[John Sharaf]

Bill,

The one thing I didn’t mention is a technique I often defer to; finding a setting where I can tie a 12×12 silk (usually a 1/4 silk) to a building and then some trees or other sturdy tie down. I’ve done this in windy situations where I would otherwise have needed four corner stands but they would have been in the shot.

Obviously this can not always be anticipated or planned for, but sometimes the karma is just right and it works. That’s why it is good to carry a sack with 12×12 rags even if you don’t have the rest of the gack to complete a conventional overhead set.

The 1/4 silk manages to just take the “curse” off the direct sun without darkening the set too much that you have to light it up again with HMI’s or reflectors.

Just another trick up you sleeve.

JS

[John Sharaf]

Mark,

The ribs will definitely make shadows, just think about how close they are to the subject and how far the light source is away. The seams in a large silk make shadows so care must be taken to avoid placement directly over the subject and sometimes as the sun moves you get a shadow in the middle of the take (especially a long interview)

JS

[John Sharaf]

Bill,

Because as you say, you’re a “one man band” you are severely limited in the application of overheads to control the sun. This is a because as you well know, there are gigantic issues of safety and liability involved in using this type of equipment, not to mention that it takes at least two people to erect and a large truck to transport.

The same issues of course exists with the use of the silk flags that you mention; they are prone to falling and flying away, even with heavy sandbags. Large silks (like 12×12) are always secured by ropes to trees, poles, buildings, vehicles or bull pricks hammered into the ground, and it is a given that as soon as you erect an overhead set the wind always starts to pick up.

What then is a one-man-band to do? I’m hard pressed to advise you! I suppose the first thing is to use the gamma controls in your camera to invoke the most aggressive highlight control. In the Sony’s that’s HG2 and 4. In standard gamma knee and slope adjustment, but be careful not to add color to the highlights or change the skin tone.

In addition (and I’m probably not telling you anything you don’t know and already do), but if you can find some shade with shaded or broken light in the background, this is good! I know that it cannot always be done. Setting the subject in backlight (without the sun coming over their head and onto their noses) is another cheat; watch out for bald or blond subjects though. In this case a reflector, white card, grifflin or “microwave” can clean up the dark side without having to rig an overhead. Often the same 4×4 or 6×6 frames that you’d use for an overhead can be skinned with a reflector instead and because they are on the ground instead of overhead are inherently safer (although they still can fly!).

I think the best thing you could do when you know in advance that you’ll be shooting formal interviews outside is to bring an extra guy! Often the reason of “safety” is enough to convince the client that the extra expense is justified.

Good luck and be safe!

JS

[John Sharaf]

Bob,

If “most of our output is for the web” then you should be shooting at 29.97fps. This preserves the progressive look and motion and is most friendly for compression algorithms that are in play for webcasting.

This is crucial information, and is one of the first things I discuss with my new clients when we start a project: what is the nature of the exhibition? The answer will determine our frame rate and gamma settings.

The difficulty in most cases is that they want theatrical, tv and internet. The fact is that very few (if any) are ever filmed out and exhibited on a large screen in the cinema, and that is one of the only cases where 24p is really appropriate. Another case would be to “mimic” what a film would look like (perhaps a satire) or to intercut with other 24fps material (like WW2 newsreels).

I’m afraid that you (and many others) are using 24p for the wrong reason, and principally because it is an available choice. Just like lens selection, what you focus on, iris setting, shutter speed and the like, these choices are best used when invoked for specific reasons.

I hate to be dogmatic, but I would generally propose that 24p be used only when you really wanted to shoot on film (and can’t), or there’s a strong possibility of filming-out to film for projection (or alternately as a source for digital projection) in a cinema setting.

If TV and the Web are your main outlets, the best choice is 30p (with 1/60th shutter) and finally if you want a “live” look like news or sports then 60p or 60i (shutter off).

Now the whole subject of cine gammas is another topic, and I had intended to continue on in this vein in my original reply but was distracted.

Making the video picture more “filmic” can also be accomplished by painting the picture. On some cameras this is done in a Picture Profile, in others by a combination of paint settings stored as a Scene File and is independent of your choice of frame rate. Color Correction in post can also be effective.

Again, it’s important to know what your exhibition will be, as the gammas and color space for film-out, broadcast and the web are all different. If two outlets are expected, two versions with filmout gamma and broadcast gamma are usually created in the on-line finish.

The main distinction between video and film is films ability to reproduce a longer tonal range, usually referred to as Dynamic Range.
Whereas the latest video cameras have a latitude of as much as 8 stops, principally because of the use of aggressive knee and slope settings to control the highlights and extended S shaped gamma curves (often referred to as Cine gammas and/or HyperGammas); film and the latest Digital Cinema cameras can record in Log Curve Gammas that have as much as 14 stops of Dynamic Range.

These Log curves, S-Log for Sony and C-Log for Arri Alexa, require recording on 10-bit formats to survive the requisite post color correction without falling apart.

In addition these same cameras have internal Look Up Table generators (LUT) that can take the 14 stops and convert it to the HD Broadcast video standard (aka Rec 709) and retain the entire range and restore the color saturation that is removed by the Log curve. In this case what you have is a WYSIWYG picture that does not require color correction (but could be used if desired). This is the Holy Grail and eventually this capability will migrate to additional cameras in the Broadcast and Professional range (as it has already done in the Sony F3 with RGB444 upgrade).

In more typical cameras in the Sony and Panasonic lines there are Cine Gamma choices that (again like frame rate) mimic the tonality of some film stocks, which it is generally agreed (and for good reason) look better than the traditional linear gamma of video.

You’ll notice that there are often choices of several or more of these Cine Gammas; some are designed for broadcast and limit the clip to 100%, others extend the highlights to 109% and generally the other choices are for scenes that are bright and scenes that are dark. It will be fairly obvious which is which by rolling through the settings when looking at these different scenes. Once you become familiar with the capabilities of each you can pick the most appropriate for use.

One caution is that if you are changing gammas, remember to reset it to normal or at least check it every time you start a new scene to make sure you’re not shooting yourself in the foot with the wrong (inappropriate) setting.

Hope this helps!

JS

[John Sharaf]

Bob,

I believe when you refer to ND1 setting it is actually ND.9 or three stops of density. If this is too much light attenuation then the best solution is to use a .3 (one stop) or .6 (two stop) ND filter (usually mounted in a matte box). If you’re using a modern camera like the EX1/3 (I think that’s what you have) you could alternately use +6Db gain to “open up” a stop’s worth of light.

Yes, the “filmlook” is a combination of motion similarities to an actual film camera accomplished by the 24fps (or 25fps in Europe) and a 180 degree shutter (1/48th @ 24, 1/50th @ 25). Of course in the real world of film the shutter is often adjusted from 172.5 (or even 144 for TV screens and computers) to 210 degrees (for a little extra exposure when necessary). Much more in either direction becomes an “effect” (a la the “skinny shutter” sometimes referred to now as the “Private Ryan” effect.

The advantage you have with the video camera is the “gain” control which effectively changes the ISO/ASA of the film by the flick of a switch, where as with film the same effect requires “pushing” or “pulling” the speed in processing. In both mediums however there are consequences in going to far in either direction. In film noise in push and contrast in pull. In video, noise in plus gain and highlight control in minus gain.

JS

[John Sharaf]

Here’s link:

https://www.markertek.com/Connectors-Adapters/Video-Adapters/BNC-to-RCA-Adapters.xhtml

JS

[John Sharaf]

Todd,

Unfortunately this is true. With oversized sensors like Epic 5K, and highly packed sensors like the F65 (which records the dense pack as 8K 16bit Raw) and even the 3.5K Alexa in Raw mode many legacy lenses have too small an image circle to be sharp to the edges when “projected” onto the sensor.

Right now the only really safe lenses to buy are the new Leica Summicrons and Fujinon Premier zooms. Even the highly desired 12X Optimo will be an issue on the wide end.

As long as you are recording a de-bayered 1920×1080 or 2K format you’ll be fine but if you’re going Raw for the additional resolution, you’re going to have problems, and this is the direction it’s all going.

JS

[John Sharaf]

There’s no doubt that the Arri Alexa is the best for what you describe, but the investment for a full kit is in the $150K territory. Next best is F3, but it takes the same lens kit and lots of add-on gack to be completely useful at about a little more than half that amount for all the bells and whistles (meaning a short lightweight zoom or two and/or set of PL mount primes).

Investing in PL lenses is a good idea, although the new larger and/or more densely packed sensors will soon obsolete all but the best and most modern lenses that have been developed for them in mind.

JS

[John Sharaf]

Yes. 24p was primarily designed to both make video camera motion the same as film camera motion (of course a 180 degree shutter must be invoked as well). In addition it facilitates film out as a frame for frame process.

JS

[John Sharaf]

Controls video out spigot which you could use for monitoring and/or recording on connected device, essentially recording 24p internally and applying the 3:2 telecine pull down on the output. One use would be to feed an uplink with a film look, another to provide a smoother ( flicker free) picture to a CRT monitor, etc.

JS