Budget-stretching tips for filmmaking, animation, motion graphics & visual effects - Make/Time/Move - Inexpensive techniques & practical insight for filmmakers & animators.

A simple little hair/makeup kit for no-budget filmmakers… a crucial weapon against Murphy’s Law

Imagine this scenario: you and your minimal crew of two or three people meet up at 9am on a Saturday for a guerrilla shoot at a slightly out-of-the-way distinct location… a ravine with a great vista, a creepy old barn, a horse stable, a honky tonk diner on top of an erupting volcano, whatever.

You have coffee & food for your people, and all the gear you need, so you’re good to go. Then an actor shows up with beard stubble, even though in the scene before and after this one (that you shot last weekend) he’s clean shaven. And you’re a fifteen minute drive from his house. Which means at least forty minutes to send him back to shave. Not to mention that he’ll hate doing it, because he probably already hates being there at 9am on a Saturday. And he’ll probably mutter some comment about not having enough gas to get to work after the shoot. Basically what I’m trying to say is that your actor hates you 14% more now.

This will happen to you. I’m not putting a voodoo curse on you. Because I don’t need to. Because it naturally will just happen to you.

Maybe you’re thinking “my actor is awesome and would never show up unshaven!” Well, what about your friend Jason who has a small part making snarky remarks while helping him carry a dead body to the car before being melted by alien lasers? Jason is usually hungover before 1pm and hence totally like forgot to shave this morning.

So, be readyz for dat. Go to Walgreens or whatever and grab a few things for a simple, minimal hair/makeup kit. I figured this out so early on that I had completely forgotten about it… I just happen to come across mine as I was cleaning my workshop. And now this little blog post is born… ah, the miracle of life.

So here’s what I would recommend you have in your lil’ kit…

1. A bag of cheap disposable razors.

2. Shaving cream.

3. A hairbrush.

4. The strongest hair gel they gots. Satan loves being a stubborn rear cowlick incarnate. Because ruining your film is a top priority for him, duh.

5. Good quality, name-brand absorbant paper towels. In remote locations, they can hold water like a sponge for when washing hands etc. … in a way that’s much less wasteful than pouring it out of a bottle. In school I once actually ran out of drinking water on a remote shoot because we had to use water bottles as wannabe faucets to clean stuff. Also bring a bone-dry oil-sucking soap like Neutrogena for getting all the potato chip grease off your hands before touching gear again.

6. A few dryer sheets in a ziplock bag. This can help if a piece of costume or wardrobe smells unpleasant and bothers an actor. If actor A had a scene with a chain smoking character a few days ago and now their jacket wreaks of Joe Camel, you can rub a dryer sheet all over it (not joking) after first shaking it out. Dryer sheets are also helpful if you have stale-smelling, “dry clean only” thrift store wardrobe that you can’t afford to dry clean.

Okay I need to preface the next part by saying I don’t know anything about makeup, so keep that in mind. Luckily, I have pro makeup artists for shoots nowadays, but these suggestions worked for me back in my no-budget days…

7 a. Baby powder. If an actor gets hecka shiny, you can put a little on a paper towel and dab away (if the paper towel alone doesn’t do the trick). It’s not exactly the best way to handle this, but for no-budgeters, it gets the job done. There’s probably better powder options at Walgreens in the makeup section, but I have no idea what they are. But worst case scenario, if you’re shooting in the middle of nowhere and your only nearby shopping option is a gas station, baby powder can work.

7 b. Kryolan Colorless Anti-Shine Powder. This is a more effective and more professional alternative to baby powder. If you’re gonna be shooting a lot in hot, humid environments, or for long hours under hot lights, I’d recommend you buy some.

8. Powder puffs. These work better than a paper towel for powder. If you know you’re gonna need to powder actors, get some, they’re cheap.

How did this article end up being like twenty paragraphs, when it should’ve been like three sentences? Anyways, I hope that somehow helps someone.

Sharpening your footage in post — in a non-crummy way

This one’s quick and easy, and there’s a good chance you already know this if you’re a seasoned post professional. But I see poorly sharpened footage all the time, so it must not be totes common knowledge.

Maybe your old no-name lenses are a little soft, or your exterior establishing shot needs to look a little more detailed, or you’re matching different lenses, whatevs. Do dis:

Don’t use Sharpen. That’s like a race car driver using an automatic transmission.
Use Unsharp Mask.
Right off the bat, set it to 100% Amount, and 0.3 Radius.
If that doesn’t do the trick, then try upping Amount to 200% at the most, or Radius to 0.5 maximum. But generally, going beyond that will cause negative byproducts.
Lastly, adjust Threshold as needed… for video there are many factors involved in deciding whether to set it high or low (types of skin, lighting, how much geometric stuff is in a shot, how noisy your footage is, etc), so really just slide it around and eyeball it to taste.

So there ya go… Unsharp Mask, 100% / 0.3, or adjust to taste within ranges 50-200% / 0.3-0.5. And generally, this applies to still photos as well. The settings should be pretty universal whether you’re doing it in Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, After Effects, Sony Vegas, or whatever else.

Before & after color grading comparison of flat scanned 35mm on the Outpost DVD

The British independent low-budget (£200,000 according to wikipedia) feature Outpost directed by Steve Barker achieved something pretty extraordinary– it rose above the endless flood of made-for-straight-to-DVD movies that belong to what I call the “post-Alien subgenre” (a group of soldiers/technicians who don’t like each other are stuck somewhere isolated/dark/claustrophobic, waiting it out for a specified amount of time until rescue/safety, while being killed off one by one by a mysterious & obscured creature/entity)… by being bought up by Sony and given a limited theatrical release in the UK.

Ok cool story, brodawg. Yeah so on the DVD there are deleted scenes that appear to be from an assemblage edit of the flat transfer film scan footage. Which means you can directly compare that to the look of the color graded final feature, if you’re into that kinda thing. It was shot on (Fuji) 35mm, so the flat transfer holds 13-14 stops of dynamic range (good prosumer video cameras and DSLR/DSLRish cameras hold 7-10 usable stops). The color grade’s bleach bypass/ENRish look is kinda par for the course considering the genre, but it’s definitely well crafted. And if you wear an eye patch, have a parrot on your shoulder, and use the word “booty” in a non-hiphop way, you can even rip the deleted scenes and try mimicking the final result… which would be pretty useful for anyone who’s learning to color grade. BUT THAT WOULD BE ILLEGALZ.

Here be the Outpost DVD on Amazon.

Efficient footage filenames when using an external recorder

If you haven’t noticed, most of the tidbits I put on this here blawg are born-ed of my trial & error, my woeful miseries, and my occasional tiny logistical victories over the ruthless gremlins of Murphy’s Law. Wait, that makes it sound like this article is going to be a lot more exciting than it actually will be — you’re all “dayumm this gonna have gremlins an’ stuff in it, like some Ghostbusters 3 shii ri here.”

Nope, boring. Just filename suggestions for recording footage to an external recorder like a Sound Devices PIX 240i.

Recently I was DP on a feature, shot on a Sony F3 with one. I assume other external recorders allow for flexible filenaming with automated take number advancement, just like the PIX 240i does — which is great. Because of this, I recommended to the producers that we shoot without slating. It can save significant time on a production, especially one like ours where we had a language barrier, chaotic locations, and a tight schedule… along with all the other factors of a low budget production.

So here’s the formula I recommend for the filename structure:
(project acronym)_(scene number)_(date)__(take number)

If your film’s called “The Buried Dirtball“, you’re shooting scene #26 on July 10th, and it’s the fifth take, then itsa gunna looka lika thissa:
bd_s026_07.10__005.mov

Though there’s one caveat… I don’t have a 240i in front of me, so I’m not 100% certain you can get all that stuff into the filename. But as I recall, you can manipulate the naming pretty heavily.
Including the date may seem cumbersome and maybe even unnecessary at first, but to me it is now essential. We didn’t use it when shooting the aforementioned feature, and that’s exactly how I learned that we should have. You may end up shooting shots from a particular scene many days apart from one another, so trying to figure out what the last numbered take was for that scene can be time consuming, if even possible at all when on location. But you probably can remember if it was earlier that day. So anyways, this can help prevent you from having shots with the same filename, which can be disastrous if one file happens to overwrite the other when placed into the same folder.

Note the three digit numeral for the scene & take numbers. That’s so if you put all your .mov files into the same folder, they’ll stack in proper order, making it easy for you to find stuffz.

Also, don’t use spaces instead of underscores… yes, I know it’s not 1997 anymore, but if for some reason the spaces cause some kind of problem for like your sound designer or colorist, then you’ll get to send a text message to yourself with nothing but a saddyface emoticon in it. Also, I’ll get to laugh loudly in your face. And I’ll probably make sure I eat something stinky immediately before. Like dog feces. That’ll teach you a lesson. Haha, in your face, bro. Jaykay, that’s just simulated schadenfreude– I would probably send you an upbeat, encouraging emoji to make you feel better, like that iPhone one of the twins in cat suits dancing.

The extra underscore before the take number is just there to visually scan better.

Also, you can use s000 (scene #0) for random unassigned stuff like 2nd unit exteriors, etc. I prefer this over other methods since those shots will all be easy to find in one place.

If you have a script supervisor on set, they can notate the “o’clock” time for shot numbers if you’re not slating (ie. shot3A was shot 2:16 – 2:38pm), and the assistant editor can then check the “date created” and rename the clips in the editing software, or just organize them into folders if you don’t need to go that hard.

Yeah, so anyways, based on my experiences on productions big and small, this format should work as a catch-all, with minimal time, energy, or headache during shooting and post. You can add more stuff to the filenames I guess, but going into the recorder’s interface to add shot numbers can be a slow and confusing hassle, especially if you’re not a fully crewed production with a dedicated script supervisor and 2nd AC. I would recommend the sorting of footage by shot be done in editing software, where it’s pretty simple & painless.

Using Super 16 lenses on the Blackmagic Cinema Camera: It works for a 1080 HD crop

There are Super 16 lenses that have been sitting around collecting dust for the last 5-10 years, and you can usually scoop some up at bargain prices. That’s because, aside from a minority of Red users, no one’s been using them, due to HD sucking all the wind from its sails like some sort of gigantic cloud vampire. No, I’m not drunk. Yeah so anyways, that all might change now that the Blackmagic Cinema Camera is starting to ship in quantity.

SUPER 16 ZOOM LENSES

The BMCC sensor size is a good chunk bigger than Super 16 (abbreviated “s16” from now on… I’m too lazy to type it out the bazillion more times I’ll need to reference it). But it’s close enough that some s16 zoom lenses will cover the sensor at the higher end of their focal length ranges, probably half to three-fourths of its zoom range, depending on the particular lens. That’s because the image circle of a zoom must be big enough to fill a format’s picture area when at its shortest focal length, ie. zoomed all the way out. And then by principle of a zoom lens, that image circle will get larger as you zoom in. As that image circle gets larger, it can hence fill a larger picture area/sensor. Here is a diagram featuring completely random and arbitrary imagery:

But here’s one thing to keep in mind: some still photography zoom lenses maintain their small image circle due to their particular design, so the same may apply to some s16 zooms as well.

***A LIL’ UPDATE***

Cinematographer John Brawley

The results don’t look too great for full BMCC sensor coverage. The Angenieux maintains a small image circle, and the Canons show noticeable chromatic aberration outside the s16 picture area, even when they cover the sensor. You can see all the DNGs via his dropbox link in this Blackmagic Forum thread.

A few paragraphs down, I’ve added examples of how these lenses can work for the BMCC via a 1080 center extract.
***

SUPER 16 PRIME LENSES

I have no idea if they’ll fill the BMCC sensor. Do long focal length primes have larger image circles than their short focal length counterparts? Maybe. Image circle sizes vary from manufacturer to manufacturer, and product line to product line. So the only way to know is to test that specific lens.

HOW TO USE ANY AND ALL SUPER 16 LENSES ON THE BMCC

This might be a big deal for some people. And it’s so simple: just crop into the 1920 x 1080 center pixels of the 2432 x 1366 frame of BMCC footage. Actually, you’ll only have to do that for footage that needs it. Like I mentioned earlier, some lenses will cover the whole sensor. But as a boilerplate, unilateral policy, it’ll work for all s16 lenses, regardless of focal length. Here’s why…

You can click here or on the picture to see a full res version of this BMCC 2432 x 1366 frame diagram. Notice how the Super 16mm picture area is just big enough to cover the extracted 1920 x 1080 HD frame from the full BMCC frame? Boom, there ya go. So it’s all good with using s16 lenses.

***UPDATE***

this Blackmagic Forum thread

John Brawley

***

I haven’t tested this myself because I’ve yet to get my filthy hands on a BMCC, but numbers don’t lie. There are a few things to keep in mind if you choose to do a 1080 center extract:

You’ll have to shoot in 2.5K RAW mode. Obviously the downsampled 1920 x 1080 ProRes or DNxHD modes won’t work for this.
You’ll need to mark the 1920 x 1080 center on your viewfinder. This is actually not that big of a deal. You just get some clear touch screen protective cover, and then make your markings via trial and error… ie. set up a tripod & chart/whatever, import footage & perform the extract, then mark the cover. I do this exact process for certain kinds of VFX shots all the time, it’s easy.
You’ll have to do the 1080 center extract in post, but it’s hecka easy. Do I even really need to explain this? I will, just in case. In whatever software, make your timeline/composition/whatever 1920 x 1080. Set your BMCC footage to be at 100% scale/size, that way it’s only showing the center. If a particular shot doesn’t need the 1080 extract, then change its scale/size to 79%.
It’s obviously not going to look as good as the full sensor 2400 x 1350 image that’s been scaled down to 1920 x 1080, because of Bayer filtering mumbo jumbo that you can google. Whether or not the optical resolution is good enough is up to you… but if your basis of comparison is a DSLR/DSLM, then it likely will. From the samples I’ve seen, a 1080 center extraction looks pretty great. And if you do see de-Bayer artifacts, try extracting from a slightly larger area than 1920 x 1080 if your lens’ image circle allows for it.

If you’re thinking it’s just weird and strange to capture image areas that are going to be discarded or unseen by the viewing audience, just keep in mind that it’s standard procedure with most non-anamorphic lensed 35mm shooting formats. Also, cropping in to 1080 on the BMCC is very similar, in principle, to the crop resolution modes of the Red cameras. Plus, really, your work is 99% likely to ultimately be seen in 1080 HD anyway. Is the 1080 center extraction worth all the extra work? Probably only if you just really wanna shoot on a fast cine zoom that’s affordable.

Also, if you’re content with shooting for a 720 HD finish, you can use standard 16mm format lenses… by cropping to 1578 x 888 and then downscaling to 1280 x 720.

The simplest way to add production value to your film: Avoid white walls & wardrobe

To me there’s four explicit things that differentiate professional films from their student/amateur counterparts (other than marketing budgets, ha)…

Sophisticated lighting
Extensive foley
A lack of white-walled interiors
A lack of white wardrobe

Numbers 1 & 2 usually cost some mucho money. But 3 & 4 don’t, so you should totally jump all up on those for your projects.

Go to the Apple trailers page and watch a bunch of ’em. Count how many times you see white-walled interiors versus color ones. Usually the more fantastic & stylish the film, the darker the color of the walls… and even with “realistic” films, the walls that “feel” like they’re white are actually light gray or beige or light blue. That’s because professionals know to avoid putting white on-camera, because it limits your lighting options since you’d have to walk on proverbial eggshells in order to not have it blow out overexposed. And that’s working with film and its 13-14 stops of dynamic range, as opposed to your (assumed) DSLR/DSLM/video camera’s 7-10 usable stops. Which means you should be extra concerned about avoiding white walls.

So you can either choose locations with that in mind, or you can score extra go-getter points by painting your location’s walls. House paint is pretty cheap, especially considering the visual difference it makes for your film. If just hearing the concept of spending a day laboring away to make your bedroom’s walls mauve or pistachio sounds like absolute insanity to you, then –REALTALK– you may not be cut out to be a filmmaker. No-budget filmmaking is 60% moving heavy objects. Wait, unless you have a big trust fund… then just hire someone else to do it and soldier on.

Yeah so anyways, get those white walls out of your film and it’ll not only look better, it’ll convey the mood/tone better (omg the scary room’s walls are bLoOoOood rEd), and will give you more lighting options without fear of blowing out the walls to yucky clipped white. The lighting thing is especially true if you have limited light modifying gear, which is probably your case. Unless the aforementioned trust fund thing applies.

And needless to say, that stuff applies, like, tenfold to white wardrobe. Because limiting how contrasty or varied you can light your actors is like shooting yourself in the foot. This is something that I’ve seen occur in a lot of student and amateur films. What’s most hand-to-forehead inducing about it is how easily avoidable it is. So don’t put your actors in white clothes in like direct sunlight, unless they’re supposed to be visiting from the afterlife. As with walls, “white” wardrobe in professional films are usually actually a little darker. Often a preexisting piece of white wardrobe will be lightly dyed, though I have no direct experience in that, so I can’t offer any advice or suggestions on doing it yourself.

Checkity these details from the last of the above framegrabs. Note that the towel on Sally Field’s shoulder is blown out white, with the same RGB values as the blown out practical light units.

That means a white dish towel will blow out on a $230 million superhero studio film shot on Red Epic… so a white dress shirt will likely do the same on your project shot on a DSLR. I assume that since it was a minor prop, they didn’t bother to dye it, or maybe they didn’t realize it was going to sit on her shoulder or whatevs. But there’s no way they’d have a piece of wardrobe doing that.

Also worth noting is that some folks feel the same way about using pure black wardrobe, which can appear on-camera as pure formless black in some lighting situations. Though this is less perceptually disrupting than a blown-out white shirt, in my opinion.

I’ve shot projects where white walls and shirts were beyond my decision-making control, and I had to work around them. All of those projects would’ve turned out better-looking had the white been replaced with something else.

Best starter filmmaker lenses for mirrorless cameras: Nikon IX rises from the grave

Listen up, I feel like this is kinda a big deal. So you’re dirt poor. Or a student. Or a dirt poor student. Or a dirt student (agriculture major). And you wanna put an earnest effort into seeing if you can cut it as a filmmaker. So you buy a mirrorless camera that shoots video, and you go the ultra-frugal route and get only the body without kit lens.

So here’s what ya do about lenses: get on the ol’ eBayz and search for “nikon ix”.

These lil’ dudes are dead lenses. We’re talkin’ in a sealed coffin dressed in their mom’s favorite outfits. They deaddddd. They were made for Nikon’s Pronea cameras, which were part of APS (Advanced Photo System), a failed consumer photo film format thingee from the 90s. Made for a now-extinct film format, these lenses can’t work on present Nikon or Canon DSLRs because they have rear protrusions that would hit the reflex mirrors.

Well now we gunn git our George Romero on, bcuz these now be ZOMBIE lenses. Their putrifying little lens hands are reachin’ up out of the dirt in front of their little tombstones. Except instead of wanting to eat our brains, they wanna help you get yr filmmakin’ on, deep discount style — because they can work great on Micro Four Thirds, NEX, Sony E-mount, NX, and whatever else mirrorless cameras with a lens mount.

Once you apply all my advicey thangs listed later in this article, you’ll find yourself with some nice video-friendly lenses that are lightweight with good optics, with a useable focus throw, hard stop focus ring, and a clickless aperture… at an incredibly affordable price. You can have two filmmaking-ready zoom lenses that span from 20mm to 180mm for as little as $60.

They may not be Nikon’s finest lenses, but they’re still Nikkors made with mid/late 1990s lens technology. I really don’t think you’ll find this kind of quality at these price points. Here’s your shopping list…

1. THE LENSES

20-60mm f/3.5-5.6 (black model)

This is the first lens you wanna grab, since short focal length lenses are generally more sought after. Made in Japan, weighs just six ounces, close focus of 1.1 feet, 52mm filter thread, and a seven-bladed iris for nice fourteen-point lens flare sunstars– kinda a minor thing but I’m not too into six or eight pointed sunstars (fyi: odd number of blades creates double the number of sunstar points, and even number of blades creates the same number as blades). Actually, all the Nikon IX lenses are seven-bladed, hooray. Originally $380 back in the day, this guy usually goes for $15-40. Mine was brand new dead stock, $15. That’s absurd.

60-180mm f/4-5.6 (black model)

Made in Japan, 9.5 ounces, close focus 3.9 feet, 52mm filter thread, seven-bladed iris. It originally went for $245, and can be found for $15-60.

So with those you’re covered pretty well, focal length-wise. But if you care there’s an in-between zoom…

24-70mm f/3.5-5.6 (only available in black)

Made in Thailand, six ounces, close focus 1.1 feet, 52mm filter thread, seven-bladed iris. Original price $160. They show up on eBay for about $15-50… mine was new dead stock.

And here are the later white models… note that their eBay prices are generally the same as the black models, though specs-wise the black models seem to be a better choice. The differences are in italics.

20-60mm f/3.5-5.6 (white model)

Same specs as the black model, except this one’s made in Thailand instead of Japan.

60-180mm f/4.5-5.6 (white model)

Alright, this one is considerably different than the better black model. Made in Thailand, 9.5 ounces, close focus 3.9 feet, 46mm filter thread, seven-bladed iris, and it has ten elements in seven groups while the black version is eleven/eight. It originally went for $100-150, which was a lot cheaper than the black model. Note that the minimum f-stop is 2/3rds a stop slower as well.

30-60mm f/4-5.6 (only available in white)

Made in Thailand, weighs a ridiculous 3.4 ounces, close focus of 1.1 feet, 46mm filter thread, seven-bladed iris. I don’t really see a point in getting this one if you can get a 20-60mm instead… other than its insane light weight. Unless if you need to tie your camera to a helium balloon, I dunno.

2. NIKON G TO MFT LENS ADAPTER

So with the G-Type adapter, there’s a little ring that allows you to have stepless aperture control. Booya. To me this is a huge deal– to be able to have minute control over how your highlights look is important to me, as well as being able to do simple iris pulls during a shot (like when you follow an actor through a tunnel or exiting a building into the sun). Kinda a big deal to have this feature using a $20 lens. One downside is that you’ll have no f-stop indicator to let you know what stop you’re shooting at, though this isn’t really a big deal with digital cinematography and its WYSIWYG LCD screens… and this is coming from a snobby, fluent practitioner of the Zone System.

Here are a couple low-priced adapter options for MFT cameras… I’ve used them both and they do the job. But the Fotodiox’s aperture control ring is way, way better than the Fotga.
Fotodiox Nikon G to MFT lens adapter (about $26)
Fotga Nikon G to MFT lens adapter (about $10)

The Fotga’s ring isn’t dampened at all and it has annoying click-stops at wide open and a little past closed. The Fotodiox will travel the entire iris range without engaging an annoying click at fully open or closed, and the ring is somewhat smooth and dampened… well worth the price difference.

Or if for some reason you wanna get a high quality, first-class adapter with a nice smoothly dampened aperture ring (and without any clicks), then here ya go…
Novoflex Nikon G to MFT lens adapter (about $260)

3. FOTGA LENS ADAPTER MODIFICATION

Alright, let’s say for some reason you have to go with the Fotga adapter. Remember when I mentioned iris pulls a minute ago? Well trying to do that with the Fotga out of the box is a headache. That’s because of those annoying aforementioned clicks on the aperture ring. When you have your iris open all the way and you try to smoothly close down a little, there’ll be a clumsy pop as you disengage from the click. Even if you never do an in-shot iris pull, it’s still annoying.

But luckily the aperture control mechanism is pretty simple. It’s just a little bolt jutting into the inner barrel of the adapter that pushes the lens’s aperture actuator lever (the same thing that the camera engages to control the iris). So if you carefully study the actuator lever’s behavior and how it corresponds to the adapter’s bolt, then you can grab some needle-nosed pliers and bend the end of the bolt a little so that it pushes the lever more towards the open iris direction.

By doing this, you’ll reach fully open iris before the adapter’s ring is able to rotate to the “open” click.

If you do it right, it’ll still completely close the iris before the ring rotates to the “lock” click… which means you’ll now have full adjustable range of the iris without engaging the annoying click when wide open. If it takes a little adjusting to get it right, no biggee, it’s a metal bolt and can withstand a little bending. Plus, it only cost like $10. Just make sure you thoroughly clean out the adapter of any metal flakes from using the pliers on the bolt… you don’t want that stuff getting on your sensor or rear lens element.

Whether you’re using a modified Fotga or a Fotodiox, the rotation throw is really short, so doing a smooth in-shot iris pull might be challenging. If you think you’ll need it, I’d recommend this Varavon Sling thingee… it’s a little awkward looking (and I feel like it should have a little fist at the end of it), but it’ll increase the rotation radius to help make up for the adapter’s ring. I have one and it works well for iris pulls.

4. FOCUS RING REMEDY

The Nikon IX focus rings suck. Like suck really hard. Like horribly bad… sucky majoris. Look at this photo:

See the tiny little sliver of a ribbed ring at the very end of the lens barrel? Well that’s the focus ring. It’s way too small to put a geared ring on it for use with a follow focus, and the focus throw is tiny. All the IX lenses are like that. But here’s how to fix that.

First, get a 52mm-82mm step up ring for each of your IX lenses. You can get them for about $2 each on eBay, but with a long ship time from China.

Then get two 82mm UV filters per lens from eBay or wherevs. They should be about $3-4 each. Just get the cheapest you can find. The quality of the threading & metal are irrelevant– you’re not going to be screwing & unscrewing them over and over, which is when that would matter. Once you get them, just carefully break out the glass… like maybe put them in a paper bag and just pop ’em with a hammer. Then carefully clean them out of any tiny glass pieces. Next, take all the shards of glass out of the bag and rub them all over your face. Just kidding, don’t do that. Because of that joke, I’ll probably have to get a lawyer now.

Now just stack all them doodads onto the front of the lens… step up ring + empty 82mm ring + empty 82mm ring. Now there’s a little more travel distance for focusing by hand, but more importantly you now have plenty of room to add a geared lens ring or whatever else.

Because the focus throw was so short to begin with, I’d recommend getting a bigger geared ring to help increase it. I’d suggest this one (these are what I use)… it should be about $17.
Geared lens ring for 75mm-85mm diameter from eBay seller up2uhk

Btw, I’d recommend you change out those screw clamps for my DIY elastic version so you can easily move it from lens to lens. You can read about it in my article about no-budget options for geared rings.

The focus throw is still far from ideal, but it’s now at least useable. And also, like all Nikkor lenses, the focus ring rotation is reversed compared to other lenses, but this is a pretty minor issue.

If you prefer a semi-permanent and more svelte-looking geared ring, you can use Half Inch Rails’ Zip Tie Lens Gears, though the smaller overall circumference will give you less of a focus throw than the other geared ring above. But whatever you’re comfortable with.

THE SUPER BIZARRO CATCH-22

Alright, something’s gotta give. Nikkor optics, stepless aperture, feather light, follow focus compatible with hard stops, and at the price of like four McDonald’s extra value meals? We live in a cruel, cruel world that loves to dangle such sweet globs of nectar in front of you, only to replace it with something grody like a stale McNugget with a hair stuck to it just as your hungry lips are within striking distance. Yeah so, here’s the issue: if you don’t find one with the rear end cap included, then you’ve got a little problem. That’s because the end cap model (Nikon LF-3) is no longer made. How weird & dumb is that? A piece of plastic whose compatriots cost ninety-five cents can mess this all up. Cool, whatevs, you’ll deal. I happened to already have an old Tamrom Adaptall 2 Nikon end cap that works though, so maybe there are some other older third party Nikon end caps that just happen to be long enough, I dunno. Maybe try going to a used camera shop and asking. They’ll often have a box full of random old end caps that you can sift through. The Nikon LF-3 and aforementioned Tamron one are both about 20mm or 7/8″ long if that helps as a guide.

That’s the 20mm long Tamrom end cap that works, and the Nikon LF-3 end cap will have that cute little Illuminati planetary alignment APS logo on it. I probably shouldn’t joke about that, I hope Jay-Z and Kanye don’t come after me.

But really, worst case scenario is that you just permanently keep one of those lens adapters on each lens and get MFT end caps, it’s not the end of the world. Just the world continuing with a little less money in your pocket.

The biggest catch is that it’s likely just a matter of time before other people figure all this stuff out and the IXs’ prices increase.

USING NIKON IX LENSES ON VARIOUS CAMERAS

They should totally work with up to APS-C sized sensors. The APS film negative was 30.2 × 16.7mm, so any sensor that’s APS-C or smaller should be fine. As far as sensors bigger than APS-C, I dunno, I haven’t tried.

One thing to look out for is that these lenses protrude from the rear mount, about 17mm.

So that means they’ll only work with cameras that are using a long enough lens adapter that the rear protrusion won’t hit the camera’s sensor… ie. is the Nikon 46.5mm flange focal distance more than 17mm longer than your camera’s? Though this is in theory, and I haven’t tried them on anything but a GH2.

If you hate reading words in paragraph form and ignored the above section, here’s a neat little list…

MFT: Yes.

Canon EF/EOS: No. There’s only a 2.5mm flange distance difference, so the rear protrusion will smoosh all up against your Canon’s guts an’ stuff.

Nikon DX & FX: No. Like with Canon, it’ll hit the mirror.

Samsung NX: Yes, in theory… though I haven’t tried it.

Sony NEX/E-mount: Yes, in theory… haven’t tried.

Note that this is as of July 2012, so in future times that list may become inaccurate. But you’ll be too distracted by flying cars and at-home plastic surgery kits to care.

OKAY THIS LONG-ASS ARTICLE IS ALMOST OVER

So there ya go. Practice and shoot your own projects with these thrifty amigos, and instead spend your money on lighting & light modifying gear. If you get a sweet client project with a budget, then you just rent pro lenses like Zeiss CP.2s (or even a better camera). Honestly, if you don’t have much money, or are just starting out, this is such a no-brainer to me.

There’s definitely other pricier still lenses that are better suited for video out there, but maybe these will help someone get started.

Here are some sources I pulled some specs from, as well as some further info I’ve dug up online…
imaging.nikon.com/lineup/discontinue/lens.htm
photosynthesis.co.nz/nikon/specs.html#IX
heritagecameras.co.uk/nikon-ix-nikkor-aps-lenses…
photosynthesis.co.nz/nikon/serialno.html#IX
kenrockwell.com/nikon/ix-lenses.htm
photo.net/nikon-camera-forum/0090yh

Planning for reflections for highly efficient VFX

So this is about using additional “reflection takes” from a shoot to greatly aid in a composite.

Here’s a scenario: you shoot an actor on greenscreen that, in the final composite, will be walking past a wall made of brushed aluminum, or polished granite, or even dark plastic. You should shoot an additional take with a mirrored panel reflecting the actor mimicking the “real” take, but with blocking altered to ensure the actor never overlaps the reflection (since this will give much more leeway for manipulation in post). Then it’s relatively quick and painless to composite the reflection onto the wall or whatever, better melting the elements together visually while also giving an organic look to CGI objects without spending eleventeen thousand hours on shaders and rendering in 3D software.

Here’s some more specific guidelines…

Plan for objects that have less than perfectly crisp reflections. This is because your “reflection take” will likely not perfectly match the real take of the actor’s performance… not to mention that your reflection panel probably wasn’t a high quality mirror to begin with.
Shoot the actor’s performance on greenscreen like normal, with no reflection panel (thus allowing for a simple composite without having to roto out the panel).
Then set up a mirror or shiny board where the reflective object will be in the composite. Reblock the actor doing their performance so that you get an unobscured shot of the reflection. This will likely require some spatial cheating, but whatevs. It’ll help when compositing if the background in the reflection is either greenscreen or black (duh), but this usually isn’t super essential. I’d suggest having the actor watch the “good” take a few times so they can study & mimic their movements and timing.
In composite, finalize the actor’s position and timing into the shot. Then throw in the reflection take and tweak it to match the reflective properties of the particular surface. You’ll likely be using “Add” or “Overlay” composite modes. Btw, you should be working in linear blend mode whenever you’re doing photoreal-ish compositing or using motion blur (if using After Effects via the “Blend Colors Using 1.0 Gamma” checkbox under File > Project Settings).
Geometric mega-accuracy of the reflection’s placement and angle aren’t nearly as important in selling the shot as having the kinetic properties of the reflection match the actor… meaning that the timing of an arm swing or head turn need to be pretty close, so bust out the retiming/speed change plugin/tool if it doesn’t.

Back in ye olde 2007, this technique really saved my skin when a project I was directing/DP/compositing became logistically stressed with revisions when the signoff process grew more complicated than anyone expected. Nobody’s fault, just the nature of the beast. To put it lightly, we found ourselves in a super crunch, both in terms of time and budget. If any students are reading this, note that this kinda stuff happens all the time and probably the primary difference between a professional and amateur is that the pro is able to not bother dwelling on obstacles and just focus on figuring out a way to deal with it as best as possible within the limitations, without ripping their own hair out and going insano. Then, theoretically, you eventually matriculate to projects with big juicy budgets and long healthy schedules that are super fun with lots of creative latitude. I’ll let you know when I ever hear of one of those. The clients who give those out must hang out with Santa Claus and ride unicorns or something.

Anyways, we had to reassess a sequence that contained a CGI refrigerator. It originally was going to animate into existence in a fancy way that can only be done in 3D software, and the shot was to be 3D matchmoved. But due to aforementioned schedule/budget factors, we were hard-pressed just to get the shot done with the fridge static, un-animated. Because of the “reflection take” I was able to use just a still image render of the fridge and make the shot look “good enough”. This saved us several hours, since it nixed having to matchmove as well as eliminate the render time for the fridge. Here’s a lil’ video clip showing a breakdown where you can see how big of a difference the reflection take makes…

Is it optically accurate? Not at all. But it “feels” right to the average viewer. Is it invisible realism? Nope. But it sells the shot with a minimum amount of time and resources.

Using a car interior as an audio booth

If you need to record clean ADR or voiceover, etc, and don’t have access to an audio booth, try recording inside a car (that’s not running, duh)… I guess they’re actually designed to have great acoustics. The only problem is that the actor can’t stand up, which often makes a big difference in delivery, especially if it’s an untrained actor… so maybe just always use really really short actors, I dunno. I can’t remember where I got this tip from… either a book, website or an audio person.

As I’m writing this, I remember a related experience from before I had heard of that. There’s a scene with two actors exchanging dialogue in the back seat of a parked car, which I shot from the front seat with a Sony VX1000.

As we were setting up mics, I was astonished to realize that the audio from the camera’s built-in stereo mic actually sounded better… which is the first and only time that has ever happened. But I guess it makes sense– that sedan had nice acoustics and we were in the middle of a quiet wooded area. Also, they were moving around a lot and keeping a directional mic properly aimed at them within such an enclosed space would’ve been difficult.

You can also get one of these relatively inexpensive thingees… I have one and it works great, especially for the price.

Color-saturated fill light for a better composite

Here’s a useful technique that I came up with for shooting certain kinds of greenscreen stuff…

Make the fill light a saturated color (that’s different from the screen and the subject’s clothes etc, duh).
In post, isolate that particular color and then tweak it to match the hue of whatever the natural bounce light would be in whatever environment you’re compositing them into.
Though keep in mind that it’s always better to just use a colored fill light that matches your particular background plate. This technique is more for cases where you have to use one setup for several varied backgrounds.

For example, you can use a saturated magenta for the fill, and then use the secondary color correction in Color Finesse to tweak just the saturated magenta to appear bluish if they’re supposed to be standing on the belly of a giant, naked sleeping smurf or whatever. Another great thing about this technique is that you not only can control the hue and saturation of the fill color, but also the luminance of the fill, and quite easily at that. Of course, this technique will only be useful for certain shots, depending on the lighting and blocking.

Here’s a straight forward example of this technique from a shoot I was DP on. Because of last minute schedule changes, I had to shoot numerous bits of Snoop Dogg in just one setup, even though they took place in a multitude of settings. We could’ve shot him in neutral color and depended on conventional color correction to help color him into the background, but that usually looks pretty rookie & unsavory in my opinion, since any color adjustments to affect the “bounce/ambient” light will also affect the entire subject’s color, even the areas being illuminated by the key light. So with a magenta fill, we had some tweakable “ambient” light to match the backgrounds in post.

You can see from the original footage on the right that not only was I able to easily change the hue & saturation of the magenta fill, but also the luminance. More examples from the exact same lighting setup below…

Also, note that in these examples (which I composited & color graded myself) the tweaking of the magenta fill was done with just the “Hue and Saturation” effect in After Effects due to what was available on that particular workstation. Theoretically, Color Finesse’s secondary color correction would’ve given even better results.