My first lighting kit is shipping to me… tips?

[Dennis Size]

There are so many great books available ….. Blain Brown’s is also one of my fav’s — despite errors, which makes it even more “fun” 🙂

[Richard Herd]

Don’t forget a light meter!

There’s three things to remember:
— It’s an art
— Contrast Ratio
— Plan to take an hour per setup

An audio guy I work with a lot (James) is now a fine lighting guy, and a lot of our conversations compare the similarities of micing a drum kit to lighting a room.

A light meter is to lighting as an EQ is to audio.

[Richard Herd]

The best money you’ll ever spend: https://www.ascmag.com/

[Dennis Size]

WOW! An hour??? I must be slower than I thought!

DS

[Dennis Size]

I second that p.s. !!

DS

[Bob Cole]

Dennis, I thought you were going to respond about the light meter.

I’ve wanted to ask this for awhile, and this is as good an opportunity as any, because I can ask Richard too:

I haven’t used my old Spectra light meter since film days, except for early on when I set up green screens. (and now, I tend to use zebras in the camera for that too). Dennis, do you eschew (like that?) a light meter because you have a good enough eye and experience not to need it? Would you recommend a light meter for someone with less skill/experience? Richard, in what circumstances do you find a light meter helpful, and why?

[Richard Herd]

🙂

[Richard Herd]

That’s a hard question to answer, in sum: to capture the image in such a way to manipulate it in post.

It’s somewhat subjective, so I hope this makes sense. Price is definitely a factor. Light meter v. monitor v. zebras–they’re all tools, but regardless there needs to be some way to measure the light. In my opinion, anyone who takes photography seriously will carry a light meter around with them, for a while, because it’ll fit in your pocket, just to see what’s going on. I learned a lot one day walking around Muir Woods, in the dappled light.

Anyway…

I use the Panasonic AG-HVX200, so it’s somewhat limited in its capabilities: 8-bit DVCPROHD. So there’s almost zero margin for error (or rather, there’s a lot of places it can go wrong!). Here’s how I construe it: The manual says the HVX200 needs a minimum lux of 100, which is 10 foot candles (on my Sekonic L-398A) @ 325 ISO — an f-stop at 1.4. I set the aperture at 2.8. (If I have to open up more than that, I boost the gain instead due to the lens causing a fuzziness.)

Unfortunately anything between “no light” and 10 fcs gets gunky. I get the room ambient light to 10 fc = 0 IRE = f/1.4, which to the naked eye is actually kind of bright.

Using Apple Color to manipulate the image, my goal is to get a clean “gradient” from black to the second stop (f/2.0). I use the luminance curve in the first room of Apple Color to achieve this, almost mimicking a log curve.

I also shoot a lot of golf, and I hate it when they wear hats. I meter under my own hat, and set the aperture accordingly. Pretty straight forward there. As the sun moves, I check the meter, now and again.

[Rick Wise]

Richard,

Your post on using a meter with your HVX200 is so thoughtful and clearly comes from lots and lots of experience and thought. As an old film guy (I first started shooting exactly 50 years ago) who became by necessity also adept at video, I find I almost never use a meter for the latter. Here’s why: I cannot find a consistent “ASA” for video. At low light levels, cameras respond with different sensitivity than at high light levels. What I do use extensively, when I don’t have the luxury of a video tech with a fully calibrated monitor, are zebras. When shooting Caucasian faces,I set the zebras to 70, and adjust exposure so that there is just a tiny bit of zebra on the highlights of the face. If the subject has dark skin, I “borrow” a Caucasian to set exposure. If shooting landscapes, I set the zebras to 100 and make sure most of the image does not have any. A lot here depends on the shot: lots of sky with white clouds? Then I’ll adjust the iris so that those clouds will have significant zebras. Just a dark, grungy street? Much harder to evaluate. Best to put a Caucasian face in the shot for a moment, adjust exposure as above, remove the face, and shoot.

I agree that moving around with a meter the way you do is a terrific way to get your mind thinking about exposure. The part I find difficult to impress on my film and video students is to find your base exposure, and then light the rest of the scene to your eye. Trial and error, a long learning process.

Rick Wise
director of photography
and custom lighting design
Oakland, CA
https://www.RickWiseDP.com
https://www.recessionvideo.net
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rwise
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com

[Dennis Size]

Sorry Bob I must have missed your asking for a reply. I’ll try to explain my eschewal; but please don’t be mad that I’m not as detailed as Richard (who impressed the shit out of me with his reply!) I frankly just don’t give light meters any thought.

When I first started in television (which wasn’t as long ago as Rick Wise, so I defer to his experience) I did soap operas. Since I came in out of theatre, I always relied on using my eyes to compose a scene and “paint pictures with light”. I did have a still photography background, so I was aware of the importance of contrast ratios and the need to meter for film. During my transition I lit a soap opera called RYAN’s HOPE — which (if anyone remembers it’s early days) had a very theatrical look. I lit the show with the same “source lit”, yet slightly heightened reality approach I would do for a stage show.
Since I learned early on to work very closely with the video shaders, I always determined my exposure via the highly calibrated monitors they were working from, which I still do to this day. Any show I light, once I determine the f-stop I want to work with, I make sure the video shader has properly set-up the cameras, and then finalize my levels/cues using the shader’s monitor.

As I began to light in other venues, especially sports arenas (doesn’t everyone just hate arena lighting) and chromakey studios, I became aware of the importance of having both a light meter AND a color meter. I also worked with other DP’s and LD’s, and after observing their total reliance on “the meter”, I thought I should buy my own so I would at least LOOK professional (and perhaps not have to guess as much).
Props are everything after all!!
I bought both. To this day I still occasionally pull out my Minolta digital color meter. Unfortunately, my comparable Minolta digital light meter was confiscated by the Secret Service during a security sweep at President Clinton’s first big television special, which I was lighting. It was never returned. Having lost — or had stolen — several analog meters previously, and now losing an expensive digital meter, I vowed never to waste money buying another meter again. (I guess it’s the stubborn Irishman in me!)
The few times over the years (twice ??) that I actually felt I might need a meter, I just included it in the rental package for that project.
Many of the LD’s in my company swear by their meters… and actually make fun of my refusal to use one. I, in turn, make fun of their reliance on such a “crutch”. I’ve found that after all these years of lighting in studios, I know what a 2000w fresnel is going to do from 16 feet ….. or 25 feet. I know exactly what focal length leko I need to get the necessary intensity at 10 feet or 40 feet. A 4kw softlight at full intensity will always provide a relatively predictable intensity level at 10 feet.
Since I do next to nothing without using dimmers I always have a certain amount of latitude in my intensity control. Even then I’ll set my leight levels/cues before even looking on camera…. and I very seldom have to rebalance. My eye — and “the force” — has always properly guided me.
I was recently doing a studio relight in Dubai. While I was hanging all the lights (on an unusally low grid) I felt that there was something wrong with the fixtures (predominently Source 4 zoom elliposidals). They just didn’t “feel” right … and as I was setting dimmer levels that should have been correct, the overall intensity level didn’t look right, nor did the color temperature.
When I set up the chip chart and had the shader balance all the cameras he told me there wasn’t enough level, which “the force” was telling me all along. I was using equipment that I knew, from distances, that I knew, with dimmer levels that always work. What could be wrong?
I told my gaffer to recheck everything in the system — the wattages of the fixtures, the dimmers and their trims, and the power. We discovered that there was a major power problem coming into the dimmer racks. In a 220v system, the dimmers were putting out less than 200v when set at full intensity — which was wreaking havoc with the output of my fixtures. A light meter would have told me my level was too low (which I knew) but if I relied on it totally I would have just set my dimmer levels higher or brought the lights closer — instead of digging deeper to discover a larger, more important, problem.
Sorry…I just realized this reply is turning into a thesis.

signing off — hope this was enlighting

DS

DS