by mediaed » Sat Apr 30, 2016 4:13 pm
A quick correction here to your post, just wonder why not caught earlier. Mid-post, you state:
"The other feature went away after the Standard gave way to the NC and BNC. It was the adjustable Iris. What a powerful feature to have when you might not have had enough flexibility with the f stop range of the lens you had to use."
The iris feature was not an F stop replacement/supplement. Wrong place in the optical path. It was a masking feature. It could be maneuvered with the controls to anywhere in the frame and opened and closed as a matte.
Many early special effects were made on the set and in the camera. Those iris in and outs to black in silent movies where the face of the actor is ended in the shot or a point of interest is irised out from was done with this feature. (This is where the iris effect found in most video editing programs comes from.)
The rack over ability of the Mitchell made such effects easy to execute as the operator could see the exact effect setup through the taking lens before shooting it. Another mask feature that disappeared from the really early cameras with the changing of the times (and lack of demand) was a rotating disk that featured a keyhole or binocular among other shapes. The most used series of those shapes became the 4-way adjustable matte feature.
All big production Mitchells, up to and including the BNCR also had the capability--with the adjustable shutter-- to do fade-ins and fade-outs in-camera and, with careful backwinding, could do dissolves. Your second shot had better be good, for obvious reasons. Dissolves -- a feature welcomed in the 1920's where in-camera effects where the only way to accomplish these things were soon made more that obsolete with the development of the optical printer. Yet, that and the rack over is why so many Mitchells became special effects cameras in their latter years.
The best use of the shutter feature on set or location turned out to be in controlling strobe effects when shooting rotating or moving objects or in panning the camera. Ever see the odd western where the wagon wheels appear to be turning backwards? Bad shutter speed or the wagon changed speed during the shoot. In the "Cinematographer's Handbook" by ASC, there is a section on this that still is useful for digital cameras to which woefully few pay attention. ED.
A quick correction here to your post, just wonder why not caught earlier. Mid-post, you state:
[i]"The other feature went away after the Standard gave way to the NC and BNC. It was the adjustable Iris. What a powerful feature to have when you might not have had enough flexibility with the f stop range of the lens you had to use."[/i]
The iris feature was not an F stop replacement/supplement. Wrong place in the optical path. It was a masking feature. It could be maneuvered with the controls to anywhere in the frame and opened and closed as a matte.
Many early special effects were made on the set and in the camera. Those iris in and outs to black in silent movies where the face of the actor is ended in the shot or a point of interest is irised out from was done with this feature. (This is where the iris effect found in most video editing programs comes from.)
The rack over ability of the Mitchell made such effects easy to execute as the operator could see the exact effect setup through the taking lens before shooting it. Another mask feature that disappeared from the really early cameras with the changing of the times (and lack of demand) was a rotating disk that featured a keyhole or binocular among other shapes. The most used series of those shapes became the 4-way adjustable matte feature.
All big production Mitchells, up to and including the BNCR also had the capability--with the adjustable shutter-- to do fade-ins and fade-outs in-camera and, with careful backwinding, could do dissolves. Your second shot had better be good, for obvious reasons. Dissolves -- a feature welcomed in the 1920's where in-camera effects where the only way to accomplish these things were soon made more that obsolete with the development of the optical printer. Yet, that and the rack over is why so many Mitchells became special effects cameras in their latter years.
The best use of the shutter feature on set or location turned out to be in controlling strobe effects when shooting rotating or moving objects or in panning the camera. Ever see the odd western where the wagon wheels appear to be turning backwards? Bad shutter speed or the wagon changed speed during the shoot. In the "Cinematographer's Handbook" by ASC, there is a section on this that still is useful for digital cameras to which woefully few pay attention. ED.