Matching Dragon and MX footage

[steve green]

I'm needing to use a loaner MX to shoot along side my Dragon on a shoot this week. It'll be mainly office and factory interiors with a few day exteriors mixed in. Any specific tips on keeping both cameras looking as close to one another as possible, I'm mainly concerned with skin tones. Or, is it going to have to be done in post with grading?

 

[Nick Gardner]

I think they match really well. I shoot them side by side all the time. Here's an example. Nothing done in post yet, straight out of the cameras -

 

[steve green]

Nick,
Thanks for those snapshots. They do in fact match pretty close. If I had to guess, is the side angle the dragon? Also, does white balancing get things even closer? Was this set up (very nice BTW), white balanced?

 

[Nick Gardner]

The wide shot is the dragon, the profile close up is the MX. Also wildly different lenses. The A camera was Illumina s35s, and the B camera had a Jupiter 9 85mm on it shot wide open. Didn't white balance. Both cameras set to 5600k. Obviously a little tweek here and there in post would line them up better. Key is a 575 par bounced into a alpine spruce bounce board, The window light is a 4k with full CTS, and then I think eack room had a 575 skip bounce off of muslin on the floor, so all pretty warm sources, wouldn't want to WB all that away ;-)

Nick

 

[steve green]

Makes sense about not WB'ing....Yep, like you say just a little tweak and it's all good.

 

[Björn Benckert]

Makes sense about not WB'ing....Yep, like you say just a little tweak and it's all good.

Buy a Spider checker cube ball and shoot a slate of it with both cameras. Then set the exposure on the MX and mimic with the dragon and yes try to expose so it´s within the "scope / DR" of the MX then dragon has no problem to follow.

Then when you are in post you can use the cube to set your white point and balance the two. If thats done I think at 4k and bellow it will be a very difficult thing to spot what camera is which.

 

[Dean Butler]

Nick those are beautiful shots. Really nicely lit and framed. Did you use any filtration on the lens?

 

[Tommaso Alvisi]

Jupiter 9 WO is the diffusion filter he he

 

[Nick Gardner]

Thanks. No filtration, but I shot the B camera on an old russian stills lens that is the basis of the Dog Schidt Optiks lenses, the Hellios 44-2 58mm f2. I shot it specifically because I like the way it renders specular highlights out of focus, and I like the glow it gives highlights. The A camera was an Illumina s35 I think a 50, somewhere right around a 2. I obviously smoked the set both to feel the light and as a light diffusion as well. I generally prefer to use funky lenses over filters.

Cheers,

Nick