C300: EXPOSURE QUANDRY - Need hELP

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djkoz

Well-known member
I am going to be videoing a dance performance (2 camera shoot) that is being held in a wedding/banquet type facility. The dance floor, which is approximately 30’ wide x 25’ deep, will be surrounded on 4 sides by the audience. All of the house lights will be turned off except for 4 chandeliers above the dance floor, and those lights will be dimmed. Essentially the only significant lighting will come from two 600 watt halogen video lights shooting through an umbrella, one at either end of the 30’ width. That is all the lighting we are allowed to bring in. Not ideal!

My dilemma is how to set the exposure, manual or automatic.

If I set the exposure to manual based on, say, the light values in the center of the floor, the dancers will become overexposed as they move closer to the lights, and under exposed as they move further back on the dance floor. The exposure on the dancers will vary dramatically.

If I set the exposure to automatic, then as I zoom in on the performers I will get one reading, but if I pull back to a wider shot so that I capture some of the dark background along with the dancers, the exposure will again change, since the meter will be reading part of the dark scene.

There does not seem to be an ideal solution, but I am leaning toward auto exposure.

If you have shot in this type of situations before (i.e., significant lighting value changes in different parts of the scene) I would appreciate your suggestions.

Thanks, Dan
 
You might have a wide shot where you expose for the center, brighter area. And then closer angles that focus on the sides, where you can raise the exposure.

Have you tested this scenario yet? You owe it to your client to tell them if it's not going to work. If you test, you can show them how it's going to look on video, and then they can decide to follow your suggestions or not.
 
So, are you the one supplying the 600 watt lights? If so, I'm really surprised they are letting you do the lighting design for their dance performance. I've done a few performances and I've never considered bringing extra lights since that would ruin whatever lighting design the designer had decided on. Why are the chandeliers being dimmed?

Assuming that they are using dimmed chandeliers as an artistic choice in order to create dim and murky atmosphere for the show, I can't imagine how they would be happy with your video lights. I would assume you would be better off with convincing them to not dim the chandeliers. It would certainly be easier to expose for the general wash of the chandeliers than two video lights. Or just shoot the video lights into the ceiling or against a bounce as far away from the performance as you can.

Stage shows are hard to shoot because of their high contrast, but it looks like you are just making it more difficult with the video lights. And auto exposure is going to really be jarring when you start cutting.
 
The producer has a vision of a dark disco scene. There will be a few colored lights on the floor and he wants those to show up on the costumes. Without the video lights that I am bringing, I would have to shoot at f/1.6 and with the gain set to higher than the camera can go. I am going to shoot in 24p and bring the resolution down to 720 from 1080. This will yield approximately another stop of light.

So, it looks like my setting will have to be: 1280 x 720, 24p, either auto iris or iris locked at f/2.8, and auto gain (with the gain limit set to the highest value). I don't expect it to look great.
 
djkoz said:
The producer has a vision of a dark disco scene. There will be a few colored lights on the floor and he wants those to show up on the costumes. Without the video lights that I am bringing, I would have to shoot at f/1.6 and with the gain set to higher than the camera can go. I am going to shoot in 24p and bring the resolution down to 720 from 1080. This will yield approximately another stop of light.

So, it looks like my setting will have to be: 1280 x 720, 24p, either auto iris or iris locked at f/2.8, and auto gain (with the gain limit set to the highest value). I don't expect it to look great.
Click to expand...

Ahh, I see. The problem is that once you set up the video lights, the producer's idea of seeing the colored lights on the costumes is going to be ruined. I don't see a good solution outside of using an A7sII.
 
The c100/c300 are great for low light.
rent a couple of sigma art lenses 18-35 1,8 and 50-100 1,8 expose for the brightest parts lock it and your set.
don't try to fill the scene with video lights, first try to get the chandeliers less dimmed
The producer had the vision of a dark disco scene so they are not expecting every bit of the dance moves to be clearly visible ,
it can be very exiting to see a dance move from the dark into the light,challenging for sure but can come out great.
 
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