Rakesh Malik

It's really easy to visualize what's going on by taking an image shot on for example a super 35 camera, open it in an editing program, and creating a crop window at different resolutions. Say you start with a 4096x2048 image, i.e. 4K. You want to see what that would look like on a 2K Super 16? Set the crop window to 2048x1080.

The numbers aren't exactly correct, but it's close enough to show the effect of different sensor sizes.

Those beams of light are easy to bounce off of reflectors to make a nice rim light or a key light if you arrange things at the right angles. I've done both in the Pacific NW forests. :)

That's also precisely why so many people posting images on social media imitate the popular images.

My first actual education in photography was from a nature photographer who made his living sell his work as fine art. He taught us to use elements like lines, shapes, and rhythm and so on to influence the way that a viewer would navigate the image. As a result, I don't use the rule of thirds or golden ratios in my compositions, even though I also don't go out of my way to avoid either. If the work, they work. But I've found that they more often than not lead to generic rather than compelling imagery.

It won't be a 16-stop sensor then :) Since 4-6 (or up to 11 if there's pre knee) stops of highlights will be all rendered as white (full). The same for shadows.

You do need sufficient A/D bit depth to utilize the full range of photosites. Recording bit depth, on the other hand, has little to do with latitude.

You're still wrong; it's still a 16-stop sensor. It's just going to be recorded as a coarse 16-stops. Yes, it's probably too coarse to be a useful for a 16-stop sensor, but that doesn't have any affect on the brightness range that it can handle, which is what the dynamic range is.

And that's why bit depth matters. It's not a determinant of dynamic range, but the bigger the dynamic range, bigger your buckets are for a given bit depth.

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding about DR is there are two bottle necks, full well capacity and bit depth. Which ever of the two has less stops of DR, thag is the actual DR of the camera. So 8 bit cameras have 8 stops.

The only thing that determines the upper limit on dynamic range is the well capacity. The bit depth doesn't have any affect on the well capacity, and therefore no affect on dynamic range.

The bit depth just determines how many levels you can measure in each well. You can have a two-bit sensor with 16 stops of DR even though the only values you'd get out of it are empty, 1/4, 1/2/, 3/4, and full. Double the A/D to four bits, and you get 16 levels instead of just four. And so on.

This is of course over simplified, but the point is that bit depth is an encoding thing, not a determinant of dynamic range.

Late to the party... but totally agree, it was gorgeous!

 

Does anyone feel this comes down to what era you started in cinematography? I didn't start until the 5D Mark ii splashed into the scene and so in a weird way the shallow depth of field that camera produced has been the subconscious standard for what "good" looks like to me.

I think it has more to do with what films you study. I started out in visual arts using the F/64 Club style, and didn't really start using a shallow depth of field until I started incorporating people and wildlife into my photographs, especially in macro photography.

My transition into motion pictures coincided with dSLR video because that was when it became affordable, but the stuff with insanely shallow depth of field didn't inspire me at all.

 

I never quite understood this.

 

If you don't want to use so much space, just shoot ProRes SQ or something (they'll do that, right?) Oh, but the picture quality!

 

Oh. Yes. You'll be using more compression, just like you are when you're shooting 12:1 8K...

 

P

You haven't actually used a Red, eh? I did quite a bit of experimenting with compression ratios before I settled on 12:1. 12:1 sounds extreme... but it doesn't look at all extreme. On the contrary, it looks excellent and left me a lot of latitude for grading.

Yes, you can choose just ProRes or DNxHR. I do it for smaller shoots sometimes.

We're looking for distributors and investors... hopefully it will be available on BluRay as well as VOD... but we're just finishing up the color grade.

https://youtu.be/F9aWP89eZ8o

I think it's been well over a year since they enabled ProRes and DNxHD recording? Simultaneous would mean that Redcode raw would still be recorded at the same time. I don't know if every type of ProRes can be recorded and at what resolutions -- at some point, the data rates would get higher than compressed raw since you are talking about RGB.

ProRes and DNxHD came with the DSMC2 brains, so it's been nearly two years now.

I've found the ProRes/DNx option to be useful for small projects, but not so much the simultaneous option, since it fills the cards up so quickly.

8K at 12:1 requires something like 30% less space than 4K 444, and it's easier to grade, so that was a winner for us on our last feature film production.

Good luck... I love trekking in the forests here, but not so much the rest of living here. Too much amazon, not enough creativity...

Maybe we can meet up for a coffee or beer before you head out :)

I love getting input and suggestions from the gaffer. And if they understand my preferences well, they can do most of the heavy lifting, so to speak. But in the end, it's my job I believe. When we go into overtime, the producer comes to me, not the gaffer :)

That's my favorite kind of gaffer. I have worked with a few of those... I ask for something and they set it up and then show me some ideas they came up with in the process that sometimes improve the look another notch. I like that :)

Seems surprising to hear about a cinematographer who isn't interested in lighting, it's like a cook who isn't interested in eating. Lighting is possibly my favorite aspect of the job.

Mine too, especially as I've been getting better at it.

Given that lighting is such a large part of crafting the look of the image though, it's even more baffling that people call themselves cinematographers without showing an interest in lighting... but I think that it's just that so many of the folks in my area are taught to believe that "directing the photography" means operating the camera. I'm glad I found a group that doesn't actually care about what kind of camera I bring along, because they love the way that I light scenes for them.

 

So, that's exactly the point I want to challenge Rakesh. Is it really your experience that most (more than 50%) of people that use their gear to get work are uninterested in developing their skills?

Sadly, it is true. A *lot* of the "cinematographers" I've run into in my area don't even show an interest in lighting; they let the gaffer decide that. It made finding a mentor in my area a challenge. I've even run into quite a few fairly experienced "cinematographers" around here who actually claim that lighting isn't their job. It's frustrating. Most of them are nice enough, but working with them wasn't all that educational.

So the few times that I ran into cinematographers who actually practiced the craft of cinematography were quite a relief! I just with that those folks were locals.

That attitude puts you in the minority of newbies. Most of the newbies that I've met haven't shown much interest in developing their skills.

I also don't believe that talent is innate, regardless of the connotation.

 

I have learnt the hard way to keep a good distance to productions which want persons mostly for their gear, not their talent :ph34r:

Agreed... usually the people who get hired that way aren't very good, because they bought the gear to take advantage of people who hire for gear rather than talent.

 

Well, I guess I break that law... I'm sort of in the F/64 camp for stills... diffraction be damned... and use swings and tilts to adjust the plane of focus for 'infinity' sharpness... rectangular lines be damned... or for motion pictures, the Greg Toland camp.. use a split diopter to get the impression of infinite DoF.

 

On the other hand, if one uses shallow DoF... at least get the actor's/actress's eyelashes sharp... and a head brace for said talent to render their head immobile for close up shots...

I came from the same camp, by learning using 4x5 and shooting landscapes in deep focus. I like having the background slightly soft, but I also like to use deep focus shots.

A depth of field so shallow that the background is mush is rarely appealing to me though. Sometimes I like turning the background into a wash of color for effect, but most of the time I do that it's for macros or wildlife shots.

One of the... "filmmakers" that I've worked with on occasion complained that only being able to record 14 minutes at a time before reloading was a major problem, so he thought my camera was unusable. Yet I'm using it with those tiny cards to shoot a feature film, but a lot of is due to the fact that we're shooting with the sort of discipline you'd use when shooting on film.

What I think is the most ironic is that the "filmmakers" who are most obsessed with rolling all the time and also with using as many cameras at the same time as they can get away with are also the type who don't have any sort of plan when they start a shoot, and the shoots end up being a LOT longer than if they'd just done a better job of planning and only used one camera.

I'm just glad that I didn't have to edit those. I wouldn't want to be the one who has to sift through all of that!

Especially since the same sort of folks who are that obsessed with generating footage are also less disciplined about slating...

I'd suggest Resolve as well from a visual perspective, but it has next to nothing in the audio category (if you need that covered).

It's currently in beta, but Resolve got a major update in that area.

There's always the legally freely available DaVinci Resolve...

Even your average hairdryer is quieter than a RED.

 

:)

Red seems to have finally addressed this... except when I was in the desert heat, my Epic-W has been surprisingly quiet so far.

My theory for why the DP would choose to frame that way:

When there's nothing in the background, it's going to make the frame unbalanced, which tends to make the audience uncomfortable. It also has the effect of making the other person's space feel cramped, while giving the other person a visually stronger and move overbearing position.

That reminds me a bit of the scene in Blade Runner very near the beginning where one of Deckerd's (sp?) colleagues is interrogating someone to determine whether they're human or android.

Unforgiven comes to mind as an example of a brilliantly executed Western with some gunfights and such in it.

Also the Assassination of Jesse James.