Sol Train Saihati

Got a shoot coming up and I'm trying to work out my photometrics- although one variable is missing from my equations: how many stops does bleached muslin take off?! Simple answer - depends on how thick it is. Does anyone have experience with the AFM Lighting bleached muslin? Its pretty thick... We're shooting on ISO 160 stock and I'm looking to get a 4/5.6 split with the source around 30ft away from the subject through a frame about 20 ft away. Im hoping that 4 x 10kW fresnels through a 20 x 20 will do it? What do you reckon? We're on a tight budget so I'm trying to get my estimate as close as possible to save us on lamps/dimmers/cables/stands we dont absolutely need.

At a tremendous mark-up... That's a Wrap are a nice company to deal with and offer free same-day delivery to the London area, although in all honesty, it still probably better to get as much as you can from non "film" companies.

Does anyone have any exposure profiles for this meter for the more common digital cameras or any film stocks? Just for a point of reference really...

Total budget would also be also be a good indicator - it's all relative.

Simple question: Is it necessary to open the aperture when shooting slow motion on digital formats?

Some interesting stuff here from Tom Stern regarding small room situations, particularly about paints, glazing, incident angles etc... Hope it helps: Tom Stern Q&A - Kodak On Film Interview Is he ASC yet!?

Right on man.

I'm sure he'd be willing to share the wealth - shoot him a PM?

Friend o mine posted this up a while back: http://www.cinematography.com/forum2004/in...c=11093&hl= Usefull No?!

It's a new year, time to buy a new lightmeter. Was just about to hit the purchase button with a 558C in my shopping basket when... Wait! What's this? A new Sekonic on the scene with some kind of USB black magic function? Hmmm... I'm sceptical. I would hope that I have a better working knowledge of the stock that I'm using than my lightmeter does. Has anyone had a chance to put one of these meters on trial? I'm particularly interested and slightly concerned about the Exposure Profiling features. Isn't this all a bit pointless, considering you have to run a series of tests just to calibrate these settings? Again, I think I would rather use my brain to calculate how to expose a scene in order to obtain the look I'm going for, basing my decisions on real-life experience and technical expertise rather than let a piece of electronic wizardry do it for me. I imagine that over/under exposure will result in some manner of noise-making warning siren emitting a high pitched shrieking sound, to provide warning of approaching danger and indicating when the danger has passed. Most importantly, is it really worth splitting with an extra £150 for this information? Somehow I doubt it, however Sekonic seem to be putting the much loved 558C to bed so I guess we're soon to be without a choice. Don't tell me that going with your gut is not an option anymore? Everyone must watch out they don't lose any detail in the shadows or highlights, or else the producers/directors sitting in grading suites will throw their toys out of the pram. Although I'm open minded to new technology... Is lighting for the grade the destiny of our artform? I guess my ranting is fuelled by the frustration that this way of thought seems to be so set-in-stone, that it is now beginning to influence our future technologies.

Happy New Year all, :D Does anyone have any good designs/ideas for a constructing Batten Strips?

A couple of lil questions... What are your shoot dates? What format are you shooting on? Is the position still open?

Just came off a short shot on xdcam... As much as I slated the camera when I first heard about it, I have to say that the results we got were pretty unbeleivable.. Excellent colour rendition and outstanding detail are just the a few of the things I could list. For the film we were shooting(A grimy British kitchen sink drama), it could hardly have looked any better. More than once we found ourselves saying "I dont understand how it looks so good." It's biggest asset is that in combination with a well calibrated high-res monitor, the gamma controls can be tweaked scene by scene to get very close to the final look you're going for in-camera, thus potentially saving money on post costs. The only thing missing is the latitude. Now I know thats a pretty big thing to be missing, but its definitely a "look", and matched with the appropriate lighting and production design its possible to attain beatiful high contrast images. IMHO its streets ahead of Digibeta, the HVX and pretty much anything up to the 750 and the Varicam, but I suppose you would expect that for your twenty grand. All I can say is, stick a half decent lens on it and don't knock it till you've tried it. Will post up some stills ASA.

Information on Michael Mann's sudden insanity. http://www.studiodaily.com/main/careers/4446.html "Company 3 scanned and manipulated HD and film footage for Collateral at 1K resolution because it was the right aesthetic." Personally I think the look is absolutely shocking. Why not just shoot on Digibeta and transfer to bloody VHS, save himself a couple of hundred thousand dollars? Oh dear, I may have just encouraged a slew of furious replies with that last comment...

An absolute second. If its not in your budget to hire a fully qualified spark for a day to tie in, then find another solution to your problem that does not involve dealing with bare, live, high voltage electricity cables.