Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • 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 :)

Ask David Mullen ANYTHING

Alexander, why don't you just try to put the material over your light meter and you will already have you an idea of the amount of light change ?
 
In theory, rear-netting should be more consistent in strength across different focal lengths. You tend to get less of a "star filter" effect that a front-net on a wider-angle lens creates (but it can still happen even with rear-netting).

Some people say rear-netting is more subtle, but on a longer lens, a front net may be more subtle actually because you are looking through less of the material.

I haven't shot with rear-nets before so I haven't tested them for light loss. For front nets mounted on a frame, I just hold it over my meter dome. The really fine ones only lose 1/3 of a stop but a heavier one may lose nearly a stop.

On "Big Love", my co-DP, Bill Wages, had this 4x5 front net made from a fine nylon black tule/veil material, not a pantyhose. It was very subtle and we could ignore the light loss from it. It was something similar to a #1/2 Classic Soft in strength, or a #1 Soft-FX. You can find material like that in a large fabric store.
 
David Mullen ASC said:
There's no right or wrong answer. If you know what you're doing, you've shot tests of the filters, looked at them on the big screen (if this is intended for the big screen) and like the results, then why not use them if they give you the look you want? The trouble sometimes with leaving things for the final color-correction is that the editor and director will spend months sometimes looking at the footage during the editing phase without the look you intend... and they will get used to it, making it near impossible to convince them to add the look later. Plus there may be a political reason to make the lead actress look her best early on rather than at the end of post. Plus you may not be there at the end of post, or the place they decide to finish the project at may not be able to do diffusion effects.

On the flip side, you may decide that digital diffusion is closer to the look you want than optical diffusion (for one thing, with some digital diffusion techniques, blacks halate as much as whites, which doesn't happen with optical diffusion.) Plus you can control it better shot to shot, assuming you color-correct looking at an image that is the size of the final display format (it's hard otherwise to make good guesses as to the amount of sharpening or softening to add when looking at a smaller monitor for material intended to be seen on a big screen.)

Digital diffusion tricks may also tend to de-noise / de-grain the image, which may be a good thing if you want that.

I like lens diffusion but I tend to use a grade lighter than the filter strength I really like, just to be safe and not overdo it (it's always better to under-diffuse by accident than over-diffuse -- a shot with too little diffusion generally does not look like a mistake but a shot with too much is distracting.)
Click to expand...

Thank you David. Yes, testing, testing and then some more testings. I just wanted to know if you shared the opinion that soft filters in post introduces artifacts. I guess you don't really think it applies, at least not a a general rule.
I have another question about light fixtures. Apart from HMIs, what is in your opinion the best/highest output per watt when it comes to lights? Par64s, Flos? I would like to get some big-ish lights like 3kw-5kw and am wondering what kind should I get. I'm mainly interested to use them as fill or to bring the overall brightness of a scene/room up. Thanks David.
 
A 5K is an awfully big light to use for fill in a typical room, unless it is a huge room... For a soft key light, yes, I can see that, like through two frames of diffusion.

Yes, PAR's tend to pack more punch than fresnels when you start using narrower lenses. But usually you need that extra punch for strong backlights or keying a large area, etc.

Generally you don't need much for fill, as minimum as possible, and you'd want a light with a very wide beam and even spread, which PAR's can do if necessary with wide lenses, but so can open-faced units and fresnels. Maybe I'd use a 5K fresnel bounced into a 12'x12' frame for a large night exterior, for fill. Inside a typical room, I'm more likely to bounce a tweenie (650w).

A 5K PAR is more likely something I'd put on a rooftop, let's say, to backlight a front yard at night or on a crane to create a streetlamp effect. Roger Deakins used a 5K PAR on the nose of the train for the opening night scene in "The Assassination of Jesse James."

I often recommend tungsten 1K PAR 64's with spot or narrow spot globes, or the 1200w HMI PAR, because they are the brightest lights that are under 20 amps, for use in a household circuit. For a 5K, you'd need a generator or a tie-in generally.
 
Thanks David.
Yes I know 5K is a lot for a room. But today we filmed with a system rated at about 100 ASA and we then threw a 35mm adapter on it that makes it lose 1 stop (at least) of light. We had a room of about 25x25 feet and we had two 1K fresnel, a 2K fresnel, a 2.5k soft box and 2 300w fresnel for eye lights and it wasn't enough. We still have some more to film with this system before we can complete our short but it seeem we better get some more lights. But as power is always a concern I thought I would ask which light gives the highest output per watt.
 
I've got a 6 light Barger and it's real nice for soft light as you've said.

Not too practical in tight spaces due to the large size of the med. or large Chimera needed but a great tool considering you can get nearly the same fc's as a 5k but run off of 3 edison's.
 
Those seem to be an interesting light Alexander. I was trying to think of a way to avoid tungsten lights because they can explode. We had a 2K quartz open face explode yesterday for the second time, even though they have a fan at their back. But the Bargers seem to rely on smaller quartz lamps to output 5k. We did have a 5K quartz open faced yesterday. It was really open faced as it had no glass or grill on it and was fully open. It had a big 5K quartz but after the 2K exploded we didn't want to risk having the big 5K explode close to the actors.
We had a 2.5k soft light by Ianiro (this one http://www.ianiro.com/slight2500.asp) but it wasn't enough to bring the room overall brightness up. We are thinking about using the 5k version next time (this one: http://www.ianiro.com/slight5000.asp) and see if does a better job. The thing is that the system needs so much light that getting a stronger key like a spot is not enough. We have to bring the whole exposure level up before we can even start shaping the light. My friend's father is an old TV cameraman from the 16mm days and he was joking around telling us "So much for the digital technology, you guys need as much light as they did in the old film days back in the 30's." Well in the case of our system we couldn't say much.
 
In the past 17 years shooting 30 features, I've rarely had a tungsten globe explode (some have burned out though.)

Yes, if you're worried about it, don't put an open-faced unit right next to an actor (and you should only use small PAR's for overhead lights pointing straight down because the others overheat.) But there's no reason to stop using open-faced lights, especially for a bounce pointed away from an actor. And definitely there's no reason to avoid tungsten lights!

If you have a lot of problem with exploding globes, I'd say you have a voltage problem, not a globe problem...
 
David Mullen ASC said:
In the past 17 years shooting 30 features, I've rarely had a tungsten globe explode (some have burned out though.)

Yes, if you're worried about it, don't put an open-faced unit right next to an actor (and you should only use small PAR's for overhead lights pointing straight down because the others overheat.) But there's no reason to stop using open-faced lights, especially for a bounce pointed away from an actor. And definitely there's no reason to avoid tungsten lights!

If you have a lot of problem with exploding globes, I'd say you have a voltage problem, not a globe problem...
Click to expand...

I'm thinking it's the light fixture itself. I have four of them and this is the second that explodes. We bought them semi-new so I'm thinking somebody may have touched the quartz bulbs with the finger and left fat on them before we purchased them. Yes, thankfully the light was pointed away for bounce but it damaged the location's floor. :(
By the way, would you have anything to add to the light matter? As to what is the best way to efficiently raise the exposure/brightness level in order to get good results with the system we are using? Thanks.
 
Yes, bouncing is a good way. But we were bouncing a 2k off the ceiling plus had a 2.5k soft and it wasn't enough. So since it seems we will have to get some big fixture, probably a 5K, I'm looking for the best Watt-output(brightness) ratio. A quartz will generate an incredibly amount of heat at this size and we can't afford HMIs. So I thought of Flos but I dont know.
 
Soft lights are generally bad for heavy fill bounces in that a soft light has a shorter throw than a par or fresnel.

I'd guess that your 2.5k soft (which I'm not quite sure how you managed to run off of house power) was only giving out that of a 1.5k in your ceiling bounce situation.

Hard lights such as fresnels or pars penetrate alot deeper into your frame.

I would use a soft light bounce if I were looking for a softly lit image though, I guess it all depends on the quality of light you're looking to achieve.
 
The 2.5k was not bounced. As it is a soft light, the type that has the quartz bulbs pointing backwards at curved white reflector, it was pointed directly to the actors. We were not filming at a residence so power was not a problem.
 
You have to ask yourself if the method you are shooting, which requires such a high and unnatural light level for a simple interior scene... is counterproductive to saving money if you end up needing 5K's and 10K's and generators, etc., plus counterproductive to achieving a natural look.

Sure, if I were stuck lighting interior night scenes to 50 ASA, I'd get the huge lights out, but I better have a good reason for using such a slow process!

Generally, HMI's are more power efficient than tungsten, which is one way of getting more light for less wattage. But then you're in a 5500K balance.

Otherwise, if you are doing a tungsten-balanced scene for 3200K and need a 50 ASA level, you're just talking about getting big, powerful lights. The most bang for the buck are probably Maxi-Brutes (6-lites, 9-lites, 12-lites) with narrower globes.
 
As far a flos go, I just got an industrial fluorescent fixture that is made to light warehouse spaces and it is super bright. It uses 54w T5HO bulbs and a 4-light fixture is almost as bright as a Kino-flo image 80. I had to add a baby plate to be able to put it on a light stand, but it's actually pretty light weight and low cost. $160-ish with bulbs. Kinda guerilla, but works great.
 
Alexander Nikishin said:
T5HO bulbs? Are they 6500K?
Click to expand...

No they're 5900K 96 CRI. I know that Barbizon also has 3200K (or maybe 2900K, I can't remember) as well. I just got them so I haven't critically tested them. But they worked without a hitch on a couple of small shoots, and looked great. I did take meter readings, though, and compared them to the photometrics on the Kino-flo website. It seems that T5 bulbs are much more efficient than the T12s that Kino-flo uses (in the image and 4-banks and others).

Here's where I got them:

http://www.fullspectrumsolutions.com/t5_high_bay_specifications_111_prd0.htm

I haven't put them through the ringer yet, so proceed with caution. But they seem promising so far for a cheapy. But the $8 shoplights at home depot can be pretty great too as long as you know what you're getting into. Oh, and they weight like 12 or 13 lbs in case you're interested.

Anyway, sorry, don't mean to hijack David's fantastic thread. I never want to write much in this thread for fear of disrupting the flow of all of the great advice. Thanks again, David, for your generosity on this forum and others. It's very much appreciated.
 
David I need a pro set of lenses for my Redcam, I like working in low lights & natural light, so i decided to bay a high speed ultra prime set or s35 MK lll set (if i can find a good set) so my qustion is:
1. Is there any big different from MK to Ulta prims in case of performance in low light?

2. Is it enough for regular work If i own Just a MK lll set or ultra set ? I mean i can work with super high speed lenses in high contrast and daylight like standard lenses ?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top