Luke Sommer

Another perfectionist, glad to find you here. I find it interesting that you like the Varicam LT colors so much, I wish I did haha. I own an LT and it's a baffling camera to me. I love the ergonomics, especially for handheld, it balances wonderfully. But the menus are very slow and there are certain things, like shortcuts keys not being able to be mapped to what you want, that drive me crazy. The colors, though, have a lighter red and denser yellows and blues. The Alexa is denser in red and lighter in yellow and blue. This makes for a sort of ghost like skin tone on the Varicam, can't really put my finger on it. However, there are ways in post to change this, but requires different approaches and techniques than standard grading. The other thing and, I can't quite figure out the reason, but the Varicam's motion has a flatness to it. The Alexa is the only camera I've seen that the motion feels like velvet. Where everything sort of blends together. I know the colors have something to do with this feel, the contrast has something to do with this, but there is something else. It might be the OLPF and the sensor speed / readout, as well. But only speculation. When I soften details and / or add grain to the Varicam it helps, but there's still a somewhat videoish quality that never quite goes away. This may be why anamorphic lenses help digital sensors, they soften the image and distort it. The thing about the Varicam that I've found through my own testing is it has decent dynamic range and, more importantly, keeps consistent color all the way through the dynamic range. One of the reasons the G2 and C200 are inferior is they fall apart when you start to lift the shadows. Also, the C200 (I owned one and returned it) has terrible CMOS smear the Varicam has almost none. But there's a reason the Alexa costs 100K, it's better (even if you don't love the colors, which you can change anyway). Don't fool yourself into thinking something a fraction of the cost is the same, it's not. But, you can get super close, if you know what you're doing. If you want the best, just look at what the best DPs in the world use (Film, Alexa, a little Red and a little Sony). In the end, the best camera is the one you have and keep working on telling a story. Throwout anything else I said.

Hi Adrian! Thanks for the detailed response. I sent you an email with an offer, you may be interested in. Either way, thanks for all of the info, really appreciate it!

Hey everyone, just discovered this forum and thought you all may be able to help me with my lighting. I'm shooting a music video for a 3 piece rock band in a house and they sent me a video of the kind of vibe they wanted with the lighting: (I only care about the lighting in the main performance, living room part) I'm a noob with lighting, but it looks as if they are pumping a ton of light through the windows (tungsten, with the camera daylight white balanced, given how orange it is) and have a bit of haze in the room, plus some fill or bounce cards, to bring up the band. I'm wondering what kind of lights they used? It looks sort of like Maxi-brutes or maybe large tungstens (5 or 10ks). What kind of generator would be needed to power such lights. Sorry for all of the beginner questions, but I'm normally just a director, but will be handling lighting for this project, as well. Also, it's very low budget, maybe $4-500 for rental. Thanks for all the help!