fStop Madness!

Justin

Justin

Active member
Hey guys, I'm in the middle of a production meeting and I can't get something out of my head. We had just finished doing test shots in a moving car at night and we had to adjust the fStops as we were switching the camera postion. The thought that came to mind is that I read somewhere in one of Jan's posts about digital movies in Sundance. She said that a quality dv movie never changes the fStop. Is this true? It seems nearly impossible to go through so many locations and never change the fStop.
Can someone please help me. Thanks!
 
Re: fStop Madness!

You need to re-read the post. She didn't say that a quality movie never changes the f-stop! She said that you should strive for consistency between scenes, consistency in exposure, etc.

Someone else suggested using the same f-stop throughout the movie. I know that many DP's, when lighting a scene, will often light for a target f-stop, frequently somewhere around f/2.8 to f/4, for DOF reasons as well as keeping within the lens' range of sharpest f-stops. When you're controlling all the light in a scene, it's easy to pick an f-stop and stick with it.

When outdoors, things are a little trickier obviously, but with judicious use of ND filters you can still get to a particular f-stop, if that's your goal.
 
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