Setting exposure on my S8

[Stephen Lane]

In two weeks I will begin shooting my first short on S8. I am using a Canon 518 w/ a Sekonic L-28c2 light

 

meter. The film stock will be Kodak color negative vision3 200T. My question is: When setting the exposure on

 

the camera do I need to compensate in any way for the f-stop of the lense itself. For instance, if I have a

 

meter reading of 64 foot candles, with ASA 200 film @ 18 fps, do I set my exposure at f3.5? Or do I need to

 

also account for the lense f-stop, which for my camera is, f1.8??

 

I hope I'm asking the question properly/intelligibly.

 

Thanks in advance for any help you guys can offer.

 

Stephen

[Chris Burke]

In two weeks I will begin shooting my first short on S8. I am using a Canon 518 w/ a Sekonic L-28c2 light

 

meter. The film stock will be Kodak color negative vision3 200T. My question is: When setting the exposure on

 

the camera do I need to compensate in any way for the f-stop of the lense itself. For instance, if I have a

 

meter reading of 64 foot candles, with ASA 200 film @ 18 fps, do I set my exposure at f3.5? Or do I need to

 

also account for the lense f-stop, which for my camera is, f1.8??

 

I hope I'm asking the question properly/intelligibly.

 

Thanks in advance for any help you guys can offer.

 

Stephen

 

 

does your camera have manual exposure? There are a few varieties of your model camera, one full auto the other has manual.

[Wooda McNiven]

Just set the camera's aperture to the reading indicated on your light meter.

 

I recently conducted a series of lighting and exposure tests using a Sekonic L-398M, Tri-X, and a Canon 1014XLS. The shots were outdoor at night using various lighting set ups and differing footcandle measurements on a human subject (that needed to be properly exposed).

 

My primary concern was T-Stops. But I found that the best exposure was in fact the one indicated by the Sekonic. This held true up to a 30mm focal length. As I didn't use a focal length longer than 30mm during these tests, I did not find out if a T-Stop adjustment was needed in the 30 to 60mm range.

 

As you are using negative film, which has much more exposure latitude than reversal, you should be just fine setting the camera to the f-stop indicated on your external light meter.

[Patrick Cooper]

Since you're shooting negative film, I would recommend a little bit of overexposure - say about half a stop or two thirds of a stop. One thing that you want to avoid with negative is accidentally underexposing the film - this can lead to an increase in grain, muddy colours and weak blacks. And it's generally understood that some overexposure can reduce visible grain. So with your hand held light meter, it wouldn't be a bad idea to set the asa setting to 160 or 125 instead of 200. And some negative films can handle a one stop overexposure extremely well (don't know if 200T Vision 3 fits the bill) but in that case, setting the asa to 100 would do the trick.

[Stephen Lane]

does your camera have manual exposure? There are a few varieties of your model camera, one full auto the other has manual.

 

 

My camera does have an auto setting, but I can also manualy set the exposure as well.

 

Thanks guys for your responses.

[Rafael Rivera]

Here's a thread I started about a test of exposure and film stocks, including Vision2 200T, using a Beaulieu 4008 ZMII:

 

http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?showtopic=48462

[Stephen Lane]

Here's a thread I started about a test of exposure and film stocks, including Vision2 200T, using a Beaulieu 4008 ZMII:

 

http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?showtopic=48462

 

 

Nice, thanks man.