Screen grabs: Night, available light, narrative.

[Ben_B]

Some screen grabs from my latest student project, this is at night in downtown Santa Cruz, CA, with available light. Lumix GH1. Mostly with Nikon 50mm f/1.4....I think all of these are actually.

I shot 1080p because I wanted to use 1/50 shutter to get some extra light but unfortunately (and I noticed this while we were shooting but I really really needed that extra 1/10 of a second of exposure) this conflicted a bit with the CFL street lights and produced that slowly moving pattern of pinkish (in this case) stripes through the image. Fortunately this is a short scene and the way it is cut you will probably not even notice the motion of the stripes, although if you look at the stills you can see them.

That said the camera handled the low light very well...ISO 800.. there is some FPN banding but there is no camera movement in any of these shots and so far I haven't found it very noticeable, it's also pretty noisy but a little noise never hurt anyone...I'm a bit less worried about how those problems will effect the final outcome than I am about that light refresh rate problem, but again, I really needed to shoot at 1/50 so what're you gonna do.

Sorry for low res of screen grabs, they were taken from Log and Transfer window, haven't even transcoded yet

 

[Martti Ekstrand]

Promising Ben. Looking forward to see the final piece.

 

[Ben_B]

Thanks.

That stupid light frequency pattern keeps sticking out at me though, hopefully with grading I can nuke it into oblivion without screwing anything else up...I am pretty confident it won't be a problem.

I am really happy with the way most of the shots look and it really came out better than I expected given the conditions...luckily we had a really bright moon tonight too

 

[Nathyn]

Looks real good.

-Nate

 

[thisisapocalypse]

These caps do look nice indeed. I doubt many viewers will notice the pink light, I didn't notice it the first time I scrolled through.

BTW - It's great to see more and more clips and shots from people who are out there using their cameras creatively, rather than constant "if i pan my camera 60 degrees at light-speed I get jello and mud!" that we see a lot of on the forum lately, it seems to me that in real world usage with reasonable discipline, this cam is fantastic and more than enough to express oneself if you've got the content.

 

[sammysammy]

looks good Ben, good job..is that the old nikkor auto-s ?

 

[yabyum]

Nice pics! Posting to bookmark for question to be asked later.

 

[Ben_B]

Here is a full resolution freeze frame (made with freeze frame tool and then export to image sequence from Final Cut Pro..anyone know a better way?) from the film for all you pixel peepers out there. Nikkor-S 50mm f/1.4 @ 1.4. 1080/24p, 1/50 shutter, ISO 800. Available light. Ungraded.

 

[AdrianF]

Thanks for posting the grabs, looks interesting. Looking forward to seeing the final piece.

 

[Kellar42]

Ben try parking the canvas on whatever frame you like, and hitting Export>Quicktime Conversion, then picking still image from the drop down menu. Hit options and pick your image type, (leaving frame rate blank) and then hit options again to increase the quality to maximum. Just remember you have to pick still image from the drop down menu again each time you do it!

 

[Park Edwards]

Ben. were you the dp? cam operator? i wanted to know the reason behind using iso 800? was it only lit with natural light and that's why? seems odd to use such a fast lens and use such a high iso.

 

[Ben_B]

This a project for a film production class at my university. For most projects you do for these classes you're supposed to be an auteur because it's easier to grade you based on your films that way, and to give you advice for improvement. I am the director, DP, and editor on this project...as well as just about everything else (although I've had some assistance from general PAs.) I do a lot of collaborative work as well where you actually have specific roles, as is generally done with most productions, but this is not the case for this film.

Yes, the reason I shot at ISO 800 is that I had to deal with available light. That lens, even as fast as it is and even wide open, still was not bright enough for how dark it was on that street. The street was lit only by lights from the surrounding buildings (most of which were closed) and street lights which appeared to be using pretty standard CFL bulbs (obviously higher than 60 watt equivalents, but still pretty basic off the shelf stuff.)

 

[Ben_B]

Here are some more screen grabs...low light, not available light...and still at a somewhat high ISO. These are from other scenes:

Heineken in honor of Kholi and that Heineken gh1 ad

 

[Martti Ekstrand]

Personally I think Dennis Hopper said it best when he said

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I AGREE

Jokes aside - even more promising screen grabs. Good luck with the film!

 

[Ben_B]

We quoted that the whole night, and all the time, at every party that has either, or everytime anyone brings up either beer. As college students we drink a whole lot of PBR...but I like Heineken a ton.

God I love Blue Velvet.