DARK NIGHT RISES: SHOT ON STILL LENSES

[Nick Morrison]

I've been reading the latest issue of American Cinematographer, and I was struck by this:

Turns out, a majority of the Imax shots in The Dark Night Rises were shot with highly cinevised medium format still lenses, mostly Hasselblads and Mamiyas:

Each Imax camera came with its own set of primes. 40mm, 50mm, 80mm, 110mm, 150mm and 250mm. Many of the lenses were T2.8 medium format Hasselblad still lenses adapted for 65mm camera mounts, with the still lens focusing movement still intact. "The focusing movement is very stiff", says Hall. "On some of the lenses, I couldn't even pull focus by hand. I had to use the Preston FI+Z3 remote focus puller with the torque motor turned all the way up."

They go on to add they also used Mamiya lenses, and that Panavision technicians were brought in to overhaul all the optics and cinevize them.

In light of the endless debate about still lenses vs PL glass, I thought this admission that one of our generations greatest action films was (begrudgingly) shot on STILL glass an interesting twist to the discussion.

Clearly, the lenses had problems. But optically...they seem to have held up.

Of course, this particular scenario speaks as much to the paucity of Imax lenses that exist, but they used still lenses nonetheless.

 

[Anderson Boyd]

...one of our generations greatest action films...

Come on bud, hyperbole. It was middling, but satisfying, cap to the trilogy. We're just lucky they didn't drop a Godfather III turd.

It was a great article though and just shows why Pfister and Nolan's stalwart dedication to film is a little nuts, and an emotional decision. Did you read the part about single snowflakes interrupting the thread on any of the cameras during the Wall St. scenes? They spent more time repairing the 3 cameras than they did focusing on making a better film, shooting some coverage instead of perpetuating those flat, tracking shot fight scenes that felt void of any scope or gravity.

When RED resolves to around 8K there's no excuse to still be shooting these clunky, distracting IMAX cameras.

 

[Nick Morrison]

Come on bud, hyperbole. It was middling, but satisfying, cap to the trilogy. We're just lucky they didn't drop a Godfather III turd.

Haha. Yeah, there's a lot of hyperbole there. I should have said "most talked about".

Did you read the part about single snowflakes interrupting the thread on any of the cameras during the Wall St. scenes? They spent more time repairing the 3 cameras than they did focusing on making a better film, shooting some coverage instead of perpetuating those flat, tracking shot fight scenes that felt void of any scope or gravity.

I thought that snowflake story was INSANE. One errant snowflake could take down an entire Imax camera. NUTS.

 

[Anderson Boyd]

+ I agree on the virtue of still lenses. I'm limited to Canon EF's right now but with careful attention can get some truly cinematic stuff. Would love to be shooting RED's or MP's of course.

IMHO Barry Lyndon is one of the most beautiful films ever shot. Though unconventional those converted NASA zooms he used for low light were essentially "still" lenses, and put up some of the great images in cinema.

 

[Nick Morrison]

IMHO Barry Lyndon is one of the most beautiful films ever shot. Though unconventional those converted NASA zooms he used for low light were essentially "still" lenses, and put up some of the great images in cinema.

+1

However, the NASA lenses and the ZOOM shots on Barry Lyndon are two separate stories.
I read Eyes Wide Open recently, and the author sheds a lot on light on this, first hand from Kubrick.

The NASA lenses were used for INTERIORS. If you say these were akin to re-housed still lenses, I'll believe you.


But the EXTERIORS were almost ALL shot on a modified version of the Angenieux 12-240 16mm zoom. As the story goes, Kubrick did a lot of complicated math at home (by himself), and realized that if he could blow this 20x zoom up by 1.6 (or 1.4?), it's image circle would just cover 35mm. Apparently, Angenieux starting getting all these crazy faxes from him, and ended up making this adapter for the film!

What's interesting is Kubrick wasn't concerned at all about a "soft" image. In fact, he then layered the shots with tons of diffusion! I presume that explains the "dreamy" look the exteriors have.

What I love is Kubrick's willingness to bend the rules to get what he wanted.

 

[Dave Blackham]

Interesting thread.

Any one know which Mamiya lenses were used. They seem higher contrast that the Hasselblad lenses, we have some here and like them very much. Some breathing though but very nice look.

 

[Richard Goodwin]

+1

The NASA lenses were used for INTERIORS. If you say these were akin to re-housed still lenses, I'll believe you.


But the EXTERIORS were almost ALL shot on a modified version of the Angenieux 12-240 16mm zoom ...

Kubrick also had several modified still lenses that he used. If I remember correctly he had a specially modified approx 100mm lens that he used on Barry Lyndon. It had been altered so that within its narrow focus range it would have greater depth of field within in the in-focus portion of the view; in order that actors faces would be fully in focus. This and other interesting facts are presented in a traveling Kubrick show that was in Paris last year and is coming to LA this year:

http://lacma.org/art/exhibition/stanley-kubrick

If the show is the same as in Paris where I saw it then they have his entire lens collection on display. It is accompanied with a video where they interview various lens techs he worked with etc...

Another interesting fact is he would order say 10 copies of the same lens. Test them himself, keep the best one and send the other 9 back

 

[Pawel Achtel]

....a specially modified approx 100mm lens that he used on Barry Lyndon. It had been altered so that within its narrow focus range it would have greater depth of field within in the in-focus portion of the view; in order that actors faces would be fully in focus. ...

Are you saying that in Kubrick's hands that lens would defy the laws of physics? Sounds like bonkers to me :hand:

Back to the subject, I don't think anyone is questioning the optical quality of still lenses and there are many still lenses that CAN be used for motion picture. It doesn't mean that they are easier or faster to work with or that they do not have other disadvantages, like breathing, tollerances, inaccurate focussing scales, back focus out, short throw, flimsy build, etc...

Just because Kubrick used a still lens for motion picture doesn't mean it is a good idea. It's kind of boring discussion: "specifically modified" still lenses versus cine lenses when you can just slap a Master Prime on the Epic and be done with it. :laugh:

 

[Richard Goodwin]

Are you saying that in Kubrick's hands that lens would defy the laws of physics? Sounds like bonkers to me ...

I'm sorry I don't have the reference. It was a video interview with one of the lens techs he often worked with. Its part of that exhibit (which has been traveling the world). And, at that show they have a large number of his personal lenses on display. I'm not sure how it was pulled off. But, like anything else if you are willing to sacrifice some of the "normal" specs of a lens you can build one for a very specific shooing situation.

... I don't think anyone is questioning the optical quality of still lenses and there are many still lenses that CAN be used for motion picture. It

Just because Kubrick used a still lens for motion picture doesn't mean it is a good idea. It's kind of boring discussion: "specifically modified" still lenses versus cine lenses when you can just slap a Master Prime on the Epic and be done with it.

In Kubrick's time (and for the majority of photographic and film history so far) lenses were much more of a hand made affair. The precision machinery and measurement equipment that is used now is much more accurate. In the Kubrick days lenses were ground by hand (and pretty much made by hand - by people who had much less precise tooling and measuring instruments than now). Hence the story of Kubrick ordering 10 lenses only to keep on.

Yes, if you want straight accuracy of rendition across a general set of shot setups then of course Master Primes are (today) great. However, you might want a specific optical character. The "look" of older lenses or have other reasons where the more standard lenses are not what you need. Or, you just have a specific vision which requires something other than accurate rendition.

Kubrick used 18th century paintings as the visual references and stylistic building blocks of Barry Lyndon. He wanted the feeling of candlelight that you see in these rendered interiors. In the Barry Lyndon example Kubrick wanted to (and did) shoot in pure candle light only. To do that he repurposed 0.7 lenses designed for the space program. These lenses had a very short Flange Focal Distance as well so that they had to be put on specifically modified cameras (essentially the camera lens combination was single purpose and specially modified for just the interior shots in Barry Lyndon). In addition the very shallow depth of field had a painterly quality. I don't think today there is an F0.7 Master Prime available off the shelf. Now cameras can sustain higher ISO but you'd still be pushing the limits. And, you still would not get the dim and slightly blurry feeling that 0.7 renders.

A contemporary example of using a still lens would be the Diving Bell and the Butterfly which used Lensbaby lens to give a sense of intimacy and feelings of memories being recalled. The director wanted to avoid a sense of visual accuracy and instead went for visual style that tended toward personal point of view.

 

[Nick Morrison]

I agree that Master Primes (or the new Leica's) are clearly the "best" way togo, but I love Richard's point about the uniqueness of alt glass.

The 20th century is littered with strange and unusual optics. I've already seen sets of lenses that can bend light and render reality in ways a conventional and "perfect" lens would never dream of doing. Clearly, such lenses are "speciality". What but what they can do...is still very "special" indeed.

The LensBaby Diving Bell reference is just one great example.

 

[Ketch Rossi]

I agree that Master Primes (or the new Leica's) are clearly the "best" way togo, but I love Richard's point about the uniqueness of alt glass.

The 20th century is littered with strange and unusual optics. I've already seen sets of lenses that can bend light and render reality in ways a conventional and "perfect" lens would never dream of doing. Clearly, such lenses are "speciality". What but what they can do...is still very "special" indeed.

The LensBaby Diving Bell reference is just one great example.

Exactly, I have come to love the master primes since they first came out, and it was not easy to Sale them, but the New Leica glass is superior and so I did the switch, however there are some particularities about Still glass, and of course in particular Medium Format Still Glass, for this I can't wait for a Epic Mount for the S series of the Leica MF glass, Assy had great glass, not so much any more since they dropped the contract with Zeiss, but there is literally a Tone of great old Medium format glass, and great not so old also, in the choices I have been trying to make for some particular scenes I have been testing all kind of glass which I can currently adapt to the Epic, so this was a good move i=on their part to not be so tied up to only use Cinema Glass.

 

[Vadim Bobkovsky]

Come on bud, hyperbole. It was middling, but satisfying, cap to the trilogy. We're just lucky they didn't drop a Godfather III turd.

It was a great article though and just shows why Pfister and Nolan's stalwart dedication to film is a little nuts, and an emotional decision. Did you read the part about single snowflakes interrupting the thread on any of the cameras during the Wall St. scenes? They spent more time repairing the 3 cameras than they did focusing on making a better film, shooting some coverage instead of perpetuating those flat, tracking shot fight scenes that felt void of any scope or gravity.

When RED resolves to around 8K there's no excuse to still be shooting these clunky, distracting IMAX cameras.

Wasn't 70mm IMAX film something around ~16K?

 

[Nick Morrison]

Wasn't 70mm IMAX film something around ~16K?

I'm not sure what the max resolution IMAX is capable of...but on The Dark Knight Rises they scanned all the IMAX negatives at 8K.

 

[Richard Goodwin]

I'm not sure what the max resolution IMAX is capable of...but on The Dark Knight Rises they scanned all the IMAX negatives at 8K.

I think IMAX is approx 10 times the resolution (but that is memory and I could be off). So 8K scan would be 4 times the data of 35mm/2K scan. Also, I think IMAX is a VistaVision style format (with film running horizontally through the equipment - hence the very massive resolution). I don't know how they decided on 8K scans. It may be the best combination of meaningful image data that is still realistic to process through an complex CGI pipeline. I'd be interested to know the deeper details of the reasoning.

 

[Nick Morrison]

I think IMAX is approx 10 times the resolution (but that is memory and I could be off). So 8K scan would be 4 times the data of 35mm/2K scan. Also, I think IMAX is a VistaVision style format (with film running horizontally through the equipment - hence the very massive resolution). I don't know how they decided on 8K scans. It may be the best combination of meaningful image data that is still realistic to process through an complex CGI pipeline. I'd be interested to know the deeper details of the reasoning.

Yeah, I mean even on Prometheus they found 5k too render intensive for all the CG work, so I think they worked at a much smaller resolution (2.5k maybe?). I can't imagine how challenging 8k must be. Even if IMAX can render out a larger file size, I get the sense it would be total overkill.

 

[Chuck Z]

I'm not sure what the max resolution IMAX is capable of...but on The Dark Knight Rises they scanned all the IMAX negatives at 8K.

I think they scan them on the specialized Imagica scanner at 11K but downsample to 8K for output.

 

[Mark Tierney]

Just wanted to add - those lenses are several grades above what you would see out of a Canon or Nikon still lens. I'm not shocked at all.

 

[Dan Kanes]

This film was rad, but generally quite soft.

I couldn't figure out why one whole 10 second cut at the mansion during the fundraiser scene was completely out of focus.

 

[Satsuki Murashige]

I've been reading the latest issue of American Cinematographer, and I was struck by this:

Turns out, a majority of the Imax shots in The Dark Night Rises were shot with highly cinevised medium format still lenses, mostly Hasselblads and Mamiyas:

Of course, this particular scenario speaks as much to the paucity of Imax lenses that exist, but they used still lenses nonetheless.

Not surprising, there's not much else out there glass wise that can cover such a large negative. I wonder how much work the Panavision techs did to make the lenses workable. I suspect they may have changed the iris assembly, didn't catch any pentagonal bokeh this time around. I'm surprised they didn't rework the focus helicoids, my Hassy Zeiss lenses are extremely stiff and not really usable for cinema use as is. Optically they are fantastic though especially the 40mm FLE f/4, reminds me of the Master Prime look. Would love to see a version with T*XP coating, cam focusing, and T2!

 

[AndrewThomas]

If Panavision "cinevized" the lenses...can you really call them still lenses at that point?