Michael Morlan

Andrew, That is freekin' cool! I look forward to seeing some paired camera stills so I can cross my eyes! I presume the double camera rig had complete control over focus point convergence and such. Did you generally set the image planes at a typical human eye distance or did you play with that?

rsellars, thanks for the detailed post. I used the Z1U for a short film and arrived at similar opinions. Like you, I measured the camera at 125 ASA and completely avoided the "cine-like" progressive modes. However, I did favor the cine 1 gamma curve for my acquisition. I knew I was going to apply a gamma curve in post anyway so capturing the mids along the camera's gamma straightline while benefiting from the higher-bit processing gave me a bit more luminance resolution between the shadows and highlights. Regarding the use of an NTSC monitor - I have gotten in the habit of calibrating the monitor normally, then lowering the brightness just enough to make the 7.5 IRE pluge bar disappear against the super black. This encourages me to expose a little hotter. I avoid overdoing it by watching highlights with the 105% zebras on the camera. Between those two metrics, my eyes, and a meter, I have a pretty clear picture of my contrast latitudes and get some really consistent imagery. I didn't know about the "free" 3dB gain. I'll have to keep that in mind for troublesome lighting situations. I typically disabled or chose other operations for all the programmable buttons, so I didn't experience any accidental auto settings. My favorite feature of the Z1U is the settings preset buttons. I can memorize and replay two different focus/aperture/zoom/gain/etc. settings and recall them with speed ramps. If I start a shot with another manual setting, I can perform two ramps in a shot - even three if I return to a former preset. One caveat: The fastest ramp time is 2 seconds - not much use for many focus pulls. I used this very effectively for a long-focal-length shot with an actor in foreground-left with another actor in background-right. I started focused on the foreground talent, racked to the background talent, then racked again as the background talent approached the camera to the foreground talent's position. Certainly no replacement for a manual lens and good focus puller but great for less demanding situations. Michael Morlan http://michael-morlan.net

I posted this at the end of that really long "post your setup" thread in the "Lighting" section but thought it might be useful here as well. "Post Your Setup" thread (at end of page) My first experience with the Sony HVR-Z1U HDV camera. I measured the Z1U at 125ASA with my choice of creative settings so this camera needs a bit more light than most pro-sumer video cameras. "Quest" is a speculative excerpt from a feature script. Director, Tim Caswell, designed and built a set with an eye to manipulating the image in post. With input from me he added surrounding light panels to provide a means to light the set from "practicals." Careful blocking and continuous tuning with scrims and nets further refined the practical keys. Every close-up involved additional talent modeling with soft-box and hair lights. Post-pro grading and manipulation further refined the image to achieve the director's desired look. Here are some low-rez frames after creative grading: A lighting diagram and full-rez, camera-original, best-color, and creative-grading frames can be found on my web site: Here's a reflected-light chart of the best-color image as inspired by those on the Kodak site.

Claudio, Thank you for chiming in and thank you for your very generous portfolio site. I've learned so much. I'm going to try the covered wagon gag. Highest regards, Michael

Adam, I've had really good results with a polarizer on a windshield. Yes, of course, you're starting at a deficit with the sky's reflection, and removing the windshield would be better but, if you're stuck with it, the polarizer will get you a long way to removing that glancing reflection on the glass. One note, however. The winshield is curved, so the incident angle is changing, thus changing the effectiveness of a polarizer. If you want a wide shot through a windshield, expect the left and right edges to have the sky creeping back in when the pola is tuned for the center of the glass. Move the camera farther away. The farther you can get the camera back, the more the change in incident angle is reduced and the more effective the pola becomes. Another thing to consider is a double or even triple net hanging over the windshield, although it's possible that the weave could become visible if it falls within the focus range of the shot.

I have a set of four Bogen Autopoles that I use on occasion in addition to my 2x4 spreaders. They're great for tucking a light into a corner by spreading them vertically between ceiling and floor. A horizontal span can SAG AND FALL! Consider placing loads near the ends rather than toward the center. Better, add two vertical autopoles at the ends to support the horizontal span (although this may negate the value of spreading something above the frame.) Connect each vertical pole to the horizontal with two super mafer clamps and a swivel snap-in. Any time a light is suspended over people, add a safety wire between light and pole. Span a horizontal pole only between wall studs. Use a stud finder and bit of light-stick tape to mark the locations of the studs. Wipe off the rubber ends before using to reduce staining surfaces. Consider a buffer of clean cloth or rubber (or the afformentioned mouse pad) to protect surfaces. The 16" end pad for wall spreaders is a great and common-sense idea. Can't imagine why I didn't think of it. :) Better to make it 24" for those cheap tract homes with 24" centers on their studs.

HDV suited this project because the director wanted all shots to be locked down, evoking 1950's low-budget sci-fi. But, the HDV MPEG2 codec starts to get stressed by lots of movement, so be sure to test a camera with the production aesthetic you desire.

As a follow up, I added an image with f-stop notations (as inspired by some sample frames on the Kodak site.)

The frame you reference is after creative manipulation which included; o reduced saturation; o level adjustments to crush blacks and blow out whites; o slight bit of noise added. There seems to be this ongoing tendency to munge up a perfectly good frame. ;-) For a better idea of the Z1U's image, take a look at the camera original frame and frame after "best-color" grading: Camera Original Frame Best-color Frame (Of course, all of these images have had pixels added horizontally as the still frame was stretched to fit a 1:1 pixel aspect ratio.) I'll post a camera original frame without stretching for an even better reference. To answer your question: I was quite pleased with the image coming off the Z1U. The glass isn't an $8000 prime but it's pretty damned good for a pro-sumer zoom. Color is pretty good and I was damned surprised by the camera's latitude - near 9 stops - not bad for video. All this from those damnable 1/3" chips, so decent control over depth-of-field is a challenge. Generally, the iris was wide open for this shoot. I'm sure the lens is sharper at a more central stop but I needed as shallow a DOF as I could get. My only other criticism is that the camera is 1080i. While the Japanese favor that format, it doesn't have much use in Europe and the U.S. From some articles I've read, de-interlacing should result in around a 850p image (after the Kell Factor and detail lost to interoplating fields.)

Okay, here's one of my latest - my first experience with the Sony HVR-Z1U HDV camera. I measured the Z1U at 125ASA with my choice of creative settings so this camera needs a bit more light than most pro-sumer video cameras. "Quest" is a speculative excerpt from a feature script. Director, Tim Caswell, designed and built a set with an eye to manipulating the image in post. With input from me he added surrounding light panels to provide a means to light the set from "practicals." Careful blocking and continuous tuning with scrims and nets further refined the practical keys. Every close-up involved additional talent modeling with soft-box and hair lights. Post-pro grading and manipulation further refined the image to achieve the director's desired look. Here are some low-rez frames: The lighting diagram and full-rez frames can be found here: Quest Photography

I am format agnostic Phil and, perhaps, you should be too if you want to be a master of your craft. I light with my meter no matter what medium I am exposing. As Stuart notes, my meter, a trained eye, and knowledge of the medium's response characteristics allow repeatability from shot to shot and scene to scene. Sure, a waveform monitor and calibrated monitor are great tools as well and, if available, should be used as rigorously as a meter. But what if you are lighting a scene when the camera isn't present? Perhaps you are pre-lighting the day before the $1000/day Varicam arrives. What are you going to do then? I D.P.'d a short for the 2005 48-hour Project in Austin this last weekend. We were moving so fast we didn't have time to set up a monitor nor would we have had proper viewing conditions on a bright Texas day. But, from previous testing, I knew the camera had an equivalent 200ASA rating at my desired settings and, between establishing an initial f-stop with my meter and watching my zebras at 105% for clipping, I was able to deliver consistent results every time.

Well I wouldn't drop the ballast in the water. :blink: According to the Kino Flo website, their banks w/remote ballast can be operated underwater. Kino Flo 4BANK page Based on my understanding of electricity, here's what makes Kino's safe in water. Someone check me: While the current output from the ballast is 5 amps (more than enough to kill you) the 25kHz drive frequency means that current doesn't travel as far from the light (the field is tiny) and, should you actually make contact with the live connectors, only skates across the surface of human skin rather than digging in deep like 60Hz, locking up muscle tissue and vital organs like your lungs and heart. Just be sure to rinse the heads with fresh water when done. It's probably best to use distilled water so there are no mineral deposits left on the reflectors, or just take some extra time to wipe everything down.

Paul, A couple of thoughts. Check that the paint will stay adhered to the tarp. If it were to come off, you would have a huge disaster in the pool's filter system. Consider throwing Kino Flo banks at the backdrop. They can be operated underwater. And, prevent any hard light from striking that backdrop through the water surface. Michael

David, The frame from DOT is the most striking lighting and composition for me. Simple choices result in such fascinating images. I presume the HMI was coming from the right of frame to light the set. Is that daylight on the window/curtains/floor at back-left? Michael

One caveat: There are some advanced setup features that are awkwardly described by the manual. One very cool thing is the ability to "boot up" the meter in an advanced setup mode that, essentially, allows you to choose which metering modes will appear while scrolling through them during normal operation. You can enable/disable/customize a variety of ambient and flash modes to suit your typical use. For instance, you can activate a footcandle/lux metering mode and choose which measurement to meter with. If you deactivate it, it simply doesn't show up while scrolling through modes. Michael

If you don't want to pony up the dough for CT meter, consider using a new DP trick -- the digital camera. Set the camera's color-temp to tungsten (or daylight) and take a shot of the headlight or the headlight reflecting off a white surface. Examine the color rendition either on the camera or on a calibrated computer monitor. I hear some gaffers are using digital cameras to test and calibrate HMI's now. Michael

As Dominic notes most eloquently, there is no specific mathematical relationship between wattage and fc. Lamp technology, lamp age, beam shaping, distance from instrument all alter this relationship. That's why lighting manufacturers supply photometric tables for their instruments. There's even a book you can buy with lots of theatrical instruments noted within: Photometrics Handbook Some other examples: Mole 2K Junior Solarspot Arri Junior 5K Kino Flo 4BANK Select etc....

Here's a fun setup that I gaffed for director of photography, P.J. Raval and director Jeffrey Travis. I don't have any frames from the 35mm camera yet, so forgive the digital snapshots, but they're fairly representative. the cast from camera position the set diagram - click for a larger version a view from the 2K kicker/key panoramic of location with hot tub at right (hidden by crew) tools: Kodak 5279 camera ? Panavision Pana-star 35mm lighting/electric: 2K, 1K, 650w 300w, 150w fresnels on-set distro w/tap into household breaker box

David is an incredibly gracious soul. He was equally engaging when I bent his ear the the DOT wrap party in Austin. I only hope that, when I am as busy as he is, that I still give of myself in such fashion.

Exactly my point Rick. There has been much debate in amateur DV circles about achieving a "film look" when what I believe is really desired is "production value." Debates over frame rate, progressive frames, characteristic curves, etc. are irrelevant. All that is important is the artistry - the composition - of the final moving image. Production value is achieved by effective set/costume/property/lighting design. The whole debate over "Film Look" is merely an attempt to achieve these things. Perhaps I'm rambling and my opening salvo is without merit. A director of photography has so many wonderful choices these days. Aspect ratio, acquisition medium, photochemical and digital manipulation, advances in materials and lighting instruments... It's a great time to be a visual creative contributor! M

I thought I'd reply, in a new thread, to a comment in the thread titled "Xmen & Resident Evil Style of Lighting." http://www.cinematography.com/forum2004/in...?showtopic=5442 I'd love to work with EFilm and, as a cinematographer, have the freedom to make adjustments in post. While the "fix it in post" mentality has somewhat eroded the authority of the cinematographer on the set, we also have an opportunity to evoke our craft and art after the film is in the can. I'm going to make a bold pronouncement. Let the debate begin: There is no "film look" anymore. Inspired by inroads in commericals, feature filmmakers are creatively experimenting with the image. Aside from having a sufficient contrast ratio and rich colorimetry in the recording medium (and other creative issues) the use of digital or film for acquisition has become a moot point -- especially with the ever increasing use of digital intermediates. Soon, every feature will go through a digital process on its way to the screen. "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?" was the first film-aquired feature to go entirely through a DI. Roger Deakins, ASC took full advantage of the abilities of digital tools to create the final look of the film, with brilliant results. The cinematographer's job is changing, expanding to include a rich set of tools in the post-production environment. I, for one, am looking forward to the opportunity to use them.

Josh, that seems kind of harsh. I'd love to work with EFilm and, as a cinematographer, have the freedom to make adjustments in post. While the "fix it in post" mentality has somewhat eroded the authority of the cinematographer on the set, we also have an opportunity to evoke our craft and art after the film is in the can.

I have four 2950 AutoPoles myself along with a couple of 2x4 wall spreaders. The AutoPoles are excellent for small interiors and lightweight fixtures and grip. BUT BE CAREFUL! A longer horizontal span can SAG AND FALL! Consider placing loads near the ends rather than toward the center. Better, add two vertical autopoles to support the horizontal span. Connect each vertical pole to the horizontal with two super mafer clamps and a swivel snap-in. Any time a light is suspended over people, add a safety wire between light and pole and, preferaby, to some other more secure architectural feature. Span a horizontal pole only between wall studs. Use a stud finder and bit of light-stick tape to mark the locations of the studs. Wipe off the rubber ends before using to avoid staining surfaces. Consider a buffer of clean cloth or rubber to protect surfaces. Michael

Hi Dave, I bought one to replace my separate Minolta Spot F and Sekonic StudioMaster incident meters. I'm very pleased with it (although, while gaffing a feature the other day, found myself metering for 50 fps rather than 1/50th of a second!) Doh! There's some film one stop overexposed. :blink: Need to read my settings better. Three excellent features of the 558-Cine: 1. cine settings for true FPS, not just exposure time; 2. spinning shutter angle adjustment, and; 3. filter factor adjustment. All built in. Final reading is your actual f-stop after accounting for most on-set variables like fps, camera filters, shutter angle, and cinematographer's creative choices.

Right you are, sir. I'm still not sure whether I was getting the full 220v or something after a step-down transformer. I never went back to check. :D Sure felt similar to a couple of other brief 110v shocks I've taken. I'm all for appropriate use of ground-lifters. Got saved the other day by a properly grounded Mole Baby in an Austin home. A hanging practical was apparently shorting to frame and, while moving a light, I touched the frame of the practical with the Baby. POP goes a breaker. Didn't feel a thing.