Rick Wise
1
COW Coin
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If your camera allows you to increase the shutter speed, shoot some tests of people or things in motion. You will see that with a higher shutter speed each frame will be crisper. That does not mean the action will look “better”. Sometimes we need blur for the illusion of continuous motion.
You can achieve a similar effect by reducing the shutter angle on cameras that allow you to do that.
Rick Wise
director of photography
San Francisco Bay Area
part-time instructor lighting/camera
Academy of Art University/Film and Video (grad school)
https://www.RickWiseDP.com -
Of the three, the Panasonic is the newest and the cheapest. All are “poor” in low light. Given all your other requirements about sound and sticks, I think I’d go with this one.
Audio input is only a mini-jack, not XLR, which is unfortunate but not a killer. You will be hard pressed to get “good” audio with no external devices. A small shotgun, even the Rode Videomic, will work OK for voices provided you are within three to four feet of the speaker and there is not too much ambient sound. If you anticipate a lot of talking heads I would invest in some form of radio mic, or at the very least a lav connected by hardwire to your camera.
A good tripod will chew up much of your remaining budget.
I presume you are shooting with available light. Maybe add a small, light onboard LED for an eye light? If you do that, you’ll need a way to mount both the shotgun and the LED on the camera.
Rick Wise
director of photography
San Francisco Bay Area
part-time instructor lighting/camera
Academy of Art University/Film and Video (grad school)
https://www.RickWiseDP.com -
Fantastic! Thank you so much!
Rick
Rick Wise
director of photography
San Francisco Bay Area
part-time instructor lighting/camera
Academy of Art University/Film and Video (grad school)
https://www.RickWiseDP.com -
The bigger the better. On a 5×7 you will find yourself going off the edges all too soon.
Much depends on the size of the room. As a rule of thumb, it’s usually best to get the subject substantially away from the backdrop so that you can soften it by relatively wide-open exposure. And for that you need a wide (and tall) backdrop. If the room is only 10′ wide, I’d still go for something bigger than that so you can drape it to taste.
Rick Wise
director of photography
San Francisco Bay Area
part-time instructor lighting/camera
Academy of Art University/Film and Video (grad school)
https://www.RickWiseDP.com -
Bouncing lights off the ceiling works ONLY to ambient fill. Overheads almost always make a lousy key except for special circumstances. In this case, to make the classroom look pleasant with good light on the participants’ faces, you will do much better if you can direct lights through windows. Use the overhead bounce only as fill.
Remember how light falls off rapidly as the distance increases.
Rick Wise
director of photography
San Francisco Bay Area
part-time instructor lighting/camera
Academy of Art University/Film and Video (grad school)
https://www.RickWiseDP.com -
Shooting care interiors with available light is always a challenge. You accurately describe the two extremes. Some ways to help:
–have the car drive where there are darker backgrounds in the noon sun — forests, city streets with dark buildings, etc.
–compromise the exposure: letting the outside be overexposed by 2 stops and the driver be underexposed by a stop or even two often works well. Pulling this off depends a bit on the quality of your camera.
–Todd’s window-darkening idea or RoscoScrim.
–Test many times until it works, taking careful notes as you go.
Rick Wise
director of photography
San Francisco Bay Area
part-time instructor lighting/camera
Academy of Art University/Film and Video (grad school)
https://www.RickWiseDP.com -
You are using a hard side light, which will cast hard shadows. Try diffusing the key from image right. That will soften the shadows.
There is a bright area screen right of your subjects, as if they are out of their “spotlight.”
Note that a hard shadow is not necessarily a bad thing.
Rick Wise
director of photography
San Francisco Bay Area
part-time instructor lighting/camera
Academy of Art University/Film and Video (grad school)
https://www.RickWiseDP.com -
That Arri kit is certainly one way to start learning about lighting. And it will last a long, long time. The 650 kit you almost bought might be a more useful purchase as you can plug three 650s into a single 20-amp circuit or two into a 15-am circuit. But the 1ks in the kit you are considering will require two 20-amp circuits or 3 15-amp circuits — in all cases, make sure there is nothing else plugged into the same circuit or you will trip the breaker/blow the fuse.
The 1Ks have the advantage that you can light a larger area. They are not, however, “big” lights. And all of these are balanced to tungsten and require adding at least 1/2 CTB gels to make them work in most daylight situations.
These are all “hard” lights, creating hard shadows. If you can add a chimera for one of the lights you will find that item useful as it gives you a quick method to create soft light. A soft key often works well as a key on subjects.
Others will have other ideas well worth considering.
Rick Wise
director of photography
San Francisco Bay Area
part-time instructor lighting/camera
Academy of Art University/Film and Video (grad school)
https://www.RickWiseDP.com -
Todd,
Fantastic information. However, I notice on the web site for the “ND” stuff some serious Don’t Use instructions. Looks like if one flies it out in front of the window, no problem. But for some reason rolling it directly on to the window can cause significant problems.
Rick
Rick Wise
director of photography
San Francisco Bay Area
part-time instructor lighting/camera
Academy of Art University/Film and Video (grad school)
https://www.RickWiseDP.com -
https://www.adorama.com/AG1065BDHH.html?utm_source=gbase&utm_medium=Shopping%20Site&utm_campaign=Other&utm_term=Other — $30. Elsewhere $150.
Rick Wise
director of photography
San Francisco Bay Area
part-time instructor lighting/camera
Academy of Art University/Film and Video (grad school)
https://www.RickWiseDP.com