies, TV series, commercials and doc's all in film, now more so in Digital of course.....and my F3 copes extremely well when clients ok it's use. But I still do have clients that want to shoot film, we are just wrapping a 28 day S16 shoot here in France and there's one more coming up this winter. At the same time the F3 is busy enough too. So as long as I can still keep that choice of cameras working then that will be great.
Cheers....Peter
 
Never shot film in my 37 year career, except for stills. I do however love shooting in the S35 format with real cine glass. Now we're making pictures... Not just recording video.
 
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