Gabriel Cortez

It is of very much interest to me, actually! Thank you Mr. Whiteman. What I had in mind when I was talking about "higher contrast ratios" was exactly a sort of "graphic" look, as you well put it. It was a mere observation that movies which take on such a look (the noirs, especially), seem to be using the natural qualities of b/w at their best, so to say. It's a subjective opinion. I feel that with just subtle separation (like between different shades of blue, as you say) there is still the possibility of them getting mushed (through whatever combination of filtering, light (soft light especially :) ) etc effects); hence my opinion in favor of hard light to act also as separation (particularly with grainy stocks, as I said). I mean, separation is of course difference between different tones of gray, but those very tones are affected by light. You can arrive at separation by having different tones of gray in your set decoration in the same light, but when you start shedding different amounts of light over different areas, your tones change too. I guess I'm saying that with hard light and higher contrast ratios you can have maximum separation of tones (duuh), and that is best suited to b/w. This would be a purely aesthetic point of view about b/w in general, but in the end I agree that you have to suit your aesthetics to the "story and genre", as you said. Thank you, again!

This is the follow-up to a thread I started in the "film stock and processing" forum, in which I was inquiring about the means to increasing the apparent sharpnes of the 7222. More contrasty lighting would be one of them, I agree. So ok, knowing that, I'll be lighting to a higher lighting ratio. But would it be mostly soft light or hard light? Which "behaves" or "looks" better in black and white? Everyone is keen of soft lighting nowadays, in color cinematography, and no doubt for a good reason. I've never shot b/w until now, but as everyone here I've seen a lot of b/w movies from the old days and they look gorgeous, lit with hard light (Casablanca, The Third Man and other noirs etc). While I know that there was also a technical hindrance to light them soft in those days (slower stocks), they look great because of that. Now, recent films such as "The man who wasn't there" and "Good night and good luck" do seem to have another feel to them, compared to the old ones, due to the use to a much larger extent of soft light. "The man.." looked quite muddy sometimes, when there wasn't enough separation (the transition from light to shadow was too soft). On the other hand, "The good german" went the "vintage way", so to speak, and it does more "justice" to b/w, don't know if I'm being too clear on this.. Anyway, I know this is a highly subjective opinion, a matter of taste, but surely there must be some guidelines and arguments for using hard or soft light in b/w; I wouldn't know, since I don't have experience with b/w, but I'm guessing that the absence of color should be an important factor to consider when planning the lighting in b/w; i.e. what works with color doesn't work with "not color" :) And then, there's also the grain factor with 7222 at least, which I found to be very annoying as it is amplified in out-of-focus and large continuous midtone surfaces. On the other hand, there are tons of gorgeos photographs making use of the infinite shades of grey, but somehow that seems harder to get in movies. So, what would be your view on the soft vs hard light in b/w ? I'm leaning towards giving more credit to the hard light as more appropriate for b/w in general. Thank you in advance! :)

Alright then, it's all crystal clear. Thank you everyone for taking time to follow this thread and post your answers!

Thank you for helping here, Mr. Kukla and Mr. Mullen. What about shooting at a higher light level (higher f/stop) for as much DOF as possible? Would that make a difference on the apparent overall sharpness of the image, and would it be worth the cost? (higher f/stop - more light - more money :) ). By higher f/stop I mean 4 or 5.6 (it's a studio shoot).

Yes I know that, but I was thinking of the final print, which is silver in b/w and color dye in color film; there's also the "Callier effect" with the b/w, and I'm wondering what other "tricks" are to this.

Thank you very much Jon Kukla, but are you saying that based on personal experience with the 7222? Just want to make sure; I haven't quite understood what are the particularities of the b/w stocks from an exposure/processing point of view, I mean if same general rules apply from color.

:) Mr. Mullen, the basic point of the matter was if whether the darn thing yields some unique light when bounced, a light that couldn't be achieved by bouncing some other unit; but you say "you could do that with a Tweenie or something", so I guess there ain't anything special to "do that" with a kino. I haven't personally worked with kinos until now, so I wouldn't know any tricks there might be to them, that's why I'm asking stupid questions, perhaps. And of course I wouldn't rent a kino just to use it for bouncing! That much I do know. Sorry, it must be my fault that I'm not being too clear in my posts; English is not my native language, so please excuse. Thank you very much for your help, Mr. Mullen. Please address my post in the the film stock and processing forum too, if you will; forgive the insistence.

I meant efficient from a cost point of view; I was wondering if bounced kinos have anything special to them (the quality of the resulting soft light) that cannot be duplicated by using another unit for bounce, and thus would justify renting a kino just for that. I didn't do this until now, so I'm just trying to imagine and draw from your experience with this technique. I think you can arrive at the same light quality by other means too, but I was curious if there is any secret about this, which would make bounced kinos unique. :) I guess there isn't. Sorry if all this was annoying to you, just trying to understand some things. Thank you very much everyone for your replies! Oh, and maybe you'd like to take a look at my question posted in the "film stocks and processing" forum, if you have any time; not sure I picked the right forum to post that. Thank you again.

Right, Mr. Mullen, that is exactly the word for what I was concerned about: efficiency. Are bounced kinos an efficient way (kinos are kinda expensive to rent) to get that kind of soft light? Or can you do about the same thing, by bouncing some other unit? Well, I've already asked this question a lil bit earlier, but the answer is still not very clear.

Well then, I see there are different opinions on bouncing kinos. I'm really curious if it's sort of a common or at least "normal" practice to do this, I'd hate to get funny looks from the crew on it and then find out they were right! :)

Yeah that was my take on it too; and the softness depends of the relative size of the source to the subject. That's why I was asking about bouncing kinoflos > won't it be inneficient - from a productivity pov - to do that, instead of bouncing some other light, if the FINAL bounce (the card/board) is the actual source that matters? I mean it's quite a decision to include an expensive unit such as a kinoflo, to bounce it, and get the same result you'd get with bouncing some other cheaper light > it doesn't worth the money, does it? Any thoughts on that?

I'll be shooting some 7222 and from the initial tests I found it to be hugely grainy, boiling all over the screen, especially in the midtones of course. Well everybody knows it's a grainy stock. Now, how can I get around that and come to as sharp an image as possible? A couple of things that come to mind are: - sharper lenses - deeper DOF (as much of the frame in focus) - more contrasty lighting? (avoiding having too many continuous midtone surfaces) Are these correct? Please give me some advice about this. Also, is there any exposure trick that could help ? I mean, like the widely accepted color approach "slightly overexpose and then print down", but for the b/w stock? Any lab processing manipulation? Thank you very much! Cheers

Did you ever do this? How does it look? Compared to bouncing a fresnel w/diffusion? All for a very soft light. Thanks.

Darrin, Of course I tested the meter with my own greycard (which is brand new btw, purchased it recently from kodak), in the studio, lit by the book, no doubt about that. And yes, I did hold the meter properly when taking the reading, was very careful about that, even repeated the test on a shoot a few days ago because I was very much intrigued with this.

Hello everyone, People say that the spotmeter on the sekonics is calibrated to 13% grey instead of 18%, and thus underexposes when taking a reading from a kodak grey card. It would seem that the incident readings are correct though. (note: the combi sekonics use two separate photosensitive cells) Is this true about the 13% thing? Are you aware of it? And if you are, did any of you had their meter recalibrated/compensated accordingly? I mean, in the end, an incident reading and a spotmeter reading of an 18% greycard should be equal, but it seems that with the sekonics it doesnt. I'm using the L-558 Dualmaster, but I assume the same is true for the 608 etc. Please shed some light on this one for me! Can't trust my meter anymore :(

Hello everyone, Do you have a specific concept in mind for the treatment of walls? I mean in terms of flagging light off them, or overall brightness etc. I.e. for a naturalistic lighting of a daytime interior, the light should gradually fade out to the ceiling, right? so do you actually set up some flags to keep it darker, taking out the spill light; and how would you think out how dark/bright that background wall should go? How high do you happen to place your sources when lighting an interior? Back in the grand b/w studio films days they would have all the lighting suspended overhead, but still the walls look very natural. Thank you.

Oh ok Paul, thanks for pointing that out, and sorry to have brought this up then. I did browse a bit through the 35mm forum and didn't find anything relevant, but I'll dig deeper then :) And yes Jon, I know it's an MOS camera. Thanks for the warning, mate. Cheers

Well, by "modern" I don't really mean the latest Master Primes, but say some Zeiss standard (the 2.1 sets) or something similar. Is there really such a big optical performance difference to account for the big price difference between the older lenses that would be mounted on a 2c and the PL mount ones? I mean would it show so badly on screen? I'm asking this because I've just seen some footage shot with a combined schneider/cooke set of lenses on a 2c that really looked surprisingly good, and that kinda left me wondering. Can anyone share a similar experience? Or comment about how good/bad are the older lenses? I have a short coming up and I'm seriously thinking of renting a 2c package and save some money for better (is it?) use. Thanks a lot guys, hope to get some feedbacks on this one! Cheers

Thank you all for your input on this topic, and especially you, David. These considerations cover just about everything related to my window questions, thank you again. And by the way, David, that picture you posted helped a lot; I wonder if you could post an example of a DAY/INT. situation, of the same kind? (along with the lighting details) Cheers

So David, you're saying that you can't shoot straight at the window if it's the source because it flares the camera, right? (as a side question, you mean that would happen only when using diffusion on the window, or also in the case when you'd go the other way? - placing something white outside and positioning the lights on the sides, as you said.) Then, what practical solutions are there to allow pointing the camera at the window - no flares - but preserving the character of the light that was shining through the window when it was the source (in the previous shots up to the one which requires shooting at the window). Sorry if i'm not being too clear. It's just that from what you're saying I understand that if for a given interior one would choose to put diffusion on the windows - and use them as the main sources - then this would mean that shots taken straight at the window become impossible (flare). And also, David, maybe you can explain a bit more "Plus it tends to look like you've covered the window with diffusion and blasted a light through it in terms of fall-off.", the fall-off part of it. What's the difference in falloff when you're using: a) diffusion on the window B) clear window and diffusion on (or close to) the source (say you have a tenner outside or smthg) c) no diffusion whatsoever, just plain hard light from a naked fresnel Thank you very much! Sorry, the B) got there by mistake, took the place of point b. :)

Thank you all for your replies so far, looking forward to hear other opinions too and perhaps some solutions/approaches on this window thing, like David Mullen's Hampshire Frost trick that Michael mentioned. And no Jason, I don't think that there is any way that "always" work better either. It's a plain choice, very much in the terms that Michael puts it. On the other hand, I was wondering if any of you actually considers blown-out windows a mistake, in general, or what do you consider to be the "overexposure treshhold" for it. Thanks a lot everyone! Cheers!

Hello everyone, I would like to hear some opinions from you on the matter of windows, specifically what is the degree of overexposure you favor for a window when showing what's outside is not an issue. I am mainly asking this because i'll be filming a studio day/int scene soon, and the exterior (what's seen outside the window) is irrelevant to the movie, but i'm not sure WHETHER to drape the windows and overexpose them a few stops so they go blank, OR to go for a backdrop and keep the window clear (of drapes). Hope i'm making myself understood here.. :unsure: I know you'll tell me "it depends on this and that" or something like that, and you'd be right, but I was wondering if you guys could advance some arguments/cases/examples on the use of one method or the other. Some cinematographers like to blow them windows big time, like Kaminski does in some scenes in Munich or Minority Report (just what came to mind), others go easy, like Rousselot in Dangerous Liaisons etc. In Capote for instance, usually the windows seen in the shot do hold "windowframe" details, such as the folds on the drapes or the very window grid pattern, without showing the outside, though -- so i suppose this would be an intermediate solution between full-blown-blank-shaft of light-kind of window and the traditional "see the outside, the backdrop" one. Well, I hope I didn't mess it up too much in this post, sorry if the question may sound silly but I think it's fairly important to have it discussed. Thank you very much! Cheers

Thank you Mr. Pytlak for the links, and many thanks to you Mr. Case for your extensive reply. "Since the neg carries more tones than that, you have to make a selection from the range when making the print. That's where grading or timing comes in." That's what I was after, thanks.

Frank, Thank you for the link, it's most revealing, especially the ANSI value for C. I just want to point out that 12% grey is precisely a full stop below 18%. So if you've got an 18% greycard and 12%-calibrated incident and spot meters, it would be NORMAL for the spotmeter to read around one stop more light from the card than the incident reading says. What I don't get is how come everybody else seems to agree that the reflected spot reading from a 18% greycard should be the same with the incident reading? I mean, I think it's rather important to know where your Zone V actually is. (BTW, even Ansel Adams talks of the mysterious "K factor" in his The Negative) I wonder if anyone else has other opinions about these things. Thank you!

That's the answer I was looking for, thank you very much Mr. Mullen! I've never thought about the unused information on the negative until now, and your confirmation of that fact puts the "film stock latitude" issue in a "new light" for me now. And let me say that "shoot your negative with the gamma of the print stock in mind" is one of the best advices I've ever been given. It's so true! It's a shame they don't tell you that in film school these days (at least at my film school). Many thanks indeed!