Tom Nelson
Forum Replies Created
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I’m usually running on a DSR-390.
-Tom
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We’ve had good luck doing weeks-long timelapse with Canon SLR camera systems mounted on solid brackets away from harm – they could have been left there for years. My suggestion would be to invest in one of the cheaper Canon digital SLRS, a programmable shutter control, a plug-in AC adapter, and a bunch of 4 GB CF cards. Do the math to see how long a card will take to fill up, and just have a contact at the site change the cards out when they need to be changed. You need to figure out how often to take a picture, where to put the camera, and whether or not you want to get ahold of the used cards at certain times, dump and QC the pics, and re-use the cards. To me, this is the least-expensive and most controllable solution.
Tom Nelson
Videographer/Editor
Essex Television Group -
If the job is for the school, invoice it for what you’re worth and have the school cut you a check – then donate the time to the school by putting the check back in their name. So, if you work on your own system for 100 bucks an hour, you can bill 10 hours on it, and write off a grand on your taxes. Sure, it’s not like you’re actually making a thousand dollars, but it’s better than that 25. And you’ve got the check to submit for taxes at the end of the year.
If it’s an hour of footage of the guy’s 5-year-old prancing around in a tutu, then too bad. Unless the kid is his son. Then, take the job and the 25 bucks, and post it on YouTube so we can all see it.
Tom Nelson
Videographer/Editor
Essex Television Group -
Most lighting on these types of shots isn’t done correctly. When I see these types of “anonymous” shots come up on my screen at home, I mess with the contrast and brightness on my TV to check to see if it was done correctly (yes, I’m a big dork). Often times, simply modifying the picture on your set reveals the person’s face. The bottom line is that it’s tough, nearly impossible, to do it in the field with just lighting. In post, you can tweak the contrast and black levels to be sure that the person’s face is entirely in the dark.
Tom Nelson
Videographer/Editor
Essex Television Group -
Hi, Tim. Welcome to the forums! I’ll mention that this lighting forum isn’t as popular as some of the others – although your post may sit for a while in here, it will eventually get some feedback.
The kit you’ve spec’d looks interesting – I’ll just give some input as to the pros and cons the kit has – it’ll still be up to you whether you still want to buy it after all.
Nice – they run cool, don’t use a lot of juice.
Good and bad – they’re very soft lights, which is graet if you want a soft light, and not so great if you want more control over your beam.
Good and bad – they’re balanced to daylight. Good if you’re shooting somewhere with ambient 5600k light, like around a window. The big drawback to this is that you will have a tougher time adding lights to your kit when you want to add them later – and you will want to add more later.
If I had $600 to spend on my first kit, I’d be on Ebay. Lots of lights were made to last forever, so getting a few used off Ebay is a great idea. On top of that, you could probably get stands, gels, soft boxes, etc.
I’d also recommend sifting through the forum a bit and looking for what people are using to light a green screen. Efplighting.com has some good tutorials; you’ll find that you’re going to need more than three lights to get good results.
Good luck – let me know what you end up with. If you end up with the 3-light flouro kit, let me know how it works out for you.
Tom Nelson
Videographer/Editor
Essex Television Group -
I’m assuming you have 2 JTL soft boxes.
I think we need more information on this. It sounds like you have a good idea, but you haven’t developed it all the way yet. I hope the shoot hasn’t happened yet, because it sounds like there needs to be more thought put into it.
Are there specific shots planned out for the shoot? You need to think about those specific shots, and determine shot-for-shot what lights may be needed, if any.
For instance, you could have a moving shot down a road in another car as the subject car passes. The camera, we’ll say it’s in the back of a slow-moving pickup truck (if budget isn’t an issue, it’s on a crane), pans right to left as the car passes by, and is shot in 60 fps so you can slow it down in post. As the car passes, reflections of light shimmer across the shiny paint job. If you’re on a busy city street with many neon signs and the ground is wet from a recent rainfall (or your buddy with a garden hose), how cool would that look? Reflections galore, and someone else is paying the electric bill. Just thinking about that one shot gives me chills.
How about another shot straight up through a sunroof as it opens to show lit buildings reaching towards the sky? Cool, and your lights are already there.
You can pull it off. You just need to put some thought into it.
Tom Nelson
Videographer/Editor
Essex Television Group -
Adam Wilt has an article online that may answer your question:
He talks about Chroma and how it can get a bit funky around the edges. If I were to suggest a test to you, I’d say capture a similar scene with your chroma level turned down in the camera slightly. Capture that footage, and see if your issue is still happening and if it isn’t, see if you can bring your saturation back up in post to properly represent the scene.
This is just an idea. Please anyone, feel free to tell me I’m nuts. I get it on a regular basis, anyways.
Tom Nelson
Videographer/Editor
Essex Television Group -
Adam – I’m unable to view your link from where I am, but I’m assuming you’re talking about a silk. It’s available in different stops for various degrees of light transmission. You can make one yourself out of rip-stop grid fabric, the type of fabric usually used on sails. I’m not sure what degree of transmission it has, but I think it’s somewhere around a stop.
Tom Nelson
Videographer/Editor
Essex Television Group -
Yikes! Sounds like a long awards banquet. The way I would do this would depend on the way the meeting is run – if it’s run by some hack with just a DVD player and a remote, the way I would do it would be to create just one track with a chapter marker where each recipient starts. you could put two seconds of black between each one, and the user could pause between each recipient if they needed to. They could skip chapters if they needed to as well. To manage everything I would suggest a series of menus that are ordered alphebetically, with each button jumping to that person’s chapter.
I’d love to have more information about the meeting – are the segments going to be played back-to-back or with pauses between? How long are they?
Tom Nelson
Videographer/Editor
Essex Television Group -
This calls for a layered menu in DVD Studio Pro, not the default overlay menu. You can look for more info on this in the manual, but I can tell you that you build all of the layers in Photoshop for all states of each button. In DVD SP, you define a button area and then tell the program what layers to display for each state. Good luck!
Tom Nelson
Videographer/Editor
Essex Television Group