Andy Lehmann

Today I checked the camera with a software waveform monitor. When i shoot a greyscale in cine 2 the picture looks darker and the curve is flatter than with the other two gammas. When I shoot with normal gamma and underexpose by one stop the curve looks quite the same like the shot with cine2 gamma. Only the colors look a bit different. Perhaps the different gamma settings are fake. Tomorrow i can check this hopefully on a real hd monitor and waveform monitor.

Normal tv-gamma in a videocamera is around 55 IRE and not 50 IRE, because it´s a gamma for tv and not theatre. A TV gamma has to been watched in a lit envoirenment, so the midtones must be brighter. The electronically gamma sets up the midtones - neither the black- nor the whitepoint. If you change your gamma in cc or in camera your midtones get brighter or darker. All the film-, cinelike or whatever they call gammas normally have a minus gamma (that means that the gamma value is a minus one): the picture looks darker, the curve gets flatter from black to 18% grey and above 18% it is steeper (hope that this is the right engl. term). If you do this in camera with a fixed gamma curve you are not sure, if they only change the gamma value or other things as well. So, sometimes you can expose your filmgamma the same way you do with your normal gamma, but sometimes you have to underexpose it a bit for best results (e.g. panasonic cinelike gamma)

When i use the normal gamma, 18% grey will be at 53 IRE, when i use CINE 1 it will be at 47 IRE and useing CINE 2 it will be at 40IRE. The lowest zebra setting is at 70 %. This works quite well for the normal gamma. When you use a 70% equivalent zebra for cine2 it must be at 52%. So, if you want to use the 70 %zebra with CINE 2 gamma to set up the "right" exposure for highlights of caucasian faces, it will end up in overexposure. Is this conclusion right or am I mistaken? If this is true and you have to underexpose while useing the cine 2 gamma, how do you control exposure e.g. when shooting for a documentary while not having a monitor and /or a waveformer?

Thanks for the replies. Yes, I thought about chinaballs before, but i´m frightend about the fact that they are difficult to control and produce too much spill. I don´t want to have the image washed out and be flat. Perhaps, I should use Chimera pancakes instead of chinaballs or bounce additional light into silverlame boards to augment the practicals!? The idea with the ND is a nice one-I´ve done this before with lite grid instead of ND. The problem with video is the stand and the things below the lamp (table etc.) will burn out if you put a bulb with a higher wattage in the practical. Okay, you can cover the bottom of the lamp shape with ND, too. But, what you´ve got is a light that is bounced from the ceiling. I´m searching for a way to get a soft light that is a bit more directional. Any ideas?

I´ll do a low-budget feature in spring. The director wants me to work mostly handheld to give the actors a lot of freedom. So, it should be avoid having lighting gear in the set. Every lamp should be rigged above or comes from outside. Most of the locations will be lit with available light (more or less). This is not a big deal, because a lot of the locations are naturally lit by fluroscents from above. The only big problem is an apartment at night. There will be a few practicals like floor lamps, desk lamps etc. and the lighting should look natural. So, I´m looking for a way to augment the praticals that work either for wide shots and closer ones...and for different camera angels (there will be a lot of camera moves that start in one direction as a wide shot and ends in another direction as a close-up). I don´t want the light too flat and toppy. The movie will be shoot with a Panasonic HVX200 in HD. Do you have any suggestions? Thanks Andy Lehmann

I don´t understand this discussion: the words cinematography and photography have their origins in old greek. cine comes from the word kinetics and means movement- graphy stands for writing. photo means light. so, photography means writing with light. cinematography is a made-up word of photography (also a made-up word, but was invented earlier) and kinetics and means something like writing the movement or you better say moving image or writing the moving image. video is latin and means "i see". videography is a made-up word, too and doesn´t make any sense. Probably, it should mean: i write what i see.. but then i see with latin eyes and write in greek ;)

The ASA rating is something between 250-320 ASA (with cinegamma on and in 25p mode).