Help. New Gig.

G

greymog

Well-known member
Hi all, forgive a beginner's question.

I've been doing personal filming for a while, and the stakes aren't usually as high, and creative freedom is rampant.

I just got a job that I really wanna keep. I will be working for a lighting design firm and making video product catalogs for them.

This is inherently tricky as I found out today as we will be shooting lights. Light sources. Bare bulbs. The space is huge, almost entirely white and gray. It's highlight material.

We had a D600 on set and it was torture to use. Stair-stepping, very harsh blowouts, and very shaky. The tripod isn't nearly as heavy as it should be. We have a week to kit out, and my eye is on the BMCC and it's lil sis the pocket. I have waaaay more than enough room for going wide (the space is huge) and we will never need to move the camera by hand and/or quickly so the rolling shutter (which usually is my biggest pet peeve) doesn't bother me in this setting.

The questions aren't really camera related, but again open to any suggestions for a low budg kit. My question is, are there are 'rules of thumb' that I can pick up, material I can read etc, on shooting bare bulbs and all? Today most notably I had problems with controlling shadow. It is tougher to fill out a shadow area when exposing for a filament in a bulb. We only had one light, diffused, but it was still way too directional. I relied on the light coming into the hangar, which was plenty, but not when trying to expose for the filament.

I'm going to wrestle with a few shots we had today. But I would like to know whatever anyone is kind enough to impart on shooting this kind of product.

Of course, I am googling and researching as this goes on, so sorry if my questions seem beginner-ish. I'm just anxious. If this job works out, I'm golden.

Thanks all in advance

Tarek
 
Exposing for the filament is going to be a nightmare, no matter how you fight it. Even the BMC, if you want to have only the filament blown out, you're going to have to throw a lot of fill elsewhere, otherwise it will be too dark.

I shot a very nice project recently on the BMC; there were some bare light bulbs in the image, and the director wanted to see the filament in the final image; we didn't have strong lights at hand to throw enough fill, so we had to cover them with some artistically placed cloth, otherwise the talent would have been way too underexposed.

So, a couple of suggestions:
* get a declicked lens, do an iris ramp to show the filament, then everything else
* alternatively, get a sheet of strong ND to temporarily cover the bulb so the filament can be seen, then take that sheet away
* in any case, if you go for the BMC, make sure you get a light meter too: that camera is very difficult to work with, because it has no exposure aids apart from the highlight zebras
 
Ok so far so good.

When you talk about exposing the filament, then removing whatever ND/gel/etc I'm assuming I'm compositing 2 shots on top of each other?
 
and thank you btw :) sorry for my rudeness I haven't slept. was anxious and didn't wanna risk being late on my first day.
 
ok... but it ain't gonna be pretty... lemme figure out how and tonight i'll post. i'll pick as diverse a selection out.
 
okay how do i post an image? i don't have a url to upload to... sorry guys i'm so stressed and totally lost
 
Go to advanced before you post then manage your attachments. Upload some frames, then insert to post.

Or, you can upload the images to Flickr or photobucket and insert them that way...
 
you're making this much harder than it needs to be.

it seems you just need the bulb to be 'on', but not necessarily bright?

in that case you could make it a heck of a lot easier to expose for the filament if you use a dimmer. from your photos it looks like you're shooting all tungsten/halogen, which can be dimmed a long ways down.

something like this is all you need if the bulbs are under 300 watts, i believe your country uses 120v, but if not, get a 220v version.

http://www.amazon.com/dpB0000BYEF6/?tag=dlevi-20

then you could just take an extension cord, cut off the appliance end, and attach directly to the bulb socket with an easy plug to go into the dimmer
 
We;ve been using a dimmer, it is working, the gripe around exposing is working out.. having a hard time uploading framegrabs for some reason.
 
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All their photo work leans to blue in the shadows and has very creamy highlights. I'm managing to score this look on camera by balancing closer to tungsten and letting the ambient daylight wash out into the coolness.... it seems to be working so far.
 
There's also the issue that the lighting fixture needs to establish a relationship with the space, ie specifically the light it shines onto the surface, which i can't nail if dimmed...
 
It's working. I got 3 bulbs. So much easier to make a look happen. Just to positive up the thread, I managed to get thru to my coworker. It's working out. I'm glad I vented this first.

Framegrabs to come.
 
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