[Richard Swearinger]

I notice in the posted example, and some shots by other master cinematographers that they usually include a smallish light source—usually tungsten or a campfire.

Is it safe to assume they’re doing it for simultaneous contrast: the warm tungsten light makes the blueish moonlight look more blue and the lighted window makes the dark areas look darker?

[Richard Swearinger]

I believe that the only way to really do it manually is to spend a few years working with really old guys who have honed their skills over 40 or 50 years and learn their secrets so that you too can look at any scene and know exactly when to change your iris and by how much.

[Richard Swearinger]

I have that same camera and when I’m in constantly changing light situations, I take it off manual and use Canon’s automatic iris. It definitely does a better job than I could especially when panning across a big scene. You will have to pan a little more slowly than usual to allow the camera time to adjust the exposure, but it works. You can also keep pushing the “auto iris” button on the side of the camera as you notice the waveform getting too hot or too dark.

[Richard Swearinger]

I completely understand your preference for being able to use the lenses you think best fit the project. But in the hands of a smart cinematographer, does sensor size really matter any more?
I’ve only shot with DSLRs and C100s so what comes out of a real video camera is a mystery to me. Lens aside, are camcorders noticeably inferior?

What difficulties would you foresee with 1″ cameras like the XF705 and its brethren? They seem to have excellent codecs plus 10-bit color and nice bit rates.
And we have better grading software and know a lot more about how to use cameras than we did in the days of the Panasonic DVX100 and the chainsaw Canons.
A 1″ inch sensor is about the same size as Super-16mm film and Darren Aranofsky and Wes Anderson seem to have made that work.
Or are you saying that 1″ camcorders restrict you to a certain indie film look?

[Richard Swearinger]

So it other words it is not like editing in LAB where adjusting the L value doesn’t affect the other two channels. (What I’m learning is that Photoshop techniques just doesn’t seem to apply very often to Resolve.)