reflex wrote:"Film is beautiful... but dead. A dinosuar. DV is very liberating. It's so straightforward to use... and it has autofocus. DV is nowhere near the quality of film. I shoot on a Sony PD-150 and the quality is *terrible*..... and I LOVE it."
- David Lynch
He uses AUTOFOCUS?
Jesus H Christ on a bike.......has the man taken a knock to the head at some point recently?
It will look like that if there are scenes wherein the AF struggles to find focus...back and forth. But hey, he might like that too!
I just happen to find autofocus the single least useful feature ever installed onto cameras.
I can take auto exposure, programmed scenes, anti-shake, even the miriad of LCD screens that adorn some camcorders....but autofocus is just plane and simply awful.
I was bumming around with a digital SLR yesterday, first question to the owner was "how do I turn the ****ing autofocus off?". Fortunately I had some manual lenses to fit the Nikon mount...
Here's a thought. When TV/film makers want a scene to look like it was shot with a consumer camcorder..........why don' they just shoot with a consumer camcorder instead of trying to simulate autofocus hunting, poor white balance and camera shake? Wouldn't it be cheaper?
The government says that by 2010 30% of us will be fat....I am merely a trendsetter
Angus wrote:I was bumming around with a digital SLR yesterday, first question to the owner was "how do I turn the ****ing autofocus off?". Fortunately I had some manual lenses to fit the Nikon mount...
Seconded. My father has gone over to digital - which surprised me, as he was always quite the luddite until he discovered the internet. He was showing me his new digital camera and it took us 15 minutes to find out how to turn off the auto-focus, which was hunting badly on a particular (max zoom) picture.
Recently I discovered my Gran's old reel-film camera in the attic. No autofocus (well, no focus at all!) no auto-metering, absolutely nothing. It's quite a surprise when you compare it to a modern SLR.
I learned on my dad's old Zeiss-Ikon 516-20 (think that is the number) which is a manual 120 rollfilm camera. You need to set focus and aperture and shutter speed manually, there is no automation of any kind - you even need to cock the shutter.
the only reason he's gone digital at the age of 70 is that he's still working and the people who put together his reports don't like having to scan pictures any more. BUT...his work requires very close-up detailed photos of failed furniture and mechanical parts, he still has a bellows camera for that....even a macro lens can't get close enough...
The government says that by 2010 30% of us will be fat....I am merely a trendsetter
I was bumming around with a digital SLR yesterday, first question to the owner was "how do I turn the ****ing autofocus off?". Fortunately I had some manual lenses to fit the Nikon mount...
You should get a Pentax - no need to turn the AF off, you just grab the focus ring and do what you want with it if you need to.
AF isn't suitable for all situations but there are certainly times where it enables you to grab a picture you wouldn't get otherwise.
Evan Kubota wrote:
AF isn't suitable for all situations but there are certainly times where it enables you to grab a picture you wouldn't get otherwise.
We use it on the VX2000 when transferring 35mm slides and negative stocks, but not reversal. The slides always fall slightly differently - we let 'em "set", and then capture.
We also use auto-exp for the negs these days (though not always), as it prevents the blacks from crossing the line, and allows me to use projector lamp intensity solely as a colour temp tweak. Who'da thunk it, I kept saying to my partner, who'da thunk it...not me, that's for sure.
Tell you what - I kinda love it how these threads always seem to go OT...although the 911 thing was a tick much.
it's sometimes worth taking what Lynch says in interviews with a pinch of salt... he's not exactly known for being forthright about all aspects of his filmmaking.
Plus at least admits he is using it because it looks 'bad', makes a change from all the HD-hype...
I'm sure it will be great regardless of the format, and that his use of video will fit the subject matter and be extremely well done despite his talk of autofocus etc.
Maybe Mr. Lynch (and I love his films) forget that this kind of filmaking exist. It´s called DOGMA, the worst invention that the movie making has invented :?
....and more to the point one of the Dogme rules is that the film must be shot on 35mm!!
It has to be released on 35mm, not shot on 35mm. That rule was set into place to ensure that every kid that had access to a camcorder wasn't making movies and trying to pass them off as Dogme films, and so the Dogme judges were not inundated with entries for official certification (a Dogme film had to be certified as such by a board of judges).
Every Dogme film ever made, except for "Mifune" (which was shot on 16mm), was shot on DV.
"...if the idea of shooting film is what truly moves you, then shooting tape is a waste of time." - Mitch Perkins
I can dig on lynch films I just need to be in the right mood for them. On the topic of his films did anyone else see that "Rabbits" series he did on the internet. That was some weird shit!!
I've always suspected that Lynch doesn't really know what he's doing. His success often appears to be a happy accident (or unhappy, as the case may be). But that's probably beside the point: the message here is that brilliant art can be created with unusual tools.
Lynch's willingness to embrace a tool that others laugh at should encourage those of us who love Super 8 film or those who see the value of intercutting ghastly old blurred early 1980s videocam sequences into our productions -- it doesn't matter what the tool is, as long as the final result resonates and fascinates our audience.
