[Bob Cole]

Thanks Dennis. That clarifies it. I hadn’t thought of using several little sources, but I can see how that would look better than a single unmotivated blast. The engineers in charge of the project may not permit this, but I’ll try.

Bob C

[Bob Cole]

[Dennis Size] “Use 2 or 3 mini kino-flo’s (9″ or 12″) mounted on the dashboard.”

Do you simply gaffer tape these onto the top of the dashboard?

[Bob Cole]

[Todd Terry] “In the past I’ve used tint material you can buy at the auto parts store..”

Just went to the store – they have 5%, 20%, 35% transmission – do you recall the most useful range, assuming no interior lighting?

[Bob Cole]

Thanks David, but I’m agreeing with you. That under-camera light from classic Hollywood films is a fill, not a key. Maybe I was wrong to compare it to the Couric floorlight, which does seem stronger. As I said, it’s an effect that seems to work best with faces with great structure.

My goal is to keep the eyelight from overwhelming the three-dimensional effect of the properly-placed key. Dim it too much, and it stops putting that “twinkle” in the eye.

[Bob Cole]

[Mark Suszko] “And in the Clinton’s case”

So you’ve heard that story too? I thought I saw a clip, but I have not been able to find it again.

[Bob Cole]

[Mark Suszko] “Anyhow, auto-poles are super useful as portable light bars”

Just noticed this old thread, looking for posts about car interior lighting. A cautionary note about auto-poles: wasn’t there some famous incident with a network interview with the Clintons, where the auto-poles fell down and nearly changed recent history?

iow- this may be one area where saving money isn’t such a great idea. I may be totally wrong…. but I’m not trying it.

Bob C

[Bob Cole]

[Chris Blair] “Bottom line…nothing will ever come of this agreement if you sign it and in my experience, you’re making a much bigger deal about it than it deserves.”

I agree with Chris. This contract is not really about you and your video activity. The company is rightly concerned that employees with knowledge and expertise related to the core business of the company will take that information somewhere else.

[Bob Cole]

[Rich Rubasch] “Lots of backups, lots of data floating around….wish I had a shelf full of tape…”

You still can – sort of. LTO-3 is $27 for 400 GB. It does take a long time, but if you can offload files to another computer for the admittedly time-consuming backup to tape, it isn’t so bad. That said, Blu-Ray looks better and better as the capacity increases.

[Bob Cole]

[John Baumchen] “60 minutes just had a segment last night on it.”

Again – there are fair use exemptions. I strongly doubt that 60 Minutes had to pay a dime to show the celebrity photographs, coffee mugs, etc., that were liberally on display throughout the piece. So documentarians, don’t be overly “cowed” by this thread.

Bob C

[Bob Cole]

[Todd Terry] “another layer of black hardware cloth”

By hardware cloth do you mean window screen?

You’ve seen those NFL announcers’ booth shots, where the play-by-play people sit facing the camera, with the football field behind them, usually just for the opening of the show.

The lighting scheme is very low-tech. They keep a roll of black fiberglass porch screening material, rolled up and sitting above the window. They turn on the lights inside the booth, unroll the screen, and get a balance between the daylit field and the booth.