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Author Topic: Stanley Kubrick's F .7 Lenses For Rental!  (Read 15616 times)

Kevin Gallagher

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Sareesh Sudhakaran

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Re: Stanley Kubrick's F .7 Lenses For Rental!
« Reply #1 on: August 06, 2013, 09:23:37 am »

At on-stop pushed, would it be similar to 200 ISO?

An f/0.7 would be a T/1 I suppose, so a Master Prime or Cooke S5i T/1.3 at ISO 1600 will be better than anything. And, I don't envy the guy who has to pull focus at that T-stop.
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bcooter

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Re: Stanley Kubrick's F .7 Lenses For Rental!
« Reply #2 on: August 07, 2013, 01:17:30 pm »

  From an article on DP Review.  http://www.dpreview.com/news/2013/08/06/kubrick-s-f-0-7-lenses-now-available-for-rent-but-start-saving-up

Anyone can be a critic, myself included and I think Kubrick's greatest films, Clockwork Orange and 2001 were trend setting and still being copied today, especially clockwork orange and few have emulated the disturbing fear that movie extruded.

That being said, 1 stop for candles I never got, actually, still don't.  I've shot candle lit scenes, using other candles through a flame retardant silk for fill, one or two very small incandesent tungsten floods for some added overhead and believe it or not candles produce a lot of light.

the issue with candle light is it moves, so wind in the studio is a problem and I'm not talking opening a door type of wind, but somebody scratching their elbow type of wind.

Candles are pretty if used in foregrounds, backgrounds, even the semblance of keys, but to each his own, though I've read about those .7 lenses which were before my time and even in the film days never understood the reasoning, especially since one stop at that level is not that hard to craft.

Kubrick was a strange cat, and would go a long, long time between projects, which doesn't help anyone stay fresh.   You can overwork and over commit but underworking gets you out of the pattern that it takes to crank 18 hour days for months and not miss a thing.

He also used a lot of candles in his last project, "Eyes Wide Shut", which I thought was interesting but very messy.  They shot in London and attempted to make it look like NY.  There was one prop U.S. mailbox that was so obviously a prop that seemed to pop into every scene so often, that I thought someday it would be a question on jeopardy.  "How many times did one prop appear in eyes wide shut?".

I do remember reading on Eyes Wide Shut that every night Kubrick would go to the lab.  Now me, if I ever went to a lab for any extended period of time, unless I was because I was worried about something.

It could have been he was just eccentric, but the director carrying cans of films is not the norm.

Anyway, I'd kind of like to see who if anyone uses these lenses and why, especially in todays 1000 iso world.

Actually since Kubrick love to muck about with stuff he probably would have loved today's REDs.

IMO

BC
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Tim Jones

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Re: Stanley Kubrick's F .7 Lenses For Rental!
« Reply #3 on: August 07, 2013, 02:32:56 pm »

 Dude,  have you not seen Barry Lyndon???
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4aDIc4uCOc
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bcooter

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Re: Stanley Kubrick's F .7 Lenses For Rental!
« Reply #4 on: August 07, 2013, 05:12:10 pm »

have you not seen Barry Lyndon???


Hey, not being a critic, though everyone has a different view of well . . . everything.

I never have seen a Kubrick film in a theatre except 2001 which I saw in re release about 12 years after it was in first release.

I've tried to watch Barry Lyndon, it's good, I guess it's good, don't know, but I've heard at least a billion and one times by everyone in the industry, (stills and motion) this quote "Do you know kubrick shot the movie using candles?  Had special lenses made man."

From an artistic or technical stance .07 lenses make no sense to me.  One stop is not an oh my god type of lighting fix even holding onto the original concept and look.

It's like when everybody in LA wants to shoot a film to look like Super 8.   They go to Super 8 sound "borrow" some cameras and a case of film, shoot a test, three light telecine it, burn a 35mm print and then in real production go and shoot 35mm film (or now digital) and in the intermediate stage do effects that look like super 8.

It's just the technique gets to the point it overpowers the story.  Not saying that about "Barry", but you know I still don't get the .7 t stop lenses.

______________________________

Early in my career I did a sports shoot for a huge manufacturer.   We built Wimbledon in Chicago, down to the flower boxes, judges stand, green walls, etc.   

They brought in two tennis stars at the time, and I shot a lot of it with a Chapman crane.  In between the main setups I stood at the center of the court and just shot the guys playing.

The main imagery they ran wasn't the huge setups, it was the guys playing.   I was so freaked.  After all that work, they picked imagery I could have shot with two cameras and one lens.

Later, (much later) it hit me how well those pick up images resonated and no matter how proud I was of building Wimbledon that stuff was boring compared to the real life imagery.

Sorry, I guess the last paragraph has nothing to do with Barry Lyndon, except one of the tennis players was Ryan O'neal.

Just kidding about Ryan O'neal.

IMO

BC
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John.Murray

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Re: Stanley Kubrick's F .7 Lenses For Rental!
« Reply #5 on: August 08, 2013, 01:49:03 am »

I never have seen a Kubrick film in a theatre except 2001 which I saw in re release about 12 years after it was in first release.

Really?  I saw original release - it, at 8yrs old, blew my socks off - still does

Actually since Kubrick love to muck about with stuff he probably would have loved today's REDs.
IMO

BC

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Sareesh Sudhakaran

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Re: Stanley Kubrick's F .7 Lenses For Rental!
« Reply #6 on: August 08, 2013, 04:15:06 am »

...I've read about those .7 lenses which were before my time and even in the film days never understood the reasoning, especially since one stop at that level is not that hard to craft.

He was using 100T pushed to one stop in the lab. I don't think he had that much of a choice. On the flip side, we don't really know if he used f/0.7 on the lens, even if he had the option!

I've read somewhere that Stanley considered Eyes Wide Shut his greatest film.

By the way, here's a 40mm f/0.33 lens from Zeiss (Only $80,000 and not made to be used): http://petapixel.com/2013/08/06/carl-zeiss-super-q-gigantar-40mm-f0-33-the-fastest-lens-ever-made/

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fredjeang2

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Re: Stanley Kubrick's F .7 Lenses For Rental!
« Reply #7 on: August 08, 2013, 02:48:32 pm »

Instead of unusable unafordable lenses.
It would be bloody nice if we could have
An affordable usable camera...

With:
Pro bloody Res or dnx 444 right out the box
N bloody D in-board (thanks manufacturers)
Fast AND bloody reliable af zooms
XL bloody R
a simple and bloody accesible menu
At 2500 bucks max with a gifted bloody good evf
And the list goes on...

Bloody hell!


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bcooter

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Re: Stanley Kubrick's F .7 Lenses For Rental!
« Reply #8 on: August 08, 2013, 03:39:59 pm »

Instead of unusable unafordable lenses.
It would be bloody nice if we could have
An affordable usable camera...

With:
Pro bloody Res or dnx 444 right out the box
N bloody D in-board (thanks manufacturers)
Fast AND bloody reliable af zooms
XL bloody R
a simple and bloody accesible menu
At 2500 bucks max with a gifted bloody good evf
And the list goes on...

Bloody hell!




In regards to Kubrik he was a great film maker and if I work 140 hour weeks for the rest of my days, I'll never hit his level.  Still, some of his work I like, some I don't.  Personal preference.

the .07 lenses I just think is silly, but I didn't shoot it, but Kubrik worked in a different time with different expectations.  I'm sure it was hard then, but today he'd be given 1/2 the time, 1/4 the budget, 10 times the approval layers.

Fred2.

I agree.  It's not possible that the people that make cameras, NLE's, colour suites,  actually know what our clients are asking for.

We all see it . . . that camera demo where they put some b+ model in the desert with a fan or in a studio (with a fan) and shoot, stills or video, put it into a computer, move some sliders and say "see how easy it is".

That's not how we work.  When a client tells me video is not "that" important I know i'm going to spend 2/3's of the post time on video, or if a client says it's not going to be reproduced that large, you can just bet it's head for times square.

It's not the client's fault or the art director, agency, marketing manger, because until it's shot and until it's a hit nobody knows where they're going to run it.

I just don't get how every camera requires about 30 additional things to make work in todays world.  Menus? crazy.  Sound?  crazy.   Transcoding?  crazy and colouring files?  whew.

People can talk look up tables, colorspace, gamma all they want but digital has a mind of it's on.  I can move the camera  6 ft. with video and the color changes and that's with any camera and no matter what colour I see on any camera monitor, ovf, evf, screen, hdmi out it doesn't matter.  The color I shoot will never look like the colour in a computer.

I'll tell you how goofy our present cameras are.  We have this zip lock bag, that holds just connectors.  mini xlr to xlr, 3.5mm to xlr, or mini xlr, hdmi micro, medium, large, and extensions.

That bag weighs about 6 pounds.

I think the people that make this stuff assume that during a shoot we have all the time in the world and in post, it can't be that hard, just put it in a computer . . . right?

I had camera makers call me and asked what I wanted and i offered to let them come to our studio, take notes from preproduction, production to delivery and then they'd know.  In fact I've made that offer a dozen times and nobody wants to take me up on it.

Every maker wants to come on set, drink some wine, look at the models, do a few snaps or bts video and say see "he" uses our cameras . . . they're so great.

They don't need to see how we work, they need to find out what our clients want.

That's a big divide and disconnect.

IMO

BC

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bcooter

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Re: Stanley Kubrick's F .7 Lenses For Rental!
« Reply #9 on: August 08, 2013, 06:51:31 pm »

Really?  I saw original release - it, at 8yrs old, blew my socks off - still does




Do you know what 2001 is about?  I know about 20 people that do, of course they all must have seen a different movie.

IMO

BC

P.S.  Who would have known back then that by 2013 we would be outsourcing rockets that barely could crack orbit.
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Chris Barrett

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Re: Stanley Kubrick's F .7 Lenses For Rental!
« Reply #10 on: August 21, 2013, 08:28:59 am »

You know what 2001 needed?  Sigourney Weaver with a flame thrower.

Sareesh Sudhakaran

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Re: Stanley Kubrick's F .7 Lenses For Rental!
« Reply #11 on: August 21, 2013, 10:19:32 am »

That, or some psychedelic After Effects plug-ins and shaky cam.
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