blakley Posted April 23, 2007 Share #1 Posted April 23, 2007 Advertisement (gone after registration) This weekend I shot stills for an independent film being produced here in Austin. I used the M8 exclusively, though I took my pink-leather-covered MP and 10 rolls of Portra 400 NC for backup. The M8 is an original copy which has been back to Solms for "the fix"; its firmware is at 1.102 and it has never experienced sudden death, though it did experience lockup once, before its trip back to the homeland - this was fixed by removing and reinserting the battery and no similar incident has occurred since. I carried two batteries, the battery charger and its auto power adapter, two 2GB cards, and a Wolverine portable hard disk/card reader unit. Battery power was not an issue. I shot about 200 pictures each day (rough estimate; I haven't checked the serial numbers), all in DNG, and copied them to the Wolverine in batches. Both days were windy, and one location had a lot of dust. On Sunday it drizzled steadily throughout the day, including during outdoor scenes. Neither dust nor water appeared to impair the performance of the camera. I experienced issues but no failures. I got: zebra stripes. jumping menus. wonky preview (wrong image displayed). wonky review (wrong image displayed, images skipped, right image displayed for a moment followed by wrong image). I shot with filters on all lenses and did not attempt to use auto WB, which I already know is still unreliable. I used four lenses: 50/1.2 Noctilux ASPH; 50/2 Rigid Summicron; 28/2 Summicron ASPH; and 75/2 Summicron ASPH. I used the Rigid Summicron where possible because its focusing tab makes it much easier to focus by feel when following action - during rehearsal I prefocus on locations on the set, remember the tab locations, and then focus quickly as the action develops in the shot. In dark shots I use the Noct for obvious reasons. The really noisy shots earned their noise; I shot some of them (handheld) at 1/4 sec. on ISO 640 at f/1.2. During quiet moments I swapped cards, uploaded images to the Wolverine, and reformatted the card. I kept one battery in the charger and the other in the camera, but this was really not necessary; I could have done each full day on one battery with a single charge. During longer breaks I imported the files into Lightroom, cropped, color corrected, and did a little curve work, and then uploaded them to flickr. The workflow was VERY fast and easy (all photos were tagged, rated, and the selects processed and uploaded within two hours of the end of shooting each day), and produced results I like a lot. More importantly, the cast and crew love the photos. In addition, several of the crew and cast kept saying "I love that camera!". Preview made it easy to review pictures on set and correct small problems with framing during shooting; this is fairly important when you're trying to mimic the Director of Photography's framing. All in all I think the M8 was a good tool for this job, and I'll use it again when the opportunity arises. I would like a firmware version which suppresses the remaining gremlins, and ESPECIALLY fixes AWB. A photo from the shoot appears below; click it to be taken to a slideshow of the rest of the selects on flickr. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted April 23, 2007 Posted April 23, 2007 Hi blakley, Take a look here M8 on a movie set - experience report. I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
mike prevette Posted April 23, 2007 Share #2 Posted April 23, 2007 No sound issues? blimp? You still guys are always buging the shit out of us movie guys on set at least you didn't try to use a flash! Nice job. _mike Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
blakley Posted April 23, 2007 Author Share #3 Posted April 23, 2007 I shot only on scenes with no sound recording, or sometimes during rehearsals for shots which were taken with sound. Needless to say I'd use a blimp if I were shooting live with sound rolling. (And: thanks!) Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wattsy Posted April 23, 2007 Share #4 Posted April 23, 2007 No sound issues? blimp? You still guys are always buging the shit out of us movie guys on set at least you didn't try to use a flash! Good point. I shot stills on a short arthouse film back in January and the director found the unblimped M8 annoying enough (soundwise) that I was even asked if I'd hold off from shooting during the rehearsals. In a quiet environment the M8 has little, if any, sound advantage over an SLR. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
gesper Posted April 23, 2007 Share #5 Posted April 23, 2007 OK, for those of us who have never been fortunate enough to set foot on a movie set, what's a "blimp?" Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wstotler Posted April 23, 2007 Share #6 Posted April 23, 2007 OK, for those of us who have never been fortunate enough to set foot on a movie set, what's a "blimp?" Ditto. Thanks! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wattsy Posted April 23, 2007 Share #7 Posted April 23, 2007 Advertisement (gone after registration) A blimp is a 'soundproofed' housing that the camera goes in. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
nzav Posted April 23, 2007 Share #8 Posted April 23, 2007 OK, for those of us who have never been fortunate enough to set foot on a movie set, what's a "blimp?" It is an insulated bag-like camera case with an opening for the lens and viewfinder that keeps the sound from interfering with the audio prima donnas! Any audio guys out there, back off on the prima donna comment, I earned that priveledge... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
blakley Posted April 23, 2007 Author Share #9 Posted April 23, 2007 The audio for movies has to be really clean. The sound team will usually record ambient noise before starting a scene so they can filter it out in post-production. The sound recording equipment they use picks up things like the buzz from incandescent light bulbs; even an M2's shutter is very loud by comparison - hence the blimp. Blimps are a huge PITA from a handling point of view, so a truly silent digital camera is a good idea on set. But the image quality from the M8, especially in difficult lighting situations, is just so good I'd be reluctant to give up on it. In my case, since I've only done this for movies produced by people I know pretty well, I have pretty good access to rehearsals, cast & crew, and locations - and I always try very hard to earn this insider status by helping out with grip work, setting lights, running errands, and so on. I imagine being a hired stills guy is much harder; if there's any sense at all that you're in the way, it must be very hard to get good shots. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest sirvine Posted April 23, 2007 Share #10 Posted April 23, 2007 Is your flickr stream public? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
nemeng Posted April 23, 2007 Share #11 Posted April 23, 2007 FWIW I used a motorised Leica M6TTL to shoot QTVR panoramas of the Superman Returns movie sets during May-Aug 2005. Luckily there were no sound issues (we only worked between set-ups) but I did cop a lot of good-natured flak from the crew during one shoot when someone noticed I was using a (gasp) film camera. I have some of the panoramas online at 4020 Φ Fullscreen VRs - you need QuickTime in order to view them. It was a fascinating job. When I started everyone was still enthusiastic and polite, but a few months later you couldn't help noticing the crew were wearing out and tempers were short. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
blakley Posted April 23, 2007 Author Share #12 Posted April 23, 2007 Is your flickr stream public? Yes; did you have trouble seeing it? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
blakley Posted April 23, 2007 Author Share #13 Posted April 23, 2007 FWIW I used a motorised Leica M6TTL to shoot QTVR panoramas of the Superman Returns movie sets during May-Aug 2005. ....<snip>.... It was a fascinating job. When I started everyone was still enthusiastic and polite, but a few months later you couldn't help noticing the crew were wearing out and tempers were short. It is a fascinating job, and for crews unimaginably hard. The number of small and large problems which have to be solved on a tight schedule every day is just incredible; it requires tremendous ingenuity and optimism. There's lots of heavy stuff, hot stuff, sharp stuff, and otherwise dangerous stuff that has to be handled all the time. The degree of organization required to get anything to work is profound. The days are long, and the schedule, in my experience, is always optimistic. There's a lot of sitting around doing nothing. And, of course, sometimes there are prima donnas to be dealt with. It's no wonder tempers fray. Your panoramas are spectacular, Andrew. I particularly like being able to see the soundstage rigging in some of them. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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