Hot Tungsten vs led tungsten now?

CharlesPapert said:
black and white project so dimmed down isn't a problem for color
Click to expand...

The concept that (source) colour doesnt matter when recording in or post producing to black and white is off.

As it happens the deep glow of 30's skin tone is entirely driven by warm lighting. So dimming is good.

A deep red source on a film set would, for example render a blue costume black. No problem if that is understood and desired.

The most obvious event is filming a blue sky with a red filter.. see below. The red filter, cant see the blue sky so it renders black. Which some find atractive.

As it happens when shooting on my FS7 and deleting two colour channels (B+G) I found the FS7 codec to become incredibly thin and tend to band. Killing channels in post or with in lens front filtration can stress the codec. Be warned.

It is most valuable to test before undertaking a project and also to know something about B+W imaging. (I suggest a 1992 college course)

S
 

Attachments

  • bw.JPG
    bw.JPG
    34.6 KB · Views: 2
Sorry to put one off the dinner. I quickly shot my leg and cycling injuries and made a B+W image from the blue and red channels. The blue channel shows the skin tone more heavily..
 

Attachments

  • IMG_4252.jpg
    IMG_4252.jpg
    339.1 KB · Views: 3
Its a little off topic but i watch Peter Coulson videos on youtube. He's a stills guy but has some views on black and white vs colour now we are electronic. Ive nicked a few of his setups for video and they worked nicely.
 
paulears said:
Its a little off topic but i watch Peter Coulson videos on youtube. He's a stills guy but has some views on black and white vs colour now we are electronic. Ive nicked a few of his setups for video and they worked nicely.
Click to expand...
what is interesting here?

film (and ground glass in general) - cant focus
digital - looks good if you add grain

Ive known these things for 20 years!

What did I miss?
 
Sam! You are suggesting I don't know that using colored sources in black and white affects the image?! Do I look like I'm new at this? What I didn't elaborate on is that I have already chosen to not be dogmatic about such things on the shoot because we have such granular control of values in the grade now they didn't have in photochemical days. I fully expect to do much manipulation of tones there, not just desaturate to 0. This is going to be a breakneck speed shoot so there is no time for preciousness--if I start relying on heads dimmed down to a specific color temp and/or augmenting heads that are full bore with various flavors of CTO to match, we'll never make our day. I've already thought about the old ways of having to bring a light down to install scrim and hoist it back up again (or ladders walking around set to do same) and it makes me shudder. Bad enough we'll have to deal with local dimmers at every light instead of having control on the iPad. I've become used to (and planning for) a pace that tungsten will not be a great help with. The same applies for costumes, set design...in theory every element should be screen tested for its tonality. This is not that shoot. The budget is under $500 and I have 8 hours to shoot an 11 page script.
 
Doug Jensen said:
Charles, are you shooting in B&W or just going to convert in post? I've been thinking about doing something in B&W.
Click to expand...
Shooting in color. No time or energy to start investigating monochrome cameras for this. Knowing my DP he'll do some tests and build a custom B&W viewing LUT.
 
And with that other chestnut of "Trickle-down economics"... that sounds about right, Charles. I'd guess it's been about 10 years that way in my corner of the corporate world. I've moved away from most retail stuff cause it's even worse.
Good luck with the shoot.
 
CharlesPapert said:
I last heard that chestnut from a prospective vendor when we were in S4 of Key & Peele. I told him, good for you if you can stick to that in your world, but we've been tasked to provide that on set for a while now. And that was 11 years ago.
Click to expand...
That's funny, I never thought of it like that where if you're standing your ground on the triangle, it's sort of like an admission of incompetency. I guess it's more of a complaint or price negotiating tactic when quoting, not an official rule. In reality, the majority of a lot of people's work has been to provide all three.
 
rob norton said:
That's funny, I never thought of it like that where if you're standing your ground on the triangle, it's sort of like an admission of incompetency. I guess it's more of a complaint or price negotiating tactic when quoting, not an official rule. In reality, the majority of a lot of people's work has been to provide all three.
Click to expand...
There are still a few bastions out there where demand outstrips supply, where certain professions and specialties are able to command the respect of "it takes what it takes". I think in smaller markets than LA, there's a certain amount of that. There's a companion expression, "you don't like this speed, you'll hate the next". In this instance, I was trying to source an elevator lighting gag for a Star Wars sketch similar to the elevator in Star Trek TOS. Now of course, would be super easy with pixel programming on LED tubes etc. Back then, we were looking at a series of small heads that would have to be programmed in a chase via dimmer board, which was a bit time intensive for our process. So I reached out to an effects company to ask if they had anything prebuilt and stock on the shelves that would do this. The guy I spoke to said hey, we can built anything. I said, I'm going to straight up give you parameters: it has to be ready in four days and it has to be (stated priced that was well under what would have been expected). He was a little surprised when I acknowledged the statement and said sorry, not on a basic cable TV show.
 
rob norton said:
The resell value for tungsten lights is awful, but if you're offering a wireless RGB lighting solution in the studio and every $$ counts then it may be worth selling even at a huge loss.

Maybe you can rent them out as props in your studio rather than use them as lights.

I can see selling open face/fresnels (even though I wouldn't) but the original s4s are still pretty good value. LED projection modifiers are still a generation or two away IMO - in terms of usability not quality.
Click to expand...
Late to respond - super busy - Thank you. I never thought about using them as props.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top