Albion Hockney

The basic way those type of filters work leads to halation in highlights. If you don't want halation I'd try Low Con - you get some softness and lifted shadows, but a much more subtle/diffuse halation.

Yes. A 2560 would be easier to operate then a 1030 and be more stable for large zooms. it takes larger sticks, 150mm ball mount or mitchell base. Why don't you ask to test at your local rental house? It is much heavier and promotes a different style of shooting then the 1030.

I think that your intuition there is Negative fill is a good one. However that is generally decided upon while lighting and can be hard to tell. If your in a space with white walls you may notice too much light bouncing onto your fill side and need it. Or your key light is so strong the white walls help even the contrast out. I would say its the last step in the process. You can achieve high contrast with soft light. It will just depends on the angle the source is coming from and lighting ratios. This example has soft light coming from mostly the rear third and a little bit from the side so her fill side gets very little light on it. Just be careful that your soft light doesn't wrap around the face/front of the scene too much - keep it coming from behind and a little on the side.

I think the practical China ball is filling the scene with a good amount of light so I would start by dimming and find a base level for the back. Then worry about the actors. Bruce, really curious about your idea becaus I would never do that! Do you have examples where you did that?

Try dimming your practicals down so they arent clipping. After you do that you will see your off camera lights are much more impactful. I would control the chinaball your using for lighting off camera with duvateen skirted around it and bring it pretty close to talent

Killian. That is a big frame. Your M90 will be able to do one beam of sunlight. I would think about one ray of sun coming between trees or a narrow alley. That should allow you to cover foreground talent in a medium shot - maybe even a wide if ambiance is way down. but day wide shots are what they are in terms of what lighting is there unless you are working at a huge scale. Like several 20x20's and many 18k's. depending on your background the lighting might look a bit artificial - especially if you see the sky. Could be ok if you like stylized.

Guy, do you have any stills or a link to the final project? I would be very hesitant to use an M40 to create direct sun outside unless the ambiance was way down and frames where quiet tight. However I can see it workings as a subtle soft sunset effect.

Capturing 14 stops dr and compressing to 7 or w/e rec 709 is much different then capturing only 7 stops to begin with

A couple things about your Maxi brute idea. 1 is that you will need to rent a generator of considerable size to run a light like that which would cost I'm sure more then a larger light. (I'd think it would cost less to run an M40 off a putt putt then run a maxi off a trailer mounted generator, not just because of the rental, but also crew). The cheapest thing would probably be two M18's and a putt putt. The other thing is the size of the source. I might be wrong about this, but I have never known anyone to choose a maxi brute because of the source size. Generally it is backed off so far away the separate source's unify into a single beam or it is put through diffusion. The intention generally isn't to get a softer source - but I don't have much experience with that so maybe there is a softening quality - I'd just be worried about having multiple staggered shadows. Lastly the Lee diffusion guide is far from perfect, I wouldn't worry too much about those little pictures. Although I will agree soft frost is not the most efficient diffuser. It has a nice quality though.

I'm confused why you are worried about the "light direction" when it is an interior shoot. Since you are placing the light outside of windows spill/source size shouldn't be a big problem as the windows will control most of the spill. I think you need to separate two things: How diffused the source should be (IE the shadow and wrap quality of the light) and Spread of the beam of light. The spread of light can be controlled in various ways, with flags and egg crates etc. It does get harder to control with a more diffused (IE larger) source, but if you have windows involved and a bit of distance between the source and subject you should be able to use flags to control the source off of what you don't want it hitting w/o much of a problem. So I think all you really need to do is decide how soft you want the moonlight and then decide on the right density and size of diffusion to obtain that (of course along the way make sure you are not loosing too much light to obtain the stop the DP wants at 200 ISO). If you think Lee 250 is too strong try 251 or if you want bigger then 4x4 half soft frost like David mentioned might be a good pick. As for light loss/throw from the diffusion generally you can account for that by using a big enough light. To get a ball park I generally just combine the photometrics of the light you want to use ( http://calc.arri.de/calculator ) w/ the light loss of the diffusion ( http://www.leefilters.com/lighting/diffusion-list.html )

I think traditionally short zooms find a use on multicam style shows or more docu style shows that moves very very fast. The modern angenieux products have pretty much taken over that space. They are sharp, light, and almost as fast as the VP's. These type of shows often care a little less about having really shallow DOF or the characteristics of the lenses too so that might help explain why the VP's never got popular - 4.4KG is also VERY heavy.

best test footage yet. could be the grade, but highlight roll off looks a little too harsh to me. Just brighter frames in general and way color/saturation is handled - feels lacking in richness. looking at the mans face at 2:56 for example. a lot of the other stuff looks great though, tonality/color in the low to mid range is looking really good.

Most of the time the gaffer does incident readings and tells the dp. Or the dp asks what something is reading at. Dp might say can you get another stop out of the key light and you make adjustments until the meter reads a stop brighter. Some dps might let you know they are looking for a certain lighting ratio and you can use the meter to check it. Im not sure of any more formalized way to work.

All I was talking about is the shallow focus.

I think the shallow DOF look is for sure in vogue, but also makes great images. It's not always about getting rid of the BG sometimes its just separation and a feeling. People are so grumpy about trends, everything has always worked in cycles - don't sweat it. just saw this the other day which I think exemplifies the large format/shallow dof trends - and it looks great https://vimeo.com/250157051

https://www.quasarscience.com/collections/a-series-led/products/a-series-medium-base-household-bulbs?variant=3582653635 6000k only still

Is the 1.6k mole (I think thats the biggest they make?) close to m40 output?

How wide is your biggest shot? are you going to see around/the top of the mausoleum. The mausoleum seems pretty far from the graves in the background so I'm not sure how much those are playing in your shot. I think your on the right track, If you need to cover a really big background I would try to get 1 m40 put that high and far away as you can. The only LED fresnel option's I know of are by Mole I think that would work too and maybe be more power efficient though I have never used them. Aside from one big BG light If you need a stronger edge on talent or want to pick out other elements in the BG I'd have some smaller HMI's. M18 and Joker 800's for the frontal light on talent, that could be almost anything. Just something soft and dim. I like the idea of it being toplight. You could also just set up an 8x8 overhead and bounce something like a joker 800 into it. You can do an M40, a M18, and 2 Joker 800's on 2 6500's.

but it seems intended to prevent saturation falling off with luminance, at least as much as is practical. Most of this is over my head! but the last thing you said - this seems quiet important. As the Alexa has very rich color in shadows. Looking that the Venice footage this is something I noticed was lacking.

This is interesting - but the idea that Sony color is accurate and Arri color is optimized for a "pleasing image" feels very vague. Why wouldn't accurate color be pleasing? Is there any information on what is actually going on inside the Arri and how an engineer is "artistically adjusting the colorimetry"

I think this is the million dollar question. Considering the release of the LF I think its clear they don't have anything new and won't soon. That said I think there is a good chance the Alexa sensor will still make better images then the Venice - of course subjective, but I do think many DP's will still favor the Alexa based on the test images from Venice. I think Arri would be hoping the next sensor they release will be another major step forward and hold dominance of the industry for sometime and maybe the tech just isn't there yet for that?

The Alexa LF seems more like a slightly cheaper option then the Alexa 65mm for high end productions (its 90k for the body). Productions that can afford the larger format lens options for the actual large format sensors like the alexa 65 and large sensor reds. I think it is a weak offering considering how long the current sensor has been around. It seems they are starting to enter dangerous territory leaving room for something else to come along. Arri moves slow with R&D and this release signifies they have no new sensor and probably won't for awhile. The Alexa LF does seem old - heavy, no internal ND, just barley hitting the 4k marks. that all said I didn't love the test images from the Venice at all. It also only does 60p which is a problem for some. It seems to me sensor tech is at a bit of a plateau when it comes to really giving a better image then the Alexa. The Alexa sensor in this regard is really amazing considering it came out 10years ago!

^ exactly. Eggcrate is usually used for tighter spaces. It gives the illusion of a big soft source far away that is flagged off on the sides.... but if you have big sources far away you can just use big solids.

I was hoping after 8 years there would be a new sensor rather then just a larger one. I wonder how development is going in general for technology that gives more latitude and color information. Since the first Alexa sensor it seems the forward progress has been very incremental for all manufactures. Finally Sony and Red may have caught up, but I'm not sure if the Venice or Monstro are really any better (was really unimpressed by images from venice thus far) Good news for current Alexa owners though, that investment is still going strong. 3.2k to 4k ...I don't know if that matters to anyone except for Netflix and VFX.

Either c300MKII or Fs7. Mostly still photo lenses like canon zooms, but maybe the higher tier shooters have cine zooms. I doubt they are using any pro mist.