Stuart Brereton

I’ve never found director’s viewfinders to be accurate enough to reliably tell the difference between 16mm & 18mm, let alone 9.5mm & 10mm. Unless you’re using a proper finder with a lens attached, they are a guide, at best.

Extension tubes are a better choice, optically, as long as you can deal with loss of exposure.

Yes, that's the problem with using regular lenses with diopters or extension tubes - you can choose a longer lens, but they generally don't focus so close in the first place, so your net gain in magnification is very little.

I just did a little messing around at home. I used my Mamiya 645 110mm lens (cf. 3' 10") with #2 & #3 Mamiya extension tubes. That brought the close focus down to about 11". I lit it with a Quasar 6" tube from about 4 inches away to the side. Stop on the lens was f8, but the meter was reading f22, so I guess the extension tubes were costing me 3 stops. 1/125th sec, 800 ISO.

Then I'd probably light from a side angle, but a little lower than in your shot, to get rid of the shadow of the eyelid.

It depends. Are we talking about shooting the same angle as your pic? Or more generally? The main issues are usually keeping the reflection of the camera and the lamp from being seen, but if they are going to be painted out anyway, you can light the eye any way you want.

If the lighting didn't have to match anything else, I think I'd cut a circular hole in 4x4 diff frame, poke the lens thru it, then light the frame from behind camera. At close range it wouldn't take a big lamp to get the stop needed. The reflection of the frame and camera would be painted out anyway.

Hence the suggestion of using two or three layer of netting, moving independently of each other.

This. ⬆️

This is simply not true, for all the reasons that Satsuki and David have explained above.

Not that I’ve ever done it, but I’ll take a punt at answering this. Dappled sunlight is two things. Light and movement. A very basic reconstruction is as simple as shining a hard light through some camo netting, while gently moving the netting back and forth. For more random movement, you could add a second or third layer of netting, and have them all move independently of each other, so that the gaps don't just move, but change size as well. Then you have to scale it up. That means a huge net, and probably multiple hard sources, rather than one big one. I’d try something like an array of dinos and 9 lights, as multi globe lamps punch through foliage better. Perhaps some sort of automated cam system to keep the netting moving, rather than having grips do it. Another method might be to use multiple effects projectors to cover the area, although you’d need to have some way of blending the edges of the beams, but that shouldn’t be difficult.

A tilt shift lens might be able to compensate for diverging vertical or horizontal lines, but it can't physically be somewhere it's not. To get that perspective on the room, the camera/lens would be reflected in the mirror. A crop from a higher, wider angle would also not have the same perspective. The lens height on that shot is very clearly about level with their shoulders.

You can indeed do it both ways. The technique of deliberately under or overexposing to move your picture information up or down the characteristic curve, in order to best utilize the available dynamic range is as old as photography itself. In black & white photography, in particular, you’ll often hear photographers talking about what speed they rate their favorite stocks. Ansel Adam’s famed zone system and development technique was all about placing exposures to maximize shadow detail, then processing to favor highlights. This is not a new idea. It’s just rather amusing that it’s now being called “dynamic range remapping”. It sounds a lot like something that an online photography journal like FStoppers might come up with. A writer with a deadline for an article but no idea what to write about, takes a well known technique, gives it a new, technical sounding name, knocks out 1000 words, and then publishes it, probably with a clickbait headline like “The Photo Technique You Absolutely Must Know!” To the OP, both pics are simply underexposed. In the second pic, it appears to have been done for mood. You can see from the sky behind the car that it's after sunset, so it would make sense that the picture has been exposed a little under to convey the feeling of fading light. In the first picture, it looks as if it has been underexposed in order to maintain detail in the hot exterior, letting the person in the doorway go dark, presumably with the intention of lifting the shadows in post to regain some detail there, which is a common thing to do. In this particular shot, it's extreme enough to wonder if they've actually done that, because her face has almost no detail in it, but if this is from a finished piece, then it's obviously artistic intent. As I've said, over or underexposing to prioritize shadows or highlights is as old as photography, and it's fundamentally very simple. Don't get confused by made-up technical jargon.

"dynamic range remapping" Otherwise known as underexposing.

Others were criticizing the film, you were criticizing the filmmaker. You accused Fincher of a lack of range, of unwillingness to take risks, and of ignorance about classical lighting technique. It seems to be a common refrain from you, that you know better than other far more accomplished filmmakers.

It helps that the Helium sensor is significantly bigger than s35, so even cropped to 6K, they are still getting a good area. In the case of Mank, the slightly smaller sensor area obviously helps a little with the deep focus look.

I've seen pretty much all his movies, but I don't believe that the fact that he chooses dark, dramatic material means that he is incapable of anything else. You're very quick to criticize other filmmakers whose talent and achievements far outstrip your own.

Well then, given that it is a "modern" movie, and is a mix of styles rather than a straight imitation, it's rather churlish to criticize it for not being something it was never intended to be. I don't think you should make assumptions about the breadth of Fincher's ability by judging his choice of subject matter. Unless you enjoy being "random internet man with opinion".

He has apparently been shooting 8K but framing for a 6K extraction for some time now, in order to do just that.

Some friends of mine just shot a movie with the Komodo. Songbird Trailer RED also have a BTS featurette on them using it in the movie. Komodo BTS There's a lot of hype, but you can see the camera in action.

Interesting that you assume that they tried, and failed. And that neither Fincher nor Messerschmidt has any knowledge of historical lighting techniques. It seems highly unlikely that a filmmaker as talented and fastidious as David Fincher would release a film looking anything but exactly as he wanted it.

Soren, assuming that you’re using this term in the way it’s usually meant, you should know that homophobic slurs, like other abusive language, are not tolerated here.

I really liked the way it looked also. Erik Messerschmidt has said in a couple of interviews that they weren't looking to emulate any particular style of b&w photography (although the deep focus look is an obvious nod). They seem to have gone for a variety of different looks. The studio offices in 1934 have a sharp, noirish quality to them, whereas some later scenes in 1940 are noticeably diffused, and have an almost IR film luminosity. At the same time, they evidently weren't too concerned with period accurate lighting. There's a fair amount of soft toplight going on, and at least one scene (election night 1936) which is lit entirely with practicals. I think it's a great combination of the old and new.

Perhaps you can elaborate on where they went wrong. Which particular "real" black and white are you referring to? Though as you say, you haven't yet seen it.

It is ? In wider shots, camera height (and position) becomes less about the actors themselves and more about placing them within the space, paying attention to foreground and background elements, and creating an overall composition.