If a light meter is good enough for Deakins...

[cyclone]

Why would any one want constant depth of field? DOF is part of "story telling".
Yo must make very boring films.[/COLOR]

Wow! I just revisited Dvxuser this morning and found your response, Shooter. "Why so serious?" as the Joker would say. Or, more to the point, "Why so rude?" Must I truly include every assumed phrase in a discussion. Ok, I will: I assumed the reader would know that I meant "...when I want to". There, now there is no room for your concern. (At first, I thought you were being sarcastic, but upon rereading your post, I think not.)

Not that you asked, but I have many other preferences (as we all do): I also prefer backlighting in most daylight exterior situations.
And, I know there are higher tech meters than my Spectra Pro and higher tech 35mm motion picture cameras than my 35 Arri, but they are also choices I make because I prefer them (as I do using constant apertures...in certain situations). To me, an Arri with Zeiss lenses is my favorite combination...(but not in every situation...thought I better protect myself there). Sharp, but not too sharp (i.e. Cookes). That could also be an interesting discussion, as long as we have professional respect for each other and don't start branding each other's films as "boring" (at least, without having seen them). By the way, I don't think I ever referenced camera position. And I also realize that this thread is in the context of Digital Photography, not Film - before I am questioned for that.

By the way, Ryan, thanks for the support!

 

[j1clark@ucsd.edu]

Of course, a lightmeter can be everything one needs as long as it is calibrated to the camera + transfer curve used. It is not much use if you don't take the specifics of the signal in consideration.

This was true even in the olden days of Film film. The ISO( ASA, DIN, whatever...) value of the film was determined in a lab setting, and the meter one was using was sort of a 'gauge' rather than a lab instrument. Could be off by +/- 1/3 or 1/2 stop off even when 'out of the box'. Film film development process could 'change' the gamma, etc. so one had to test, especially if one was going outside the manufacturer's recommendations.

 

[starcentral]

A couple of very handy on-camera tools are the spotmeter (giving average data levels/IRE/whatever from a small frame area) and the spot-waveform (waveform of a small rectangle in the frame). This way you can isolate small portions of the frame and still have precise sensor+transfer curve based feedback. In fact, I'd say these two are the most useful digital on-camera tools. Shame that most cameras don't have them. Cluttered scenes are no issue in this case, because you can select only the part that interests you.
Of course, a lightmeter can be everything one needs as long as it is calibrated to the camera + transfer curve used. It is not much use if you don't take the specifics of the signal in consideration.

I truly miss working with a spot meter as it was found on the Sony F3, unfortunately Sony hasn't put this on the F55 yet... or maybe never. Knowing the transfer curve (gamma specifics) isn't only limited to working with a light meter however, you would also need to know them working with waveform monitor, false color, IRE levels, etc.. which on some cameras work on the signal being recorded not a LUT'd signal.

 

[Bern Caughey]

Meters still have their place but I reach for them less then I used to.

 

[Mitch Gross]

I have never shot film motion pictures, only digital ones, starting with the 35mm adapters. I may sound like an idiot saying this but there are some good folks on this thread and I'm really curious to know so I'm going to ask:

Can you use a light meter, working with a gaffer to describe absolute values of light and how you want to light? Can a DP say something like "We are at T4 and I want those shadows 3 stops under," or can the conversation happen around highlights.. "they can't exceed T22." Something like that? Forgive my ignorance in advance but if Mitch says it's important to know the absolute values then I would think you could use them on set to light without running back ot the camera.

As an aside, I'm looking for a way to light talent without asking them to bob their heads side to side like Lucy and Linus so I can see them in the waveform monitor

Excellent questions and the answer is very much a YES. In fact I will often tell my gaffer something like "I want a key on the face at T4, with that window reading T8 on the curtain. Let's keep the shadows on that wall under a T1.4 so that we don't read that ugly fabric." And so on.

I'm actually more of a die hard than this. I use footcandles. It usually drives my crew nuts but they get used to it. No one has to know anything about the film stock or the sensor. Nothing about a waveform or a histogram (btw I hate histograms. F-ing useless tool for the way I work.). No one has to worry about a LUT or the filters being used or where the lens is set or shutter angle or the weight ratio of an African swallow to a coconut. All they need to know is "Key light at 50 footcandles, curtain at 200 footcandles, shadows below 6 footcandles."

There's a purity in that.

 

[Mitch Gross]

This is an interesting thread. I have been thinking about this, not that I have a project where it's even relevant in the foreseeable future, but re: waveforms/false color vs light meters, if cam, WFM, and false color are readily available, and you're not working with a large crew (say, you ARE the gaffer/DP/everything), why light meter over WFM or vice versa? Real world scenario: you're working on a movie, trying to keep consistency across shots and scenes with regard to ratios and light levels. Let's say you know you like your keys to be at x level and fills at y level, and you like the "lamplight" on the walls to be z level. Why a meter vs WFM/false color to measure these things and keep consistency? Someone mentioned WFMs being confusing to read with a lot in the shot. Good point there, what else? Someone else mentioned wanting to see what the lights were actually doing vs simply reading reflected light in the shot, but ultimately, isn't the reflected light all that matters--i.e. what it looks like in the scene/shot?

What happens when the actor moves two steps to the right, or if you have a blonde-haired pale skinned actor walk in next to a dark-skinned African-American actor? You need to know how the light will interact within the space, and for that you first need to know what the light itself is doing. Then you need to see how it effects your subjects. We are not talking still pictures, it's movies. Things change in the shot, or at least they should if you are not making the most boring pictures ever.

 

[hscully]

I'm going to give it a go. Who knows I might just learn something... it happens I got a used Gossen delivered from B&H. I'm going to do a couple of setups and see what's what. First I'll just get to see if I can make things match what I know from the camera and lenses with what I'm getting with the light meter. It's quite an elegant little thing. I'm looking forward to it.

I pay a lot of attention to contrast ratios and I think I'm pretty good at eyeballing them . I think it will be fun to test that assertion.

So Mitch I'm guessing your gaffer has a meter and an agreed ISO and shutter speed and then you can get close enough readings to talk T stops with regard to certain areas of the set?

I have mostly Duclos Zeiss ZFs. I'll be curious to see how well they stay together regarding f stop.

 

[High1ander]

Whenever I've been shooting film I've used light meters all the time. But for me in digital land, light meters are a luxury in the sense that I don't have time on set to be taking readings. I check the monitor/levels/waveform, etc. to see if all is there and if things are being blown out or not gonna register shadows. Contrast ratios I can see with my eyes or in camera as well. But, when I want to get things "right" I use light meters. Another approach for me is that I use light meters when deciding what a camera or film stock can do, sort of using them to tell me how well they perform, and if I'm testing film I also shoot with a DSLR to match them against each other, so I can use the DSLR to ballpark scenes later on, usually that's been fine since if it looks good highlight wise on the DSLR it will be even better on film that has more DR.

 

[David G. Smith]

This was true even in the olden days of Film film. The ISO( ASA, DIN, whatever...) value of the film was determined in a lab setting, and the meter one was using was sort of a 'gauge' rather than a lab instrument. Could be off by +/- 1/3 or 1/2 stop off even when 'out of the box'. Film film development process could 'change' the gamma, etc. so one had to test, especially if one was going outside the manufacturer's recommendations.

With film one of the primary creative decision you could make was to "Rate" the stock at an ASA (Now ISO) setting that was different than the manufacture's standard. If you rated the stock at a higher ASA than standard then the lab would process it at that (With push processing). If you rated the stock at a lower ASA the lab would process at that (With pull processing). What you had to do was set your meter to the ASA that you were rating the stock at and light for that. I was always working low budget and ended up having to rate the stocks I was using at a higher ASA and have the lab process to that with push processing. I started with the first Kodak Vision stocks and usually rated them a full stop above. They handled it very, very well, but did have a tendency to make the gamma curve more steep (Making for higher contrast) and increased grain a tad. The effect on color with the way I did it was less predictable, but I found it to actually have very little effect on saturation (Maybe a bit of enhanced saturation), but kind of flattened the color out a bit. It worked for what I was doing at the time and I needed the extra stop, for sure. I always wanted to see what I could get with rating down and pull processing but I never had the lighting resources to experiment with that.

Shooting digital video is a very different animal in regards to playing with latitude that film gives you. It does more than make up for it in the control that you have over the look in post, and what not.

 

[bill totolo]

Sorry Bill, I was being a bit of an arse in my post but for sure there are times where you can use a grey card.

You definitely were not, I was trying to poke a little fun at myself.

 

[Mitch Gross]

So Mitch I'm guessing your gaffer has a meter and an agreed ISO and shutter speed and then you can get close enough readings to talk T stops with regard to certain areas of the set?

Yup. If a Gaffer showed up to work without a proper light meter I think he'd be sent home after breakfast.

 

[hscully]

Yeah... that's what I've seen acting on larger sets. The gaffer had a light meter in both the first and second units.

 

[Josh Bass]

I guess even in the scenarios you mention, i could still see using false color/wfm to measure the different levels when are actors are on different marks or light skinned/dark skinned scenario. Maybe im missing something but i still dont really see the issue.

 

[Josh Bass]

I guess even in the scenarios you mention, i could still see using false color/wfm to measure the different levels when actors are on different marks or light skinned/dark skinned scenario. Maybe im missing something but i still dont really see the issue.

 

[Grug]

I truly miss working with a spot meter as it was found on the Sony F3, unfortunately Sony hasn't put this on the F55 yet... or maybe never. Knowing the transfer curve (gamma specifics) isn't only limited to working with a light meter however, you would also need to know them working with waveform monitor, false color, IRE levels, etc.. which on some cameras work on the signal being recorded not a LUT'd signal.

I'd need to look up the old footcandles-ISO equation again, but couldn't you calculate the footcandles you'd need to properly expose middle grey for the F55 base sensitivity and then use the spot meter on a lightmeter to check the reflectance of a grey card (or grey object in the frame) in the same way you used the spot meter on the F3?

It'd actually be a lot faster than having to reframe the camera to pull it's internal spot meter over wherever the grey card was being held.

 

[Mitch Gross]

First you need to establish what the light is doing. Is it brighter on the left or right or even across both? Then you see how your subjects react to that light. Does one reflect it brightly while the other absorbs much more? If you learn how your subjects will react to the light, which is a basic test that everyone should do anyway, then you will be properly prepared to set the light for them beforehand. Once your subject lands on set there should only be minor tweaks at best. Anything else is rude and shows that their time is not valued.

A perfect example is Danny Glover, who was noted by several cinematographers to have particularly absorbent skin. Standing next to Mel Gibson or other fairly light-skinned actors, DPs would often need a "special" just for bringing up Glover's levels, sometimes by a full stop.

So on set the practice is to doing a rough blocking rehearsal so that everyone knows how the talent will move about on set and where the camera will look, and then the set is turned over to the DP & Gaffer to light. They need to preflight those specials in for Glover's positions and make plans so that they do not interfere with to light skinned talent, who would otherwise suddenly step into a very bright beam of light. And once the actors returned to set, NO WAY does anyone reset a light unless there has been a change of plans. Otherwise you get yelled at like Christian Bale unloading onto Shane Hurlbut. And it also means that actors like Danny Glover get damn good at hitting their marks perfectly and "finding their light."

Setting the lights in this fashion is simple and straightforward when using a light meter. I could do it with no camera present. Doing it with only in-camera tools would totally suck, as it would be a constant struggle to determine what was happening because of an unevenly spread light or from different reflective levels from various subjects.

There are reasons to use any tool, although I still personally have little use for a histogram in my work. But others like them so I wouldn't dismiss the things completely out of hand. A light meter is an incredibly useful tool, and used well can be a much faster, more consistent way to work. Don't fear things, old or new.

 

[starcentral]

I'd need to look up the old footcandles-ISO equation again, but couldn't you calculate the footcandles you'd need to properly expose middle grey for the F55 base sensitivity and then use the spot meter on a lightmeter to check the reflectance of a grey card (or grey object in the frame) in the same way you used the spot meter on the F3?

It'd actually be a lot faster than having to reframe the camera to pull it's internal spot meter over wherever the grey card was being held.

You could definitely use a light meter's reflective mode the same as the F3's spot meter (which the F55 doesn't have) but first you'd have to "calibrate" your camera and meter at least once by rating the camera's ISO because there are many camera settings and possibly other variables that "could" cause you to determine a different ISO than the camera itself is rated with by the manufacturer (lenses, mapped values for slog or hypergammas, gain, shutter speed, etc..). For the Sony F3 I was able to rate the camera as 800ISO in slog mode which was bang on with the manufacturer. Oddly enough using the exact same process on the F55 I rated the camera as 640ISO and not 1250ISO as rated by the manufacturer.

Once you have gone through the process to calibrate your meter to the camera using a grey card (by rating the ISO of your camera) you can put your light meter in footcandle mode and take a footcandle reading and now you would know exactly how many footcandles you need to get the f-stop you determined during the process of rating your camera's ISO.

For example on the F3 I determined that I need 42fc to get f4 at 800ISO. What I also have is a small memo book where I keep the foot candle output I have measured from various lighting fixtures with & without modifiers. I know what a 575w HMI or 575w Source4 will put out in footcandles at what distance. Manufacturers always seem to rate the output of their lighting equipment HIGHER than it is so whenever I end up renting some lights I don't own I take measurements of the output in footcandles which for me always comes in handy later.

 

[Noel Evans]

(btw I hate histograms. F-ing useless tool for the way I work.).

For the way my brain works histograms are the turds of exposure tools. And if its all I had - the light meter is coming out of the bag.

Putting film aside for the moment - the key to exposure is consistency through sequences / scenes. The best tool to allow you to do that is the tool that allows YOU to do that with ease. For me thats waveform and a light meter.

 

[bill totolo]

I'd need to look up the old footcandles-ISO equation again, but couldn't you calculate the footcandles you'd need to properly expose middle grey for the F55 base sensitivity and then use the spot meter on a lightmeter to check the reflectance of a grey card (or grey object in the frame) in the same way you used the spot meter on the F3?

It'd actually be a lot faster than having to reframe the camera to pull it's internal spot meter over wherever the grey card was being held.

Divide the number 10,000 by your ISO to arrive at correct exposure at a T 2.8
So, if you are rating your camera 500 ISO, you need 20 FC's to expose at 2.8, 10 FC's for a T2.0 etc

 

[Razz16mm]

Excellent questions and the answer is very much a YES. In fact I will often tell my gaffer something like "I want a key on the face at T4, with that window reading T8 on the curtain. Let's keep the shadows on that wall under a T1.4 so that we don't read that ugly fabric." And so on.

I'm actually more of a die hard than this. I use footcandles. It usually drives my crew nuts but they get used to it. No one has to know anything about the film stock or the sensor. Nothing about a waveform or a histogram (btw I hate histograms. F-ing useless tool for the way I work.). No one has to worry about a LUT or the filters being used or where the lens is set or shutter angle or the weight ratio of an African swallow to a coconut. All they need to know is "Key light at 50 footcandles, curtain at 200 footcandles, shadows below 6 footcandles."

There's a purity in that.

+1000 Basic physics rules!