Shooting Digital Still Cam Readout as Clapper augment

[Alain Lumina]

HI,

 

I'm planning on using a digital still cam as a light meter for my CP-16r, shooting self-financed experimental.

 

The canon A590 is has a good display with zebras, F-stop, shutter speed, date/time

and a intensity graph

 

(see screenshot here:

http://www.magicalrealismfilms.com/cam-meter.jpg

)

 

Do you think the display will be bright enough to be shot by most films? the worst situation

will be daylight with say 50d film.

 

I could copy the info onto a clapper board with color bars, but this would stlll be a good reference in addition.

 

Don't know if anyone has tried this.

 

I'm very disorganized and, of course, I should have someone writing all this down right? That would be fine if I had the money!

 

Thanks

 

Lumina

[Chris Keth]

I think it would be a waste of film.

 

If you want notes, I would just keep a notebook and make scrawls. I do it when I shoot and it doesn't take me away from anything or slow me down. I just do little one liners like, "42A 35mm T2" (scene 42 apple, 35mm lens shot at T2) or "35C 18mm T2.8-1/3, backlight 3-12 over" (scene 35 charlie, 18mm lens, stop 1/3 closed from T2.8, backlight was 3-1/2 stops over key)

 

You can also have one of your ACs take your notes. We do it all the time.

 

Besides, if you're metering with the camera, how will you meter to expose the LCD properly? Figure that one out.;)

Edited March 28, 2009 by Chris Keth

[Karel Bata]

I use a Weston 5 :D

 

It was good enough for Nestor Almendros!

 

But seriously, taking your own notes at the time is a) a very good way of organizing your thoughts, thus 2) learning from what you're doing, whilst minimizing 3) the risk of later having a mass of data that you don't really understand. When I started out I thought it might be useful to create a chart of light meter readings of various lights at different distances and settings to refer to later. (I was so keen!) Looking at the figures I did learn that the inverse square law does not apply to fresnels (actually it does, but that's something else) but I've never referred to that data since. Fun at the time though, in a geeky sort of way... :D

 

Oh, and 4) maybe avoiding mistakes! ;)

[K Borowski]

Yeah, a digital camera is overkill for this sort of thing, kind of akin to shooting the 10-o'clock news with an IMAX camera. . .