AlexJBender

Hi Anthony Over here in England, we camera assistant deal with cold environments on a daily basis..the advise I was given recently, was to take a lens that you're not going to use first up, for example an 8mm or whatever you have, that you wont use as your first lens of the day. Breath on to the lens and see if the condensation clears without any assistance..if so you can leave the lenses with the caps on within the lens box and all should be fine. If you have condensation on the lens that doesn't clear, get them inside your location with the both caps off, and rest them on the foam on the lens box. I would really refrain from spraying or using any liquids on the lenses, as this is only going to lengthen the process of getting the lenses to working temp. just keep the lenses warm when possible. A

Phil Rhodes - you're clearly a delusional fool. Deakins winning a lifetime achievement award for his work pretty much sums up your weightless argument. Emma, I work in the film industry here in the UK and I assure you, British cinematography is as good as any. I recently worked with David Higgs BSC, who also shot one the Red Riding Trilogy. There are plenty of talented cameramen in the UK, as there are in the world over...but what a Phil Rhodes seems to be forgetting, just because a film is shot in America, it doesn't change the fact, the DP was and still remains, British. Phil Rhodes, you're not making any friends here and the sun, most definitely doesn't shine out of your arse.

Hi Ram I recently worked on a feature that included a few dark skinned actors and wanted to suggest a way of tackling this issue. What we did with our actor, especially in exterior shots with strong environmental light sources, was to simply flag and use bounced light. It seemed best to not over light to compensate for the darker skin tones and instead light as normal and be aware of the way different skin tones take light. We used tungsten sourced lights, often from paraffin lights, supplemented by chinaballs. As previously mentioned, make consideration for underexposure with slightly darker skin tones and I think you'll be totally cool with this. White walls or not - just concern yourself with getting the the tone right on your actors and flag off as much light from strong white backgrounds as possible...perhaps throw in some gobos or set dressing to take away the harshness of the walls. Hope this helps

Hi Ben I know it's been mention in other post here - but I would suggest a good way of lighting this with little money, is to stick with tungsten source lights and use a full CTO with a diffusion. Use a ultrabounce or silk on a frame if possible to soften any hard sources. For closer work, a daylight chinaball is great option, held above head height works really well and can easily be gelled and diffused for little money. If you're budget can stretch to it, a great light to get hold of is a source4. Because the beam is so sharp, you're able to bounce from ceilings or polly boards with great efficiency and little fall off. Hope this helps Alex