New lighting with DVX100b

J

Jerryv

Active member
Here are some frames exported from Adobe premiere (i know the aspect ratio is not correct, its supossed to be 16:9)

sequence01xz7.jpg

sequence02wz0.jpg

sequence03pq7.jpg

sequence05yc9.jpg



Today is the big day, iam going to shoot this with 5 actors on te table (this was just a test) and while i dont have anymore time to test the lighting, iam still VERY VERY VERY curious about your opinions! So i hope to hear some reactions without the next hours
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Iam a bit nervous about this, because it looks -on a t.v.- very grainy.

I did NOT use the gain setting, i shot it with 0 db.

I had enough exposure (but even if i did not have enough light: the gain was off, so why should there be any gain? it must just get black!!)

I expososed the scene for the brightest object in the room (the lamp) So i lower the exposure untill there was no overexposure on the table caused by the lamp. Therefore, the rest of the room was getting a lot darker but the bright object appeard fine.
It was the look i wanted.

But playback on a tv its grainy and moving.

It was shot with a DVX100b scene file 6,
no changes made.
(unless for exposure and manual WB)

So, what can i do? because: when you shoot something brighter/overexposed than the rest in the frame and you lower exposure to make it look right, the rest of the frame gets darker.
But is it normal to have grain with it also?
There was enough light, i closed the lens, so why is there gain?

Anyways: even if you dont have a answer, please leave a comment on the lighting.
 
I like the third grab best...for the last grab, i think the characters should abstain from leaning in too much as imo it looks a tad weird. Otherwise great job - just watch for aspect ratio when you export. I can't come up with an explanation for grain tho..
 
A few more hours :)
Ow, iam getting a bit nervous about the lighting, but iam glad you like it :)

Even without the grain, is it not too dark overall?
 
imageonepictures said:
It looks squeezed!
Click to expand...

It is!

The dvx100b can display sqeezed footage as 16:9 in the viewfinder, so i dont see a reason why not going with sqeezed footage. But when export a still image from Adobe premiere, the aspect ratio is not exported right, well, in fact, it is... but you just dont see it as 16:9 (in Photoshop you can enable and disable aspect ratio correction) So, well, i just dont know how to deal with this.

But what do you think about the lighting? (much grain on tv) and the overall look? too dark? or good?
 
The grain is most likely from you having a proper exposure on your actor only. The rest of the room is dark, causing grain. I would suggest bringing the light up in the whole room overall, slightly over expose your image, be careful to not let any parts blow out, and then bring it back down in your NLE.

So shoot slightly too bright, being careful not to blow out any parts of the picture, then darken in post. Grain should no longer be a problem.
 
You may also want to play with the detail, v-detail, and detail coring. Details low, coring high, might help a little at the cost of sharpness
 
Shibuya Oboya said:
The grain is most likely from you having a proper exposure on your actor only. The rest of the room is dark, causing grain. I would suggest bringing the light up in the whole room overall, slightly over expose your image, be careful to not let any parts blow out, and then bring it back down in your NLE.

So shoot slightly too bright, being careful not to blow out any parts of the picture, then darken in post. Grain should no longer be a problem.
Click to expand...

The room is lit enough, but i lower the exposure myself, so i dont understand that this is causing grain. If i dont expose for the main subject (the table) but for the room, the table is going to be overexposed. I cannot have both good.
And if i lit the room too much, the whole effect is gone that the light seems to get from 1 or 2 places... :crybaby:
 
Thank you!!!!!

But there is a LOT of grain when playback... (somehow, on my pc monitor, i dont see a lot of grain) is it possible that when there is enough lite and you close the iris so less light gets in, grain is kicking in? Even if you, on purpose, closed the iris a bit down?
 
The room is lit ok (maybe a little dark), but the subject is not lit well. Use three point lighting. key, back and fill on your subject. It will look superb.
 
You should definitely look up three point lighting. You'll find helpful diagrams all over the web.

What I was saying about overexposing was to shoot a brighter picture, then in FCP take the mids down, and maybe the blacks a little too. The three way colour corrector is a great tool. Just be careful not let the brightest part of the image to blow out while shooting.

And yes, if you are closing your iris down too far, it can cause grain. And you are absolutely sure you didn't have the gain on?
 
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lighting looks ace... I really liked it even with the squeeze so I put it into photoshop to check it out.

aspect.jpg


how did the shoot go?

Any footage?
 
Jerryv said:
The room is lit enough, but i lower the exposure myself, so i dont understand that this is causing grain. If i dont expose for the main subject (the table) but for the room, the table is going to be overexposed. I cannot have both good.
And if i lit the room too much, the whole effect is gone that the light seems to get from 1 or 2 places... :crybaby:
Click to expand...


I'm curious what you're lighting package is. It looks to me like you're just lighting with practicals - which is fine, but as you're finding out, it's quite difficult to get things to even out.

If you can't get a proper lighting package to help you out, and you're stuck with what you have in the room, I'd suggest looking at a few simple things to help out out, like getting lower wattage bulbs for those lamps and / or dimmers. That way, you can bring the overhead light down a little bit and the difference between the face and the light won't be so high.

The only problem with that kind of solution, you'll loose light on your subject. In your case, I'd reccomend getting a few cheap china balls and using them as fill on your subject. The light is nice and soft and are highly useful to use in a pinch when you don't have softboxes, silks or things of that nature. The problem with the china lanterns is of course flagging the light...but if your shots are tight enough, it might not matter. Anyhow, I digress.

As far as the issue of grain is concerned, it was mentioned before that it increases when your f/stop increases (iris gets smaller)... Since you didn't mention what f/stop those framegrabs were at, I'll guess that they're pretty high. If you go with my suggestion about lowering the overall light levels and opening up the iris to a more mid-range f/stop, like a 4 or 5.6, the grain will go down.
 
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