Lighting... but not the norm...

PerroneFord

PerroneFord

Deals in Lead
Ok, my last question for the week.

While pouring over articles in my ASC magazines over the past few years, a common theme kept coming up.

Cinematographers and DPs choosing an F-Stop to work at. Simple on it's face but has some serious implication for me in my non-narrative work.

When selecting a working f-stop, you are effectively saying that you want to set an upper limit of light on the set. Whether that's 100 IRE, 107, or whatever. But it basically says how bright the set will be. Film DPs may do this because they are interested in depth of field. However, my needs are different.

I am not working with professional talent. So it behooves me to keep my lighting on set to a quite low amount. Of course this has implications in terms of my depth of field, and potentially noise.

So for those of you who work with non-pro talent, where do you set your lighting levels? I am in pre-production for a shoot in December and playing on set today I was working my lighting between 40 and 70 footcandles. Fortunately, the talent is somewhat used to being lit, but I felt this was quite bright. I cannot imagine what it would be like at 150-200 FC that seems to be popular on some sets.

Really hoping to hear from some of you guys...
 
As long as actors aren't blinded by the lights directly, the human brain adjusts to lighting levels pretty well, I think. If the whole set is very bright, you won't notice after a few minutes. Only if you switch on and off the lighting all the time, or if you are blinded by hard light sources.
I mean outdoors it's usually much brighter than on any artificially lit location, and people don't have problems with that, do they?
 
FBAS said:
As long as actors aren't blinded by the lights directly, the human brain adjusts to lighting levels pretty well, I think. If the whole set is very bright, you won't notice after a few minutes. Only if you switch on and off the lighting all the time, or if you are blinded by hard light sources.
I mean outdoors it's usually much brighter than on any artificially lit location, and people don't have problems with that, do they?
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Very true... how do you think we manage on a sunny day? I just went outside with my light meter.... I live in the valley. It's an f/45 in the sun and an f/8 in the shade (24fps, ISO 320). Somehow we manage not to squint our asses off. :) (for those curious its 32x as bright in the sun versus the shade... today, where I live)

No matter what light level you use, as long as they aren't staring directly into a light, they should be fine with light levels of any magnitude... well at least if you don't go over an f/45 at 320 IS0... lol.

Most DP's like to shoot around an f/4. Some like 2.8, etc. It all depends on what you pick and why, but no matter the decision, it is very much not going to be so bright it effects actors.
 
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Yea.. of course I knew this was going to happen! LOL!

I suppose my issue is that I am doing mostly event work. Often recording conferences in hotel ballrooms. So room ambient is quite low, but stage is HOT. I think the last show I did, room ambient was about 12FC, and I needed about 50 on the stage. So for the talent looking out into the audience, it was "black" while the lights hitting them were like looking into the sun.

I've mitigated this some with silks and softboxes where I can get a more diffused light onto the talent in most cases, but I was just curious. I wish I could bounce a 10k off the ceiling to just raise ambient and work from there, but it's just not possible.

Thanks for the thoughts guys.
 
Your problem is contrast ratios and latitude. Can you turn the house lights up? Maybe even just shoot a 2k at the back of everyones heads for a nice rim light. We may not see their faces but at least we see nice looking rimmed outlines of people.

You can shoot with Vision3 Kodak film 500asa. It's a fast stock and has about 11-12 stops of latitude. lol. (I'm guessing that is not in the budget :) )
 
Ryan Patrick O'Hara said:
Your problem is contrast ratios and latitude. Can you turn the house lights up? Maybe even just shoot a 2k at the back of everyones heads for a nice rim light. We may not see their faces but at least we see nice looking rimmed outlines of people.

You can shoot with Vision3 Kodak film 500asa. It's a fast stock and has about 11-12 stops of latitude. lol. (I'm guessing that is not in the budget :) )
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The 10 stops on the EX1 do just fine for me. I am not having trouble getting my images. I am just trying to increase the comfort for the non-pro talent I am pointing the lights at...
 
10 stops, lol.... ok. (ex1 dynamic range is horrible thus those '10' stops are very rigid, with no room to play. I would only rate the ex1 for a true eight stops of latitude at best, but if you want to stretch it to ten, I won't argue.)

Oh... so this isn't a camera problem? Or a lighting problem? It's simply a man speaking to a crowd who isn't comfortable with lights? Jeez. I don't know what to tell you. Maybe buy him a pair of sunglasses or a pair of gonads?
 
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Ryan Patrick O'Hara said:
10 stops, lol.... ok. (ex1 dynamic range is horrible thus those '10' stops are very rigid, with no room to play. I would only rate the ex1 for a true eight stops of latitude, but if you want to stretch it to ten, I won't argue)
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LOL, hey I don't need more than 6 stops. I'm just a guy trying to film some folks. I'm not making movies. Mr. Wilt says 10, who am I to argue. I didn't realize the dynamic range was horrible. I don't know what to say.

Ryan Patrick O'Hara said:
Oh... so this isn't a camera problem? Or a lighting problem? It's simply a man speaking to a crowd who isn't compfortable with lights? Jeez. I don't know what to tell you. Buy him a pair of sunglasses or a pair of gonads?
Click to expand...

Well, when you rely on certain people for your income, and you want to make them look good, but yet, comfortable at the same time, you do what you can. It sounds like the answer is to try and increase ambient levels as much as practical to adjust the eyes, and then just paint in with light. That jibes with things I've heard and read in the past. Just wanted to see how other people handle it.

Thanks for your thoughts.
 
Don't get me wrong, EX1 is nice. Easily arguably better then HVX200p and very close to HVX200a. Dynamic range is bad because you can't shift post exposure around without getting drastic artifacts or likewise issues. It's not the EX1 in particular but most HD/DV cameras have bad dynamic range. Film, because of photochemical elements can be underexposed by 2 stops and look fantastic (brought back up), etc. My experience otherwise.

I understand your dilemma. It seems it is really the speakers fault for not taking to the lights like a pro. Best bet is what you said. Shrink the contrast between ambient audience and stage lighting. It will be less of a change to his eyes which will adapt faster.

Best of luck.
 
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Id like to add, Video is not film and vice versa, pretty obvious, but checking FC for video isnt going to tell you a great deal. The best video tool for checking light is a waveform.

I light for fstop at least 90% of the time. And with a waveform isnt that hard to get what you are after, which is totally subjective. Do you need a 65 ire reading on a face all the time? No, there are times when you dont. See images below.

Which also bring me to another point. The EX1 shifts exposure easily in post. Its not like my HPX500, but you wouldnt expect it to be and nor is the HVX near the same. Smaller chips. But its pretty good IMO.

4 EX1 shots with post adjustments made in color (no these are not graded for final output, just a demonstration). The final shot is the original and I highly doubt there will be any level changes to this in grading, its what I shot for (dont judge it until you have seen it on a proper monitor). Though I may make some colour adjustments. But its pretty clear the first image has been stretched a long way from original. These were grabs from my viewer slug and then save uncompressed so file sizes are pretty big.

ID1.tiff

ID2.tiff

ID3.tiff

ID4.tiff
 
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Hi Perrone:

I totally agree with Ryan, it's not about footcandles or F stops, it about contrast ratio. Take any non-pro talent into a dark room with a single 650 through softbox as a key, add a fill and hair/rim. If you leave the interviewer in the dark near the lens, the talent will feel that they are "blinded" by all of this bright light.

Take the same setup and don't change a thing but throw a kino or something with a lot of falloff onto the interviewer and camera. Instantly the talent will be okay with the light levels, or at least the non-pro I have been working with lately feel this way. If the set has some ambient and is not black away from the lights on them, they are fine.

Dan
 
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