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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Time for good tech reading before receiving the camera ?

A

Antoine Fabi

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I am sure i am not alone here.

I lost some of my skills i had when i shot 100% manual still 35mm film photography.
Today, with real time monitoring, i dont question myself anymore about aperture/speed/ISO relationship etc... other than basic depth of field control. I rather watch the monitor and tell myself...OK looks fine !

What reading would you suggest to gain back these basic knowledges ?

thanks
 
I suggest the RED ONE User Manual!

Hope they put up a PDF version before they start shipping...
 
thanks, i'll try to find this book here.
 
Antoine Fabi said:
I am sure i am not alone here.

I lost some of my skills i had when i shot 100% manual still 35mm film photography.
Today, with real time monitoring, i dont question myself anymore about aperture/speed/ISO relationship etc... other than basic depth of field control. I rather watch the monitor and tell myself...OK looks fine !

What reading would you suggest to gain back these basic knowledges ?

thanks
Click to expand...

Hi Antoine,
I suppose some kind of digitally modified zone system for Red would
help. Untill a 4/2K/HD SDI monitor/reference rig is developed, a spot meter
and your old 35mm still experience may come in handy.
You'll probably have to "learn" your Red like a particular film stock,
slide a compressed dynamic range window about in order to get the best possible
pictures in any given situation.
I'd suggest taking a bucket load of 35mm stills to practise this before
your camera arrives.
Shooting Digital Red in the early days could be sorta like what we do on a film shoot anyway, only with pixles.
A video tap on a film camera tells you nothing about the neg and I doubt
a 720p Red video feed will let you know too much about the 4K bayer file being recorded.
see what you think. Mezmo.
 
Since the RED One is closer to a 35mm motion picture camera, I'd suggest using Cinematography (co-written by David Mullen, ASC), as well as Painting with Light for lighting.

I trained as a fine art photographer first and found the zone system (although I think the book by Minor White is more detailed, if not a bit more technical than Adam's Camera) very helpful to understanding exposure (since each zone represents one stop of difference). To explain a bit -- in early b&w photography, it was all about the printing -- the negative was exposed, and as long as you got a good range of value, you could compress/expand the contrast in the darkroom as much as you wished -- a photographer was as much a printer as anything else... White, Adams, et al. helped design a system that you could use in the field to pre-determine how to expose certain values in an attempt to maximize the possible range... it's especially useful in motion pictures because all we really get to control is the the camera negative.

The hollywoodcamerawork site sells a good product for learning camera blocking. I've started suggesting it to both beginning directors and ac's.

The best resource for cinematography and lighting technique in general is, and always will be the ASC Manual and the ASC's publication American Cinematographer. Reading the articles and case-studies while watching the scenes they discuss is a great way to grow your craft by leaps and bounds.

I'm with Mezmo in that I plan to rate my camera at a particular ASA for a show and run with it like I would any film camera, but ultimately, the RED represents a giant leap forward in camerawork... you won't have to expose very carefully to get a good image (see the test images at iso 2000+!), however, practicing good photography technique will make the difference between a good image and a really luminous one, just as it does in digital still photographs. I think my light meter will still be on my belt for the foreseeable future.

Cheers to you for wanting to brush up on your technique! Respect!

W
 
mezmo said:
Hi Antoine,
I suppose some kind of digitally modified zone system for Red would
help. Untill a 4/2K/HD SDI monitor/reference rig is developed, a spot meter
and your old 35mm still experience may come in handy.
You'll probably have to "learn" your Red like a particular film stock,
slide a compressed dynamic range about in order to get the best possible
pictures in any given situation.
I'd suggest taking a bucket load of 35mm stills to practise this before
your camera arrives.
Shooting Digital Red in the early days could be sorta like what we do on a film shoot anyway, only with pixles.
A video tap on a film camera tells you nothing about the neg and I doubt
a 720p Red video feed will let you know too much about the 4K bayer file being recorded.
see what you think. Mezmo.
Click to expand...

If you are going from the zone system to digital cinema I suggest not investing to heavily in film style shooting techniques. Your camera is essentially a very expensive reflective light meter and I think the RED will have very good tools for determining exposure in the camera.

For documentary style shooting the accuscene mode one the viewfinder (I don't know what RED is going to call this) is going to immediately show you highlights and shadows (zones 10 and 1 at least) just as we now use zebras. That is usually enough to get a good image when you have no control.

For shoots with heavy lighting use a light meter while you are setting up lighting instruments to determine the overall incident levels in a scene, and thus predetermine your depth of field. But don't relie heavily on a spot meter as you might when shooting film, I think it makes things complicated rather than going right to the source...the camera. Get comfortable with reading the waveform on the camera itself (not on the HD Output). This will allow you to quickly determine where your midlevel exposures are falling.

One trick I use with a waveform on HD is to keep a black card with a horizontal slot cut in it. If you place this card infront of the lense and move it up and down vertically you can isolate exposures on the waveform. All of information you could gleen from a reflective meter is contained in this graph. Especially when lighting dramatic closeups, its great to place the slot across the eyes of the stand in. You can see immediately how much contrast you have and tweak your fill and eyelight accordingly.

I don't believe in just eyeballing a monitor to try to determine how you are exposed. Often we can get away with it, but it can cause serious problems for this reason: In a dark room a monitor will appear bright, thus when lighting a dark scene, like a lamplit interior, you are likely to think the image is brighter than it is, and underexpose. In sunlight the opposite is likely to happen. Instead anchor your work in some kind of measurement.

That's my suggestion.

IBloom
 
Zone System

Zone System

mezmo said:
Hi Antoine,
I suppose some kind of digitally modified zone system for Red would
help. Untill a 4/2K/HD SDI monitor/reference rig is developed, a spot meter
and your old 35mm still experience may come in handy.
You'll probably have to "learn" your Red like a particular film stock,
slide a compressed dynamic range about in order to get the best possible
pictures in any given situation.
I'd suggest taking a bucket load of 35mm stills to practise this before
your camera arrives.
Shooting Digital Red in the early days could be sorta like what we do on a film shoot anyway, only with pixles.
A video tap on a film camera tells you nothing about the neg and I doubt
a 720p Red video feed will let you know too much about the 4K bayer file being recorded.
see what you think. Mezmo.
Click to expand...

Mezmo,
The idea of a modified zone system for RED is kind of intriguing for me coming from the still side of the universe.
I'd be interested to hear more about how you would apply that system to a digital negative, as it is generally based on altering exposure and development times etc to bring out and compress the data in a given scene.

~ Greg
 
Gregory Leno said:
Mezmo,
The idea of a modified zone system for RED is kind of intriguing for me coming from the still side of the universe.
I'd be interested to hear more about how you would apply that system to a digital negative, as it is generally based on altering exposure and development times etc to bring out and compress the data in a given scene.

~ Greg
Click to expand...

Greg,

For me at least, with a RAW camera format and workflow, you have the same kind of control (if not more) that you have in the darkroom, and a lot of the same things can apply, as it's all about using every bit of dynamic range you have. There are a couple of books on the subject using digital slrs but I haven't found any of them to be any good, myself. I think more than anything the most important bit of the zone system is to make you sit down and think about what image you're creating, how, and why, rather than flying by the seat of your pants. Of course, I'm sure i'm preaching to the choir! ;)

Maybe we should make a topic for this in the 4k workflow section... I bet we could come up with some cool ideas/applications of the complete zone system, not just the originating negative side.

W
 
ibloom said:
If you are going from the zone system to digital cinema I suggest not investing to heavily in film style shooting techniques. Your camera is essentially a very expensive reflective light meter and I think the RED will have very good tools for determining exposure in the camera.

IBloom
Click to expand...

And, as a D.P. or gaffer, what do you do when you are pre-lighting a scene ahead of the camera crew and there is no camera/waveform package sitting on the very busy set? You still have to learn to light with meters and your eye.

I always use my meters (incident and spot) and, after having gotten tuned into my look for a project, my eyes to light - even when a reference monitor is right there. The camera is the last place I look before shooting.

While, fitting an exposure into a "legal" system is a different deal and requires the use of waveform/vectorscope to assure a usable broadcast image, it's sort of irrelevant with the RED One's RAW acquisition, isn't it?

Learn your fundamentals children... or just hire me. ;-)
 
Michael Morlan said:
And, as a D.P. or gaffer, what do you do when you are pre-lighting a scene ahead of the camera crew and there is no camera/waveform package sitting on the very busy set? You still have to learn to light with meters and your eye.
Click to expand...

ibloom said:
For shoots with heavy lighting use a light meter while you are setting up lighting instruments to determine the overall incident levels in a scene, and thus predetermine your depth of field. But don't relie heavily on a spot meter as you might when shooting film, I think it makes things complicated rather than going right to the source...the camera. Get comfortable with reading the waveform on the camera itself (not on the HD Output). This will allow you to quickly determine where your midlevel exposures are falling.
IBloom
Click to expand...

It's a matter of style, prelighting sets is a good thing. But for me things have to change once I see the frame.

When I've gaffed for other DPs on digital I find they make a lot of mistakes going off their spot meters. Sometimes it seems like they would like to pretend they are still shooting film.

On digital you need to be much more precise about your highlights and shadows as it is less forgiving (RED will be better but likely no exception) So I think you need to refer to the waveform anyway for the tweaks. I'm not saying don't use a spot, you definitely need one for things like NDing windows, but definitely don't go out and buy a really expensive spot-only-meter for RED.

IBloom
 
B&W Exposure v Colour

B&W Exposure v Colour

ibloom said:
I don't believe in just eyeballing a monitor to try to determine how you are exposed. Often we can get away with it, but it can cause serious problems for this reason: In a dark room a monitor will appear bright, thus when lighting a dark scene, like a lamplit interior, you are likely to think the image is brighter than it is, and underexpose. In sunlight the opposite is likely to happen. Instead anchor your work in some kind of measurement.

That's my suggestion.

IBloom
Click to expand...

Coming from years of still photography including processing and printing... when I moved into the world of moving images the best system of exposure I found and still use is the B&W viewfinder or viewing the monitor initially in B&W. This way you are able evaluate the tonal range and view it as you would a B&W photographic print. Detail in the blacks and whites etc... That works nicely when you have a smaller setup and not a lot of time. Of course it's fully dependent on your bars being set correctly!
 
Kiwi Red said:
Coming from years of still photography including processing and printing... when I moved into the world of moving images the best system of exposure I found and still use is the B&W viewfinder or viewing the monitor initially in B&W. This way you are able evaluate the tonal range and view it as you would a B&W photographic print. Detail in the blacks and whites etc... That works nicely when you have a smaller setup and not a lot of time. Of course it's fully dependent on your bars being set correctly!
Click to expand...

I do the same thing. I'm hoping that RED has a B&W mode on their EVF. Some DP's also use a black and white monitor on set because that seems to reduce the amount of art by committee.

IBloom
 
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