Ryan Emanuel

FOV is the term that confuses people because others would argue that the focal length and the FOV do not change, only the crop factor. Its semantics of terms but thats definitely where people get confused. Separate question. I own a set of Veydra MFT primes. Now the imaging circles cover s35mm. People use these lenses with the Fs7, but when I compare frames between the Veydras on my Blackmagic Pocket 4k and my directors viewfinder set to s35mm, the frames line up between the viewfinder and the P4K. That leads me to believe that the Veydra imaging circle is designed for MFT, the 25mm Veydra has no crop on the P4K. But then what is going on for the lenses on super 35mm. Can you really have an imaging circle where the FoV of a 25mm fits on a MFT sensor, but theres still enough extra 25mm room to cover s35mm. The reverse crop would be like .70 crop, that seems like a lot of room before vignetting. Or is the lens company lying about the mm and the true FOV is more like a 18 but they marked the lens 25mm

Still confusing mostly because people use the term field of view differently. I'd like to try to explain my understanding without the term field of view. Please let me know where I'm wrong. I understand that the depth of field and the spacial distortion of a lens is fixed. Regardless of the sensor size those characteristics of the lens are part of the optics and not the camera. 25mm will have a the width, height, and spatial distortion relationships between distances of a 25mm within its imaging circle. When the sensor is smaller than the imaging circle, there is a crop, or smaller cookie cut out of the 25mm imaging circle. It is not the same as shooting on a tighter mm. The distortion and the depth of field is the same as the 25mm, but it is cropped in. The sensor size the imaging circle that the lens was designed for only impacts the potential cropping. But the full spacial perception characteristics of depth, width, and height, of a 25mm can be projected onto different sized imaging circles. You can have a 25mm imaging circle that fits on a small sensor that sees the same exact frame as a 25mm designed for big sensor. If you take the 25mm with an imaging circle designed for LF, and put it on a s16 sensor. You are still looking through a 25mm but with a crop in equivalent to the percentage of the surface area of the LF sensor divided by the surface area of the S16 sensor. Now saying a 25mm is a 25mm is a 25mm is right but its kinda a riddle that perplexes the original question. You won't use an 25mm with a LF imaging circle on s16 like you would on LF, the experience of shooting on the 25mm with a fixed imaging circle is different on the different sensors. Due to the crop thats going to effect the distance subjects are from the camera. While you might have liked subjects 6 feet from the camera for mediums on a 25mm with a LF imaging circle, once you use the s16 sensor with the LF lens, the crop will force you move your subject back to 12 feet lets say for the medium. You will get the depth of field and distortion characteristics of a 25mm at 12 ft but your frame will be a medium. The frame will definitely look different even though its the same lens. The entire experience of shooting will be different, BUT it is not the same as a 50mm in terms of depth of field and distortion characteristics setting the focus to 12 ft. It is important to know what imaging circle size the lens was designed for because of potential cropping.

Theres nothing bland about high key, it its just another style. The trick is choosing a location with bright walls and making sure the make up is on point. If people have shiny foreheads with specular highlights, theres nothing you can do with the lighting to fix the problem. The ratios aren't that specific, you usually are just keying 1-1.5 up. The fill and background can be pretty flexible depending on the look. Without a lot of firepower, your gonna need to do tighter frames or ISO up, or choose a location with ample natural light. You don't have enough output to booklight, and bouncing may or may not work. If you have the space going through heavy diffusion might be easiest. Going up on the ISO might give you a thin negative, but it will capture the feel. Its also a personal preference how much the windows blow out. Going up on the ISO will help with the highlight rolloff. Light the cyc separately from the talent.

You probably have to ISO down, so the fill level you get from the eye light is less noticeable.

Thats one of the age old questions. It really depends on your preferences and also your camera's highlight DR. Are you ok with the lamp blowing out on screen? Some DPs are some DPs aren't. You could re-wire the socket with a higher wattage bulb, but you will have to be careful with the shade as it can be a fire hazard if it wasn't meant to be around heat. If you do get a brighter bulb, the lamp will probably blow out on screen. If you don't want it to, your most likely going to have to carry the practical, but adding a source from the same direction off camera to raise the key exposure from the lamp. This would probably be a small eggcrated fixture like a litemat 1 with snap grid armed into the scene, or something softer if thats your preference. Its interesting that you guys don't like the spill light upward. I have no problem with it, but its possible to tape some 216 gel to it, but definitely do not do it in a rush, do it the day before if you can, because its a delicate job to tape the gel but not have it be visible in the lamp shade on camera if you see the lamp.

You won't be able to fade from a warm look to a completely red anyway on the s60 unless you have dmx. If you have no crew, you have to forget about the s60, and find something more practical. Davids suggestion of the bounce makes a lot of sense. Are you going for hard light or soft, if it is soft you have to do a ceiling bounce or litemats. If you have no crew the you can probably get one litemat on a goalpost, in a reasonable amount of time and get a PA to help you stem it up, but it wont be that soft. If you haven't rigged a goal post before, an s60 is not the place to start especially if your speedrail is 12+ feet. Though a goalpost is a simple rig, if the question of what stand to use comes up then I wouldn't recommend putting more than 10-15 pounds on it. Canada might have different terms but you should be asking for 3 riser combo stands with casters. Please please please get safety chain. Another metric you didn't mention is how wide the frame is ft/meters aka how wide the goal post needs to be.

It also depends on your crew's capabilities. You should check how much a scissor lift is to rent at least for the backlights, the hanger probably has one for $200-300. I know that the key grips I work with would be asking me where the backlight overhead was going and how many lights were going in it. The space does seem perfect for an overhead softbox to backlight talent and light the whole space, but if your crew can't do that quickly its probably not worth it., but it would be dope.

your shutter speed cannot be lower than the frame rate, and for normal motion you usually want it to be double, so shoot at 240 on the shutter for 120 frames per second if you want it to look normal.

That all depends on what kind of story it is. And your approach as a director. Sometimes the actors matter most, some times the world building does. Do you wants to give actors freedom to go anywhere around the set, do you want striking compositions that could tell the story without audio. Theres plenty of of difference styles with different price tags.

I still have yet to see the actual benefit over 12 bit prores 444. Seems like extra post work with little benefit. You get to adjust your color space and your iso, but with a wide gamut baked in with a log gamma, the chances of you being able to do all the same transforms as you did with raw with minimal additional artifacts is pretty high. Plus I heard the raw file is smaller than the prores files, so I'm concerned about the compression artifacts. My gut is telling me that lifting and underexposed 12 bit 444 file with a large datarate might be easier than lifting the smaller raw file in post.

It is hard at first, but if your good it'll take 1-2 years before your financial sound if you start crewing. DIT jobs are easy to get so are grip and 2nd AC, the important thing is to learn the ropes fast so people will rehire you. Don't PA if you want to be a cinematographer, different departments. The hard 1-2 years is usually easier than 3 years of film school before you can work and over 100,000 in debt even at feirstein. You'll have to finance your own films which is not listed in the costs. But if you want comfort, film school will provide that. Most people just have the debt looming over them and don't make as much money in the industry as people who didn't go to school.

Matt, I'm sorry but dedication to the craft matters as much as a degree. All that matters in the long run is who knows you and who is going to hire you. Theres tons of working professionals that don't really have a passion for film but know how to network. This is a fake it til you make it industry, nothing more nothing less. Esther the biggest question for you is why do you want to go. You can learn more about filmmaking on set PAing than at film school. I knew more than some of the professors by just reading. To me the only reason to go is that you are willing to gamble $100,000 that the directors and producers in your class will have careers and you can form relationships with them. The truth is one out of 25 directors in film school will be a director, most will be something else. Cinematographers have it easier to pay back loans because they can gaff or key grip or AC, but if you jump straight into crew jobs you'd be in the same place with no debt. At the end of the day is really more of a personality question than a talent question. Are you personable enough that an experienced director would want to work with you more than an experienced dp? Then film school could very well be worth it if you are a beginner. If you go that route just know relationships is all that matters, what you learn in the classroom is pretty useless in comparison. If you knew a experienced dp, they could probably teach you everything about cinematography in 3 weeks, but an MFA at brooklyn college is 3 years and you'll know less. Definitely don't go if your only incentive is to learn.

I dropped out of the Feirstein Cinematography program. It really depends what level your at and what your trying to get out of it. Feirstein is not really catered to people with industry experience. Its more of an introduction to filmmaking even though its a MFA. The pace of the program accommodates first time filmmakers so if your looking for a fast pace it might not be the right place.

Yea I was talking about recording bit depth, not the A/D. I guess my question is if you have a camera like the C series cameras that are 12bit sensors that are lowered to 8bit when encoded, is there no reduction in dynamic range after going down to 8 bit? If a lower A/D bit depth can effect the DR, why does the recording bit depth have no effect when theres less code values to distinguish stops especially on the lower end?

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. You can double the code values 8 times before you max out at 256 per channel. 10 bit has 10 stops, and 12 bit has 12 stops. Thats why 8 bit cameras can be so muddy underexposed, since the bottom three stops only have 14 code values per channel in total. Almost half the stops of DR the camera can see has very little color information. With less info the chances that the eye can tell the difference between the stops is low. Hence ETTR to utilize the top 4 stops that have over 80% of the color information the camera can capture. With a 12 bit camera the additional code values are added to the highlights and middle grey is reset higher giving the darks near middle grey 4 times the color info. Visually theres an increase in clarity and spacial fidelity. I feel like the canon c200 is a good example. If anyone has seen the difference between the 8 bit capture and the 12 bit, the darks have more "DR." When two camera have the same bit depth but one has a higher full well capacity its obvious which one will look slightly better, but from my understanding bit depth in many casing can be the largest variable in DR.

A silk probably wont work on that window unless you booklight it, if you want the window to be evenly exposed. Its 50/50 whether the patient is being lit by the window or a separate small source. There should be two specular square highlights in their eye from the two windows but they have one, so they might have blocked the window light and used a small source for the window light. Or they did use the windows and the lower window just didn't catch in the eye. If the patient angle looks to front lit, i.e. you aren't getting the rembrant triangle, either move the desk and chairs camera right until the shadows look right, or turn off the window light and get a small source to come from further upstage camera left. I'm not sure about the fill soft box, seems you can achieve that contrast ratio with a passive bounce instead. The shot reads very single source. Air on the side of subtlety with the exposure of the fill light. You shouldn't have to raise the fill level more than a stop at most. The Doctor has two extra things. They have a hair light from above right behind them, which is important since they are at least a stop down with a window 3 stops up camera right. The extra hairlight is helping bring focus to the subject. Second they have a bounce or dim light coming from camera right. Its slightly low angle since the nose shadow is angled up. I'd assume its a bounce catching the window light and angled towards talent. Might be a larger bounce.

I understand there is some story motivation, but the shots still seem like some standard medium overs and a 50/50 wide. Plus if you are pressed for time, I would show as little of that window in your shot as possible. The problem with the current wide is that you will have to find a balance in exposure between the cross keys and the window, where the faces are bright enough to stand out but dark enough to be plausibly motivated from the distant window. Especially since one character will naturally be silhouetted in the wide its not a quick process to get that key/backround window ratio right. In the end its up to you what you want to try, but to me the feeling of being watched or confined could be achieved with lensing in the center of the room where the natural light would actually be helping you in a time crunch.

Indie rule - Do not key through a window that is visible in frame. The edge will not wrap around well. So the you have to put in all this work to expose for a window that isn't even lighting the talent. It usually looks worse and is more work. If you have budget you can pull it off, but even with resources its ill advised. I would suggest changing angles or your blocking. Why are you putting one character against the wall. Also cramping yourself into the back of the restaurant might force you to put daylight sources too close. Whats wrong with the center of the restaurant? Or putting them right next to the window?

Until you unload the camera

It just really depends on how you shoot. Dynamic range doesn't matter in all cases. And if people are lighting for cinematic contrast they will kill half their dynamic range anyway. It only matters when the story calls for pleasant rolloff in high latitude scenes. For most controlled scenes you wouldnt be able to tell a 13 stop camera from a 14 stop. Plus since modern cinematography is pushing into the darks bit depth probably matters more for clarity than the stops of dr the sensor can handle. Highlight retention is easy to handle on most cameras now especially if your already 1.5 under for key and have some nd gel.

There are different things going on here for sure. Like Bruce said the majority of the feel of the look is derived from the wardrobe make up and production design. Look at the color palettes and communicate with your art department and wardrobe, to keep all design elements within the color scheme that you choose. As far as things you can do with the camera, I would take a bunch of stills from scenes you like and bring them into davinci. There are tons of false color plugins that you can download. Use false color and scopes to analyze what level skin tones and black levels are exposed at for the scenes you like. Thats a start. The complication for replicating the contrast and color precisely is that you don't have people with the same exact skin tone, and you don't really know where the lighting impacted the contrast or where the contrast curve of the camera did. I would shoot tests lighting a subject and create a 2:1 4:1 8:1 16:1 contrast ratio with a very soft key and then try different contrast curves on all those tests and see which combinations you like. You can also see if the key is one stop up or one stop down, side light, rembrant lighting, top light, and see how that effects things. Once you have a contrast curve you like for the camera, test CTS CTB CTO to see what level you need to get that warm key in the second photo, who knows you might need 1/8 CTS or 1/4 CTO for the last photo too depending on your contrast curve. As for the color thats the trickiest part. If you look at the vector scope, the color is pretty interesting. There is more purple/red in DDL then I would have expected and in general highlights of the skin are yellow and darks of the skin are red. Basically the skin is a wide array of tones between yellow and red, digital some times especially for the cheaper cameras, has a narrower array on the vector scope for skin tones. Usually its a thin line near the skin tone line, but the stills here are more like pizza slices on the vector scope. So you need to know how to separate tones a little bit. Some times that can be done just with contrast, sometimes you have to drop the luminance of colors specifically which takes a little skill. A good colorist and some testing would be the best route on the color front, but if thats not an option, wardrobe, PD, make up, and lighting, and an appropriate contrast curve will get you close to the feel anyway.

Another thing to take into account is color, if you use a high contrast tonal curve, colors will separate more and you will get more saturated and deeper colors. There are some deep saturated colors that look great that are very difficult to get naturally in a low contrast image. I guess thats where the "experience colorist comes in, but I would say to get cool looking color in a low contrast/high dynamic range scene, it might be more dependent on wardrobe and production design than your colorist. A great colorist will still struggle to make a low con image look good in a white room with bland wardrobe and even lighting. Also I'm just talking about the LUT you use for viewing and exposing, you still should always be recording log or a low contrast curve if possible for safety and add the contrast back in for post.

I would say you have some good things going on. For the front angle, the key has a good angle and is flagged off the background nicely. Its a matter of personal preference but I would have softened the key more and brought the intensity down like 2 stops. Since its a dark scene, 30-50 IRE is a good range for his skintone depending on mood. I think the shot is in the 70s. Also he can use a very very subtle edge light to separate his black hair from the background. For the cutaway on the hands, its a good angle but you can lose 90% of the fill light. Let the edge light define his hands and create more interest with light and dark tones. The fill flattens the shot to much. Its kinda why the shot from the back works better than the hands. For the profile shot, I think it can also loose a little exposure on the key and the fill light. The background just needs some brighter points of interest. Its a little to black back there. The front shots work a little better because you have those white doors to add some light/dark/light/dark to the background.

If it were up to me, I would gladly test the units with the camera and a grey card and a RGB parade to know for sure. The lack of testing for me is due to production department on tiny budget projects. The tungsten units and the HMI are both coming from different owner operators so coordinating a test before the shoot would require an extra rental. I tried to negotiate explaining the benefits of using a regular rental house, but with sites like sharegrid, some producers will browse for the best bottom line. I'll have to do the test on set, I was just asking because I have a tight first day.

I have a shoot where I'm going to need HMI's and tungsten to work seamlessly for color temp and green/magenta shift, but I will not have the time to test, wondering if anyone has had to do this already and has a gel cocktail that worked well. Thanks.