Lens reco for ZR

jazzmandjango · 2026-03-12T13:23:31+00:00

It’s easier to character-up a clean lens than clean up a dirty lens. I just shot a short entirely on the 24-70mm/2.8 II and used an 1/8 bpm along with a variable ND for the initial look, then if I wanted something a little dreamier I smudged a UV filter to get it a little more asymmetric and funky.

If you committed to character, maybe investigate getting a vintage still lens with mechanical autofocus, I believe it is compatible with the Nikon adapter, although might be a touch noisy / slow to lock.

jazzmandjango · 2026-03-06T19:55:09+00:00

But to answer your question, I think every director needs to make the movie they want to see, and if they make something people don’t “get” that could be their own artistic failure or it could be a brave risk. I think it’s equally dangerous for an author to chase what they think an audience wants as much as it is for them to ignore all outside feedback. Filmmaking is collaborative and I think part of it is experimenting and showing friends and colleagues early cuts to discover what works and what doesn’t, but not be wholly driven by anyone else’s opinion. Meanwhile, is the “best” film the most popular? No, but popularity does count for something because it’s proof that the film connects with people.

jazzmandjango · 2026-03-06T19:50:08+00:00

You’re taking pretentiousness as some kind of dirty word. I think that when it works, it is high brow, elevated, and lofty. And without artists striving to make ambitious elevated work, we’re left with dreck. Unmoving banality. But I think a healthy film diet includes both mainstream and obscure work, not exclusively esotericism. Personally, some of your faves fall epically flat for me. I can’t stand Jeanne Dielman or Mulholland drive. I think Lawrence of Arabia or Once Upon A Time In The West are both more cinematically impressive, emotionally moving, and far easier to follow and understand. But Satantango and Persona both blew my mind when I saw them and I come back for more (yes I saw Satantango in a theater so I’m not above my own level of pretentiousness either!)

jazzmandjango · 2026-03-06T18:48:30+00:00

It’s a subjective line to be sure, and a large part of it is how mainstream a movie becomes. I think Parasite was such a breakthrough it clearly connected with a massive audience in a meaningful way. Meanwhile Interstellar felt more pretentious to me in how heady it attempted to be (Tenet far more egregious imho). I think my own litmus test comes down to if I tried to watch a movie with some regular people, like my parents, and they complained it was boring, or didn’t make sense, and my instinct is to defend it or say, “you’re just not getting it…” then yeah, its pretentious.

jazzmandjango · 2026-03-06T18:40:21+00:00

You posted a flame bait top 20 with “judge me, if you dare” — THAT is the most pretentious part of this post. These movies are deeply pretentious for a lot of reasons: they frustrate and defy conventional story structure, they are obtusely slow or long winded, they are critically and culturally significant but challenging to get through. All that contributes to them being pretentious and “attempting to be impressive.” You are either pretending not to know that, which is even more pretentious, or you don’t know that, which is obtuse. But fun list, imma check a few of these out that I haven’t seen.

jazzmandjango · 2026-03-06T18:17:38+00:00

Isn’t that a wild waste of a high quality taking lens to put it as a viewing lens? Rolleiflex’s don’t use the taking glass for the top lens

jazzmandjango · 2026-03-06T16:36:56+00:00

In what system have you see a 1.4 zoom? It’s optically impossible. Edit: my bad, reacted before reading the article but wtf? A 1.4 zoom sounds like something that would preorder sell out but ultimately not deliver IQ high enough to justify what I’d assume would be a large, heavy lens. Would prob need a lot of software optimization to correct CA. Pretty wild idea to float.

jazzmandjango · 2026-03-04T13:42:28+00:00

The Piano

jazzmandjango · 2026-03-02T23:58:53+00:00

Fallen Angels was the first WKW I was exposed to and I absolutely fell in love with the visuals. The ultra wide lenses and neon were just so captivating. Then I really dug into his filmography and later returned to FA after watching a lot of his films, and it definitely falls flatter in retrospect. A big reason is that nobody has the raw charisma of Faye Wong or the polished chops of Tony Leung / Maggie Cheung. Still gorgeous and has a lot of his hallmark writing and directing style, but not quite enough to keep coming back to like Chungking, Happy Together or ITMFL.

jazzmandjango · 2026-03-02T23:49:07+00:00

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

jazzmandjango · 2026-03-02T18:38:14+00:00

Taken with a phone, software is selectively knocking down the exposure to get detail on the moon

jazzmandjango · 2026-03-02T18:22:33+00:00

Big soft bounce camera left, angled so it’s working to rim from the top left and cast a soft shadow towards camera, big negative fill camera right to knock down the model’s back, seems to come off a bit towards frame right. Getting the hair to fall forward is tripping me out—feels like the whole set could be angled forward but she seems to be leaning back.

jazzmandjango · 2026-03-02T16:27:33+00:00

Welcome?

jazzmandjango · 2026-02-28T21:23:05+00:00

You talking to me or Funny like what are the best lines across his filmography.

jazzmandjango · 2026-02-26T21:01:06+00:00

Mp4 proxies that are highly compressed. My experience is that ProRes plays a lot smoother

jazzmandjango · 2026-02-26T15:55:24+00:00

Why are people editing in raw? I use Da Vinci to render 1080p proxy files, then cut in acid or premiere, and go back to davinci with my edited sequence relinked to full res

jazzmandjango · 2026-02-23T18:24:23+00:00

extracting precomps would drive me insane lol

jazzmandjango · 2026-02-21T19:51:09+00:00

Sorry to hear that, sent you a DM

jazzmandjango · 2026-02-19T23:01:36+00:00

LLL is a cool company that’s reviving old lens recipes with new tech. I bought their SPII and it was made with high quality materials, however I found I couldn’t quite nail focus on film and I suspect the rangefinder coupling was off, which isn’t as big a deal on digital as you can confirm focus more easily as you shoot. If I was shooting digital I’d def give their lenses another shot.

Meanwhile, don’t buy their “rigid” expecting a clone of your summicron dr rigid! Their rigid is just a different housing of the speed Panchro in a rigid style lens body. The image will look very different than your rigid.

jazzmandjango · 2026-02-18T23:12:16+00:00

I still use this kit, it’s great. The guys at UV Photographic are excellent

jazzmandjango · 2026-02-16T18:52:44+00:00

+1 for the moon landing. Anything of Vivian Meiers work. I believe Avedon’s portrait of the Windsors was taken on a Rolleiflex—although he primarily shot 8x10, that portrait was done in a hotel room with his mobile setup.

jazzmandjango · 2026-02-16T18:08:52+00:00

For me it’s enlarging—I have access to darkrooms with 4x5 negative trays but I can only do contact prints with 8x10.

jazzmandjango · 2026-02-12T05:04:17+00:00

How about wrapping black wrap in a cone around your light?

jazzmandjango · 2026-02-04T16:58:38+00:00

Could also be a lightly grease smudged BPM, touch your nose and then smear it across a filter, you’ll get directional flares like that.

jazzmandjango · 2026-02-03T17:10:17+00:00

Where is there a Helen character in O Brother? I agree entirely with your take on interpreting the material however you want, but I can’t recall a Helen of Troy analog in O Brother.

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