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Denair Isaac

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    Vegas& Miami Neons

    in Lighting for Film & Video

    Posted

    Hi,

    I'm shooting this music video the first week of august. The director wants to shoot Macro shots of the neon lights so he can overlay them during the video. What he essentially wants, is the look of a neon light with a bad ballast that stobe.

     

    We went location scouting and did some test shots with a 7D. We will be shooting with a 5D, and an adapted hpx-170. During the test shooting I was able to get some neon lights to flicker. I had to move the camera to get a kinda flicker that was some what more moire than a flicker, or the neon lights had to be moving. (VIDEO)

     

    What I'm trying to do is pretty much the opposite of what i would normally do to get a computer screen or tv to not strobe .

    I tried to use the fastest shutter, and I was able to use the cameras banding problem to get a sort of flicker look, but its still not what the director wants, plus its hard to get a proper exposure without the signal to noise ratio being to high. The slowest shutter setting however in video mode in the dslr's slowest shutter is 1/30 sec. For some reason i think if my shutter is wide open that it would kinda work. Would I be better to try and shoot the neon lights with the adapter with a 350 degree shutter?

     

    Am I on the right track? Or whats the best way to get neon lights to strobe?

    Thanks for you time

    HD camera recommendations...

    in HD

    Posted

    Also forgot to mention - a local still photographer friend of mine recently purchased a $5k (still) camera that apparently shoots HD video..(I know I'm out of the loop here)... he said it can compete with the best prosumer cameras b/c it has a 35mm-sized sensor.

     

    Is this true? thanks! :rolleyes:

    This is true these still camers have great resolution but u have to look at how much it compresses the image. This might matter if you want it to be blown up and projected The hvx is nice because it compresses it image the least out of the camera in its prosumer bracket. Im looking into the hpx170 which is the hvx but just P2 and a few real nice upgrades. Like the fact you can do uncompressed 10-bit 4:2:2 HD-SDI. Hope i was somewhat helpful.

    Lighting black and white skin tones EXT Day + Night

    in Lighting for Film & Video

    Posted

    Hey Ashley,

     

    Been there, had to deal with that. It can by tricky, I suppose a lot of it has to do with the general mood/feel you are going for in the first place. I.e. it can be tougher if you want a more even, high key sort of look, with less contrast, in which case you'll have to balance out your exposure between the two. In my case, when having shot like this, I suppose I was somewhat fortunate in that the material was quite dark/moody/contrasty in nature, so the black/white skin tones actually played into that fairly well.

     

    However, I did often find myself on the verge of losing detail in the african american actor, especially as the caucasian actor was quite fair skinned. In the end, I found I would usually start by exposing for the darker subject, and then stopping down about two stops. That would put him at an acceptable level of detail. Then it was all about netting/diffusing the lighter skinned actor to where they didn't get too overexposed where they moved. On which note, being discretionary with your blocking can help to keep them from always moving through same areas of light etc...

     

    In the end, I think the most important thing is; darker skin should look darker just as the lighter skin should look lighter. In other words it isn't so much about balancing them, it's just about getting them within an acceptable range of difference to what the film (or video) can handle. And in that sense testing is your best option.

    this has been alot of help i have a feature comming up with tbe same senerio but flip the sex, and would it make that much of a diffrence if it is in the snow? I wanna thank you in advance.

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