Digital FX Design | Production | Post

Last week, my daughter took an interest in an old 1950s box camera of mine. She carried it around the house playing with it all day. Eventually, she asked me if I would get some film for it so she could actually take pictures. The camera uses 620 film, and I assumed I couldn’t buy that anymore. Within an hour, my daughter found 620 film online. She’s been taking pictures ever since. Film is not dead, but it’s slowly becoming a bit of a novelty. And, Red’s brand new Epic-M digital motion and still camera isn’t helping film’s cause…

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Not too long ago, most of us got our DVDs in the mail. We opened the envelope, slipped out the DVD and enjoyed two hours of entertainment before slipping it back in the envelope and dropping it the mailbox. Tomorrow, or the next day perhaps, we’d get another movie. It’s a process that is almost as familiar to most of us as microwaving popcorn. Now, many of us stream our movies via Netflix on our televisions, Apple TV or any number of other streaming devices. But the concept of movies delivered to the home is nothing new. In fact, the idea is probably a lot older than you think…

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Earlier this year, the creative team at Digital FX descended upon downtown Baton Rouge. Dragging along our fearless leader, Greg Milneck, and more cameras and lenses than we knew what to do with, we set out to capture what this city was hiding. It was decided that each of us should use a different device to add some variety. We had Leicas, Canons, Holgas, Polaroids. We had film; we had digital. Even a Flip Video camera made it into the mix. From sun up to sun down we sought out local history, schmoozed with locals, and generally did our best to revitalize our artistic sensibilities. Sometimes you just have to ditch the studio or that dark color grading suite and see the light of day…

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If you’ve ever tried to shoot serious video on a Canon 5D, you know its limitations first hand. It’s true, the 5D shoots great video, even professional quality video. But apart from this fact, albeit an important fact, the 5D is not a serious tool for serious professionals for a myriad of reason. Or is it? The new Contineo 5D MKII powered cage from View Factor Studios seeks to remedy the problems associated with 5D productions.

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Operating a facility 1500 miles from either Los Angeles or New York can present challenges. After all, we can’t just run down the road and collimate our lenses or check the back focus on our Red One cameras. We have learned to adapt, and in the process built our own rental facility to supply our own needs for top quality equipment and services. But until recently we were still forced to send our cameras and lenses out to check for proper flange focal depth or back focus issues and lens collimation. Fortunately, some new affordable products have become available that allow us to handle this locally. These optical collimation devices allow us to set the PL mount of a digital cinema camera relative to the sensor. Several months ago Abel CineTech released the IB/E Null Lens for the RED One camera. At the time, the Null was the only option shipping – until now. Optitek has released the Optimator. Optitek claims this new tool improves and expands on the Null concept with greater ease of use and makes all tests “laboratory condition” compliant regardless of location. Accuracy really isn’t an issue here, since both devices are accurate to within 5 microns which is literally splitting hairs.

We just got our hands on the Optimator and our tests have proven very promising.

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