USER REVI EW | MAVO LF
and there’s a scale to it, you just can’t replicate it on a smaller sensor. It’s like if you look at 65mm film or IMAX, the scale of that imagery – you can’t get anyway else. There is something very immersive that really pulls you in because of the vastness you can achieve with it. You look at something like The Revenant , which was shot predominately on the Alexa 65, the scale and width of those frames were so immersive. “In terms of this film and the benefits of the LF, obviously with a bigger sensor area more light comes in, there’s more depth-of-field. One of the advantages is that I can focus more on quality of light rather than output. I’ve got more light coming in because of the size of the sensor and you’ve also got the dual native ISOs. So you’ve got the 800 and the 5120, which for some of the night-time scenes is going to really help. Again, it means I can focus on the quality of light rather than just sheer output. “The movie has a fair few exteriors and some wider exterior night-time scenes, one in a graveyard. A lot happens in the main character’s apartment block. A 50mm close-up is going to be wider than it would be on Super 35, so we’re going to see more of the environment and more of the production design. “Some of the lighting set-ups we have been able to simplify because of the ability of the camera in low light,
but because we are looking to a noire style we wanted heavy contrast with the shadows – we’re doing quite a few silhouettes. Again, that all comes down to the quality of the light.” LENS PACKAGE “As I said, we are going to be using the Samyang Xeen primes – the 14, 24, 35, 50 and 85, which is the tightest they do. From discussions that we’ve had about coverage and shooting we will probably use the 24 and 50 the most, 24 for all the wider stuff, and then the close-ups will be more 50mm. There will be some 85 and 35 thrown in to the mix, but it’s mostly between those two lenses. “We’re going to shoot KineLOG, obviously, but in ProRes 4:4:4 rather than Raw. We just haven’t got the budget for storage to shoot Raw, which is one of the compromises we have to make – in an ideal world I would have shot Raw. They have recently released a guide to get it to interpret correctly in Da Vinci Resolve, which works really well, and once you’ve got those settings you can just import the Raw in and it interprets correctly, and looks incredible. “I’m using consumer-available SSDs for storage. The KineMAGs are the proprietary products and they do everything perfectly, but what I’ve had the most success with are the Samsung 860 Pros, which aren’t massively expensive SSDs but they’re really capable. I’ve used the
IMAGES Ash testing with the Mavo LF for a feature and a short
860 EVOs as well, which again have been really capable. SanDisk Ultra 2s are good for some of the lower frame rate and resolution options, as they can’t cope with the full 6K with high frame rates. “If you have a Super 35 job it’s then just a sensor crop mode inside the camera. It will give you the same field of view as the Mavo Super 35 model, so you obviously lose a little bit of resolution but can still do 6k in Super 35. There’s an option in the menu in ‘Shooting Formats’, and you choose what you want; it includes MFT and Super 16, as well. There’s no camera restart, you just select it and it’ll reboot itself but it’s not like a full restart. It’s much quicker than restarting, it just refreshes everything – it takes maybe a second or two. “I’ve already had a few updates for the camera; there’s one that’s about to drop that activates the side panel menu, giving you ISO and frame rate readout on the panel. The Facebook page and the group are really helpful, also ProAV Email me when there is anything new.”
BELOW New updates will activate the side panel menu, which gives you a parameter readout
“THERE’S A SCALE TO IT YOU JUST CAN’T REPLICATE ON A SMALLER SENSOR... IT REALLY PULLS YOU IN”
64 DEF I N I T ION | APR I L 20 1 9
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