Definition June 2017 - Sampler

LITTLE MERMAID New non-Disney version

APEING THE ANIME Ghost in the Shell goes live

SOUTHERN COMFORT

Comfort TV returns with The Durrells

CAMERA CAPERS

New movement technologies

definitionmagazine.com

June 2017

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BACK TO THE FUTURE 9 vintage lenses you’ll want to use

LIGHTING TECHNIQUES

Defying low budget production

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Bright Publishing Ltd, Bright House, 82 High Street, Sawston, Cambridgeshire CB22 3HJ UK

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SALES MANAGER Krishan Parmar

PRECISION PALETTE: With its roots in anime and manga, Ghost In The Shell required innovative tech.

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Welcome

Something is happening in movie lighting and it’s not just to do with a new generation of lights. DOP Jess Hall, who lit and shot the new live action version of Ghost in the Shell, did his homework on the origins of the story. He studied not just the Japanese manga and the subsequent animes but also ancient art to derive a palette of 28 colours which completed the look of the movie. Nesting in the 28 colours were also shades of a Hong Kong island night with tropical rain casting a skewed lens over the neon of the city.

Just a good DOP doing his job of course, but here’s where Jess started to push the technology to allow for his precision palette. When he wanted to mix and convey his colours, he couldn’t find lighting tech that would enable his vision. He ended up pushing an LA-based lighting company to innovate to give him the six-channel desk needed to convey the subtle colour differences that recalled the 1995 anime which was inspiring the movie.

He was then able to mix his lights in an almost live, theatrical way on-set.

Whatever you think of the movie, you can appreciate the care taken to mix a cinematography medium format with custom-made lenses and a dedicated colour palette recallable as required.

JULIAN MITCHELL EDITOR JUNE 2017 DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM

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NEWS NAB 2017

NAB 2017 was the usual gear feast but for some of the tech the time had come to deliver WORDS JULIAN MITCHELL

he rise of HDR is unprecedented as most people now understand that with it you’re getting something for nothing.

Development has been supersized and it doesn’t seem any time at all since those first Dolby demonstrations where we realised that our pixels just got a whole lot better.

Live HDR was something talked about last year but at the show you could see the demos. On the AJA stand was the new FS-HDR Frame Synchronizer and Converter delivering live HDR and Wide Colour Gamut processing, powered by the Colorfront Engine – although no doubt AJA has the colour knowledge to do it itself.

Sony was showing off its live HDR demo and, of course, not just in 4K – live HD HDR is just as important as a stepping stone to more 4K broadcast.

Technicolor also had a live HDR demo, but this time at the Renaissance Hotel just outside the Las Vegas Convention Center.

The LED revolution in lighting was also again one of the headlines at the show with companies trying to explain that more colour knowledge was needed to take advantage of the new technology. The new LEDs are also democratising the industry with smaller companies like Aputure innovating with its designs to take on the more established brands.

ABOVE Rich Pierceall, CEO of Cineo Lighting with the new $10,000 LED light.

FAR LEFT Sony A7S MkII with Hawk anamorphic.

LEFT Aputure is a lighting company to watch. Strangely it also does microphones.

Most companies were showing new additions to their ranges; those we saw were bigger from Cineo and smaller from Outsight, makers of Creamsource lighting.

Storage products continue to be polarised from the single user to the massive corporate and there is innovation at both ends. We saw a small company with great products called AKiTiO, which is worth checking out as the product care and attention was obvious from our visit. LaCie has always had clever and attractive products and we like its new 2big Dock Thunderbolt 3 product that not only uses Thunderbolt 3 but also gives back to you what the new MacBook Pro took away, for example, SD and CF slots and USB 3.

Quantum, inventor of StorNext

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NAB 2017 NEWS

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THIS YEAR WAS ITS FIRST INCLUSION OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. IN FACT IT’ S SO NEW IT IS STILL UNDER THE SECURITY AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION (SEC) RULING data management, was showing the sixth iteration with its shared, high performance, highly scalable products.

This year was its first inclusion of artificial intelligence. In fact it’s so new it is still under the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) ruling.

New camera announcements were thinner on the ground with most companies making more of what they already have. ARRI was showing its wireless system with the SXT camera.

This is more of a wish list item from the feature film market and ARRI has been planning it for a while, having picked Amimon chipsets to use in its own very ruggedised design. The Amimon system didn’t quite match the spec for such a product. There was news from Sony about Instant HDR, which is a free update for cameras like the FS5. The results were very impressive and Sony claimed, so good that it will take a grading step out of the process. Sony also showed a new version of its box camera with the A7S

II chip inside; this time it has genlock so is perfect for VR rigs.

VR and 360 were ever present, more so on the Canon stand which had its own 360 tent – permanently full. Radiant Images of LA didn’t have a stand but didn’t need to as its rigs were everywhere and there wasn’t a GoPro in sight. The rigs were full of cinematic cameras from RED, Canon and Sony. VR is getting cinematic and that’s great news for everyone. VR is an industry maturing in plain sight, but the content will be the judge of its staying power.

The battle of the good value zooms continues with Canon announcing the 70-200mm lens partner to its already popular 18-80mm. Sigma announced further additions to its new cine range, and talking about lenses, Zeiss celebrated selling 30,000 CP.2 compact primes with the introduction of the CP.3 range.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the show was the Sumo monitor/recorder

ABOVE ARRI showed the wireless version of its SXT camera with an industrialised and ruggedised version of the Amimon chipset.

RIGHT Battery specialist IDX is moving into filters with this new ALPHA I ND filter set. The company promises more in the near future.

LEFT Atomos is disrupting again with a 19in screen that records just like its famous on-camera recorders: The Sumo.

from Atomos. You might think that it’s just another camera-attached product from the company, but you’d be very wrong. The Sumo is all grown up and is a 19in HDR monitor with an Inferno recorder inside it. You can take multicam inputs in so you are remote from the camera channel. The Sumo is great for a DIT station or a director’s station – and many other uses that we haven’t thought of yet. Atomos disrupting again.

Technology that has been introduced and coming soon included a new ND filter set from IDX, known up until now only for its battery technology. Other sets are on their way. We also saw a demo from Technicolor of the new Pulse system, which is initially being used for highly secure VFX pulls for production. A dailies system called Rush is also on its way. Last but not least was the evolution of the virtual set, which has been around for a while. But now with gaming engines powering them, the awkward avatar-like nature is a thing of the past.

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SHOOT STORY GHOST IN THE SHELL

Apeing the Anime The production journey of the live-action version of Ghost in the Shell was never going to be smooth – which piled the pressure on the DOP and VFX vendors WORDS JULIAN MITCHELL PICTURES PARAMOUNT PICTURES

he 2017 Ghost in the Shell liveaction movie was hampered even before it was screened to the public. Outrage hashtags were liberally used to complain about the #whitewashing and the #cultural appropriation by the film’s producers of content that was originated in 1989 in the original Japanese manga comic.

Animes followed the manga and have regularly been screened up until the last one in 2015. But it was the standalone movie of 1995 from which the new live-action movie took its lead, and, to a lesser degree, the TV series of the early noughties.

The 1995 movie was a mixture of traditional cel animation and CGI, and a story pegged to a fictitious New Port City (based on Hong Kong) in around 2029 that flirted with existential questions of what it is to be human in a cybernetic body or shell. Fans of the anime feared that Hollywood would dilute the concept, more Speed Racer than The Matrix. The casting of Scarlett Johansson as Major, the lead character, and not a Japanese native fueled the social media outrage even more. There was also peer pressure from creatives in Hollywood who had already been influenced by

ABOVE Ghost in the

Shell is set in an city based on a fictional version of Hong Kong.

RIGHT Director Rupert Sanders.

the anime, so you wouldn’t blame the production for donning tin helmets as they produced their version.

DOP Jess Hall countered the baying pressure by doing his homework and appropriating in his own respectful way. He studied not just the previous films and graphic novel but researched Japanese art and more particularly the colours and perspectives that he found there. The choice of the ALEXA 65 camera wasn’t just to do with it being the camera of the moment but Jess wanted to match a medium-format’s perspective with the anime’s. “I wanted to atone

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GHOST IN THE SHELL SHOOT STORY

the anime’s aesthetic. The mediumformat by its nature compresses the perspective. Compressed perspective is something that exists in traditional Japanese art and to a certain extent in anime.

“But also with my own taste I was interested in using wide-angles which kind of echo manga’s feel. I’m not talking any kind of exaggerated perspective though, so there’s no keystoning or distortion. The ALEXA 65 format is also perfect for other formats like IMAX, 3D, HDR and standard 2D projection. The perspective that you can get in 1.85

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framing was, as soon as I saw it, the way that I wanted to go.”

DIGITAL – BUT NOT AS YOU KNOW IT Matching the anime aesthetic didn’t stop there as Jess pursued the right optics to resolve his vision. The quality he had in mind obviously had to include the lenses for the ALEXA 65, while the lens choice is widening, it’s still something of a trial and error exercise. Jess sought the help of Panavision lens engineers to make some custom glass, “The lenses were custom made with Dan Sasaki JUNE 2017 DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM

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SHOOT STORY THE DURRELLS

Return of The Durrells Comfort drama The Durrells is back with pressure to provide more drama, with more camera angles, in order to sustain the popularity

eturning for a well-deserved second season, engaging ITV period drama The Durrells reunited director Steve Barron with director of photography (DOP) Sam Renton. The show’s huge success last year set the bar high for the upcoming series, reveals Sam, who was brought in as DOP to lens the first three episodes.

“The quality of the acting, writing and production design on a drama such as The Durrells demands that we try and cover each scene as thoroughly as possible,” explains Sam. “This year’s scripts had expanded: more scenarios and more people involved on every page. Because of this, there was a need and desire from Steve and

ABOVE Sunday

night comfort TV is back, now with extra shots.

myself to get, sometimes in some challenging environments, as much great quality footage as we could.

“On last year’s series we used another small action camera which had all of the inherent constraints those cameras have: fixed lenses, the inability to control depth-of-field and the fact that they were made for sports action, not filmmaking.

“Our goal this time around was to give ourselves an extra cut, or an extra few frames that we wouldn’t have otherwise had access to.

However, the scale has to shift up so much more when you’re putting in a third or a fourth ARRI ALEXA. The infrastructure alone that goes around it is prohibitive.”

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THE DURRELLS SHOOT STORY

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I WAS FORTUNATE ENOUGH TO HAVE A VERY EXPERIENCED TEAM OF GRIPS ON THE DURRELLS Early on in production, the duo experimented with the Micro Cinema Camera to establish how they might get the most from it. “What we got from those early tests were some great shots that were a cut above anything we’d seen from the GoPro, and the rushes matched up almost seamlessly with those from the ALEXA.” “Add to that the fact that we had full control over focal length, we suddenly had a lot more creative freedom, which enabled us to film in a style not too dissimilar to the way we were shooting on the ALEXA. We were able to ND down to the same level as the ALEXA, ensuring depthof-field was continuous.”

SMALL CAMERAS Ultimately, it was expense and the desire for flexibility that led Barron and Renton to the Blackmagic Micro Cinema Camera, which, with the help of Panavision, they built up for use as a third and fourth angle.

“We rigged up the micro cameras with cages and then relied on magic arms and clamps in order to rig them to things such as bikes and cars,” says Sam. “I was fortunate enough to have a very experienced team of grips on The Durrells who could rig just about anything to anything. We would then use an external monitor, which we would clip on to line up a shot, lock the shot and then remove it.”

THIS PAGE The

director’s idea was to conjure up quick, extra shots for the edit. Minicams were the way forward but not the GoPro.

LENS CHOICE Steve Barron tends to prefer shooting wide, according to Sam. “As such we would typically pair up the Micro Cinema Camera with either a 9.5mm Zeiss Distagon or a 5.5mm Optex lens, both of which were supplied by Panavision. We also had access to a 12mm, 16mm and 25mm options.

Working with the 5.5mm, in particular, meant that we were able to get a good match with our widest 35mm format lens.”

Using the Micro Cinema Camera was all about obtaining moments the production team wouldn’t have otherwise got, and putting cameras in places they might not have considered before because of space limitations.

“One example of that is an olive press operated, as they were in the 1930s, by a donkey,” recalls Sam. “We wanted a close-up shot of the grinding wheel crushing olives and the only way to get that was to rig a Micro Cinema Camera off the rotating arm and get a shot down. It was more of a

detail thing, but we couldn’t have put anything else in there.”

There was one aspect of filming during the current series where the Micro Cinema Camera did save the production crew time, recounts Sam – and that was car work.

“I was handheld in the back of our action car shooting a close-up with our ALEXA; however, we didn’t have any time left to rig a second so I grabbed one of the Micro Cinema Cameras. We clamped it to the vehicle and snatched a profile, two shot of the guys in front, for which it would have taken too long to rig another ALEXA. As it was, we did it in five minutes with the help of the Blackmagic Micro Cinema Camera, and we got two shots for the price of one.

“I was a fan of the camera’s natural aesthetic, and the fact that I didn’t have to worry where the material originated from, because of the flexibility and latitude afforded by shooting in RAW,” concludes Sam. “There’s a difference in sensor sizes, but when you consider that it’s only HD, and the camera itself isn’t much bigger than a tennis ball, it stands up very well against the ALEXA.” JUNE 2017 DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM

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GRADE STORY ALIEN: COVENANT

DARK DESTROYER The ninth film in the epic sci-fi franchise, the new Alien: Covenant movie recalls the tone of the first time we met the acid-blooded xenomorphs WORDS JULIAN MITCHELL PICTURES 20TH CENTURY FOX

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ALIEN: COVENANT GRADE STORY

atching an Alien movie makes you wonder why the crew members of the various space craft haven’t. Dark moody planet, corporate agendas and a feeling of dread – the clues are there, c’mon! But we all subscribe to the conceit and eagerly wait (or not) for the horror to unfold.

Stephen Nakamura is a high-end finishing colourist out of Company 3 in LA and has been working with director Ridley Scott and DOP Dariusz (Darek) Wolski for a number of alien encounters. “Ridley has got this ship running so well. Everyone knows what is expected of them so there is no panic just a superb creative environment. He works very hard to achieve that.”

We talked with Stephen as he had just finished the HDR version of the movie, “Darek has just signed off on the HDR, home video and Rec. 709 versions. The IMAX is done so all the deliverables are signed off on.”

We wondered what his brief was this time as most people know what has gone before, “this one’s a little bit different. Prometheus had a definite look and there are some similar looks to this one, but it actually has a little bit of a different feel to it. Especially when the movie starts off, it has a very different look in a new area.

“But generally it’s a lot more desaturated than previous versions and there’s dark texture everywhere.

When you shoot things that are sometimes dark, in a really weird way you can see more; you can actually pay attention to texture more. A lot of the movie is crafted at night, there are things inside of the spacecraft that are dark and only lit by panels so inherently there’s a darker, heavier feel to the whole thing. Of course when you have all of these people in dark outfits in the spacecraft and caves you’re getting that feel – there’s very little of the movie that’s day exterior.

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ABOVE The colour

palette chosen for the film adds to the tension and darkness.

THERE ARE SOME TYPES OF MOVIE WHERE YOU CAN REALLY TELL THAT SOMETHING’S BEEN DONE; THIS ISN’T ONE “This is a particular palette that they picked and it kind of lends itself to that and this palette really helps to tell the story that Ridley and Darek came up with. It’s a lot heavier look than all the other movies that we’ve done. It definitely feels different but it definitely works. There are several scenes where it’s very saturated but it looks great and really helps to add to the tension.”

ABOVE Ridley Scott

and Katherine Waterston.

DANCING IN THE DARK When a colourist approaches such a narrative look like this with so many deliverables to grade, where does he start? They’re driven by the palette but have a responsibility to make it look better. “There is a conceptual idea that they have and then they do their dailies in Rec. 709. They sort of paint a picture of what they want the movie to look like. Certainly when you’re looking at it on a 50in monitor when you’re crafting dailies, as opposed to having the images in a completely dark room on a 30ft screen, the feel is quite different.

“What I don’t want to do is make images that are very heavily manipulated. There are some types of movie where you can really tell that something’s been done; this isn’t

one of those. We just want to live in a world in a certain palette.

“We want you to sit in a theatre and go ‘hey, that’s really interesting’.

We want you to live in that world the whole time. What that means is certain scenes, depending on the costume design and the production design, I have had to pop a little bit more colour in there because it might get too electronic looking.

Sometimes there maybe trees that are too saturated and I’ll have to pull that down; other times we may have scenes where there may be just steel and rock and things like that with no colour. At that point we have to put in more skin tone otherwise the whole shot is looking black and white. It’s like an overall feel shot by shot, scene by scene. Crafting that you live in a certain world, there are some scenes where the production design has a lot of colour everywhere with coloured and neon lights. Other times there are no lights and there’s no colour in the shot. Then we have to put some regular colours back in and it still feels the same. That’s how I approach it, in a shot by shot kind of basis.”

Like most creative collaborations Alien: Covenant started off with a big conversation. Stephen is a big JUNE 2017 DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM

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ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE CANON

UK DOP Neville Kidd has gone from filming Doctor Who for the BBC in Cardiff to shooting the latest episodic for Netflix in Vancouver, using Canon gear all the way ou know that Canon gear has proved its adaptability in the professional video world when it’s used in so many different genres of shooting. In this series we have already seen Canon cameras and lenses in daytime television and in the highest level of natural history shooting, and now we see it in the highest quality drama production world of Netflix streaming.

YOU COULD JUST USE IT ANYWHERE AND IT WOULD MATCH UP WITH THE MAIN CAMERA

IMAGES Canon’s EOS C300 MkII camera was used heavily in the popular Netflix episodic Travelers.

Neville Kidd has always had an eye for Canon. He’s shot a few episodes of Sherlock for the BBC and regularly used a Canon EOS C300 camera to shoot all the difficult to get shots that the main camera wasn’t able to reach. He also often shot with the Canon EOS 5D MkII when he wanted more contrasty shots for effect reasons in the show.

“The EOS C300 was really the next version of the Canon EOS 5D MkII; you could just use it anywhere and it would match up with the main camera with ease, the quality was that good and you’d rather have the shot than not. That’s why we went on to use the new Canon C300 MkII in the new Netflix shows Travelers and now Altered Carbon.”

WHO TO ALTERED CARBON Neville’s star is definitely on the rise as he’s gone from BBC shows like

© NETFLIX

Doctor Who and Sherlock to plying his trade in the bustling film city of Vancouver shooting exclusively for Netflix. It’s the same quality as before but just so much more of it.

Travelers is a 12-episode series about time travellers coming back to an earlier time to change the course of events. Neville’s new show is called Altered Carbon and he is in the middle of a seven-month shoot for the sci-fi themed episodic show. Neville describes the new show as “future film noir”.

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CANON ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE

“We are using one of the largest sensored digital cinematography cameras and before we started shooting we went into a long period of testing which lenses would suit. The camera can shoot 6.5K images which results in a lot of data to deal with; we decided to bring that down to 5K so it would be cheaper to post-produce. We then had a problem with close focus using some lenses, but we looked at the Canon Cinema lenses and realised that they would cover the sensor perfectly and give us the range that we really needed.

“The only problem was we needed XPL lens mounts and the Cine Primes up to now have only been available in Canon EF mount.”

But luckily, and because of their popularity, the excellent 35mm fullframe Canon CN-E Primes will work on just about any PL mount camera with a simple modification that can be returned to factory spec with the OEM Canon EF mount if needed.

“We ended up with two sets of the lenses from the CN-E14mm T3 to the CN-E85mm T1.3. These are great fast lenses which is what you need in these types of episodics – everything has to be quick. We thought about using vintage glass but they are just not fast enough. Now we use the primes for most of the shooting; we do use other character glass but the Canon lenses match up beautifully in the grade.

The Canon glass is a little bit more ‘crunchy’. We were really happy with the performance; we got nice flares out of them and they match the other lenses beautifully. When we saw that we knew we were up and running.

Now they are our go-to lenses.”

TRAVELERS Neville had learned the trick of modifying Canon lenses when he

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WE GOT NICE FLARES OUT OF THEM AND THEY MATCH THE OTHER LENSES © BBC

IMAGES From Sherlock to Travelers to Altered Carbon, DOP Neville Kidd has used Canon glass and cameras throughout.

© BBC

shot the Netflix series Travelers. Again he was using a large-sensor camera but this time he wanted to use the Canon Cine Zooms with it. More modification yielded the same result and again the Canon lenses became the number one shooting lens for the popular episodic series.

“We ended up using lenses like the CN-E30-300mm T2.95-3.7 for the show. This is a really lovely lens and

© NETFLIX

gives us that extra length that the other zooms we would usually use would not.”

But Neville didn’t leave it there as he needed a camera to shoot the car scenes – and there were a lot of them in the series. Remembering his time with the EOS C300, he brought in the new EOS C300 MkII model. This was so he could use his Canon Cine Primes as originally designed with EF mounts and he could shoot 4K. “We tested quite a few of what you could call movie cameras before we decided on the EOS C300 MkII; it creates a beautiful image and beat off some of the major cameras that are designed for episodic work. It was also so good that matching with the main camera was easy – much easier than the other cameras that we tested.”

Neville has even found a place for the Canon EOS 5D MkII in this new series. “One of the characters has a kind of heightened alert status which we used the Canon EOS 5D MkII for.

It’s a very stylised look, shooting very close focus in a rapid stills mode for this desired effect.”

NEVILLE KIDD Cinematographer Neville Kidd has worked on projects ranging from Doctor Who to Netflix episodic shows. He’s won many awards including a Primetime Emmy for his work on Sherlock.

MORE INFORMATION: www.canon.co.uk JUNE 2017 DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM

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GEAR GROUP RETRO LENSES

VINTAGE STOCK

The Gear Group this month is all about looking back to make sense of the present. What we mean is that vintage lenses, like vinyl, is more popular than ever as it’s their age and deficiencies that tame the digital-ness of modern-day cameras. We have a pick of the most popular oldies on the market DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM JUNE 2017

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RETRO LENSES GEAR GROUP

BAUSCH & LOMB CANON K35 SUPER BALTARS HIGH SPEEDS There are some DOPs who love vintage glass like some dog owners love threelegged hounds. They see the glass as something damaged but they love them because of that. They ostensibly want them to ‘ruin’ their digital capture. It’s almost like they are in conflict with themselves. One of these guys is Anthony Dod Mantle. He’s from a family of painters so is more moved more by the look of something than how many pixels he can use to shoot it.

For the movie Rush he used the Super Baltars to counter the digital cinematography. “I love it if I can go out and shoot with as much latitude as possible, control the exposure and take it back into my little harbour of love in the grade. Then it goes to the editing and I get it again and I know what I’ve got and where I can take it. So for me the optimal situation is to get as much latitude as possible and ability to shoot with a resolution I can control, partially with old glass, as I did on Rush, and inferior and damaged glass.”

If you’ve seen the film he obviously used the Super Baltars to enhance the vintage look of the image and recreate the 1970s faded look. A vintage look? Use a vintage lens – it can’t be that simple.

If you think that you’ve heard of the makers before then you’re probably right, Bausch and Lomb used to make contact lenses, glasses and sunglasses but they got out of the cinema lens business in the 1980s when an accountant’s red pen ended their manufacture.

These beautiful 1950’s lenses were used on the likes of Star Wars and again in the first two Godfather films. They have minimal flare and a low contrast, perfect for the vintage look. They give a beautiful and artistic quality to the images hitting the sensor.

A set of these jewels are from a T2.3 20mm up to a weighty T3 152mm.

If there was a list of vintage lenses that people are waiting to use or to be rehoused then the Canon K35s would be on top. But there is a problem. Three lenses in the set have floating elements in them. For the others there is only one element you move backwards and forwards, but on the tricky three you have different elements moving at different rates. They have to be in particular positions at any one time.

Apparently the focus pullers absolutely hated these, especially on the wider focal lengths from ten foot to infinity there was no even spreading of numbers at all.

When you mention the Canon K35s most people will respond with the fact that they were used to shoot James Cameron’s Aliens movie to emphasise the shadows and grittiness. But we like to add the recent BAFTA award-winning drama Doctor Foster, shot with the Panasonic VariCam 35. DOP Jean-Philippe Gossart commented, “I did find the camera a little sharp but that’s something you can find in many of the new 4K cameras. I decided to counter that by using older lenses; the Canon K35 vintage range took away the sharpness but gave something pleasing in terms of skin tone rendition and a soft texture without being overwhelming.”

These high-speed aspherical lenses were Canon’s answer to the Zeiss Superspeeds. Launched in the 1970’s, they were offered with PL mount.

One Stop Films in London have one of the few full sets of K35 lenses that also include the super rare 10mm. “They are a great option for features, commercials or promos; fast and small lenses with a characteristic look and an almost perfect round iris. They’re one of the most popular lens choices recently.” The standard set includes 18, 24, 35, 55 and 85mm.

“We also stock the 25-120mm zoom, a really beautiful lens that alongside an extended set of the primes would make a perfect choice for a feature film or drama.

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CINESCOPE LEICA R If the glass in your lens is good enough then it’s virtually ageless, since it can be rehoused and updated, ready for anything the modern film industry can throw at it. This is exactly the process that Cinescope Optics is carrying out, its marquee product being based around the renowned Leica R Summicron, Elmarit and Summilux families. Long revered by both stills photographers and filmmakers, these lenses have been redesigned and engineered to the highest standards to create a product that is fit to partner the very highest spec cinema cameras.

The first six optics in the range are the Leica R Elmarit 19mm T2.9, Leica R Elmarit 28mm T2.9, Leica R Summicron 35mm T2.1, Leica R Summicron 50mm T2.1, Leica R Summicron 90mm T2.1 and Leica R Elmarit 135mm T2.9.

Five further lenses are also available to order: the Leica R Summilux 35mm T1.5, Leica R Summilux 50mm T1.5, Leica R Elmarit Macro 60mm T2.9, Leica R Summilux 80mm T1.5 and Leica R Elmarit Macro 100mm T2.9.

To create a product that’s truly up to the requirements of even the most discerning professional, Cinescope Optics turned to the world-renowned lens designing and engineering specialist True Lens Services (TLS). They then used all their considerable expertise to refashion the vintage products they had to work with into state-of-the-art lenses for today’s digital age. The result is a cinematic look that’s steeped in timeless character, partnered with a product that is really easy to work with and also bang up to date in every way.

Cinescope are reporting brisk business with these rare rehoused gems so there is a four-week waiting list. Although Cinescope Optics stresses that this timescale might be subject to fluctuations created by demand. We should be reviewing these lenses in our next issue.

MAY 2017 DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM

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CANON 18-80MM T4.4 REVIEW

At NAB this Canon 18-80mm servo zoom has been joined by a 70-200mm at a similar price. We look at the wider end WORDS ADAM GARSTONE ith hindsight, it is surprising that Canon’s EF lens mount didn’t get used in moving image cameras earlier. Its mechanical strength, wide throat, and data connectivity are, arguably, second only to ARRI’s PL. The flange to focal plane distance is large – due to the clearance required for a flip-up mirror – which causes some limitations, but this was easily offset by the unequalled range of comparatively cheap stills lenses available for the mount.

Those stills lenses aren’t great for movies though, so Canon – and others – have been busy designing new ranges of EF mount lenses specifically for cinema and TV. Canon’s new 18-80mm T4.4 zoom, designed to cover S35 sensors, is just such a lens. It has pretty much everything – Canon’s top of the range ‘L’ specification optics, servo zoom (with an optional rocker handgrip), autofocus, autoiris, and Canon’s excellent optical image stabilisation.

Only that T4.4 maximum aperture

BELOW The Canon

18-80mm T4.4 lens comes at a breakthrough price and adds to the current super value zooms to hit the market.

51

might worry some people – and its manual focus ring, on which more later.

The 18-80mm is squarely targeted at the single operator, ENG style market, especially with the optional zoom rocker handgrip.

The lens is built to Canon’s usual, exquisite standards, with a tough, alloy body, weather seals and an attractive red mount. The lens comes with a bayonet lens hood (with locking thumbscrew).

At the front of the lens, the focus ring has both a rubberised grip for manual focussing and a 0.8M followfocus gear. Unfortunately, in order to facilitate its fast autofocus, Canon have made this focus ring the ‘endless encoder’ type, which I can see really bugging the manually focus minded operator. It also has a rather short throw for a follow focus, at 130˚. The zoom and iris drive gears are 0.5M, with 90˚ travel – the iris shuts fully.

The zoom servo has a conventional servo/manual switch on the left underside of the lens, and a pair of zoom buttons on the right – its speed set by a tiny dial next to the servo/manual switch. However, I can’t imagine anyone using this lens without the handgrip, which attaches securely to a rosette on the right of the lens and is cabled to the lens remote

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REVIEW CANON 18-80MM T4.4

port. The handgrip is comfortable and gives good control of the lens and camera balance on the shoulder. The zoom rocker is accurate and sensitive.

There is a one-shot autofocus button, as well as the expected run/stop button under the thumb.

At the rear of the lens are autofocus, autoiris and optical image stabilisation switches which will be familiar to anyone with a Canon stills lens. There are three modes of stabilisation: ‘A’ is standard mode, suitable for normal handheld operation. ‘B’ increases the stabilisation, at the expense of some inaccuracies (ie. wobbles) at the end of a pan, and ‘C’ is a minimal mode, for shooting on a tripod (presumably, a rather poor tripod that still needs stabilisation).

Under a small rubber cover are a couple of screws (lock and adjust) for back focus adjustment – I was able to tweak the back focus for Blackmagic’s URSA Mini Pro with no issues. As an aside, the lens would seem perfectly suited to the URSA Mini Pro, except that – at the time of writing – it wasn’t possible to control focus or iris from the camera, though all data was read from the lens correctly. That’s likely to need a firmware update from Blackmagic.

On the Canon EOS C300 MkII however, the lens performed superbly.

The fast and virtually silent motors in the lens match perfectly with Canon’s astonishingly good autofocus technology. I tried a couple of those tricky ‘presenter walking towards you

OPTICALLY THE 18-80MM DOESN’T DISAPPOINT. RESOLUTION IS VERY GOOD

as you walk backwards’ shots, with the aperture wide open, and focus never wavered from the presenter’s eyes. Autoiris is equally fast, adjusting from bright exterior sunlight to interior gloom so naturally that it was hard to detect the transition.

Optically, the 18-80mm doesn’t disappoint. Resolution is very good throughout the zoom range and across the frame – though like almost all lenses the corners are rather less sharp than the centre at all apertures.

The 18-80mm doesn’t quite reach the astonishing resolution we measured with Sigma’s 50-100mm, but it has a much larger zoom range – it’s very similar to the best Canon ‘L’ stills zooms, like the popular 24-70mm

ABOVE The lens’s

handgrip offers good control and camera balance on the shoulder.

BELOW We can’t

imagine anyone using the lens without the optional handgrip.

f/2.8. Resolution rises from T4.4 to just over T8, before physics raises its ugly head, with diffraction effects limiting the MTF over T11.

At 18mm there is about 3.3% barrel distortion, swapping to just under 1.5% pincushion at 80mm. Similarly, there is a little chromatic aberration but it is very well controlled, never rising above 1.25 pixels.

There is a little focus breathing at the short end of the zoom range, but at 80mm it’s virtually undetectable, and the lens seems to be truly parfocal, maintaining focus throughout the zoom range (once you’ve tweaked that back focus, of course).

With the amount of glass in a modern zoom lens, it’s perhaps not surprising that you can provoke a lot of flare throughout the zoom range.

At 18mm veiling flare wasn’t as bad as at 80mm, and the flare artefacts are reasonably attractive, if you are doing it on purpose! The flare was no worse than other lenses in the class, however, and the word here is ‘provoke’ – shine a torch down the barrel and you’ll see flare, but in most normal shooting scenarios it can be avoided.

There is a nine bladed iris for those tasty out of focus highlights.

The Canon CN-E18-80mm T4.4 L IS KAS S (phew, that’s a mouthful) has a street price of just over £3900 plus VAT, with the optional zoom grip coming in at £357.50 plus VAT. The 18-80mm zoom range is perfect for documentary/ENG style shooting on a camera with an S35 sensor, and it makes a great pairing with Canon’s own EOS C300 MkII (and, no doubt, the C700).

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4K CAMERA LISTINGS

IN ASSOCIATION WITH

DEFINITION’S 4K CAMERA LISTING As the professional video world moves towards 4K production and UHD broadcast we have the camera reference listing you need

The original URSA Mini is a fantastic camera, but the Mini Pro is Blackmagic’s first, real, professional camera that is true, no compromise competition for the Sonys, Panasonics and Canons that are the staple tools of the owner-operator cameraperson. Ignore it at your peril.

SPECIFICATION

BLACKMAGIC DESIGN URSA MINI PRO 60FPS in 4.6K

15 STOPS

EF MOUNT

PL MOUNT

DIFFERENT MOUNTS: EF

B4 MOUNT

The control connector for broadcast lenses has been added, meaning that the new Canon EF mount broadcast lenses will fit too.

4608x2592

SENSOR – FORMAT AND SIZE

25.34x14.25mm (Super35)

FRAME RATES

23.98, 24, 25, 29.97, 30, 50, 59.94 and 60 fps supported. Off-speed frame rates up to 60p in 4.6K, 120p in 2K windowed

LATITUDE (STOPS)

15

LENS MOUNT

EF (Interchangeable with PL and B4 mount)

DIGITAL SAMPLING

4608x2592, 4608x1920 (4.6K 2.40:1), 4096x2304 (4K 16:9), 4096x2160 (4K DCI), 3840x2160 (Ultra HD), 3072x2560 (3K Anamorphic), 2048x1152 (2K 16:9), 2048x1080 (2K DCI), 1920x1080

CFAST

PL

Interchangeable lens mounts let you buy a camera with Canon’s EF mount and then swap to a PL mount, or B4, or soon a Nikon F mount.

B4

The mounts are very inexpensive. With the shim kit you can shim out any of the mounts to correct those back focus issues.

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4K CAMERA LISTINGS

IN ASSOCIATION WITH

BLACKMAGIC DESIGN URSA MINI 60FPS

15 STOPS

PL/EF MOUNT 4608x2592

BLACKMAGIC DESIGN MICRO STUDIO

CFAST

60FPS

A lightweight miniaturised version of URSA but with the new 4.6K Super 35mm image sensor as an option. URSA Mini shoots up to 60 frames-per-second, has a bright fiveinch fold-out viewfinder, dual Raw and ProRes recorders.

SPECIFICATION

11 STOPS

MFT MOUNT

3840x2160

The Blackmagic Micro Studio Camera 4K is a tiny Ultra HD resolution camera that can be used in HD and Ultra HD video formats. Blackmagic Micro Studio Camera 4K includes 6G-SDI connections, built-in colour corrector, talkback, tally indicator and PTZ control.

SPECIFICATION

SENSOR – FORMAT AND SIZE

25.34x14.25mm – 4.6K, 22x11.88mm – 4K

SENSOR – FORMAT AND SIZE

Single CMOS, 13.056mmx7.344mm

FRAME RATES

23.98, 24, 25, 29.97, 30, 50, 59.94 and 60fps supported

FRAME RATES

HD 1080p23.98, 24, 25, 29.97, 30, 50, 59.94, 60 Ultra HD 2160p23.98, 24, 25, 29.97, 30

LATITUDE (STOPS)

15

LATITUDE (STOPS)

11

LENS MOUNT

PL/EF

LENS MOUNT

Active Micro Four Thirds (B4 lens control output)

DIGITAL SAMPLING

Lossless CinemaDNG RAW, 3:1 and 4:1

DIGITAL SAMPLING

3840x2160, 1920x1080

RECORDED BIT DEPTH FORMAT

CinemaDNG RAW 3:1 – 180MB/s CinemaDNG RAW 4:1 – 135MB/s

RECORDED BIT DEPTH FORMAT

Built-in colour corrector, talkback, tally indicator, PTZ control output, built-in microphones, backup battery

WEIGHT (KG)

2.3

WEIGHT (KG)

2

BLACKMAGIC DESIGN CINEMA 4K 30FPS

12 STOPS

PL MOUNT

4000x2160

CFAST/SSD

Ultra-compact 4K digital film camera with Super 35mmsized sensor and global shutter, PL lens mount, 12 stops of dynamic range, Raw and ProRes SSD recorder.

SPECIFICATION

60FPS

11 STOPS

MFT MOUNT

3840x2160

Another live UHD broadcast camera but with a ten-inch viewfinder, Micro Four Thirds lens mount and four-hour battery pack. Switchable between HD and UHD.

SPECIFICATION

SENSOR – FORMAT AND SIZE

Single CMOS Super 35mm, 22x11.88mm

FRAME RATES

4K Raw at 4000x2160p 23.98, 24, 25, 29.97, 30 Ultra HD 2160p23.98, 24, 25, 29.97, 30

DIGITAL SAMPLING

BLACKMAGIC DESIGN STUDIO 4K

CinemaDNG RAW – 265MB/s 3840x2160

BLACKMAGIC DESIGN URSA 60FPS

15 STOPS

PL/EF MOUNT

4608x2592

CFAST

Now with the new sensor option that it desperately needed. This is a big camera with an even bigger monitor. Our advice is to upgrade to the new 4.6K sensor.

SPECIFICATION

SENSOR – FORMAT AND SIZE

Single CMOS, 12.48x7.02mm

FRAME RATES

Ultra HD 2160p23.98, 24, 25, 29.97, 30

DIGITAL SAMPLING

No on-board recording SDI video output. HD/UHD switch 1x 6G-SDI 10-bit 4:2:2 via DIN 1.0/2.3 connector

SENSOR – FORMAT AND SIZE

25.34x14.25mm – 4.6K 22x11.88mm – 4K

FRAME RATES

23.98, 24, 25, 29.97, 30, 50, 59.94 and 60fps supported

DIGITAL SAMPLING

CinemaDNG RAW 3:1 – 180MB/s CinemaDNG RAW 4:1 – 135MB/s

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