Joshua Csehak
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Posts posted by Joshua Csehak
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Also, just remembered that a stocking behind the lens will lift the blacks a bit, white probably being best to both lift and wash out the colors. Worth a try.
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This might be stating the obvious, but if you have the luxury of waiting till you've got an overcast day (or at least, cloudy, and only shooting when the sun's behind a cloud), that's killer low-con!
If not, maybe you can find a way to stage everything in the shade?
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If it's in good condition, buy it. And if you don't want to buy it, PM me and I will. The only downside is they're unwieldy. I got by with a Diva for interviews for years. (Which I'd be happy to sell you, but I'd want $500 so this kit's a way better deal!) But Kino 4x4's have been some of the most used and useful lights forever. LEDs are in now, and in a lot of ways better, but that doesn't make this kit any less solid.
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And CTO and/or CTS in the highlights, depending on taste.
It's getting trendy though. It was good in Guardians of the Galaxy, but Shape of Water took it to a new level.
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Camerimage is crazy. I've gone the past few years. It's worth going for the Polish food alone. But mostly awesome to meet other DPs.
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25 and 85.
My everyday 3-prime arsenal is the Otus 28, 55, and 85. I'm mostly on the 28 and 85. And often wishing the 28 was a 24. I have the Tokina 11-16 to throw in once in a while when I need something extra wide. Might replace it with a Milvus at some point...
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But he could just throw an ND on it.
I get losing detail, since with a shallower DoF more of the fire will be blurry, but I don't know, I'm not convinced he's talking about exposure.
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In the July 2018 AC, Jayson Crothers says, "If you open up to a T4 or T5.6, you end up losing detail and color in the fire, so a T8 is usually the widest I'll shoot on the burn stage..."
I don't think I've ever noticed a change in aperture affecting the color. Can anyone explain this to me?
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Red monochrome pros:
-higher resolution (8k is literally 8k, since you don't lose resolution from debayering)
-it's easier to see what you're getting while you're shooting
-you'll look cool on set with your wallet of colored glass filters
-you don't have to worry about post messing up your image, since it's burned in
Shooting-color-and-converting-it-in-post pros:
-colored glass filters are hard to find as a rental, and not cheap to buy
-you'll have more options with the look (you can, for instance, take the red channel and 25% of the green channel)
-you can change your mind in post
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My feeling is they were different sources "back then", mostly hard sources. The old softboxes were not that big, and probably needed to be used fairly closely. Today, with Kinos and LEDs, softlight has become much more the norm.
I really need to watch The Artist again, because it kind of bridged the gap between contemporary and classic lighting.
I'm also halfway through (again) The Man Who Wasn't There, but I'll watch anything Mister Deakins shoots...
My suggestion is watch some classic B&W films with the sound off, and the pause button at the ready, then deconstruct scenes that inspire you.
-j
Yeah, I get the same feeling. The books seem to talk mostly about fresnels, or homemade softboxes that are grids of lamps. I feel like The Artist pretty much nailed the old style, no? I felt like even the camera movement was spot-on -- no technocranes or steadicams anywhere to be found.
I LOVE The Man Who Wasn't There -- both the lighting and the story! I'm pretty sure Deakins's lighting diagrams were featured in an ASC issue. Lot of lights! But not quite what I'm talking about in terms of standard studio lighting, of course -- more like noir/creative, I'd say.
Good suggestion, but the deconstruction is the hard part! I need to figure out how to easily grab and post frames. Maybe I should rip my DVD collection.
The fundamental difference is that since there is no color to separate objects, one had to do so through the lighting. Remember two objects of very different color will reproduce as the same gray on B&W Film. For that reason you had to use "Reverse Keys", "Liners", and "Kickers' to separate objects from one another and talent from the background. It was easier to do so in those days because the productions were stage bound because of the large lamps required for the slow film. When faster color film stocks became available, and production moved onto real locations, this style of lighting was pretty much abandoned because it was more difficult to do without a studio grid and it was unnecessary because now an object's color would create separation. As a consequence, our images have become flatter. It took a child's innocence to make me realize this. At the screening of an American Experience program, "Murder at Harvard", that I lit the Old School way because it was filmed in B&W, my 8 year old daughter said it looked three dimensional when asked what she thought of the first B&W movie she had seen.
Guy Holt, Gaffer, ScreenLight & Grip, Lighting equipment rental and sales in Boston
Guy, that makes a lot of sense. Maybe I just need to shoot some B&W and try and replicate it. Also, awesome to see you're in Boston! (I am too.)
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Haha, my bad. Yes, 300w :) Do you think it's enough of a difference to account for the different look back then? Surely it must be much more complicated than that?
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I've been watching old Twilight Zones lately, and it struck me that there's a common look to the lighting in most old B&W movies. They all seem to be really well-crafted in the same way. What is it? Were they using big fresnels exclusively? Does the size of the lens matter? That is, is there that much of a difference between a 10k with a 20" lens and a 300k with a 4" lens, assuming they're exposed the same? I have Malkiewicz's Film Lighting, Painting with Light, and Reflections, and just ordered Roger Hicks's Hollywood Portraits; are there any other good books or resources on this?
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Want! All kinds of want... Wonder how hard this would be to make...
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Hey guys, I was just watching Big Love (specifically, season 4 ep.2), and noticed that the bokeh was reeeeally nice. The out-of-focus blur was beautifully creamy, and the circle-of-confusion-bokeh-dot-things (is there a technical term for them?) were lovely solid discs. I remembered noticing the same thing when watching The Pacific. Anyone know what lenses they used in either? In Big Love at least, they used Arri cameras, so my first guess would be Master Primes?
Thanks!
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Because if you can do it in one image, why do it in more?
I guess if you set up a scene with objects of varying levels of brightness and spot-metered each one and determined that they each were a stop brighter than the previous one, and there were enough of them, you could take a picture of the scene and see what got blown out and count down till it got too noisy for you. I think the multi-pic method is way easier, though.
Unless, are you talking about determining a camera's DR based on a scene you haven't metered? I don't see how that's possible.
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Why not just shoot a gray card wide open, at the point where it's just blown out, snap a pic, stop down, snap a pic, and keep going till it comes out black, and however many pictures you've got, that's the dynamic range?
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I wonder if you had flexible track, if you could have a person on each side pulling the track out of the shot as you rolled along.
It sounds like big tires will be fine though. You could also let some of the air out if it turns out to be too bumpy.
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Aw, I thought you'd shot Neil Young! Nicely done though. Heard a lot of good things about the Tokina -- you like it, I take it?
Kinda funny that they're doing drugs while playing an anti-drug song ;)
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I'm with Sam on this one. Have you shot a wedding with a wide prime before? You're gonna miss so many shots. There'll be something going on a ways away, like a couple kissing, and what are you gonna do, run up right next to them? If anything, I think a portrait lens (like around 80mm) would be more useful than a wide. With the zoom, you're covered. You don't really need shallower DoF than f4, and between the 5D's low light capability and the IS, speed shouldn't be an issue. It's a no-brainer, IMO. Definitely pick up a 50mm 1.8 though. I got mine on craigslist for $65. It's as sharp as my L zoom. Another no-brainer.
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I just talked to a guy at Cinelab (http://www.cinelab.com), and he said they'd do it. Not sure how much it'll be, but I'm gonna buy some short ends and find out.
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I am trying to plan a similar shot where the camera is tracking backwards and goes through the glass of a car right before the actor opens the door and gets in. The real tricky part is going to be doing the shot with an actor in the frame.
There's an After Effects tutorial about something like that:
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He didn't say what still lenses he was using, but here's the line I'm referring to:
"Shooting with still lenses, I was seeing about 5 1/2 stops below key and 3 1/2 stops over. When we went to the Primos, the latitude increased by about 1 1/2 stops in both directions."
Am I missing something? How can that be taken any other way?
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My vote goes for bullet time. You can do a lot in post, but you can't change perspective like it does at :28, unless you make cgi models of the whole scene a la Avatar, and I doubt they did that.
Other possibility is that they filmed each clip going one direction, and took a short length of that and reversed it, but rotoscoped the guy from the non-reversed part. Since the background is pretty close to the same, the rotoscopy could be very forgiving. Not unlike the Kylie Minogue video he did.
I think they're doing a couple different things, actually, depending on the shot. Like at 0:40, when it jump-cuts and then switches direction, I'm bet he's rotoscoped.
Conflicted about Sigma art series and true cinema lenses
in Lenses & Lens Accessories
Posted
The Sigma Arts are the best bank-for-buck in glass, period. The IQ is very cinematic. My kit set of primes is Zeiss Otus, and they only do two things better than the Sigmas -- less chromatic aberration, and the Sigmas have a slight green cast.
I still might pick up a couple Sigmas for run-and-gun on the C300, so I can use the autofocus function, probably the 18-35 and 50-100 (though it breathes like a mofo), but need to try their 24-105 and 70-200. Curious to hear anyone's experiences with those!
I've been a Sigma fanboy ever since I did an A/B with the 18-35 and Canon L 24-70 -- the Canon looked like a picture, the Sigma looked like art.