Frame & Reference Podcast - Lens Month: Jay Holben, ASC

Episode Date: July 22, 2021

Welcome to our fourth, and final, episode of Lens Month! To round out the series, Kenny talks with cinematographer, producer and director Jay Holben, ASC. Jay has had a storied career including directing “Before the Dawn” and episodes of “Strange Events.” He was also the DP of “Mothman” and “Black Tar Road.” Outside of his work on set, Jay is an Associate member of the ASC and the co-chair of the ASC Motion Imaging Technology Council Lens Committee. He is also a contributing technical editor for American Cinematographer Magazine and a faculty instructor for the Global Cinematography Institute. As Kenny says in the episode, Jay is a Master of Many and is a total wealth of knowledge so make sure to listen to the full episode! For more on Jay, check out his website Frame & Reference is supported by Filmtools and ProVideo Coalition. Filmtools is the West Coasts leading supplier of film equipment. From cameras and lights to grip and expendables, Filmtools has you covered for all your film gear needs. Check out Filmtools.com for more. ProVideo Coalition is a top news and reviews site focusing on all things production and post. Check out ProVideoCoalition.com for the latest news coming out of the industry. Check out ProVideoCoalition.com for more!

Hello, and welcome to this, another episode of Frame and Reference. I'm your host, Kenny McMillan, and today, rounding out Lens Month, we've got Jay Holbin. Super excited to have Jay on the show. He is an ASC associate member. He's the co-chair of the ASC Lens Council. It's got a longer name, but I can't quite remember it. He's directed plenty of films. He's produced plenty of films. He's shot plenty of films.

He's one of those wore Many Hats kind of guys who didn't, you know, you hear about the, what's it called? You know, Master of Nun type person. This is a master of many. And so really excited to have them on to round out the Lens Month. We talk about everything in this one, so you're definitely going to want to listen, although I don't know why I'm saying that at the head of the podcast, because you're listening. But just very excited. I really hope that we can have Jay back on in the future to talk more about cinematography as a whole or filmmaking as a whole because, yeah, he's just got all the knowledge you could possibly want. He also writes for American cinematographer.

I don't know if I just said that. but the man has, if you go on American Cinematographer, the website, or have any American cinematographer magazines, I've got probably a hundred or so there. He's probably, his, his articles are necessary reading for cinematographers. So give those a read, but first listen to this. Yeah, I'm going to shut up and stop fawning all over the man. I think I mentioned this in probably the first episode of Lens Month, but I recorded these in like May. So, you know, we've learned more since then. Things have happened.

So if you hear anything and you're like, that sounds a little anachronistic. That's why. Anyway, on to my conversation with J. Holden. So the way I usually start is how, what got you into cinematography? Because I know you, you're not just a lens tech or even just a director, just a cinematography. You've had a pretty storied career so far. So far. Thank you for saying that. Yes. It's still at the cusp, right? Yeah. What got me into

cinematography is kind of what got me into every other aspect of the business. I have wanted to be a film director since I was five. And part of what I learned very early on is to be a really good director, I needed to understand what everybody else was doing. So I actually started as an actor and as a writer and kind of worked my way through all of the departments. And cinematography was one of the trades that I wanted to learn on the way up to become a better director. And then I found a second passion in that. And I stayed in that world ever since. Sure. Did when you were coming up, did you have any, I mean, what were your inspirations, but did you also have, you know, mentors or anyone that you can point to that

really helped you along in your career path? I unfortunately didn't, and I'm only mildly bitter about it. No, they're really, you know, my education was books and American Center Photographer magazine, but, you know, an extraordinary amount of reading and learning on my own, and I really wasn't fortunate to have any specific mentors. I had one incredible afternoon spent with Alan Davio and got a lot of great advice from him, and that meant a lot to me, but that was really just a day. Everything else has been taken at solo. It's interesting because we've done maybe 20 of these interviews, and I think only two or three people really said that they had any mentors. It does seem like cinematography is, the field is sort of populated by a large

band of renegades, as it were, to coin, uh, what's that? What was that? Um, oh, Realt with D.B. Rebels. I was thinking of a, oh, shit. Speaking of books, why can't it, Stu Matt, Matt, Mashowitz, Matt, Mashwitz. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Who had Renegade in their was that no that's rebel again I'm not sure about Renegate yeah I'm thinking about a rebel without a crew was the reverest book what were some books like that you

that even today you would suggest for people to read if they were trying to get into it or kind of enhance their craft because obviously ASEMAG which must be a joy for you to now be so integral with but any books that are on your being part of AAC MAG has always been a deep

honor for me and I you know I'm 20 some odd years into it now and and still very proud to be part of that. Yeah, cinematography, Chris Makowitz, Malkowitz, I'm going to slaughter that name, but yeah, and David Mullen. It was a great book early on for me. So it was a shot by shot by Stephen Katz. Say, lighting for film and electronic cinematography by Dave Vera. was another really great one, of course, the ASC manual. There's a shot in the dark by Jay Holbin and behind the lens by Jay Holbin, that guy. Those are some great books.

No, but yeah, there's the extraordinary wealth of books, but those are the ones that really stand out to me that early on were really big, you know, turning points for me and kind of learning. Were you a big, I say were, but I still am. Were you a big, like, director's commentary kind of guy, DVD special features guy? Because I know a lot of people were, that was a big point, especially for me. Oh, yeah, especially in the late 90s, man. That was bread and butter.

Learned a ton of this. As a matter of fact, I just recently went back and re-listen to Danny DeVito's commentary on War the Roses, which is like one of my favorites. It's not only hysterical, but really insightful. I mean, he really shares some great moments. that were like, you know, again, like turning, wow, okay, great, that's something I'm always going to keep in mind. The, man, the close encounters laser disc was really brilliant in the way that they did the commentaries and the layouts for that. But sure, yeah, I don't listen to them

as much now as I used to, but man, in the late 90s and early 2000s, that was the thing. yeah because that's i mean i'm a slightly younger than you and uh that was definitely the thing that got me into filmmaking was buying a DVD and having there be um something on there where the people who made the magic were like so here's how the magic sign and i was a magician as a teenager so like that it all felt very uh interconnected that there was like secrets that you could delight people with and there was like a small group of people now it's a huge group of people but at the time, it felt very small and kind of, you know, if you're, if you're this type of, if you're predisposed to be this type of person, there's like a whole collection of folks

that are just like you that like to do the magic. Yeah, that was the, you know, that was what American cinematographer was. I was a kid growing up in Arizona, loving movies, wanting to be part of this business. And everything at that time that you didn't get the internet that exists, because I'm an old man, but everything at that time that you would get your hands on that was movies was it was all about the celebrities and the actors and you'd find American cinematographer on the newsstand and just devour it because it gave the insights you know it got that look behind the scenes into the real magic of making movies so yeah when again laser discs were a thing and the commentaries were on that and the DVDs that was gold when you get a

good one. Yeah, I just watched the, I just watched Tellboy 2. And there's, there's a documentary about the making of that's longer than the movie. And I just love that. It's and also too, I feel like there's, I've definitely seen some like, here's how we made it documentaries, but I also really enjoy the, um, uh, what Adam Savage calls the, it's not here's how it was made, but here's what happened. You know, kind of follow alongs. I think those are also valuable because they don't, because I think if you try to do it, here's how it's made, you'll cut out. all the places where you screwed up whereas here's what happened is a lot more like and then this happened and then this definitely happened and you know and i feel like those are more

instructive and more valuable that no one wants to highlight their failures absolutely i actually i put out a product a little over a decade ago called filmmaker in a box that was uh 17 and a half hours of documentary material on the making of a micro budget feature film And the whole idea was to provide every step from development through posts, documented. Every document in the production, every contract, the budget, the script, the script supervisors, notes. Everything was available to give the full experience, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Every mistake that was made, every good choice that was made, and documented as this intense case study. So, yeah, I put that out there for people to learn from.

This is what we did, good and bad, and run from there. Is that product still available? It is. It's online now on the UDEMI platform. It's called Filmming in a box. So the physical DVDs aren't being sold anymore, but the whole program is online. Awesome.

So what got you? obviously you're here for for lens month but uh i i'd be stupid to not ask you more questions about you know the the industry as a whole just because you're um so accomplished but uh what got you so focused into lenses was it just kind of like one day you were writing an article and then it just kept going and going or what uh how did that come about because you are like the lens guy for the ASC if i'm not mistaken uh i do chair the uh the lens committee for the ASC's motion imaging Technology Council. So I guess that technically makes me the lens guy for the ASC.

It was a discovery that I knew nothing about lenses that got me in the lenses. So somewhat embarrassingly during my career as a cinematographer, I really didn't know much about lenses. And it was true of most of my contemporaries at that time that my experience, because I mostly shot with Panavision cameras was super speeds, normal speeds, and primos, which I never really got to play with. And all the anamorphics

were always rented out. So that's what I knew. I knew normal speeds and super speeds. And there was a few years ago, I guess now, about eight, nine years ago, I was doing a series of lectures that was sponsored by Panavision. I was doing them at Panavision.

And I was asked to do a lecture on lenses. So I put together a two, two and a half hour lecture talking about lenses and focal lengths and a guy McVicker, who was the lens guru at Panavision Hollywood, sat in on that lecture. And after it, you know, gave me some really nice compliments and said, hey, it was a great job. But do you want to hear my spiel? I was like, hell yeah, absolutely.

So it's, okay, you know, come out next week and let me do my thing for you. and I grabbed my buddy, Christopher Proves, and we went out and spent a few hours with Guy who just melted our brain. And realized at that moment, I know nothing about lenses. They know absolutely nothing about this world, and it's truly extraordinary. And Chris and I, about a week or two later, went back to Panavision, and we spent a couple of days testing every 50-millimeter lens that they had. And that test, kind of putting together side-by-side images, really informed, oh my God, there's a whole world to image control in understanding glass.

And that led to me teaching a class on optics for the Global Cinematography Institute that I was already teaching for. I'm kind of pushing for, let me share this information that I've learned, writing a couple of articles for db magazine and then i came up with a really stupid idea of this should be a book and i went to christopher and i said hey do you want to do a book with me and he was like yeah yeah let's do it and at that time that test that we did at panavision turned him on the k35s turned him on to starting to invest in lenses and starting to

look into rehousing uh and so it sent us both on this crazy tangent and for the last seven years we've been working on this book on city lenses that'll be out at the end of this year. Yeah. Oh, good. I was going to ask when that comes out because that was something that Ryan Avery had mentioned. He was like, yeah, they're working on like what seems to be the most comprehensive sort of, what would you call it, like encyclopedia of lenses. I'm calling it a treatise, but yeah, there are aspects of encyclopedia. There are aspects of 101. One, there are aspects of just a standard reference book. It takes from the very basics of this is what a lens is

and this is what all the markings are through the understanding of optical design, through the understanding of optomechanical design, through care, testing, maintenance, into the evolution of sine lens design from the Pesville portrait all the way through the optimal primes. we, you know, detail over 200 family of lenses and their evolution.

And it's a monster. Well, I'm honestly, like, I'm happy that you spent the time to do that because, and I'm also happy that you said, you didn't know anything about lenses. Because when I started to talk to Matthew, I had worked with Matthew on, like, kind of a side project. And now, and I thought, you know, lens, I get it, I guess. And then I did the interview for this. And I was like, at the end of it, I was like, I just, I didn't ask him anything because I didn't realize what I don't know.

And then I got to Alex and then that happened again. And then the other day with Ryan, I really realized how little I know. And I think the problem was is that, you know, the classic, you don't know what you don't know. And so I'm wondering, is there anything, is there any sort of blind spots that you see in sort of, let's say, your day-to-day cinematographer with lensing that you could help illusion. illuminate, you know, because right now it does, it feels like, if I were to, you know, just only speak about myself, it does, you kind of just maybe go on a forum online or you ask your friends, like, what do you like? And the answer is usually like, oh, R-E-Mini with Cook S-4 is, duh. And you go, good, that looks good, but you don't have like a reasoning or you don't

know what is bringing that. We're also camera focused. We know so much about, well, some People know so much about bit depth and logs and all kinds, you know, input transforms and resolve and all this stuff, but we don't know about just the oldest part of the camera, the lens. Well, it's the interesting aspect of the back in the world of shooting film. The lens was just a tool to get the image onto the emulsion. The emulsion was really where you had the character of the image, now how what film stock you chose, how you expose that film.

stock how you develop that film stock how you printed that stock that was where the character of the image and the creative process of the image really where the heart of it was in the digital world that's become a lot more um uh i'm a loss for word there uh it's kind of standard Unified. Yeah, standardized or unified across platforms. You know, you can make every camera look identical. And there are, you know, pros and cons to every camera. But for the most part, it's a flat playing field. That's where the lens really imparts an extraordinary aspect of the creative character of the image. And understanding that is a powerful tool for the cinematographer, that a lens choice isn't just, you know, what's available to me or, you know, my variation of focal lengths, but within the optical design and within the particular vintage are different looks that you can impart on the image and you can bake into the image. So an understanding of the differences between Cook S4 and Panavision Primo and a K-35 and a Schneider

xenon will give you a body of tools. in which to help create better character to tell a story. Yeah, because I think, you obviously correct me if I'm wrong, but from my sort of timeline, it did seem that independent film, all the lenses were built into the body, you know, your DV cameras for the most part. And then when we were able to attach other lenses,

all the options were stills, and we still were not thinking of character. It was just like depth of field. And then for the longest time, it feels like, you know, your choice of lens, if we are to believe the marketing hype, comes down to how wide open can it be and how sharp is the image, which in some ways I suppose are opposing things to some degree. Talk to me more about what kind of character a lens can impart because I don't think, especially for people starting, don't, I don't think a lot of

lot of people realize just how much like microcontrast or I guess macro contrast or or even just fall off can fall off can really affect how something looks absolutely those those are very subtle things that are hard to quantify when you're talking about acutence or microcontrast that gives a shape to the transition between what is in focus and what is not in focus and in some lenses that can be a very sharp transition, and another lenses that can be a very gradual transition, what you were talking about as far as roll off. But that's a really subtle aspect that, again,

is hard to quantify, it's hard to show. The bigger things that are easier to see and that make a bigger difference between families and lenses are some of the aberrations, especially spherical aberration, the amount of spherical aberration within an optical design really has a lot to play or a big role to play in character. It can have a huge role in the way that skin tones are represented,

in the way that skin texture is represented, in the way that out of focus is represented, whether it is an overcorrected sphere collaboration that gives you more sharper out of focus aspects, which is kind of a contradictory concept. But you have, if you're looking at, bouquet highlights, you can have sharp edges around them, or you can have undercorrected sphere collaboration that gives you really organic bouquet that just kind of falls off and melts into

the background. And those two differences can be huge in the representation of an image. Flair is a major factor in character of lens, especially veiling glare. So the lens, so the lens's ability to control veiling glare is a huge factor in contrast, in color saturation, in skin tone representation, and understanding how coatings play a role in that helps to understand how you choose your lenses. To know that if Panavision Primos or Leika Sumilex Cs have really strong coding that controls that flare quality, whereas K-35s or Xenons or even super speeds don't have that strong with flare control, so you get more veiling glare and you get less contrast and you get a little softer image, even though it's sharp. Right. And by veiling glare, you mean

sort of the effect of, to put it in a weird way, like a filter would have. That's that sort of full image reduction in contrast. Exactly. Vailing glare is a featureless, shapeless, loss of contrast and color saturation. So it's an overall haze to the image. And it happens, you know, in your setup right there, the bright window behind you, the lens that you're using has really good veiling glare control. Otherwise, your blacks would be really washed out by that window. So if we're using a vintage lens with less coding control,

you would have a lot less blacks and a lot softer image from that window in the background. Gotcha. Yeah,

this is for anyone watching. It's a, it's the Canon 40 pancake. Oh, nice. Which looks hilarious

on my C-500. You know, it's like C-500, V-lock, transmitter, lens. It looks like a body cap, you know.

So you, you guys have been doing, how many times a year, is it just once a year that you have the sort of get-togethers at the clubhouse where everyone kind of just talks about lenses and the manufacturers come in and stuff like that. Well, that varies substantially based on, you know, individual schedules and work schedules and the clubhouse schedules. We try to meet at least every quarter for the lens committee. She doesn't always necessarily work out that way. And COVID, of course, changed everything

for everyone. But generally trying to meet about every quarter with the projects that are happening with the lens committee. And what, go ahead. I just don't see there. There's about 68 members of that committee representing cinematographers, lens technicians, rental houses, camera companies, lens companies. We try to run the full gap.

And what do those conversations sort of consist of? because I assume cinematographers are just asking for smaller, lighter, brighter, or, you know, what, because one thing that Ryan was saying was that his job is to convert what cinematographers want into, what would you call it, mechanical speak, engineer speak, yeah, what are those things that, that sort of the cinematographers at the higher end, what are those things that they're they're looking for generally. Well, man, that varies. It varies depending upon who you talk to.

You know, go to a Greg Frazier. Greg is looking for character. He's looking for something to give a shape and a feel to his image. He's reaching for more vintage and more aberrant lenses than, say, Roger Deacons. You know, Roger Deacons or Cadet de Chanel wants a very clean, neutral. lens and they want to do all of the shaping of the image through their lighting. So it varies substantially depending upon the creative individual who's talking about it. You know, somebody like a Medellique, again, is going to reach for lenses that flare more

and lenses with a little more aberration and more character to them that shape that image, which is why he's leading on Kawa anamorphics or the Cook S.F animorphics, you know, of the super flair kind of as his general tools for the last couple of projects so it really it depends on who you talk to do the uh do the engineering types always kind of take whatever they're getting and go and give it the classic like hmm okay and then turn around and try to what am i trying to say are they trying to meet demand or are they trying to figure out how much they can sell for the most part yeah yeah yeah yeah Yeah. Again, that depends on who you talk to.

You know, one of the interesting things about, say, Panavision or Hawk is that Hawks a little bit of a hybrid, but Panavision doesn't sell their product. Right. So they're not worried about the sales price or, you know, the return on that particular research and development. They can listen to a cinematographer who says, I'm really looking for. or a super sharp lens that has incredible flair. And they say, oh, okay, well, interesting.

And they go make a series of lenses for that cinematographer, but then maybe they'll, you know, produce more of them. Hawk can do the same thing. They listen to their cinematographers and say, oh, we love your C series, but we really want something that has a little bit better edge-to-edge performance. And I say, okay, well, we're going to come out with the B series. and then oh you know we like the v series but it's a little too much let's do a little bit more

flare okay now we're going to come out with the bead lights you know it's a little faster okay now maybe a little more okay now we're going to have the bead light vintage and they can release new line for every concept where you have a company more like sorry no go ahead go ahead we have a company more like zice they have to sell their lenses so they have to listen to the cinematographers and find a more universal product that's going to appeal to a larger base so that as they put the millions of dollars into research and development and manufacturing, they can get that back by selling a large number of lenses. So there's a, it depends on, again, totally. Who you chat? Well, and I suppose

that answer helped help me figure out what I was trying to say, which is what is more universally again, I'm just, I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. So I'm trying to get a reading on just what the landscape of lensing is. Is the universal, so to speak, average cinematographer looking for brighter, sharper, the end? Or is that push towards vintage? Because, you know, as K counts went up and as dynamic range went up, it seems like we walked further away from clinical and closer to, let's buy, let's buy out every Canon FD on eBay and go from there. Are lens companies leaning back into vintage, or is it still, let's keep it clinical?

No, they're definitely, they're definitely following that trend. And it's a difficult thing for a lens company to do because, yes, for the longest time, the process was produce a lens that is faster, sharper, more contrasts. And that's the evolution of optics generally from the first photographic lens all the way through the end of the 1990s. So there was one track. And if you're an optical designer or an optical engineer, that's where your mindset is. I have to create a better performing lens that's going to deliver more contrast and better sharpness at a faster speed. And then it started to be, okay, so we try to make them more compact, and we try to make them more universal in size and make the markings similar.

And these trends started in the late 90s into the 2000s. But now, exactly like you said, because we have digital cameras that have made the image more flatline, the trend is to go to more vintage and more character. And the manufacturers are having, they have to respond to that. And it's a struggle. You know, there's nothing more fascinating than to watch lens engineers, optical engineers and optical designers watch a camera test with a cinematographer and a director.

Because they'll be back by the monitor watching all these things going, oh, my God, that's terrible lens. Look at that. That's horrible. And then the director would be like, that's great. That's what I love. And an optical designer is like, what? What?

This is terrible lens. It has horrible spherical aberration. It has no edge to edge performance. The fall off is, yep, I love it. That's what I want. And then just watch their brains melt because everything they've done is fighting against that. Right. And what we're liking in lenses creatively are false, technically speaking.

So it's difficult to get a company, you know, especially like a German company like Zeiss that is wants precision and wants perfection to say, no, we need to step back and we need to create a series of lenses that caters to the creatives. So they take the Zeiss Supremes and take a step back and create the Zeiss Supreme Radiance version that allow more flare and control of flare to cater to. those audiences. So, yeah, all of the companies are having to do that. Anjadou has, you know, stepped up and said, we're going to give you a series of lenses that are custom tunable. So you can swap out an optic within the design. You can change

out your iris. You can add an additional element to the rear of the lens to alter the character of this series of lenses to what you want. And I think that's a very smart move. do you see the sort of it's I talked about this in the last podcast but it is the sort of influx of just rehousing tons of stills lenses is that like fun and exciting or is it kind of complicating things yes I think it is incredibly fun and exciting it's it's exciting to find glass that looks good and that works and that helps to tell a story. Rehousing lenses is not a new thing. This has been happening, dating back really to the 40s and 50s, taking and repurposing glass from other sources

and utilizing them. The trends now, I think, really started with the excess of owner-operators of cameras. And I'll pin that back to the, you know, the release of the red one. Prior to that, the, you know, barrier of entry to being an owner-operator of a 35-millimeter motion picture camera was about a quarter of a million dollars. Then, you know, there were digital cameras that, you know, not a lot of people took very seriously. But again, like the F-900 was, was about

a quarter of a million dollars. Red introduces a professional tool, and that was a little questionable with the red one, but at an extraordinary price, you know, at $30,000, that allowed a ton of people to suddenly enter the business. And that placed a massive demand on optics. That just was not service. So suddenly there is, you know, 10,000 PL cameras in the field that worked there prior to that and this incredible demand on lenses and people are reaching for okay what's available and what can I afford and that opened up all these doors to still lenses whether that you know the EF or icon mounts or the Olympus mount and there's beautiful glass out there so now there's this trend of rehousing more and more of these into the cinema style

mechanics with maintaining the look of that beautiful glass from Olympus and my connor canon that actually for sure i i'm i'm going to ask you a question that sucks uh can you define for me because i feel like i'm not i mean i'm sure i've already done three or four but uh what how do you define a cinema lens because it does feel like online people are uh and the only reason I say online because that's where the discussion is, especially now that we can't hang out and see each other. But, oh, I, you know, I just picked up a cinema lens. It's, I, this is going to be great. And it's like, well, are you an owner-operator by yourself? Because I think you just made your job harder, you know? And also, do you even know what it looks like? No, but it's

cinema style. So now I know it's good. It's got gears on it. Nothing beats online forums for something telling you whether it's a good lens or a bad lens, because everybody has an opinion, right? So the answer to that question is mechanics. The real difference between a still lens and a cinema lens is that, and you touched on it, the cinema lens is designed for a second person to manually adjust. just the focus while another person controls the camera. This is not true of stills lenses, this is not true of broadcasts or ENG lenses. It is something that is unique to the cinema world.

So to design a lens for that, one of the first things that you need is that you have to remove the hand from touching the lens. to remove the focus control from physically touching the barrel of the lens, which means we put a gear around the focus. And that's one of the main things that separates a still lens from a cinema lens is that 0.8 module 32 pitch standard gear. So that allows me to put a follow focus to separate that physical connection

or a remote follow focus. The next thing is the increase in resolution of focus markings. So still lenses, especially starting in the 80s, early 80s, were designed for autofocus. And autofocus, the way to achieve that is to move the lens elements as little as possible, and to keep that focus distance,

that resolution of marks as small as possible. So that lens is capable of quickly achieving focus and silently achieving focus. And that's a huge factor in still lenses. So the focus scales on a still lens, generally speaking, are very small, which means as you were trying to manually focus a still lens, it's incredibly difficult to know where you are between three feet and six feet when you have a quarter of an inch of space and no markings. So a cinema lens has more resolution of markings.

It's going to have three feet, three feet, three inches, three feet, six inches, three feet, nine inches, four feet, four feet. And it's going to have more spacing between those markings to give you more precision of focus as you are manually finding focus. Those are your primary things. Then it gets into lens mounts. The standard lens mounts for the motion picture industry being PL or PV or now LPL are much more robust mounts than say EF or the Nikon or, you know, the stills world. They are designed to have heavier lenses to positively lock that lens into the camera to make sure that there is no movement. and to make sure that that flange depth is locked and steady because that's what keeps a resolution of marks accurate

is to make sure that that back focus and that flange depth is accurate. Then you get into aspects like maintaining barrel size between focal lengths so that as you go from 25 to a 50 to 75, your gears positions are in the same position, your barrel diameters are the same so all of your accessories are the same these are other things that separate sinning lenses from

still lenses primarily it's all mechanics yeah well and so that I'm happy you ended on that because I think that that's what I see is people going I have a cinema lens therefore my image is good it's like no you have a cinema lens therefore your job

is harder if you're alone if you are a one-man band, yes, your job can be harder unless you are actually using a follow focus wheel to a job's focus. But, you know, single operators who are pulling their own focus, that's more in the EMG broadcast world. And then you have a simpler, less tension on the barrel. You have a, you know, a single barrel in which your Zoom, well, Zoom is generally on a motor, and that's at your other hand. But you're pulling your own focus as you're operating. That's not the way that the cinema world works.

Right. So it's designed for a second person to be there. And it's a two-person team. Yeah, I suppose a good way to think about it would be like, if you did have a second person, would you want to hand them a stills lens? Or would that make their job really freaking hard? It does. Yeah.

Yeah. And, you know, as DSLR lenses became more ubiquitous in the film industry, and people were shooting with SLR lenses, yeah, it's a super pain to move that technology into the workflow of the cinema world. And that's why we get companies like Duplos doing Cini mods to take those lenses and help them mechanically enter into the workflow of the film world.

Yeah. Is there, has the advantage, advancement of lenses, specifically, you know, coatings and optical design and all that. And maybe you should take a moment to differentiate between optomechanical design and optical design. But has it been kind of a sliding scale where just every year something else changed or are there kind of defined eras of lens design? Like if you were to think like, oh, I want a 70s lens for this reason versus an 80s lens or whatever the, you know, chop-ups are.

Absolutely. There are huge milestones. I mean, it's, you know, starting back from the 1870s in photographic design in, you know, the first acrimat, you know, the first doublets, the, the triplet lens, the planar, you know, all of these original optical designs were huge milestones that we're still living off of now. So lenses that were designed, you know, in 1889 and 1905 and 1912 are the basis of optical design that we're using now. But beyond that, the most like really significant change came at the end of the 1930s and 1940s, and that was thin film anti-reflection coatings.

So this was really a discovery from the teens, but it took until the 30s to figure out. out how to do it, to artificially apply a thin film coating on the lenses that reduced flare. And when that happens, not only do we reduce flare and get better transmission, but it allowed for more significant optical design, because prior to that, optical designers had to limit the number of pieces of glass that they used, because every piece of glass would be a reduction of light transmission and increase of flare. So if you went past a triplet, which is literally three pieces of glass, every additional piece of glass that you added increased flare, so you lose contrasts, you lose sharpness, and you lost transmission. So optical designers were limited.

When we introduced anti-reflection code is that opened up a whole new world of optical design, and like, oh, wow, we can correct more problems because we can introduce more elements because now we can get better transmission. Codings have evolved substantially. So from the initial coatings in 1940, really about 3940, to the 70s, some minor improvements in the 70s,

we got some significant improvements. In the 80s, we got more improvements. In the 90s, we got more improvements. to the point where we're now multi-layer coating every element to not only just control flare, but also control color. So this was something that, you know, lights really pioneered right around the time of the Panavision Primos was the ability to control the coloration of an entire family of lenses by refining the optical coatings in every element to get a color matched series

of lenses. And, you know, we're talking about 1990s for that. So these things are still evolving. The introduction of asphoric elements, really about the late 1950s into photographic lenses and then cinema lenses. The A-sphere helps to do the job of several other optical elements and reduce the number of elements that are necessary and the weight. Then you get into free-form elements and you get into changes in optical glass, the chemical composition of glass, and that was something that started very, very, very early on in the late 1800s, but is still happening now that there are so many chemical varieties

of a combination of glass that an optical designer can use. And I think I'm kind of going into the weeds trying to answer your question. But yeah, no, weeds are good. Weds are good. The more weeds, the more I can like grasp things. But to your point, there's so many, you know, you were saying that there's so many chemicals, chemical compositions that they can use to make lenses, but also, I think something that's been brought up a lot is chemicals they can't use. Can't use lead anymore, you know? And that apparently made the FDs cool or something. There's a lot of, there's much ado about that. And there's a lot of magic and voodoo attributed to lead. But really what lead did is increase the refractive index of the glass. The increase of

a refractive index allows you to make less perverture and smaller elements. There's a lot of different chemical compositions that you can do to increase the refractive index. So the magic that's attributed to lead is a little overplay. There's a lot of things that can be incorporated now that replace that quality.

And lead was obviously, taken out of service due to environmental concerns. And it is an environmental concerns of the finished glass, it's environmental concerns of the manufacturing process. So that was outlawed first in Europe and then that sort of trickled through the rest of the world. But there, you know, there's been a lot of chemicals introduced into lenses, including radioactive elements to change the optical condition of that. thorium was one of the things that was introduced in the lenses in 1930s to the 70s,

and it is a radioactive isotope. So there are lenses that, you know, you throw up to a Geiger counter and they're going to register, they are literally radioactive, not dangerously so, but a lot of different things were tried. Sure. I mean, you get radiated when you get in an airplane, so nothing to be scared of if you own one of those. I like that you mentioned the sort of voodoo and magic because one thing that I at the beginning of the talk me talking about how I loved the magic, I think the only way to

be a magician is to, I'm going to start stealing words from like Steve Yedlin and stuff, but like have control over your craft, whether it be, you know, knowing how to manipulate a card or or a thumb tip or whatever it may be or in our case knowing exactly what a lens or a camera or your imaging pipeline does so that you can be the magician and present the trick and not have the trick happen to you I get you know um to that end how would you and I know for people listening Jay has put up a shit ton of stuff uh both in the magazine and online But I'm going to ask the question anyway. How would one, how do you recommend one go by evaluating lenses, maybe for their specific camera or maybe just in general?

You know, what kind of test should they be doing when they go to, say, a rental house or maybe if they were even to purchase it? It's a very timely question. There are actually just two shotcraft pieces that I did for American Cinematographer magazine on exactly that topic. Yeah. So there are. I did read them. Oh, hey, sweet, cool. There are a lot of different types of tests,

and I don't think that there's necessarily anything wrong with any particular way of testing. There's no bad way to do it. I happen to, because I'm generally testing a lens for the sake of understanding as much of that lens as I possibly can. So there's a difference between a generic lens test and a specific project-driven lens test. So if you have a specific project in mind

and you are testing lenses for that, then there's a different process for doing that. You generally want to have subjects that are close to what your talent looks like. You want to have lighting that is similar to what you're going to be doing on that project, maybe even the exact wardrobe or props or locations for that project,

and you want to take that image through your post-production workflow in order to test those lenses. That's the way to help really determine a look for a specific project. For a generic test, I want to find out as much about that lens as I possibly can in as an efficient way as possible. And there's a couple of different ways that I do that. One is an all-encompassing generic test, where, A model is seated and flat lit with a contrast resolution chart, a color chart in front of a Christmas light background, a black background with Christmas lights on it, and two additional lights that give me flare. So within a single frame, what I'm trying to look at is color rendition, contrast, veiling glare, spot flare, and bocane. Okay. And I can pack all of that into a single image and test every stop on the lens.

And I get a lot of people like, why do you do that? Because the performance of the lens changes. And because I want to learn as much information about that particular lens as possible, I want to test everything. And that doesn't mean that most cinematographers aren't going to shoot at 22. right if you know what you're going to use that lens for great you don't have to do that but when I'm doing a generic test I want to push it as far as I can and that's a tedious amount of testing but you can get a lot of it the other way is to do isolated tests where you just shoot a black background with the Christmas lights and that way you're just looking at the bouquet of the lens and you roll focus to test intra-focus and extra focus

and see the change of the bouquet. I'd like to use nets instead of a single strand of Christmas lights. I use these nets that are designed to be thrown over bushes because I want to cover the entire field of view of the lens because the quality and character of the bouquet changes across the field of the lens from the corners to the center. And I want to see that in a single field. The next kind of isolated test that I'll do is a flare isolated test, which is, again, a black background with a single light source, generally like 150 watt for now, and then I'll put that, you know, eight or 10 feet away, and I will take the camera and I'll pan it 180 degrees across that light source.

and that'll show me where we start to pick up veiling glare before the light is in shot when the light is in shot it's going to show me how it treats spot flare and ghost flare and that tells me a lot about the optical design on the lens

and then you can take a lens out and shoot faces because that's mostly what we shoot so to see skin tone representation to see distortion of face and it's very interesting, you know, people, there's a lot of information online now about relationship

of focal length to perspective. Oh, no. And focal length of distance of subjects, you know, and some great gifts out there where, you know, people's faces, you know, grow and shrink as you hit them from 10 inches with a 10-mill or 100 feet with a 1,000 mil, and to see what happens to the human face with that. but also within individual optical designs, a 50-millimeter lens from five feet away, 10 different manufacturers are going to have 10 different renditions of the face. So these are important things to kind of see, to see, okay, from the S4 series to supersedes to Tokena Vistas,

what is it going to look like on my subject? that's an important thing to test. Yeah, the reason I said, oh, no, is because I was having flashbacks to win. I was, you know, I bought the C-500s and I was having to wrap my head around full-frame lenses. And, oh, boy, that just gets, that gets in the weeds. I had, I had, I was on Roger Deacons's forums and I was asking about his experience with them on 1917. And I had asked a stupid question. And sure enough, who comes after me, but David Mullen.

And I get, I get a good paragraph of him very politely telling me how stupid I am. And, and I was like, shit, I knew, I knew that I was wrong. And I somehow wheeled myself back. I had read, I was on Steve Edlin's blog for like three days just trying to like go back and realize, you know, because he's a very technical writer, so you kind of have to go back and reread it and go like, do I get it now? And you finish it and you go back. I think I get it now. So yeah, that's why I said, oh, no, I thought you were going to start talking about that. No, there's an awful lot of confusion and misinformation about format size and lenses.

the bottom line is a 50 is a 50 is a 50 meaning that there's much ado made about crop factor and most of it you can completely ignore and throw away it has no bearing whatsoever unless you are used to a particular format and you're now shooting with a different format and the understanding of crop factor will help you understand how the field of view of those lenses is going to change. So, you know, a lot of people will say, you know, you're shooting with Super 35 camera and you have a 50 millimeter lens and you go to a full frame camera, that lens now suddenly become something different. Right. It doesn't. It's exactly the same thing. Field of view is different depending upon the format you're on. So a 50mm

lens on an 8mm camera is a very long lens with a very short field of view, very shallow field of view. You take that exact same 50 millimeter lens, you put it on a 16 millimeter camera, it now is a median field of view. You put it on a 35 millimeter camera. It's now a standard based field of view. You put it on a large format camera. It's now a wide lens. It's still a 50 millimeter lens. 50s never changed.

But based on the format, the field of view changes. Well, and the number one, correct me if you think something supersedes this, but the number one piece of misinformation that I see is shooting full frame allows you to shoot longer lenses and therefore less distortion. Yeah, that's not true. Distortion, there is geometric distortion in lenses, but what most people are talking about distortion is the relationship of the camera distance to your subject, and that is independent of focal length.

If you are able to take a hundred millimeter lens and put it an inch away from a face, that lens will distort the perspective of that face just as much as a 10-millimeter lens 10 inches away from the face. You're just seeing a much smaller portion of the image so it's hard to tell. But distortion is based on the relative distance of the subject to the lens,

not the focal length of the lens. That is definitely a misnomer. Also, right along those same lines, a lot of people are saying that because you're shooting with longer focal length lenses you're compressing your foreground and your background more in a larger format and that is not true either

compression of foreground and background is again the relationship of the distance of your lens to your subject and if that doesn't change neither does the compression there's a wonderful test Manuel Luber's I hope I can pronounce that right

did an extraordinary evaluation of a Alexa mini to an Alexa 65 on a simultaneous 3D beam splitter rig to dispel all of these misnomer's and misunderstandings. And it's truly extraordinary. I recommend everybody to check it out. I do too. Unfortunately, yesterday, I saw. I saw someone cite that as proof that the 65 had less distortion than the mini. Luckily everyone, luckily everyone was correcting him, but it was like, what are we doing, man?

Like, that was the whole, that was the thesis. By the way, one of the most beautifully shot tests I've seen in a minute. Yeah, we wound up getting images from him to use in the book because, A, what he did is beautiful. B, it's very expensive to put that particular test together and difficult and time-consuming. And we just, there was no way that we were going to do it better than what he did. So we got his permission to put several images from that test into the book to illustrate these and correct these misnomerate. We're about up on time.

But is there anything that is exciting you about the, let's see. we'll open it up to the whole world of cinematography again. But like what are things kind of that are you're excited to see that are new or maybe even excited to see leave, you know, in our art form? Oh, wow. I don't know if I really have an answer to that. I think that every tool has its use and every technique has its use. You know, when I was coming up primarily,

as a DP in the late 90s and in early 2000s, things like Zooms were like a no-no. Like nobody liked a Zoom lens. And you never zoom in a shot. That was like, oh my God, total amateur hour. Right. But that's absolute BS. And there are extraordinary seminars like John Seale

who were brilliant with a zoom lens and the way that they would nest a zoom into a Dolly or into a crane move and do extraordinary work with it. So even things that you kind of dismiss, like drones are a little overused right now, or, you know, stabilizers and crazy, you know, pass-through shots going through a car window or something are perhaps a little bit overused right now. But those techniques have their place.

So I don't, there's nothing that I'm really like, oh, this is coming and man, it's going to be amazing. And there's nothing that I really hate either. other than people saying that that particular lens or that particular tool is crap. Because I don't think that that exists. Every tool has its job. The iPhone is an incredible tool and can be very well used. A GoPro can be an incredible tool.

HDSLRs are amazing tools. Technology snobbery is just frustrating. defeat us. So I love everything. Bring it in. And if it helps tell the story, great. Yeah, I think a lot of that tech snobbery just comes from insecurity.

I bought the newest, coolest thing. And if there's a newer, cooler thing that comes out, my value is somehow lowered. Whoie? So I like to end every podcast asking the same two questions. and I think we already answered the second one, but what, it can be an object or a life change or a resource or something. What thing off the top of your head can you point to as having the biggest effect on you in your career as a cinematographer that kind of brought you

to that next level or allowed you to get to where you are today or that you use most often? The first thing that pops in my head is the technique of shadow side to camera was one of the things that elevated my work exponentially, almost overnight. Just that simple concept of keying from the off-camera side or putting shadow side to camera, adds a particular depth and cinematic look. to the image that really was a massive, you know, change in the quality of my work. It is something that I like to pass on as kind of in this setup, a little bit. I was going to say, yeah, look, it's right here, but only if I, it's not really, only if I'm over here is it shadow side of camp. But that was a technique that was like, oh, wow, that was game changing for me.

yeah the uh you know we've had some you know some you know buying a light meter was one and then also so was a good pair of shoes which i think was the magnum photos has a whole book called uh like buy good shoes or something like that that was one of stevens spillberg's advice to young filmmakers is get good shoes that's good advice and actually i just met with the young filmmaker earlier today and that was one of the pieces of advice i passed on was a really good shoes um and to, you know, if you're an operator, get a good back brace. Back support, take care of the back. I've finally hit the age where that really is more important now than ever.

Early 20s, man, he's operating all kinds of like that. No problem. Everything's fine. Now it's like just doing this, sitting on this weird stool. Like, I'm going to be aching for 10 minutes. Yeah. And then the final question, is there anything that you would like to promote to the audience that you'd like them to check out or? anything like that?

Well, absolutely. The Cine Lens Manual is going to be coming out at the end of this year. You can track that progress on the Instagrams at Cine Lens Manual. That's kind of the big thing that I'm looking to promote. Obviously, American Citibitographer, I got a couple of books that are out of the field doing a revised, updated version of my first book. I don't know when that's coming out, but sometimes not too distant future. but yeah follow along with me on the Instagram is at Jay Holden and thanks for having this talk with me. I appreciate it. Yeah, no, man, thank you. I'll have to have you back on when that book

comes out and also when we can talk about something I know more of. I feel like these past four podcasts have just been me going like, I'm stupid. Can you help me be not stupid? Not stupid at all, man. You are seeking the knowledge and then that's what you got to do. just never stop work. I appreciate it. Well, yeah, like I said, thanks again, and we'll talk soon. Absolutely, my pleasure. Frame and Reference is an Owlbot production.

It's produced and edited by me, Kenny McMillan, and distributed by Pro Video Coalition. Our theme song is written and performed by Mark Pelly, and the F at Art Mapbox logo was designed by Nate Truax of Truax Branding Company. You can read or watch the podcast you've just heard by going to Pro Videocoolition.com or YouTube.com slash owlbot respectively. And as always, thanks for listening.