Hello, I will be shooting a short film that I wrote, I'm still considering shooting the short film at night, since the night time is a character in the short, but the diner location I needed closes at 4pm, and they won't allow me to shoot at night, since it's low budget, and don't have the funds to pay them. For that reason alone I may have to shoot in the daytime, which would introduce considerable problems, considering I will not be able to afford lighting equipment, For instance, I have interior dialogue scenes in cars, if I switched that to daytime, on a partly cloudy sky, I would need an HMI light and a muslin to bounce light for consistency, which I could never afford. In night time, I can merely use a Chimera 1K light and use a bulb that could match the parking lot lamps and use that in a low key situation, exposing this light with a fast primes and 800 iso would allow the proper exposure. Plus, I love the look of sodium vapor lamps, especially on a wintry night, I plan on shooting with a Canon 7D and a couple of fast primes, a wide-angle 24mm f/1.4 and a standard telephoto 50mm f/1.2 lens. These lenses are incredibly sharp when shot almost wide open, the lenses lose considerable sharpness at around f/5.6 , but if I shoot between f/2.2 to f/1.8 at 800 iso, I'll need between 5-8 foot-candles for proper exposure in the exterior scenes, which is something I could never do with film. I was scouting a different diner in Austin that is open for 24 hours, I hope they allow me to shoot there, the main light source are fluorescent fixtures that are around 4400k,
I understand that many fluorescent tubes that are used in public places have bad CRI rating at around 56 or 60, compared to Kinos which are around the mid 90s. I could never change all the fixtures, since that would cost a lot of money! So, does anyone have any advice on how to deal with fluorescent sources that are not very photographic? Is it possible to use the greenish color they render to my advantage? I kind of like the Fincher look with the green fluorescent tubes,when he uses them in night time, so when exposing for such a scene, do these fluorescent tubes normally flicker? I didn't get a chance to photograph them at night, which is something I will be doing.
I also plan to film in the interior of a hotel, I plan on changing all the bulbs to give it a warm look like in no Country For Old Men, I wanted to match the sources with 3200k globes. If I shot at 400 Iso at f/3.2 that would require 32 footcandles. So my question is, when it comes to choosing the wattage of the globes, do I have to make sure I get the proper amount of watts to match the amount of footcandles I will need? I plan on bouncing a 250W Omni-light, since they're rather cheap, this will establish the key light, which is motivated from one of the lamps close to the bed, added to this I plan on adjusting the color temperature to 6000k to give the scene a warmer look. So, how exactly do I go on about figuring out how many watts will match the amount of footcandles I will need? I'm sure there is a formula for this?