[John Sharaf]

Greg,

These days, the “hot” battery light for the purpose you describe is the LitePanel LCD. It’s available in native daylight color temperature as well. You should consider the 1×1′ unit in addition to the smaller on-camera version depending on the scale of your buggy subjects.

JS

[John Sharaf]

Scott,

That’s a very small space! I hope your subject is table top or miniatures. It sounds like you are aware of the inherent problem of keeping the shadows of the foreground off the set walls. Obviously getting the lights high and driving the shadows down towards the floor would be a solution, but this is never the best place for portraiture lighting. Using soft light sources at least creates shadows with soft edges, so fluorescents like Kino Flo would be a good starting point. Dennis asks appropriately what is your budget, but to me I need to know what is your subject? What do you intend to stage in this tiny three wall world?

JS

[John Sharaf]

Bob,

What you’re trying to do is actually quite complicated, because to do it successfully requires a truckload of grip equipment. First off the net, which I’d recommend to be a single black net, must be tightly stretched on a proper frame fare enough back from the subject so it’ll be out of focus. You’re absolutely correct to observe that moire can be an issue and this is precisely why a double net will not work. In addition considerable care must be taken to keep the net in the dark, both from whatever lighting you’re aiming at the foreground subject and from whatever ambiance naturally falls on the net itself. Finally of course safety is an issue, so securely sandbag and or rope the frame so it doesn’t fall on the subject when the wind comes up.

Really your best bet here is to force the iris as open as possible with shutter or nd filters, tighten up the lens to as much telephoto as you can stand and choose a background that is in the range of exposure.

JS

[John Sharaf]

Emiliano,

While it might be possible to import from the Varicam’s HD-SDI outputs into the Blackmagic card, it is highly ill advised. This is because the additional wear anbd tear on the camera of rewinding and playing tapes is not kind to the camera. It was not intended for this purpose.

What you want to do is rent a 1200A or 1400 Panasonic VTR for this purpose. The cheapest method would be to do so over a weekend when you could presumably rent it for one day and get three nights and two day’s use for the price of one day. In addition, you will have deck control from your FCP.

Also, you’ll need to rent the deck again for output onto tape, as the Varicam does not have any means of inputing HD-SDI, only the camera can source the internal VTR.

JS

[John Sharaf]

The advantages of using professional fluorescent lighting instruments and globes (like those made by Kino Flo) are many.

First off, regarding the globes. They are designed to be of photographic quality, meaning that they burn at predicable color temperature; either 2900K, 3200K or 6000K. This allows you to choose the appropriate tubes for the particular scene. In addition these tubes are rugidized and constructed with plastic overcoat so that in the event that they do break from transport or rough handling (which is inevitable, the broken pieces are contained within.

As far as the fixtures themselves, the lamp head is designed, engineered and manufactured to maximize the effect of the tubes with properly designed reflectors and grids to direct the light without spilling in every direction. The harness and cables are built with usability and safety in mind to protect the operator and the subjects who will appear in the focus of the lights and finally the ballasted are specially designed top operate at higher frequency that normal fluorescents so that the output is maximized and they do not flicker at normal framerate and shutter combinations.

Kino Flo in particular has been at this for a long time and they come with a lot of experience in the motion picture and tv lighting business. Their catalog has continually increased as new lighting objectives come into play and each new product builds on those before. All this puts them at a tremendous advantage over someone who wants to save a few dollars by building their own lights, and their prices are quite reasonable to boot, especailly when you consider how long their units last and their resale value if and when you ever choose to part with them.

Your best bet would be to watch eBay patiently and purchase some used Kinos when you can there.

JS

[John Sharaf]

Ben,

You are correct in your observation that some silks still allow a specular source resulting in harder shadows than others. This is definitely observable if you position yourself down light from the silk and look back into the light source; you can actually see it. Now if you use a heavier diffusion like a muslin you won’t see the light source anymore and you’ll have much less shadowing on your subject. In between are frames made of various degrees of white diffusion like Lee filter 250, 216, etc. On these diffusions you’ll notice when you look into the light source that the whole frame of diffusion is evenly lit and there will be no specular. Of course the heavier the diffusion, the less transmission and you’ll require a large lighting instrument to maintain the same amount of illumination.

JS

[John Sharaf]

David,

You would be making a big mistake to invest in anything other than an HD lens for an HD camera (like the Varicam). Because of the number of pixels jammed into the small imager of HD cameras, the circle of confusion which determines what is in focus is smaller than an SD camera and therefore requires a “better” lens. Believe me you are severely emasculating your Varicam to mount an SD lens on it. Contrast, chromatic abberation and sharpness will all suffer. The money you spend on an obscelete SD lens is wasted, the money you spend on an HD lens is better investment that the camera itself (as it will fit onlto your next 2/3″ camera too).

Both Canon and Fujinon make 16x or 17x HD lenses that are priced about $14K net. This is what you should be considering.

JS

[John Sharaf]

Varicam is not particularly stop frame friendly, although it can be programmed as an intervalonmeter but shooting 10 frame bursts from which the single or double frame must be edited into the stop motion sequence in post.

Cameras with cache or that write to solid state media (like P2) are much better suited to this purpose. I’d recommend you look into a Panny 2000 or 3000 for this assignment.

JS

[John Sharaf]

Robin,

You haven’t missed anything!

The PDW700 is still vapor-ware. Sony certainly will be showing it at NAB in a few months but firm delivery date is still unknown. I believe the best Sony will say is “after NAB”, but with all new camera introductions, it always seems to take longer than e4xpected, with bugs revealed in early delivery and months before the backorders are fulfilled.

My best guess it that onesies will be vailable in the summer or early fall.

JS

[John Sharaf]

Craig,

“Time Of Day” or “Freerun” code is not default drop frame. The only settings that are default are nondrop at 24p, 25p and 50i.

I know this does not explain the problems you’re having with “preset with dropframe” setting so maybe someone who’s more familiar with the particular software involved can further both our understandings.

JS