Tag Archives: super baltars

Digression on lenses, lighting and cameras

 

LEICA SUMMICRON LEICA SUMMILUX

Lighting, lenses and camera. They all affect how your footage is going to look like and how you will perform as a director of photography or a cinematographer. Well, that is beside the real personal skills you have. They matter and they come indeed into the game. That is to say you can be a master in your job but if you relate badly to people you work with it’s all going down the pan in the end. I guess this is true for any job you do but let’s remember that film-making is a collaborative job for starters and you have to relate well with your fellows.

Converting a Bolex Yvar 36mm lens to Cmount

 

I know what you’re thinking.. why going through all this mess when this lens is not that fast. Thing is I own a 75mm Yvar AR and I love it to bits. It’s  sharp even wide open, contrasty and it’s got beautiful colors. And it’s a vintage 50 years old lens that can still produce stunning images on the cropped sensor DSLRs.

The Bolex camera was made in 8mm and 16mm versions. It’s a precision Swiss design and a variety of lenses were made in different formats from Kern Paillard themselves, along with Canon, Schneider, Cooke, C to name but a few . The Kern’s one are A grade stuff and perhaps they are so sharp because 16mm film has to resolve more details to look decent once projected.