Krasnogorsk 3. Santa Monica on Super 16 & Kodak Vision 250D

[@truefilm6991]

Best K-3 footage I have ever seen! I imagine the original scanned file! It's a challenge for many reasons, but a great looking short film can be done with an S16 modded K-3. Very inspiring!

[@TheCinematographyLab]

Thanks! There are great samples of what the K3 can do. Your have great examples of what the K3 is capable of.

[@mttopfilms]

Beautiful footage!

[@gnomeof1950]

ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS!

[@mttopfilms]

Good camera control and scene selection. Your pans are smooth and your horizons are level. Nice titles too. Excellent clip.

[@TheCinematographyLab]

Thanks Jon!

[@thousandoaksmall1995]

Excellent example of what the K3 is capable of.

[@JR-lw8yu]

Great short film! I ordered my K3 today and hope I am able to learn how to produce such nice work.

[@TheCinematographyLab]

Congrats on your new K3! The K3 is an easy to use camera, you just have to learn and practice a few things and you'll be shooting great films with it soon.

[@JR-lw8yu]

@@TheCinematographyLab I am already studying and thinking about the process. Looking forward to practicing. Thank you for your help!

[@andrewthompson5609]

Amazing footage. Do you recall which lens you used for the Ferris wheel scene? It looks amazing. Definitely my favorite shot.

[@TheCinematographyLab]

Thanks Andrew! I'm pretty much sure it was a Super Takumar 50mm f1.4

[@andrewthompson5609]

@@TheCinematographyLab I was hoping you’d say that! Hahah I just ordered the 24, and 50 takamur lens

[@TheCinematographyLab]

@@andrewthompson5609 Haha, those are great lenses. I loved the 50mm even when it has the field of view of a 150mm on S16. You got a 24mm? That's cool, they are not easy to find, or they are expensive on eBay. I wanted to get one for my K3, but I found a 28mm locally and I'll go with that one.

[@andrewthompson5609]

@@TheCinematographyLab yeah I luckily found a pretty cheap one on eBay. Less then the 50mm actually. Excited to test them out soon

[@TheCinematographyLab]

@@andrewthompson5609 That's awesome man! I'd like to see that test. Are you planing to use them with a K3?

[@Asset1968]

Did you modify the k3 yourself? Did you have to deal with any unsteadiness issues that sometimes happen with the k3?

[@TheCinematographyLab]

I did modify the camera myself, yes. I did buy a re-centering ring and I got some issues with lenses not focusing at infinity, but I worked it out to an acceptable point by sanding the part. Unsteadiness? Well I did not encountered terrible issues to be honest. The footage you saw here was shot using a tripod and it was stabilized in Premiere Pro, but as I said before nothing terribly bad for a K3.

[@Asset1968]

@@TheCinematographyLab well it looks great! So you had to sand the recentering ring? Kudos for making it work it looks great!

[@TheCinematographyLab]

@@Asset1968 Thank you! I did sand the re-centering ring, because it was thicker than the original one. That caused the flange focal distance to change hence lenses were not working properly (witness marks and infinity) These cameras are built like tanks, and they work fine most of the time within their limitations.

[@grizzuh]

Great Images and nice Colors. 4K Scan???

[@TheCinematographyLab]

Thank you! No, that's 1080p actually, but I think Cinelab did a great job on the scan.

[@lezipoa916]

isn't the movie frame almost square? How does your movie here on youtube appear as if it were a lens that compresses the image in the square frame and then returns it to cinelab for widescreen? Or was it just a cutout at the top and bottom of your movie. And who is this CineLab company that made for you? I really enjoyed your footage.

[@TheCinematographyLab]

Thanks Lezi Poa. There are several formats. The Krasnogorsk 3 originally captures a 4:3 almost squared format yes, but this camera was modified to Super 16 which has an aspect ratio pretty close to the 16:9 or HDTV format. Cinelab is the name of the lab here in the US and they just sent me the file in the 16:9 format. I shot and scanned this a few years ago, but now most labs over scan the film which let's you crop in any way you want.

[@spamsfilms]

Are you taking light readings with an incident or spot meter?

[@TheCinematographyLab]

Both. I used my Sekonic L558 meter which has both incident and reflected options. I used the incident meter at the beginning when there was more light and then the reflected meter for shots that have bright stuff on them like the sky and the ocean. I used the reflected meter when it got dark to measure light sources and the sky for sure.

[@spamsfilms]

@@TheCinematographyLab thanks you, all looks incredible by the way, best footage I’ve seen anyone get from this camera to my eye. I plan to shoot a narrative short film on one soon, any recommendations or tips and tricks?

[@TheCinematographyLab]

@@spamsfilms Thank you Sam! Well a lot f recommendations. Test the camera before if you can, focus the diopter, make sure the gate is clean and if your camera has light leaks tape around the edges of the film chamber cover. The shutter angle of the camera is 150° and you may want to compensate for the lens if you are not using a cinema lens marked on T-Stops. Film likes light. A big mistake I see all the time is making small mistakes that lead to under exposure, then when you want to bring the exposure and color back in post you get ugly artifacts. Pay attention to those things and you should be fine. Good luck with your short film.

[@spamsfilms]

@@TheCinematographyLab Do you know by the way if the meteor lens is parfocal? As in can you zoom in to make focusing easier and then zoom back out? Can't find those details online and from a test shoot last week I was really struggling to tell what was in focus at the wide end of the lens.

[@TheCinematographyLab]

@@spamsfilms The Meteor lens is parfocal. There is pretty much no documentation about it because the K3 was advertised as a home movie camera, so they didn't feel the need to mention those details, but back in the day pretty much all lenses used on movie cameras were parfocal. It's one of those things that technology changed for bad. At the time S8 cameras and 16mm cameras had parfocal lenses because it was the way it was supposed to be. Now I'm talking about movie cameras and lenses not photography lenses. There is a website that has the lens specs and it says it's parfocal and I know it from experience, but I couldn't find the page. It's difficult seeing the difference while you zoom in and out using the viewfinder, but if you don't see any discrepancies that's good. Now a lens must be collimated and the focal flange distance must be correct in order for a parfocal lens to perform properly. If you changed the mount of your camera (re-centering ring) the lens may not perform as expected. Most lenses work fine since the DOF of 16mm is deeper than the 35mm format. I'm going to make a video talking about lenses for the K3 soon and I'm going to talk about the differences good and bad of the meteor and still photography lenses.