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Varicam Night Shoot with Pro-35adapter (redish skin tones and noise)
Hi everyone.
I’m getting ready to shoot a short narrative. We’ve chosen the Varicam in unison with the pro-35mm adapter and high speed primes.About %80 of the script takes place at night/interiors.
We did some tests and I noticed two things.
1. The skin tones go pinkish quickly in low light
2. The image gets noisy( I know that I lose 1.5 stops with the pro-35mm and that there is added grain because of the ground glass). Beyond those factors, how do I prevent these issues?
I like the SHADOWS and am hoping they can stay BLACK and relatively noise free.
I guess I need to ‘overlight’ and then us an ND filter to bring the picture back down? I don’t want to stop down to much with the lens as I’ll loose my shallow DOF.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
thanks,
Michael -
7 Replies
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You’ll need to set up the camera with the adapter & lenses you are going to use.
The VariCam menus are deep and the parameters are highly interdependent, so this is not a task for the untrained. You’ll need a good VariCam tech with proper charts, scopes, and plenty of time to get the color where you want it to be with the equipment and lighting conditions you’ll have on the shoot.
I can’t say how much of the noise you’re seeing is due to the nature of the camera and DVCPro HD or the adapter, but wilder settings could certainly contribute.
Good shooting!
Leo
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Do you know anyone in Los Angeles that could assist me in getting the camera colors, menus dialed in prior to the shoot. We can’t afford a DIT to have on set every day.
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Contact Professor John Sharaf, august source of all knowledge.
He hangs out here at the Cow…
Good shooting!
Leo
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I agree with Leo about the importance of the set-up. I can tell you that I shoot with the Pro-35 a lot and have never noticed a color shift in skin tones do to the adapter. Also, there is a distinct difference in the “grain” produced by the Pro-35 and camera noise due to low light, DVCPro HD, etc. When you change the speed of the ground glass rotation, you will see the grain change on a monitor. The shallower your DOF the less noticeable the grain. Dial it in to your liking.
Best of luck.
Rick Amundson
Producer/Director/DP
Screenscape Studios
Bravo Romeo Entertainment
http://www.screenscapestudios.com
http://www.bravoromeo.com
http://www.indeliblemovie.com -
Michael,
From my limited experience with the Pro35 and the Varicam, I’d highly recommend that you do not use it for the project you describe! If you’re so hellbent on using hard lenses, the Zeiss Digi’s either prime or zoom are a much more practical choice. The main reason of course is the exposure factor of the Pro35. In addition, the addition of the grain is, in my oppinion, an unnecessary degredation of the image, and furthermore I’ve had compression artifacts in the past where the DVCPRO100 codec could not keep up with all the grainy noise and blocks up.
I find that the most common rationale for using the Pro35 is that someone in authority owns movie lenses that they want to rent. Perhaps this is cynical on my part, but as regards DOF, there are many creative ways to deal with this issue that can be successfull, especially with night shots where you’re already working wide open and can selectively light focus zones.
I don’t mean to start a firestorm with others who may have successfully used this device, but it does seem counterintuitive to the use you describe.
As regards the color of the camera, this is a matter of proper setup, namely matrix, which is not built in to the bland factory set. With the Varicam, there is also the matter of the Dynamic Range setting in Film Rec, where the extreme 500% may not be the ideal setting, especially again for the night scenes you describe. Without a VC or DIT you can only approximate a setting, as night scenes vary quite a bit based on the lighting (or non-lighting) style at play. User beware! At the least you should understand that changing the Dyn Rng setting also changes the color saturation and master gamma.
JS
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John,
I agree that the Pro35 is not right for all situations and maybe night exteriors in particular, but the question was how to use it effectively, not whether or not to use it.
And please be careful. While I use several different lenses with the Varicam including Zeiss Digi’s, I’ve used the Pro35 for the last 4 years for a variety of reasons but I don’t believe it has ever been just to rent lenses.
Rick Amundson
Producer/Director/DP
Screenscape Studios
Bravo Romeo Entertainment
http://www.screenscapestudios.com
http://www.bravoromeo.com
http://www.indeliblemovie.com -
Yeah I’m concerned with the low light situation and the pro-35mm adapter, but I really want a shallow DOF. If our location was a little bigger then I’d go for a set of digi-primes and utilize space/light to acheive DOF.
I really really don’t want this to look like a low budget video production (even though that’s exactly what it is). We already have other things working against us… for instance.
One of the rooms we’re shooting in is ENTIRELY WHITE! And further more there isn’t really an “art dept” to assist in helping with set dressing to lessen the ugliness.
So my tactic is to utilize shallow DOF to ‘hide’ the ugly. I’ll also try and get out of the wide shots and into the tighter ones as quickly as possible.
Basically I feel the Pro-35mm is going to help me more than it hurts me. I can overlight a bit and then use ND to bring it back down.
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