S8 Booster wrote:havent had to much to do with pro8 but i bought a trial package from them and they split and perfed 122m Fuji F500 into 24 carts for me without any problem.
there was an initial communication snag on the fuji bit which was immediately solved by Phil when he took charge. the rest was handled by mr Pesterino? - quick efficient and no problem at all.
Though painful, at least the dialogue between Roger and myself has drawn out some apparently needed good press for Pro8.
S8 Booster wrote:i think this negative film thing has issues often overlooked but "1 time shooters": it introduces so many new variables never needed to take into consideration with K40/reversal and the results may vary a lot despite rather proper treatment.
A great point, and it applies to 1 time shooters of Super 8 in general. I don't rent my cameras to anyone - I prefer being hired as operator at no extra charge - because even some seasoned 35mm shooters can be caught out by a Super 8 camera which may be an unknown quantity to them. Above is extra important if I'm to transfer the final product, because I find running a bunch of black film to be emotionally stressful, and no joke!
I have said on the forum before, I have had dealings with Pro8 and found no problem at all.
Phil Vigeant is utterly obsessed with the Super8 format, indeed I thought I was was obsessed until I met him. On at least 3 occasions he spent over an hour out of his day to chat about the format and film generally. He knew I am only a small time filmaker and will never use vast qualtities, but still found time.
Matt
Birmingham UK. http://www.wells-photography.co.uk
Avatar: Kenneth Moore (left) with producers (centre) discussing forthcoming film to be financed by my grandfather (right) C.1962
I've had two direct experiences with Pro8 which both good. I shot a commercial and dream sequences for a Super-16 feature and both turned out as good as I expected. (There were some camera issues which screwed some of the footage, but that isn't Pro8 problem.)
On the commercial, we just sent the footage in and had a unsupervised transfer. The stuff came back a little grainer than I would have liked, but I think that was a camera issue.) This was in earlier 2000.
On the Super-16 feature I personally supervised the transfer with Phil doing the actual telecine work. We had a nice discussion about Super-8 in general. Phil is passionate about Super-8. I asked lots of questions and he answered them as best he could and occassionally did a soft sell on his products, but he didn't over do it. This was late this summer.
Now, about a year or so back I did see some bad work out of Pro8. It was short by a friend which I had nothing to do with in anyway, but did see the final transfer and got all scoop on the technical aspects. The footage had a jitter which ran across two camera which tended to make me think of bad cartridges. Pro8 blamed the cameras. (By the way, one of the cameras is the one I used on the commercial and 2 years later on the Super-16 feature and the footage was rock steady.)
Do I think Pro8 is overpriced? Yes and I said that to Phil. I said I though if he lowered his prices some (20%-ish) he might well increase his volume of business. Now, maybe he's maxed out, so that doesn't interest him because that increase in business wouldn't cover hiring more people for the workload.
So I would give Pro8 a .666 batting average, but the one miss was a bad miss with lots of bitching and moaning and blaming others like the bat boy instead of saying I screwed up.
I'd give them another go if the right project came up, but I would insist on camera test.
I had a similar experience with Phil 15 years ago. He spent over an hour on the phone with me talking about super8. I was just a film student in Detroit considering shooting a micro budget feature on super8. This was a time before you could easily go on line to find an answer to any question related to filmmaking. I made lots of phone calls in those days and not everyone was as helpful as Phil.
I know that others have had a less favorable experience. That is to bad, paticularly when it's a first impression. Several years ago I called Duart lab in NY and Fotokem in Burbank. Both are great labs. My question was simple. Duart gave me a curt dismissive answer. Fotokem put me on the phone with one of their colorists and we had an informative discourse. I teach cinematography. All of our student films are processed at Fotokem. Fotokem is the lab I use for 16 & 35. First impressions are important.
I agree. Unfortunately, if the first impression is a bad one, the person that got stiffed often makes it a career to repeat their unfortunate experience over and over for years, just to have something "important" to talk about when the subject of that particular company comes up on a forum. When wannabe whiners start repeating second hand information just to be part of the discussion, it can make a few isolated incidents seem like a mega-trend. Again, in the old days before the internet, you could screw people on a regular basis and possibly get away with it because there was really no one to complain to (think "jet pack" plans for sale in the back of Pop Science). But, now, a bad rep usually circulates faster than a good rep on the internet. Any company that continues to thrive faced with that kind of relentless oversite can't be as bad as the minority suggests, even if some legitimate problems still exist.
Is it really necessary to re-centre at all? If the full S8-filmborder is added the centre would move 0.35mm. Actually it is less.
One might also consider moving the filmgate a bit. Just widen (while being at widening) the screwholes a bit sideways and just put the gate in and pull it a bit to the right. Make sure it stays horizontal.
Check using the Baumgarten method, light the gate from the rear and check the wall-projected borders with the viewfinder...
Might be revealing to other needed adjustments.
Anybody got an experience or serious opinion on the original topic response I gave?
Moving the gate would cause issues with the pull down claw. The claw is most often part of an assembly seperate from he gate itself. The larger issue would be the cart. I am not sure of the side to side tolerance. The plastic pressure plate and film channel may not be able to accomodate that slight shift to the gate. It could work. Or it could jam the camera, scratch the film or cause poor registation.
There is so much play in all components. The claw is flexible and is guided by the slit in the filmgate/plate and the plate of the cartrdige still can easily interlock with the camera platenotches. It is only 0.3mm or leven less.
You're not suggesting having the pulldown claw slide against its guide slot are you? That is a prescription for early retirement of that camera. You may think 0.3 mm isn't a lot, but how much metal gets removed when you sharpen a knife? That's what you'll do to that pulldown claw by having it slide against a metal guide slot. I don't recommend it.
r.sk8s wrote:Moving the gate would cause issues with the pull down claw.
Taking the vignetting problem as the most noticeable one, the cleanest solution is choosing a widescreen camera with the biggest front lens element. Vignetting appears with zooming in because the interior lens is pulling back to include the inside front of the focus ring in the frame. Avoid threaded filters etc.
r.sk8s wrote:Has anyone considered VISTAVISION 8 ?
Rob Skates
Extensively in thought experiments. Exposing two frames at once changes everything.
Yes, if the format is to be taken seriously, no, as a low-budget experiment with limited results.
aj wrote:Anybody got an experience or serious opinion on the original topic response I gave?
The other important part is opening up the projector gate, top & bottom. Having less masking in telecine is the goal, more than having extra image on the right side of frame, IMHO. Of course it still shifts...
That i understand in max 8 is how the ability of shoot in 4/3 is saved? It's said in pro8 press release there's a 16:9 framing lines in the viewfinder INSIDE a 4:3 window... I don't understand how is it done if the gate is in 16:9...
Probably similar to 16:9 on 4:3 TVs, black bar on top and on the bottom.
Indeed, bringing the masking and borders in makes centring the lens the least of one's worries. If so much more is in the frame uncontrolled why cann't the centre be off by a fraction?
