Hi Liz,

We shot 1080i on a Z1. During capture I couldn't actually get FCP to
see the camera over Firewire in HDV mode, which resulted in me having
to down convert the image to a 720 x 576 DV frame.

There are some great advantages to shooting with the Movietube – the
facility for mounting prime lenses on a prosumer camcorder being the
obvious one. However, we found the unit to be extremely light hungry,
which aside from nearly cooking the cast and impeding on the ability
to tightly control focus, meant a rather dark resultant image.

After compensating for this in post with a series of aggressive level
changes, and the addition of a layer of colour correction, some heavy
and unwanted banding crept in.

I am sure that we could have squeezed a lot more out of the Movietube
than we eventually did, and perhaps you have seen some of the great
examples of footage on the Movietube web site. However, my gut
feeling is that it is a piece of kit that works best under extremely
tight shooting conditions, and a whole set of compensating factors on
set if one is to achieve the sort of results that one is happy with.

A couple of years ago a friend of mine shot a short film on Digibeta
using a 35mm pro adaptor. I thought the results were superb, and to
be quite honest if I was looking to shoot a feature and didn't have
the budget for film, I would definitely consider this route.

The same guy now shoots quite a lot of material on HDCAM but I am not
sure whether or not he has used a pro 35mm adaptor with that format.
And if memory serves me right there are some important considerations
to be aware of when configuring the camera setup file for a 35mm lens,
which if I hear more about I'll let you know.

All the best,

Simon