keeping exposure in wide shots

[Olivier Egli]

hi everyone

it's me again with my mountains shots as stated in another thread.

I am shooting this music video in the Swiss alps and so far I could cover the question about the film stock, color temp and filters.

Another thing is exposure control

I know I am going to have to NDs the hell out of the light since I have snow and probably overcast weather.

I thought of keeping the face of my actor 1 stop under key (normal rated 7274) so the camera is at F5.6 and the face at F4. his orange blouse might be 1-2 stops hotter than the camera's setting and the highlight (snow) I will determine with my spotmeter with the highlight setting.

that's okay so far, the tricky thing are the extreme wide shots.

shot with zeiss superspeed 9.5mm I will have superwide shots for far above of my actor walking in the snow.

How do I determine the exposure/ the NDs as I want to shoot the close ups at F5.6 and the wide shots at F4? Can I only rely on my spotmeter reading the highlights in the wide shots?

Should I just measure the contrast between the snow and blouse and decide that the snow is at lets say 3 stops over key? So in that case if my reading of the snow is F11 I would be fine with an iris setting of F4?

help! how can I determine the right exposure for the wide shots???

Mr. Mullen? Anyone??

[Mitch Gross]

You should be shooting all your shots at pretty much the same exposure. This will aid in the cutting between the shots. So keep the exposure the same as your closeups. If you fear that this will give you overexposed wide shots then stop down about 1/2 a stop for the wide shots. The footage will still cut together directly but will give you a little extra headroom if you need to take it down in transfer.

 

It's great that you're preparing yourself well and asking a lot of smart questions. Just don't worry yourself to death here. Shooting at an extreme location adds a few variables, but it's mostly still like shooting anywhere else. You want to maintain a consistency in your material and try to capture the image the way you wish to see it.

[Olivier Egli]

thanks Mitch!

 

I know, I have to stop worrying all the time.

[David Mullen ASC]

Since color negative has so much latitude, I'm not a person that uses a spot meter much -- I find it gets too confusing because I have too much information to process. So in a snow situation, I'd take an incident reading and simply decide if some over or underexposure is needed to hold detail. For example, if there was only snow in the shot, I might underexpose the incident reading slightly to hold more highlight information. I might also use ND grad filters if convenient to bring down some of the hotter areas in the frame.

 

Generally if people are in the shot, your main exposure decision is based on the skintones and you let the landscape naturally be whatever it really is (other than perhaps darkening an area with an ND grad.) If the people are really tiny in the frame or there are no people, then you judge whether the non-human subject is neutral-toned, "hot", or "dark," and under or overexpose to hold more detail. So an insert of icy snow, if I wanted to hold more detail, may be underexposed one stop from the incident reading to hold more white details. For a dark rock, the opposite. It's just an overall adjustment to weight more information in one direction for further color-correction later.

 

The only really tricky thing is when you have glare off of snow or water and then have to decide how to expose it (assuming a pola doesn't help) -- let things be silhouette off of the glare and hold more detail in the bright areas, or let the glare flare-out.

[Fredrik Backar FSF]

Hi scubba. Fred here too.

Like David said; don´t get too worried about spotreadings... The only thing I spot read was a mountain range very far away that we shot. The reminder of surroundings usually fall naturally into place.

 

I´d stay normal on the faces If I were u. But for an effect though it could be good if u want to.

 

Good luck!!!!

[Olivier Egli]

great! thanks! I finally got some viable information about the problems that were causing me bad sleep.. It is interesting tough to hear that reflective readings are not as widely used as I thought. I admit, they tend to get confusing at times. i will carry mine with me to check for highlights and the allover contrast of the scene. (Maybe I should get a sensitometric curve of my stock? but that's probably far too exagerated).

 

In general the actor is gonna be very small in the frame in the wide shots so that I worry more about the snow, but I still want the orange to be on the rather glowy bright side.

so in a incident reading I could let him be a bit over key, right?

 

incident reading of the snow means holding the meter towards the snow (which would be reflective) of actually measuring the light falling on the snow?

[Jarin Blaschke]

If you have an extreme range of contrast, also be sure to control your fill light well. You might even consider pulling the film a stop or so to give the neg a wider range of information - pulling will also bring down the highlights (blinding snow) more than the shadows. You can always add punch later.

[David Mullen ASC]

It sounds like he wants more contrast anyway. But it all depends on if the weather is sunny or not.

 

You point an incident meter towards the light falling on a subject, in this case, the sun or sky.

 

I don't know if overexposing a wide shot will make an orange shirt pop out more because you're just overexposing everything equally. A mirror or hard reflector bouncing the sun into the orange shirt would be more effective.

[Olivier Egli]

yes, that's fine with me.

I will follow the adivse of the incidental reading. It will probably be overcast on that particualr day, as most of the time in may in this region. people up there told me that, so I will rather have too little than too much contrast.

some cameraman here recommended the low contrast 3 but I dont want that, this will make me lose definition in the snow. although it probably nicely desaturates the colors. but this the post will do.

 

do I still need the haze or skylight with the 85 or 81EF on?

 

also will the 812 (instead of the rather objectionable enahncer, thanks Mr Mullen) warm up the whole picture (destroying the effect I am going for) or is it only for skintones and orange? In that case, should I only use it in close ups where you see the skin or also in wideshots where you see the orange blouse?