New UltraPan8 2.8 film "mayday!"

[Nicholas Kovats]

Presenting my Bolex UltraPan8 film of last year's 4th annual Mayday bicycle charity race for the Bicycle Messenger Emergency Fund found at bicyclemessenger.org. This year's Mayday 2014 race and events can be found here, i.e. https://www.facebook.com/events/6493229 ... r=upcoming

https://vimeo.com/92484795

metadata:
camera = Bolex UltraPan8 2.8
camera_re-manufacturing = Jean-Louis Seguin bolextech@gmail.com
lens = 5.9mm Angenieux retrofocus
exposure = T11-T22
frame_rate = 48
film = Kodak Vision3 color negative 200T
film_re-manufacturing = Edward Nowill edwardnowill@gmail.com
lab = Niagara Custom
scan = John Gledhill bitworks.org

[jpolzfuss]

I can summarize my critic with a simple "Wow! That's excellent!"

However I've got a question: Was the sky really grey? Or is this due to the film/transfer? (The shadows look like a sunny day. Hence I would have expected a sky that's more blue...)

[Nicholas Kovats]

Thank you, jpolzfuss. If I remember correctly it was a slightly overcast day. Very bright when the sun was out hence my 48fps frame rate to the increase the shutter speed and T11-22 exposures. Mostly T22.

I can summarize my critic with a simple "Wow! That's excellent!"

However I've got a question: Was the sky really grey? Or is this due to the film/transfer? (The shadows look like a sunny day. Hence I would have expected a sky that's more blue...)

[slashmaster]

LOts of nice bikes. Wonder how many have carbon fiber frames.

[doug]

Nice relaxed atmos captured. The very wide frame seems to help for this, especially showing multitudes of bikes on ground. And I liked the softish lighting and the handheld craning shots.

[Nicholas Kovats]

There were a few. But unlike steel, carbon is susceptible to catastrophic failures. Plus steel is more affordable. Carbon has a higher theft factor.

[Nicholas Kovats]

Thanks, Doug. It was a fun shoot.

Nice relaxed atmos captured. The very wide frame seems to help for this, especially showing multitudes of bikes on ground. And I liked the softish lighting and the handheld craning shots.

[S8 Booster]

very good no doubt but does it justify the mod costs of the cam vs a tweaked/masked 16mm? you are moving into 16mm territory for film making - yes?

shoot 8, anyway.

[Nicholas Kovats]

It has been worth every penny. There are 14 cameras built so far. Masked 16mm is suboptimal. You are wasting film. UP8 doubles the film capacity as there are 80 UP8 frames per foot relative to 40 standard 16mm frames per foot. Half of these 16mm frames would have been masked therefore losing half the information potential.

very good no doubt but does it justify the mod costs of the cam vs a tweaked/masked 16mm? you are moving into 16mm territory for film making - yes?

shoot 8, anyway.

[carllooper]

I think the sky is grey in the same way that every other shade of blue in the film is grey.

Also, if shooting at 48 fps that somewhat defeats the idea of additional film capacity! A neutral density filter would have been a better idea! However shooting 48 fps is still a cool idea. Especially if you can play it back as 48 fps. Or making the work a slow motion work instead. Another thing you can do for a 24fps work is ensure that additional information, otherwise sacrificed, actually gets employed. For example, in After Effects you can employ certain effects that will properly merge two frames into a single one.

C

[Nicholas Kovats]

Carl,

I have been wanting to outsource my color correction for some time. Bitworks maintains the image sequence jpegs are sufficient. Do the jpegs bake in the color space? Would it much more helpful to request TIFFS? Ultimately what is best? Raw 4:4:4? I am itching to nail down this process. Can it be done? Currently 100 ft of UP8 footage (5 minutes@24fps) outputs approximately 7GB+ of footage.

My advice and comparison stands for UP8 footage shoot at 24fps. I shot at 48fps for artistic reasons and also to save my exposure. I was using my huge 5.9mm Angenieux absent any ND filter. It has a huge non-standard front end. My meter was reading T22-32 all afternoon.

[carllooper]

If what we're seeing is the direct results of the transfer then there is potentially some fault in transfer. Do you have an original jpeg? I'll have a look at it.

For final distribution a jpeg sequence is fine. But typically there will be more work to be done following a transfer, so you don't want the immediate results of a transfer locked in to the small bandwidth of a jpeg. However if there's no more work to be done, the jpeg sequence would indeed be just fine.

In film to film printing, the grading for the final print is done prior to the final print (eg. from colour analysis of the negative or a workprint). The results of such grading are then used to program the printer lights that will change in real-time during printing. The final print is like a jpeg sequence. There would be no more work to do other than to screen the film/jpegs.

But in film to digital printing, there tends to be no grading done prior to transfer (other than the application of some house standard). This is because the digital pipeline allows it to be done after the fact. But then this does requires one treat the output from such a transfer as an intermediate rather than a final print - so one will want of such that it have a bit more bandwidth than a jpeg to play with, ie. so one can make corrections or otherwise apply some digital creativity to it. For such an intermediate it doesn't matter how it looks, so long as it captures as much of the original signal as it can, without any 'corrections' made during transfer. It's to be treated as raw data rather than a finished work.

The only other way is to grade the film prior to digital transfer and ensure that the transfer is then done according to such grading.

C

[carllooper]

Re. shooting on a day that is too bright.

The other alternative to shooting at 48 fps, would have been to close the shutter by one stop. It's that little lever sticking out from the Bolex near the front of the camera. Gives exactly the same result as shooting at 48 fps, minus the exposure of all that 'redundant' footage.

However, I think it's cool to shoot 48 fps. I was intending to do that on an upcoming project - the purpose of which was to enhance what would become the completed work otherwise shown at 24fps work. The 'redundant frames' wouldn't be dropped from the work but would be employed: to enhance the frames that were used. While it reduces the number of frames used to that which 16mm uses, it allows the UP8 frame to exploit the full bandwidth of a 16mm frame, while at the same time employing a spherical lens.

C

[James E]

Frickin kewel man! I love the W I D E !

I had to give up the bicycle in my mid 30's due to back injuries. Had a pretty sweet custom fitted Jamis Aragon "crossbike" Having lived in Portland OR for nearly 20 years I just called it an "urban mountain bike".

I took up super 8 after giving up heavy physical fun when my wife said "get a hobby you're driving me crazy". I'd like to do some experiments with SD8/ Max 8 on the gates of my Elmo Super110 and C-300. Are any of your UP8 Bolex's available for rental?
Cheers,

[Nicholas Kovats]

Send me an email James at nkovats@gmail.com.