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Markus A Ljungberg

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Everything posted by Markus A Ljungberg

  1. Hi all, would love some suggestions on lenses Just wrapped a feature that we shot on Venice 2 and Signature Primes. I'm planning to shoot some additional bits consisting of exteriors of buildings, details inside a church, some landscapes etc. The budget is pretty much spent so it will be me and my BMPCC 6k (Modded to PL mount). I'm now looking at lens options. Just curios, what would you pick for a good match? It should be something fairly clean so I'm considering UPs or potentially Sigma FF High Speed or Sigma FF Classics. Looking forward to hear your thoughts, thanks
  2. So with the new firmware that just came out you can get a LUT ie 709 on your output whilst recording in S-log. And there is a false colour update for the EVF but you need to take your EVF to Sony for it :) Anyway. Rating the camera to 640 for the last couple of days and happy with the results. Haven't gotten around to shooting any step charts unfortunately.
  3. Thank you David that's very helpful. I'll check out that CML thread. I'll try to shoot a greyscale to figure out what the S-Log levels are. Those Panalog and Log-C numbers are good references though, and thanks for passing on Juan Matinez post I was looking for those numbers. If I learn anything else on the matter I'll post it here. Thanks
  4. Hi All, I'm a couple of days into an LB indie-feature shooting on Sony F55 with Angenieux zooms. With budget and time constraints we never had a chance to properly test the camera, and I now have a couple of questions perhaps someone enlightened might help me out with? I find that on native ISO (1250) the camera need 1 to 2 stops more light then what my light reader says. We are shooting in SR Codec so the picture I'm looking at is flat profile, and when shooting in SR it appears there is no way to get a Rec709 preview in the EVF/Monitor. At first I thought this was what was throwing me of, but even after the DIT applied a LUT it still feels like the camera does need at least one more stop of light the I'd expect on ISO 1250. Has anyone else had this experience? Has anyone done any tests under more controlled circumstances? The exposure assist in camera is terrible, there is the waveform which is fine, but that's the waveform before LUT is applied so it's not telling me what my luminance will be in the final picture. There's no false colour etc. only zebra which says very little about the information in the picture. Using the waveform at least I know I'm not crushing blacks or clipping whites, but I feel like I don't have the same control over exposure as I have on film, Alexa, Red or even on my magic lantern'ed 5D! The picture looks great though. And I must say that the low light capabilities are great, and the low weight appreciated. Though when fully kited up it becomes a very long camera. I'm also looking for a good comparison between SR codec to XAVC. The "low" bitrate of XAVC scares me a bit, but it seems to be a very sophisticated codec. Does anyone know how it holds up in grade? And how it holds up for keying? I will try to find the time to do some more controlled tests to post here for everyone. In the meantime I'm rating my light meter to +1 stop for F55. Thanks,
  5. How would you light for a wide shot, full body, on green screen, if you want to achieve a high contrast look? I'm dealing with a scene where 10-15 people are dancing and performing a ritual. The main light will come from a big fire and torches (Will be added as CG), so ideally the shadows should be deep, 1:16 ratio, some shadows close to being crushed. A subtle cold light will come in as ambient. How would you light for this against green screen? For the tight shots it's pretty straight forward but I'm trying to figure out the best way to deal with the wide shots. I will definitely see feet on the floor. Our CG supervisor says that I don't need to worry about dark shadows on the floor, as they will be brought into the final comp, but they obviously can't be crushed. And I still need a reasonably even light across the floor. My plan at the moment is to using space lights to bring up the ambience and to light the floor just enough to enable a clean keying (But less then the conventional 60-80fc), and then have the lights mimicking the fire a good number of stops over the ambient level and also a lot warmer, close to 2xCTO. In post the floor can then be keyed properly, and then after keying a LUT could bring my contrast up to where I want it to be, and with the RAW format I could cool down the shot to make my the tungsten ambient appear cold and the fire warm. Is that a sound plan? Is there an easier, better way do to this? I'm definitely loosing out on some of the latitude of the camera with this approach, and as I like to achieve the look I want in camera it feels a bit awkward to rely so heavily on post. Unfortunately there's no budget for a test shoot. The size of the studio is W: 45' x L: 55' x H:16' and I have a grid over the entire set for rigging lights. Shooting with Red MX. All advice much appreciated, thanks =)
  6. Thanks David. Indeed the latitude doesn't look that dramatically different on high/low ASA. I suppose it's only in extreme situations it would make a difference, just curios on what those situations could be. I suppose you would know when you'r looking at it, and at that point you'd make the correct adjustments. Maybe I'm making too big of a deal of this shifting latitude range, it's just a new factor for me and I want to really understand it. Is ASA800 somehow a better choice of EI in general, being the native ASA of the camera? I think the grain and performance looks nice throughout, but the graininess of course being very apparent on higher ASA.
  7. Let's discuss the latitude of the Alexa, and how it's shifting depending on EI/ASA. How do we best take advantage of this? At first I thought it was pretty straight forward, but the more I work with the camera I find myself puzzled with this. If you'r not familiar with the Alexa, the latitude for highlights contra shadows is dramatically different depending on set EI. On EI160 you have 5 stops latitude above 18% grey and 9 stops below, whilst on EI3200 you have 9,4 stops latitude above and 4,6 stops below . From what I understand this shift is mainly because of engineering reasons, can anyone explain this or refer to a more detailed explanation of this? It also seems to fit many situations nicely though so it also feels like it's deliberately designed to perform this way? If the latitude was locked around 18% grey independent of other factor it would be more limiting, but it would at the same time be easier to predict the results. The only reason I've ever bumped up my IE or ASA is to get exposure in less light, or occasionally to get more grain, now suddenly another factor comes into play; where do I want to shift my latitude? Highlights or shadows? My first thought was that when shooting a dark set, most of the scene is likely to be in shadows, so I would want more details in the shadows. Bumping up the EI would give me the opposite. Strange? Then I think again, and realize that with a dark set, I will expose for a dark set, and any highlights appearing in that set will be way off the exposure and clip. Say a street light appearing on a dark street. So it makes total sense to have more details in the highlights. Ok so when shooting a bright scene, with more details in the shadows, would I want more details in the highlight? Say if I have a portrait in sunlight, the bright side would be very bright, and if I expose close to this then it would be vital to keep the details in the shadow side of the face. But then in a situation like that I suppose I would prefer the sun to be on the verge of clipping and just lifting the shadows to get the exposure I want. I don't really see when I would want to be shooting at EI160 given how much it reduces my latitude in the highlights, unless I needed absolute minimal grain/SNR in the image. Like David Mullen pointed out in a previous thread, when you choose a low EI obviously you need to carefully watch your highlight details, and on high EI you need to be extra careful with your shadow details. The recommendation overall seem to be shooting at IE800 (Which is the native IE right? With the Alexa are there any special advantages of shooting on the native IE other then the balanced latitude?) and perhaps dropping to IE500 in sunlight. Mullen advises to avoid EI200 or lower because your more likely to clip highlights and get a more videoish look, makes total sense. What are you thoughts on this? How do you take advantage of the latitude shift in the Alexa to achieve the results you want? Would there be situations where you want a dark scene but because of the design you would want to shoot it at EI160? Or what would a situation look like where you choose to use IE1600 and stack ND:s even on a bright scene, just to get the latitude you want? Ideas? Thoughts? Thanks, /Markus
  8. Follow up question: What about naked light bulbs? I just walked out of the theatre after watching Le Havre, and in one scene they had a naked light bulb in a fixture on the wall. The bulb did cast a nice and realistic looking shape on the wall around it, which made me think: Did they use a high wattage bulb? Probably. On a digital medium the bulb would probably clip, but shot on 35mm it had a nice gradient to it. Or could it be that they used a low wattage bulb (15W?) to avoid clipping, and then somehow managed to fake the light on the wall, making it look like it came from the bulb? If that's the case it sure had me fooled. Any other ideas on how to deal with naked light bulbs?
  9. Guy that's an excellent rule of thumb for getting the practicals right, I'll adopt that immediately. That's a good rule of thumb for exposing the skintones as well. Thanks for the thorough list of tricks and links to the scene analysis. Defining the edges of frame with details is also something I didn't think of, and you'r right I should be very careful with a chinese lantern not to get spill all over the place. Thanks for your input David, exposing halfway towards that gloom sounds like a sound approach. Shooting at lower ASA is a great suggestion, I might do that. The Kino is only intended to softly fill in the shadows so I don't crush them, and leave enough room for darkening it a bit in post. Maybe bouncing a ND:ed light off a large polly is a better idea for filling the shadows, but I don't think I'll have room for a setup like that. Fresnels and flags/nets of course, always =) Thanks again for the good advice. Does anyone else have any other input?
  10. I would love to hear your approach to underlit scenes. I have a couple of scenes that takes place in a dark and gloomy drug-dealers apartment. The look should definitely be very underlit, with patches of light around practicals and coming in through badly covered windows. When you want an underlit look how much would you achieve that in camera versus darkening the scene in grading? Playing it safe would be to expose only a stop under key and then take it down in grading, but then some practicals might still be close to clipping. Completely achieving the effect in camera would be to completely underexpose; exposing to the patches around the practicals and let everything else go dark. But then the options in post would be limited. I'm shooting on the Red EPIC (But with some luck an Alexa might become available for us instead). My plan is to expose to the patches around practicals and then using false color make sure that I'm at least not crushing the blacks. How would you light and expose such a scene? This danish TV ad pretty much nails the look I'm going for in the opening interior scene: I'm also looking at the more gloomy and dark bits of Hoytemas "Let the right on in". I'll probably be using a Kinos as soft fill and a chinese lantern for augmented light if needed. Any advice much appreciated, thank you. /Markus
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