NEW TESTS noise & false color

[huascar]

Hi, yesterday I spent a lot of time to understand better how to work with FALSE COLOR to avoid noise in low light scenes.

My results bring me to work in this way:
for dark areas YOU CAN'T HAVE ANY (almost) PURPLE AREAS. Purple=noise!!
for highlight areas WHERE YOU HAVE YELLOW (THEN ORANGE AND RED) YOU ARE CLIPPING! So you can have a little area with orange/red (maybe where a direct light "touch" a face) but not more.
Following this rules I obtain good results. Good means "what I see with FALSE COLOR is what I'll have on post.

Now I'd like to understand well how color correction works on dark areas, and what it does on noisy areas. In my pics you can see that an almost noise-free image becomes better (no noise) if I use curve, shadow and contrast settings. It seems that this settings help the image to be noiseless. It is true? So if I have an image with noise I can truy to decrease it raising up the dark mood. Right?



Anyway, here's my test. I hope they are clear.


Thanks to everybody


huascar

 

[huascar]

No comments?!?!?!

 

[scott william]

using the shadow effect in redcine does help hide noise in shadows. How have you found the nikon lenses?

i have the 17-35 2.8, 70-200, 2.8, 85mm 1.4.

 

[huascar]

Very very good! The main difference compared to cine lenses is the ease to use them. If you have to make a change-focus with a Nikon lens you have to be very carefull. But the result, in term of image quality and depth of field, is amazing.

huascar

 

[Dan Hudgins]

S curve and fill light

S curve and fill light

With the RED ONE I think it is best to do three things:

1) Under expose a little to hold the highlights.

2) Use more fill light than looks right on the monitor.

3) Use gamma in post to rase the mid-tones and S curve to reduce contrast in the shadow and highlight areas.

You do not want to increase the contrast TOO much in the mid-tones, but they are the clean part of the tonal range, so that can stand some increase in contrast.

If you do not use too much fill light and later rase the contrast in the shadow areas you will boost the noise to the point where it looks rough.

If you use too much fill you can then push the noise down into the black and reduce the contrast in the shadow areas to make the noise less rough.

Always using 5500K or there about with 80 series filters increases the dynamic range and gives you more latitude than shooting under low K lights without a blueish filter.

 

[Kim Frank]

Thanks for the tests!
Did you shoot all of them with 640 ISO or just the first one?
I always avoid boosting the rgb channels either by setting the
ISO higher, gaining on or two of them by correcting white balance
or bringing them up in post, cause that always brings up the noise.
Mostly when boosting a underexposed blue channel or boosting the shadows.
If you stay above the noise floor (false color purple) with your shadows you
Want to see detail in and in color correction just crush the blacks beneath those
You're hiding the noise in pure black. You're not eleminating the noise
you're just making it invisible. No matter how you expose, if you under expose
or over expose (I ETTR letting just highlights clip I don't need to keep detail in like
a bare bulb) try not to bring/gain/boost up the shadows in post but to
crush the pure shadows without detail a bit.

 

[Dan Hudgins]

rim-lighting

rim-lighting

Not so much a criticism, but more a suggestion, your sample images like so many others posted here lack cinematic lighting and have the sort of look that comes from not using enough fixtures.

If you could add some light to medium rim lighting from each side along with the key, kicker, fill, and eye-light. Rim lighting with the lights behind the subject a bit from each side gives the subject a more three dimensional quality and reduces the critical nature of the exposure and grading since each part of the subject uses the whole histogram, that is a finger will go from near clip to full black on each side, as will the ears, nose, eyes, and other features and textures of the costumes by using raking lights.

It can be useful to look at the subject through a blue glass viewing filter when setting the lights.

Fill lights do not need to be soft lights at all, they can be small fresnel lights that are flagged off so that each one just fills the shadow area that needs a little more or less light and you can adjust the balance with scrims.

Another trick of lighting is to light the area behind any part of the subject that should be dark so as to have it in Silhouette. Likewise if you want a part of the subject bright, then do not light the area behind the subject (but light up the subject to lower contrast range). Having light over dark or dark over light increases the apparent contrast without needing to have ANYTHING large burned out on the sensor, and reduces the noise since no part of the shot is in the foot of the sensor curve, rather it is the relative contrast at edges that tricks you eye into seeing things brighter or darker than they are in the image, like in classic paintings.

 

[Tyler Black]

Awesome tip, Dan.

 

[Jamie Havill]

Not so much a criticism, but more a suggestion, your sample images like so many others posted here lack cinematic lighting and have the sort of look that comes from not using enough fixtures.

If you could add some light to medium rim lighting from each side along with the key, kicker, fill, and eye-light. Rim lighting with the lights behind the subject a bit from each side gives the subject a more three dimensional quality and reduces the critical nature of the exposure and grading since each part of the subject uses the whole histogram, that is a finger will go from near clip to full black on each side, as will the ears, nose, eyes, and other features and textures of the costumes by using raking lights.

It can be useful to look at the subject through a blue glass viewing filter when setting the lights.

Fill lights do not need to be soft lights at all, they can be small fresnel lights that are flagged off so that each one just fills the shadow area that needs a little more or less light and you can adjust the balance with scrims.

Another trick of lighting is to light the area behind any part of the subject that should be dark so as to have it in Silhouette. Likewise if you want a part of the subject bright, then do not light the area behind the subject (but light up the subject to lower contrast range). Having light over dark or dark over light increases the apparent contrast without needing to have ANYTHING large burned out on the sensor, and reduces the noise since no part of the shot is in the foot of the sensor curve, rather it is the relative contrast at edges that tricks you eye into seeing things brighter or darker than they are in the image, like in classic paintings.

Dan, could you explain that so an absolute retard (aka me) can understand it.

Appreciated!

 

[Dan Hudgins]

How Green Was My Valley (1941)

How Green Was My Valley (1941)

Dan, could you explain that so an absolute retard (aka me) can understand it.
Appreciated!

If want to learn from the masters get the DVD for:

"How Green Was My Valley (1941)"

and look at the shadows to see where the lights are and try to count how many lights are set on each shot, in particular some of the medium long shots that are interior.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0033729/

Arthur C. Miller made his first film in 1909 (!) so he was there when cinematic lighting was developed, you could get DVDs of all his films and study the use of light, after all cinema is "painting with light".

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0587926/

==

Your eyes cannot see absolute brightness like the sensor does, but if you flick a dark blue glass in front of your good eye in and out for a second or so before your eye adjusts you can get an impression of the absolute lighting ratio. The ND filters sold are not as good as a blue glass because the blue glass limits the number of eye cells that sence light so you can judge the shadow lighting better.

==

The movie screen and monitor do not have enough brightness range to match what you eye can see in life, so you need to "fake" the contrast range by lighting the subject to compress the tonal range without making it look flat.

To do that you put spots of light onto the dark parts to bring them up to the bottom 7-10% of the sensor curve. And you flag or scrim off the light from the light colored parts of the subject to bring them down to the 70-80% part of the sensor curve.

Since you do not want everyting to end up gray in the image, you then need to add "accent" lights from the side or back to bring up the texture and form of the subject.

Accent lights can be small fresnels with snoots, or pattern projector lights with masks of the right shape.

Since you cannot use VariAC for color work, and ND can pass IR, you can use screen scrims on the lights to control the ratios.

The lighting brightness and subject coloring work TOGETHER to give you the tone values for points in the image you make.

If the subject is "black" (nothing is black its just dark gray so reflects maybe 2% of the light) you can put any amount of light on it to get any shade of tone in the end image.

Likewise if some part of the subject is "white" you can put any amount of light on it to get tones from black to white on the end image.

The only thing that is hard to control is chrome or other specular reflections, for those you use black spray paint, "dulling spray", matte spray varnish, black mesh cloth, white tape, magic tape, or just flag off the direct lights from those points as you can or let them burn out.

As noted above fill lights do NOT need to be soft boxes etc. You can control the texture of the subject by using point lights for fill that will make many small specular reflections that you would not see with soft lights, a dim point light source can make good specular reflections on the surface of the subject that would otherwise be "dead" if a wide soft light was used. For skin people use power to reduce specular reflections and water and glycerin to increase them. Rather than have someone just a dark blob in the frame, with specular reflections of the oil on their pores you can get a wider range of the histogram used for each sub-unit of the frame, so using many point sources can be better than one large soft source.

In general you want the bare clear bulb used for the "eye light" to make a reflection in the actors eyes that does burn out, thats why you do not use a reflector behind the eye light but put a black flag there so you just get a fine point to show where the actors eyes are pointing. The eye light should not be bright enough to act as fill light, that is done with another fixture.

==

When working outdoors you need to adjust all the lights in ratio to the light to have since you do not have the option of adjusting the iris/ND/shutter over as much range.

You do have the option to shoot a night and light for day like you would in a studio.

You can also wait for the "golden hour" like D. W. Griffith to get the sun at a low angle and the sky light lower so you can use the sun as a key or kicker and light to fill and accent with fixtures.

==

If you want something to look dark, you need part of the frame to be very light. If you want something to look light you need part of the frame to be very dark.

It is the RATIO of the frame area that is dark or light that tells you eye if it is dark or light.

To make subjects look 3D they must be light from the side, because if light from the front (like with an Obie or ring light, see ref here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucien_Ballard) you get no detail except from the color on the subject none from its shape, if the light is behind the subject you get some outline from the rim lighting but none from its coloring.

So you COMBINE the lights to bring out the parts of the subject that contribute to the story.

1) Fill light from the front to bring up the white parts of the subject to between 30% and 70% white on the monitor.

2) Kicker from behind the subject to bring up the edges of the subject to 90% of the white on the monitor.

3) Key light pointing at the subject along the line of his or her noise, a little behind the noise line for night subjects and a little in front of the noise line for day subjects.

4) Lights from both sides to give three dimensional shape to the subject.

5) accent lights on the dark areas to lift them out of the noise and grain as needed and to increase the audience's attention on points of interest in the frame.

6) light behind or flag off light from the background to "lift" parts of the subject off the background and create light on dark or dark on light contrast at the edges of the subjects in the frame.

7) Eye light close to one side of the Matte Box to make the small reflection in the actors eyes at 100% sensor output.

Do that well in 10 minutes and you have a start. Study good lighting to see how various subjects were dealt with, buy some black wrap, get some good lights, and try to duplicate shots in good movies light for light until you can see all the same shadows and reflections in your footage.

Today people want to shoot with a 20 stop range camera then use "grading" to "fix things". That is not Cinematography or lighting, and it does not produce as good results. What you end up with is using the camera for "motion capture" and having an image that is more CGI than cinematography. Grading can "help" good lighting, but good lighting is done with lights not computers.

 

[Jamie Havill]

If want to learn from the masters get the DVD for:

"How Green Was My Valley (1941)"

and look at the shadows to see where the lights are and try to count how many lights are set on each shot, in particular some of the medium long shots that are interior.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0033729/

Arthur C. Miller made his first film in 1909 (!) so he was there when cinematic lighting was developed, you could get DVDs of all his films and study the use of light, after all cinema is "painting with light".

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0587926/

==

Your eyes cannot see absolute brightness like the sensor does, but if you flick a dark blue glass in front of your good eye in and out for a second or so before your eye adjusts you can get an impression of the absolute lighting ratio. The ND filters sold are not as good as a blue glass because the blue glass limits the number of eye cells that sence light so you can judge the shadow lighting better.

==

The movie screen and monitor do not have enough brightness range to match what you eye can see in life, so you need to "fake" the contrast range by lighting the subject to compress the tonal range without making it look flat.

To do that you put spots of light onto the dark parts to bring them up to the bottom 7-10% of the sensor curve. And you flag or scrim off the light from the light colored parts of the subject to bring them down to the 70-80% part of the sensor curve.

Since you do not want everyting to end up gray in the image, you then need to add "accent" lights from the side or back to bring up the texture and form of the subject.

Accent lights can be small fresnels with snoots, or pattern projector lights with masks of the right shape.

Since you cannot use VariAC for color work, and ND can pass IR, you can use screen scrims on the lights to control the ratios.

The lighting brightness and subject coloring work TOGETHER to give you the tone values for points in the image you make.

If the subject is "black" (nothing is black its just dark gray so reflects maybe 2% of the light) you can put any amount of light on it to get any shade of tone in the end image.

Likewise if some part of the subject is "white" you can put any amount of light on it to get tones from black to white on the end image.

The only thing that is hard to control is chrome or other specular reflections, for those you use black spray paint, "dulling spray", matte spray varnish, black mesh cloth, white tape, magic tape, or just flag off the direct lights from those points as you can or let them burn out.

As noted above fill lights do NOT need to be soft boxes etc. You can control the texture of the subject by using point lights for fill that will make many small specular reflections that you would not see with soft lights, a dim point light source can make good specular reflections on the surface of the subject that would otherwise be "dead" if a wide soft light was used. For skin people use power to reduce specular reflections and water and glycerin to increase them. Rather than have someone just a dark blob in the frame, with specular reflections of the oil on their pores you can get a wider range of the histogram used for each sub-unit of the frame, so using many point sources can be better than one large soft source.

In general you want the bare clear bulb used for the "eye light" to make a reflection in the actors eyes that does burn out, thats why you do not use a reflector behind the eye light but put a black flag there so you just get a fine point to show where the actors eyes are pointing. The eye light should not be bright enough to act as fill light, that is done with another fixture.

==

When working outdoors you need to adjust all the lights in ratio to the light to have since you do not have the option of adjusting the iris/ND/shutter over as much range.

You do have the option to shoot a night and light for day like you would in a studio.

You can also wait for the "golden hour" like D. W. Griffith to get the sun at a low angle and the sky light lower so you can use the sun as a key or kicker and light to fill and accent with fixtures.

==

If you want something to look dark, you need part of the frame to be very light. If you want something to look light you need part of the frame to be very dark.

It is the RATIO of the frame area that is dark or light that tells you eye if it is dark or light.

To make subjects look 3D they must be light from the side, because if light from the front (like with an Obie or ring light, see ref here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucien_Ballard) you get no detail except from the color on the subject none from its shape, if the light is behind the subject you get some outline from the rim lighting but none from its coloring.

So you COMBINE the lights to bring out the parts of the subject that contribute to the story.

1) Fill light from the front to bring up the white parts of the subject to between 30% and 70% white on the monitor.

2) Kicker from behind the subject to bring up the edges of the subject to 90% of the white on the monitor.

3) Key light pointing at the subject along the line of his or her noise, a little behind the noise line for night subjects and a little in front of the noise line for day subjects.

4) Lights from both sides to give three dimensional shape to the subject.

5) accent lights on the dark areas to lift them out of the noise and grain as needed and to increase the audience's attention on points of interest in the frame.

6) light behind or flag off light from the background to "lift" parts of the subject off the background and create light on dark or dark on light contrast at the edges of the subjects in the frame.

7) Eye light close to one side of the Matte Box to make the small reflection in the actors eyes at 100% sensor output.

Do that well in 10 minutes and you have a start. Study good lighting to see how various subjects were dealt with, buy some black wrap, get some good lights, and try to duplicate shots in good movies light for light until you can see all the same shadows and reflections in your footage.

Today people want to shoot with a 20 stop range camera then use "grading" to "fix things". That is not Cinematography or lighting, and it does not produce as good results. What you end up with is using the camera for "motion capture" and having an image that is more CGI than cinematography. Grading can "help" good lighting, but good lighting is done with lights not computers.

Thanks Dan, that's really great. I'm making a short next month, and I'm not really a retard, I've just never worked with more than 3 point lighting.

What would you recommend as a good standard lighting package for a Red shoot? Majority of film is shot in daylight/dusk with two short indoor night scenes. So far I've gathered 3 Arri 800w tungsten (with 3 softboxes), 2 more 500w tungsten, and an LED litepad set (3 lights, not sure of their output). Also a mixture of CTB filters.

 

[Dan Hudgins]

Power

Power

Thanks Dan, that's really great. I'm making a short next month, and I'm not really a retard, I've just never worked with more than 3 point lighting.

What would you recommend as a good standard lighting package for a Red shoot? Majority of film is shot in daylight/dusk with two short indoor night scenes. So far I've gathered 3 Arri 800w tungsten (with 3 softboxes), 2 more 500w tungsten, and an LED litepad set (3 lights, not sure of their output). Also a mixture of CTB filters.

I did not mean to side track the tread, but the issue of ENG vs. diliberate filmmaking gets into exposure. Rather than try to adjust the exposure to fit the lighting, which may or may not work, it can be better to lock the exposure for the best iris setting and adjust the lighting on each part of the subject to fit the role that shot plays in the story line.

==

Fresnel fixtures with snoots and flags give good control over the light, but 2Ks draw close to 20amps each, so how much power you can get is an issue.

If you gell all the lights to daylight there is some extra IR, so you may want to have an IR filter in the matte box, something that cuts above 680nm.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellipsoidal_reflector_spotlight

Ellipsoidal lights are directional, but maybe not used much for filmmaking as they once were.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresnel_lantern

Fresnel lamps come as small as 50w or so and can have snoots on them, so you can use them for both accent and kicker and key lights.

I was thinking of making some adapters for out mole Junior Solarspot 412 so that they could take 100w Edison screw base bulbs, then over-run those to 180v or so to get 3400K+ light, that would give good control and use less power. I don't know if anyone makes Bi-Pin to Edison screw base adapters, you would need to copper rods and some strips to put a ceramic base on top.

6x #412 fixtures with snots and barn doors would be a help, they have 10" lenses. We made an adapter that plugs into a 220v cloths drier outlet and gives dual 120v power out, so you may be able to run 4x 2Ks off something like that, if you can get power from two houses then you might be able to get 200amps total or more.

http://www.filmandvideolighting.com/mori2juso412.html

I was thinking the other day of having a truck with a bank of car batteries as a buffer, they can charge up and the discharge for the length of the shot, that way you can get more amps off a 20amp outlet. Probably not something you would get into, but it might be useful. Tungsten lamps can run off DC, and that gives less flicker, but DC is more hazardous (and can damage the switches on the lights) so most people would use an inverter to get AC.

If you can't find a set of snoots you can use lots of black wrap foil.

Flags are just as important as lights, since you are buiilding up contast between light and dark, so you need to control the dark as much as the light.

The matte box is part of the lighting since many of the lights will be pointing almost into the camera when you have longer lenses on the camera, and you need the matte box well adjusted to keep any direct light off the filters and the lens. You never want a shadow to fall on your diffusion filters, nor do you want them to wash out your images because direct light from off frame is reaching them.

http://photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=001QkA

http://www.dedolight.com/www/dedolight/default.php?la=0&pg=000004010800&id=Optical_System&section=0

http://www.dedolight.com/www/dedolight/default.php?la=0&pg=000004010802&id=Lenses&section=0

http://www.starlight.com/patternprojectors.html

http://www.starlight.com/images/goboselection.jpg

Some of the better types of pattern projector may need to be found on the used market so they can go on standard light stands, you can use them as fine control spot lights.

You can also purcahse black colored matte board from an art supply store and cut slots and holes in it to use as a kind of Cookaloris to control light. If you put your soft lights back 20 feet, and the Cookaloris close to the subject you can get soft edge shadows. Likewise you can use frost gells over the fresnel along with the Cookaloris to get a softer edge. You can also bounce the Fresnels off a white board and use that spot of light as a soft light both direct or through a Cookaloris or holes in a Matte board etc.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/31833-REG/Lowel_O1_57_Cookaloris_for_Omni_Light.html

http://www.lowel.com/edu/light_controls/cookaloris.html

http://www.sjmediasystem.com/lighting-background-effects-cookaloris.html

http://www.sjmediasystem.com/lighting-background-effects-scrims---gobos.html

http://www.sjmediasystem.com/lighting-background-effects-snoots.html

Where are the snoots?

 

[Brice Ansel]

Dan, you are a generous soulmate.:yesnod:
Brice

 

[Jamie Havill]

I did not mean to side track the tread, but the issue of ENG vs. diliberate filmmaking gets into exposure. Rather than try to adjust the exposure to fit the lighting, which may or may not work, it can be better to lock the exposure for the best iris setting and adjust the lighting on each part of the subject to fit the role that shot plays in the story line.

==

Fresnel fixtures with snoots and flags give good control over the light, but 2Ks draw close to 20amps each, so how much power you can get is an issue.

If you gell all the lights to daylight there is some extra IR, so you may want to have an IR filter in the matte box, something that cuts above 680nm.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellipsoidal_reflector_spotlight

Ellipsoidal lights are directional, but maybe not used much for filmmaking as they once were.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresnel_lantern

Fresnel lamps come as small as 50w or so and can have snoots on them, so you can use them for both accent and kicker and key lights.

I was thinking of making some adapters for out mole Junior Solarspot 412 so that they could take 100w Edison screw base bulbs, then over-run those to 180v or so to get 3400K+ light, that would give good control and use less power. I don't know if anyone makes Bi-Pin to Edison screw base adapters, you would need to copper rods and some strips to put a ceramic base on top.

6x #412 fixtures with snots and barn doors would be a help, they have 10" lenses. We made an adapter that plugs into a 220v cloths drier outlet and gives dual 120v power out, so you may be able to run 4x 2Ks off something like that, if you can get power from two houses then you might be able to get 200amps total or more.

http://www.filmandvideolighting.com/mori2juso412.html

I was thinking the other day of having a truck with a bank of car batteries as a buffer, they can charge up and the discharge for the length of the shot, that way you can get more amps off a 20amp outlet. Probably not something you would get into, but it might be useful. Tungsten lamps can run off DC, and that gives less flicker, but DC is more hazardous (and can damage the switches on the lights) so most people would use an inverter to get AC.

If you can't find a set of snoots you can use lots of black wrap foil.

Flags are just as important as lights, since you are buiilding up contast between light and dark, so you need to control the dark as much as the light.

The matte box is part of the lighting since many of the lights will be pointing almost into the camera when you have longer lenses on the camera, and you need the matte box well adjusted to keep any direct light off the filters and the lens. You never want a shadow to fall on your diffusion filters, nor do you want them to wash out your images because direct light from off frame is reaching them.

http://photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=001QkA

http://www.dedolight.com/www/dedolight/default.php?la=0&pg=000004010800&id=Optical_System&section=0

http://www.dedolight.com/www/dedolight/default.php?la=0&pg=000004010802&id=Lenses&section=0

http://www.starlight.com/patternprojectors.html

http://www.starlight.com/images/goboselection.jpg

Some of the better types of pattern projector may need to be found on the used market so they can go on standard light stands, you can use them as fine control spot lights.

You can also purcahse black colored matte board from an art supply store and cut slots and holes in it to use as a kind of Cookaloris to control light. If you put your soft lights back 20 feet, and the Cookaloris close to the subject you can get soft edge shadows. Likewise you can use frost gells over the fresnel along with the Cookaloris to get a softer edge. You can also bounce the Fresnels off a white board and use that spot of light as a soft light both direct or through a Cookaloris or holes in a Matte board etc.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/31833-REG/Lowel_O1_57_Cookaloris_for_Omni_Light.html

http://www.lowel.com/edu/light_controls/cookaloris.html

http://www.sjmediasystem.com/lighting-background-effects-cookaloris.html

http://www.sjmediasystem.com/lighting-background-effects-scrims---gobos.html

http://www.sjmediasystem.com/lighting-background-effects-snoots.html

Where are the snoots?

Crikey Dan, thanks so much! Gonna take me a while to get through that, I'll report back when I have!

Regarding your question about how much power we have - we have two 6.5k Honda generators and also we can tap into the house mains. The house we're filming in is a 14 bedroom disused manor house, so I expect it'll be able to take a beating.

Thanks again.

 

[Michael Totten]

Today people want to shoot with a 20 stop range camera then use "grading" to "fix things". That is not Cinematography or lighting, and it does not produce as good results. What you end up with is using the camera for "motion capture" and having an image that is more CGI than cinematography. Grading can "help" good lighting, but good lighting is done with lights not computers.

slam dunk !

 

[Michael Totten]

Thanks Dan, that's really great. I'm making a short next month, and I'm not really a retard, I've just never worked with more than 3 point lighting.

What would you recommend as a good standard lighting package for a Red shoot? Majority of film is shot in daylight/dusk with two short indoor night scenes. So far I've gathered 3 Arri 800w tungsten (with 3 softboxes), 2 more 500w tungsten, and an LED litepad set (3 lights, not sure of their output). Also a mixture of CTB filters.

Jamie.

Also, having an HMI around is very useful. They pull much less power than tungsten units and are much brighter.

If you blue up a tungsten unit to get around 5600K you're killing roughly half of the light output. So let's say you had a 2K tungsten and you used full CTB to blue it up (now you've got the net output of a 1K... not much light IF you're playing with sunlight).

Also, a 2K pulls roughly 20 amps... once you start adding all those tungsten units up you start to wonder when a fuse is going to blow (that is if you don't have a generator, which many low budget shorts do not).

I would recommend either a 1.2K HMI or an 800 joker (both of these lights can be plugged into a standard household socket).

best of luck

 

[Dan Hudgins]

Scoops and bare mogul bulbs

Scoops and bare mogul bulbs

I would recommend either a 1.2K HMI or an 800 joker (both of these lights can be plugged into a standard household socket).

I am sure HMI are useful for daylight use, and outdoors at night for lights that need to shine on a wet down street from a distance.

Has anyone done a side by side for flesh tone rendering in the RED ONE? In film recorder tests the cold light in the monitor does not produce enough red light to expose the 2383 print stock well, to the eye it looks like there is red there but to the film its like 2 to 3 stops low. Not that IR is good for the sensor, but there may be some difference between 80 series filters and Tungsten vs. using HMI direct on flesh.

==

About the power issues, we use some older Mole Scoops they are parabolic brushed aluminum and we put mogul base clear "work light" 500W bulbs in them, the boost the voltage to between 180v and 210v which gets the K value up to maybe 3800K. They don't last long but you get two more stops, so a 500W lamp is about as bright as a 2K. There is some focus on the way you can slide the reflector up and down with the screw that lets you take the lamp appart to store the reflectors nested, they are good for location since you can stack the reflectors to take less space. They make a sort of soft hard light source.

To get a point source you can take the reflector off the older mole scoop and then you have a bare bulb (300w to 1500K). We were doing some tests with mercury vapor lamps and put an adapter for Edison to two blade into the balist fixture then put the lamp in to the mole scoop and it worked just fine, you just need not to bump it while it is on because there is a contact in the lamp that turns it off if the glass breaks. It might works with sodum or metal halide lamps as well but I have not tried that, there is a high start voltage on those so the wiring should be rated at the starting voltage. Anyway, that could be useful to avoid mixed lighting by using matching sources.

http://www.prolighting.com/mobasopo.html

A bare mogul base clear lamp can be a useful lighting tool since it gives a broad even light, and you can cast shdows as needed. If you boost the voltage with a VarAC or Colortran (tm) you do not need as much blueish filter on the camera or gell on the lights since you start with a higher K value.


We also use some double mogul base "broads" for getting the light up to the minimum, then put fresnel and scoops on top of that base light. Since the broads work with the low cost 500w mogul base lamps you can boost the voltage to get 4K of light for 1K of power. When you boost the blue end comes up more than the red end so the K value goes up, and the bulb life goes down. We have a high current multi-tap xformer with a relay and foot switch that lets the cameraman step on the foot switch to boost the lights for light readings and to shoot then puts the lights back down to do general work.

http://www.theaterlighting.net/scoops.html

http://www.stylefeeder.com/similar/h63bdw6r

The Scoops I am talking about do not look like those in that last link, they are two parts, the reflector comes off and can be adjusted up and down when you loosen the thumb screw that locks the reflector in place. The base is vertcal for photofloods that burn base down and it goes on a light stand rather than overhead.

Its similar to #10 in this image,

http://www.mole.com/aboutus/history/images/smpte/1943-06_fig-24A.jpg

#11 is a broad.

So something to think about is how you can cast shadows using bare bulbs to adjust the lighting on various parts of the subject, and to let the bare bulb bounce light as well so it acts as both a point source and a soft fill light. I went to a lecture some years ago about a DP that used mostly mogul base bare bulbs, 1500w photo floods I think (un-frosted?), to do lighting on many famous Hollwood "B" movies, he got the jobs because he could light faster and need less power than other guys since he just used a few bare bulbs on light stands, it was just knowing how to place them, and to use the walls and doorways to act as reflectors and flags...

Another trick I should mention is if you put a full sheet of white diffuser gell in a bow across front of the the barn doors (not back near the lens but out about 20-24" from the lens) of a fresnel 2K with wood cloths pins you can focus the 2K from spot to flood to get a nice bright soft light about 18-24" round that can work close to the actor maybe 3 feet away, if you put one on each side you get a nice soft modeling light that is very bright so you can stop down to get sharp images and more DOF. As you change the zoom in the fresnel you can adjust the shadows on the actor from very soft to harder since the size of the light spot on the diffuser gets bigger or smaller. Bouncing the fresnel off a white board gives more hard light since the board will have some specular reflections in its paint.

 

[Dan Hudgins]

Light to "waste"

Light to "waste"

As you know, when the sensor is not at its optimum optical color balance it gives less than 11-12stops range.

So if you shoot under low K light like 2600K you are loosing many stops of range, likewise under 3200K you are going to get a few stops less range and get more noise in the dark areas and more clipping in the highlights.

Some people complain about the 80 series filters taking two stops, but with the camera rated at 320 daylight, minus two stops is still EI 80, which is more than many fine films were shot on ECN with, and you can easily get T/4 with a few fixtures. These light levels are what classic films were shot with and give you greater range above the work lights to control the contrast ratios.

One thing that gives low budget films their characteristic look is having lights near the camera pointed at the subject. This look is the result of the vain attempt to have the light meter tell you that there is "enough" light on the subject. You are not using a copy stand, so all parts of the subject do not need "enough" light, only those parts of the frame that need to be in the upper parts of the sensor's curve.

Putting a spot light on the background behind the dim subject can give enough exposure for a dramatically effective shot, its just important that part of the frame be exposed for the upper part of the sensor's range so that when the images are viewed on a TV without DC restoration the average bias is in the mid range. In other words a small bright area in the frame can counter balance a larger dark but not alltogether black area. The same goes the other way around, you can have a small dark area to balance a lighter area that is larger, so the area ratios may range from 10%/90% to 50%/50% etc.

When you have more than enough fixtures to light up to maybe two stops more light than required, you can then flag and snoot off 75% of the light, and that gives you control over where the light is on the subject. Blocking light from parts of the frame is as important as shining light on other parts.

Using the exposure aids in the camera can help tell you if you have enough signal to avoid noise or clipping on parts of the subject that you do not want in the noise, but since the range of the sensor is limited under any given K value, the way the subject is illuminated can bring BOTH the shadows and highlights WITHIN the range of the sensor so that there is more room for "error" in the absolute exposure.

In ENG type work you do not have control over the light other than to select the camera position relative to the light sources, but when you do have control it can be useful to think about how the lighting can be used to control and adjust the exposure in each part of the frame rather than the exposure being an overall compensation for the lighting as a best compromise between noise and clipping.

 

[huascar]

Hi Dan, thank you very much for all your support!!
I have read all and now I'm testing...

My last question. How I have to do shooting during the night an outside scene? I have a couple walking on a footsteps, but the frame is very wide. I'll use some lights for the characters, but the rest of the street would be underexposed, would be in the purple area... How can I do to have a noiseless image?

Thank you very much

huascar