camera settings.

[IllLifeFilms]

Could someone please help with the proper settings for morning, day, dusk, and night shooting.

[Mike_Donis]

Morning: decide what looks good once looking through your viewfinder.

Day: decide what looks good once looking through your viewfinder.

Dusk: decide what looks good once looking through your viewfinder.

Night: decide what looks good once looking through your viewfinder. But make sure you light it so you can see what's going on.


;)

Really, there aren't any 'standard' settings, because the settings are merely to fine tune what youre shooting; it depends entirely on what sort of look you're going for. Realistically, I only ever take note of my settings if im trying to match shot for shot, and still, there may be a difference depending on the situation. But the look will be completely different depending on what you want.

The daytime sequences in "Saving Private Ryan" look very much different from those in "Along Came Polly". Whatever look you're going for will dictate what settings you'll use.

:)

[J.R. Hudson]

Pay attention to the Exposure more than anything.

Settings can change many things but there are no magical settings for the time of day. In retrospect "decide what looks good once looking through your viewfinder" couldn't be farther from the truth.

Unless you have a pre-determined look you are after, just make sure everything is properly exposed!

Are you after a certain look here? I noticed you keep asking the same question. Maybe you can tell us what exactly you are planning to do and we might be able to get more specific?

[IllLifeFilms]

thank you, but on the menu where you select these settings, when you actually get it the way you ant it, how do you save it to the dial.

What you are suggeting is to go around to each scene and just play around with how you want it to look. right?

[IllLifeFilms]

Where do i change the exposure on the 100 model?

[IllLifeFilms]

as far as specifics to where i am going to shoot. i have to do a lot of inside to outside shots. one of the places we are shooting is at a pizza place and the whole thing is lit horrible with flourecent lights. the night shots are basically just outside, the only real lights out there comes from street lights and such.

[Mike_Donis]

on the left side of the camera (when it's lens is pointing away from you) there's a little wheel...you can open the iris from wide open to all the way closed down.

In the camera's menu, you can adjust the master ped. levels, which will crush the blacks (or lift them, making a 'milkier' image). This is similar to using "levels" in post production, it doesn't optically make the image brighter or darker though, its just for fine tuning. Your main exposure control is the iris wheel on the side.

[Mike_Donis]

one of the places we are shooting is at a pizza place and the whole thing is lit horrible with flourecent lights. *the night shots are basically just outside, the only real lights out there comes from street lights and such.

For the pizza place, seeing how you dont like the flourescent flickerey look, I'm assuming that you want a more "hollywood" glossy sort of look. You might want to try bouncing light off the walls to evenly fill the subject (and the place itself), which would make it appear softer: bouncing light and diffusing the source light will give you a nice, glowy, soft look, which I think is what you want.

For outdoors, at night, are you wanting to enhance the look of the streetlights, or are you wanting to get an overall clean exposure on the scene?

[J.R. Hudson]

You can save/overwrite any of the Scene File settings by going to the bottom of the Scene File menu and simply saving it. You can reset it back to the default (INITIAL) settings at anytime.

You adjust exposure using the IRIS dial located on the left side of the camera.

Many things can determine exposure settings such as ND and Shutter Speed.

Do you have a Manual or did you steal this mutha!? ;) :D

[IllLifeFilms]

i do want an overall clean look to the whole scene, but for trial purposes how do you go about both.

AS for stealing the camera, no i didn't, i just like to learn from people, and their experiences. plus i am illiterate when it come to manuals.

[IllLifeFilms]

by just saving it does that assign the settings to the F1-F6 wheel?

[J.R. Hudson]

Thats because the manuals are written by Tibetan monks and translated by Convienence Store employees. We are all illiterate when it comes to manuals.

Yes, when you save scene files you can overwrite the dials.

[Mike_Donis]

For giving your night scene a general wash, I'd suggest bouncing a lot of light, not to use a hard source, and gel some, or most, of your lights with blue. That will give you essentially a "brighter" scene without you having to worry about getting specific on the lighting set-ups.

I'd suggest, however, using one harder source to accent the details of the scene, basically giving them an ouline of light, on the important parts. lol I've probably talked about this to death in the past couple days, but I love seeing almost nothing in a night shot, except for the specific details which the DP intended :D. But not having any idea what your scene is about, you very well MAY WANT me to see everything, just make me think it's night ;)

[IllLifeFilms]

thank you very much

[Mike_Donis]

that's what this forum is for!

[jaredalv]

Just my $.02. I'm definitely no expert. But why fight the lighting that naturally occurs in a scene? I don't know, but to me, we're trying to recreate the location we're shooting with maybe lighting added for mood. In other words:

> in the pizza parlor with the horrible flourescent lighting, LET the flou's give off a slightly greenish light. Now if you have flicker, yes, you will need to do something about that. But so many people are worried about eliminating the color temp of flou's, to me, that should only be a documentary/interview worry, where they are trying to make the scene 'beautiful'. In stories, we want to recreate these places, so use what's already there. Especially if you're going to have those lights show-up in any establishing shots. Subconsciously people see flou's and expect flou color.

> In the night shot, I would use more hard lights to give shadows. After all, it is night. So hang a bluish wash up high for your soft fill (the moon) and then (depending on the color of your street lights, mine are orange) orange gel some hard lights from up high as street lights. This will mix your blues and orange for some nice effect. But especially at night, I'd use the master ped to crush the blacks and keep those shadows there.

Again, just my day late and dollar short $.02 worth of comments...

Happy shooting,
Chico

[Mike_Donis]

That sounds like a good idea, jaredalv. But just to add, I'd probably not crush the blacks in camera. It would be better to wait till post, just because you can then decide later if you want to lose certain amounts of detail in the picture. It's generally good to give yourself some room in post to colour correct, rather than having to settle with an image that you have no control over anymore.

[jaredalv]

Point taken, thanks.

I really like well-lit scenes that lend rich blacks. To me, washed-out blacks speak of a>poor camera or b>poor lighting (having to add gain which washes them out and adds noise). So I tend to maybe crush mine a little bit much.

I completely understand your point however and will go change my custom scene Master Ped to -2 from -5 right away... although that's still probably too much for some... oh well, different strokes for different folks.

Thanks again

[Mike_Donis]

I completely understand your point however and will go change my custom scene Master Ped to -2 from -5 right away... although that's still probably too much for some...

To be honest, I have my Master Ped set at -5. I've found that it tends to be the best of both worlds, you stil get richer blacks, but maintain much of the original detail, too. I was more so thinking that if you lower it all the way down, it wouldn't be a good idea. I still find it useful to have an image that you generally want in-camera, and just refine it in post; I guess I wasn't fully clear, really.

If lowering the Master Ped levels to -5 looks too dark and lacking in detail, then by all means set it higher; In this instance, however, I was referring to having REALLY crushed blacks in-camera.

There I go rambling again...:P