Construction Lighting Equipment for Night Scenes?

[Jim Feldspar]

The Panasonic HVX 200 is rated at 320 ASA. So for night construction scenes you will have to pump in quite a bit of light. But fortunately for you, i think there will ba alot of places to hide lights in a construction set right? Aslo make sure you dont shoot the camera wide open. f2-f2.8 would be desirable. I have shot wide open on this camera in low light situations, and the blacks come out milky, and grainy. Not the effect i was after in that situation. Another side note, when shooting dark scenes, it's a good idea for you to shoot looking through the eye piece rather than the flip screen. The viewing angle of the flip screen is very narrow, and you will be looking at the image with the wrong exposure if the screen angle is not exact. A way around this is to look through the eye piece.

 

a while ago when i was shooting with this camera, i was shooting the NTSC version (in singapore that shoots PAL). I noticed the kino pulsing. This is easily fixed in camera.

 

Good luck on your shoot, and if you have any problem with the camera, you can contact me on this forum. I have learnt alot on the Panasonic HVX200 and the P2 format mainly through trial and error. Mostly error.

 

Ken Minehan

 

What is the right angle for the flip screen to get the most accurate monitoring? Is it straight

out (which is hard to do most of the time) or flipped up slighty (which seems to look right

to me and also is easier because usually that fits the way that I'm shooting.)

 

Also, you mentioned fixing the Kino pulsing in camera. Would that be a shutter speed

adjustment?

[JD Hartman]

Only the heads were replaced and only film people would recognize a film light. 4-1200w ballasts were placed at the bottom of each light tower wherever it was moved or placed and powered from blimped film generators. When using construction light towers on a film set it is fairly common to bypass the power supply and onboard generator.

 

Best

 

Tim

 

If you are dying to own one or more of these light towers, I'd look into auctions at construction and heavy equipment rental companies. Since the stock genny is loud, you might be able to find a bargain in a unit that has a blown engine or a burned out generator. Use the space formerly occupied by the engine/generator to hide the HMI ballasts and store the cables.

[David Auner aac]

I will be shooting a very low budget horror film that calls for half of the scenes to be shot at night.

 

Ideally I want to use one large light source to back light the locations that I will be filming. Also it would be great to use the same light to shoot through windows at night as the main light source for a room.

 

Hi Jason, since you're shooting horror I'd think that you could incorporate any off-color lighting into the final look. Just in case you can't get rid of the color cast. Use it to your advantage! And for the shot in the room you could gel the window to balance the light.

 

Best regards, Dave