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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 :)

Filters, prompter and greenscreen at once.

E

Evolution

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I have a shoot at the end of next week. It is my first client shoot with the Red. Of course to make life difficult, they want a greenscreen shoot, they also want a teleprompter. I have a red rock matte box, and an IR filter, as well as a filter "set" from red rock.

Unfortunatley, I do not think I can get our prompter over the matte box, so I can't use it or the filters. The prompter will cause a 2 stop loss. I only have tungsten lights. So, do I filter the lights? Will probably loose more stop?

Any suggestions are appreciated on how to approach Green Screen (and lighting it), while using an on camera teleprompter, and tugnsten lights (with possible filters, I wuold still need to purchase).

Thanks in advance...Bob
 
It would be an unusual teleprompter that can't fit around the redrock mattebox - but if you really can't and still want to use your IR filter, just CAREFULLY tape it to the lens front. Not sure that you'll find an IR filter to be that important in a studio greenscreen setup, however.
 
I would be shocked to see a prompter eat 2 full stops! All the ones I have seen take 1/2 to 2/3rds of a stop.

I agree with Alexis, just tape your filters on. The purpose of a mattebox is to keep light off of the lens - you will want to keep light off of the teleprompter glass as well so you'll either have to flag it all very well or wrap black cloth around it all.
 
ir filter

ir filter

will the ir filter help with the tungsten lights? or do the lights need their own filter?
 
I agree with Brent, there's no way the prompter will take 2 stops. I would say it's more important to expose correctly than to have CTB. If you aren't using ND, more than a 9 you would not need an IR filter.
 
Most people still aren't shooting with IR filters on the RED for 2 reasons - 1., they're pricey and hard to come by, 2., it's rare that you'll have a shooting scenario that REQUIRES one... generally, only if you've got some heavy ND on.

As far as your tungsten light goes, just rate at 250 and get a good clean exposure, and you'll be fine. I've been on a handful of shoots that were greenscreen, telemprompter, tungsten-lit, and they all turned out fine (and none used IR filters.)
 
As Brent said, the prompter should lose you less than 1 stop. But I've run across a few prompters that made for a muddy or less contrasty image. If you can shoot some tests with the prompter and greenscreen setup before the actual shoot starts, it will help you.

If you only have tungsten lights, I would recommend a CTB filter 1/4 for sure, possibly 1/2. These will lose a bit more light as well, but will get you closer to daylight balance. Same as using an 80x filter... You can also gel all the lights, but that takes more work and if you're shooting all tungsten, it's easier to just put on the one filter.

Depending on your lens(es) used, you may be able to go with a screw-on CTB filter. Then you don't have to mess with the mattebox. If you're shooting indoors or with well controlled light, you won't need the mattebox and other filters anyway. Best to leave the mattebox off if you don't need it for filters when using the prompter. If you do use it, you won't need the flags, just the bare minimum to hold the filters. And Brent is also right about keeping light / glare off of the prompter glass.
 
I disagree about only needing IR filters when using heavy NDs. I have done 3 jobs this month (2 Red, 1 Phantom) where there was NO ND, but using an IR filter vastly improved our color rendition. Certain fabrics really reflect infrared, as well as the inks used on some color corrects.

It seems to me that any time you are shooting with lighting that is rich in IR (ie. tungsten or sunlight) you should at least look at what an IR filter does to the image.
 
As far as your tungsten light goes, just rate at 250 and get a good clean exposure, and you'll be fine. I've been on a handful of shoots that were greenscreen, telemprompter, tungsten-lit, and they all turned out fine (and none used IR filters.)

Can someone please explain what is meant by: As far as your tungsten light goes, just rate at 250 and get a good clean exposure.

I am very new to all of this and do not understand what rate at 250 means.

Thank you for the help...Bob
 
They mean ISO 250. Which I would actually recommend against that. You start cutting away some of RED's dynamic range by rating outside of the ISO 320-500 range. The IR filter advice is good, but it takes more testing to know. IR filters can help color rendition, but it's also one more piece of glass in your optical path. IR transmission varies with different lenses too... The IR transmission on lenses like Zeiss super-speeds is rather high. Whereas the transmission on a larger zoom with more elements like the RED 18-85 or a Cooke 18-100 is a lot lower.

Anyway, best advice is to test... test some more.. and learn.
 
I don't know exactly how much is effected when you expose for (or develop your RAW data for) values below ISO 320. But the sensor has a native 320+ ISO rating, so if you fall below that in your own lighting, you're not sending the camera the most optimal amount of light in most cases.

That said, shooting tungsten can be goofy anyway. I know others that rate at 250 or so when shooting tungsten just to put more light into a scene because of the incomplete tungsten spectrum. The camera prefers ISO 320 balanced at 5000K, but when that isn't possible and you're shooting with lights with color temps in the 3200K~3800K range, you may have to compensate with more light or whatnot.
 
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