Stephen Sanchez

Hello Boris, I've never done a mirror into a mirror for more than a few minutes at a time. I can see a few issues. You know a guy will have to remain up there to adjust the sun-collection mirror. Something like every 3 minutes. Make sure they have a radio and perhaps a timer. It's best to call for another re-aim just before a take. I'd call for it right after camera rolls. Also, as the collector follows the sun, its angle to the second mirror will change over the day. The steeper the angle, the less light will be reflected. This will manifest as a thinner beam and less bright. This is only an issue if you need that exact look the whole day. But something to consider if the reflector is placed in a way that will have a steeper angle by shoot time. If you move the collector for a better angle, it will affect the beam angle transferred below. Be sure to plot the sun's arch so the topper's placement doesn't cast a shadow on the sun mirror. Practically, I see it as a pain in the arse. If I had the option, I'd forego the sun collection and use the M40 lensless and laserbeam it into both mirrors, or avoid mirrors altogether. This saves the headache of adjustments and loosing a guy all day. The photometrics of that light will tell you what lux you'll get on full spot without a lens. All you need is the distance. If the lux at that distance isn't near daylight (80,000lux) then you will need more wattage or dealt with it being dimmer than real sun.

Offer to help out in any way and you will get to know them better. Or offer your skills for free ( even though shorts rarely pay, this still sounds like a deal). I did this with the local group, offering to edit their project. Over the course of the project, I ended up handling the post-production, then color grade when the colorist did a bad job. Then you end up with good friends who help each other, as what happened to me.

Not that I know of. Arri has their own app as mentioned. I've had to search the web for each fixture. It takes a minute to compare, too. Because not every manufacturer measures intensity at the same distances. So then you have to do conversions.

LA Times article: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2021-08-30/behind-hollywood-glamour-this-instagram-account-highlights-darker-side-for-workers How many of you are experiencing this? This seems to be narrative work. What about those of you working commercials?

You're looking for photometrics. Most big companies, even Aputure, have photometric documents that display a fixtures intensity measured at various distances and their beam angle. That, plus knowing the stop loss of your diffusions will help find the stop you'll get. As practical advice, if you can afford it, try to always have more fixture wattage than you need. You can always remove light, but you cant get more if you need it.

A moving reflector with moving lights will cause the light to dance on your subject. And having backlights and camera track with your subject will work, but you wont see the background. In which case you could probably find a way to do it stationary in a controlled environment. So David's answer inherently solves all of that. The main takeaways are: Punchy light sources up high. So long as you can do that you will see the rain and background. You could still try to follow with backlights, and light the background separately in small pools of light ( say if you only had access to the weaker fixtures), but you won't be able to see much of the rain in the background. So it depends on your goals. As for the key light. I would make that a powered source or at minimum, a white surface.

That is such a perfect answer. Thanks David.

The curtains are partially blown out in the reference photo. The thing about your windows is you can't get a beam through them exactly like the reference photo. The frosted glass will glow instead of passing the beam unaffected. So it won't ever act like that reference photo. However, if the glass is lightly frosted, then you can shoot a beam from up high into it and the deflection into camera will be less intense, just like any other frost you'd use for production. But if it's a fine dense white window, then then above approach won't work. At that point, it's no different than placing diffusion gel on the window. If all the windows on that wall are the same material, then ND gel is pointless. You'll have more control by scrimming the fixtures until you reach an exposure you're comfortable with. Something I've done in a separate situation with large blown windows was to ensure there was some texture, like coarse net-style sheers with a pattern on them large enough to break up the glowy blob. Or have curtains in some manner. You may not have decision in the set deck, but you can suggest different solutions and request that a sheers solution have a pattern.

Keep in mind those landscape lights will likely have banding. I lit a set for someone using just those exterior LED panels you pictured. Color accuracy aside, in post they noticed banding when scrubbing the footage. For that use, it was okay, but with chroma key, the keyer will have to be broad enough to color pick the bright and dark bands. Otherwise blotching and artifacts will show. I've not messed with the green flood lights, but if they are designed the same, banding will occur. even at 300 degree shutter.

Those light levels are very low. It seems the skylight isn't reaching into the car. Tube lights in the ceiling would work for modern cars, but it wont sell old western by themselves. Perhaps have the characters light lamps to motivate the ceiling lights. As for exterior, the skylight may not matter if you're trying to play it as it really is: a dark rock canyon under trees. But if you are trying to pretend that the treecover doesn't exist and it is really skylight (which is at 10,000 lux), then you've got to lift it up more. Did you spot meter the rock? If the rock exposes at an acceptable stop, then I'd just play is as a dark canyon and not lift the skylight anymore.

Perfect explanation! Kudos Adam. @Mateusz Czopek, so with the above scenario, shooting your dark scene at 400 instead of 800 makes it darker for you. Your response is to either give the scene more light with the iris, or hotter fixtures on set. The more you shoot, the more you'll understand what you can get away with, and what you shouldn't. And each camera make varies a little with the noise levels. So get to know your tool.

Don't apologize. It's complex at first glance. So on video cameras that record log, the log image is the full range of the sensor. It records this file at the set ISO it was manufactured at (base ISO). That ISO can't actually change. When you view the image with a LUT (which you need to do), the LUT can only see a range of that log image. So when you push your ISO, you're viewing the shadow section of the log image, which is why its noisier. And this leaves the mid and highs of the camera's range unused. You need more light on the sensor to utilize the dynamic range its capable of, which will inherently give more detail in the shadow areas. So when you view the log in a lower ISO LUT, and light it that way, you are feeding the sensor more light. Switching between ISOs doesn't do anything to the log image, its for you to expose along the range of the sensor. So, for a cleaner image, shoot scenes with lots of shadow or darkness at a lower ISO (by 1 or 2/3 a stop). And for scenes with lots of white or hot areas, use the base ISO. If you are recording Rec709, the same principle applies because the camera is printing a LUTed image from log in realtime. This is different for stills cameras and I don't understand why. Stills cameras have a base ISO (say 800), but you can shoot at 100 and have a cleaner image and the most dynamic range.

I thought it was tiffen filters, but Ira doesn't specifically state the manufacture of the Top Gun grads.

Yes.

Is this on a set? Or actually outside? The more specifics you have about your problem, Adarsh, the better an answer you'll get.

@AdarshSo there's a couple ways you can consider lighting. They've already been brought up here: Lighting the space, or lighting for specifics, like layers you mentioned. A great way to look at it is both. Light for the space, then if the character is moved past that set, you can either choose to continue the gag with new lights (think interview setups on a long lens) or fill the new space with whatever natural/practical sources you like. Sometimes with relying on just lightingvthe space, you'll find holes of underexposure. So you can either add more to the space (somwtimes creatively hidden), or follow the character with a light (such as an out of frame lantern at night on the beach). You can also do this backwards: Light for the character first, then motivate those sources by extending them to the rest of the room. Your talent's kicker can apply to the background as sunlight through the window, for example. This manifests as a FG + BG lighting approach (layer lighting). I'd advise against this. The resulting image can look artificial.

I used this FX6 for a week for a new spot and... Oh my gosh. That AF feature is incredible. I did a backwards doorway dolly following talent coming toward camera. It locked onto her without a problem and really eliminated retakes from missed focus. This allowed the director to deal with talent only. Really cool. An issue I found was the unintuitive way to change faces. Canon makes it easy with touch screen, but Sony didnt go that route, and changes couldnt be done on the fly.

@Phil Rhodes thanks Phil. I didn't consider forza. I'm looking at Aputure LS1 and Dracast too. @Gabriel Devereux yea I'm looking at white LED. You know, I've seen recent news stations built with LEDs completely. And while news doesn't care about image quality to the degree we do, I dont see any problem with it. The tech is constantly changing and refining. But for static skylight, I'm not concerned. Thanks for the info man. Personally I think banks of surplus Kino Image 80s would be perfect for the job. I'm on the fence about it, since LED is so efficient and dmx dimmable. And Image 80 abailability is dependent on what I can find.

A lot of our LED production gear is color accurate, like skypannels, Litepanels and Aputure. But they're built for daily use, and are bulky and expensive for a permanent placement. I'm looking for LED fixtures just as color accurate as our production gear, but intended as permanent installations. I'm going to be lighting for a string of permanent studio sets. They're all interior rooms with "windows." The studio will have no hanging grid or grid power drops, but instead permentant sky and sun installations and main distro from lunchboxes for production floor lights. LED over tungsten will save on power, air conditioning, and cable gague to the fixtures. I may end up using tungsten for the suns but certainly not skylight. So friends, any suggestions on color accurate LED sources meant to be set and forgot? FYI, I have used industrial fixtures, like hibays, for some budget builds, and the green tint is apparent. This could be a backup option, but I'm hoping for something that I dont have to correct, or is missing color wavelengths.

I know someone who had a welder copy their c-stand cart, using a hand truck as the base and scrap steel. It turned out well.

Perhaps this article is what you are looking for? I haven't noticed a difference using a current sekonic digital light meter. I recently used my little L-308x to match back lights from Astra panels and Kino flo's, with HMI key and fill light. I had no problem. Perhaps the problem is related to older generation sensors?

What an undertaking. This is a dream gift and opportunity to experiment! Right? I mean to intercept the sun over entire city blocks and place your own? What a treat! I would ensure that whatever the overhead solution is, that it works for you obviously. If the material can take the 80,000 lux of sunlight and bring it down to 10,000 lux or less, then your 18ks can work. Id look up the fixture photometrics and have the overhead diffuse and chop enough light to make those fixtures bright enough to play as sunlight. Remember, sunlight is 3 stops over skylight, on a clear cloudless day.

@amirali mohammadi That professor is describing the same thing as two different terms. Perhaps he's using older concepts. "Fall-off", as I and every shooter/photographer I've met use it, is the fall-off rate. And it's literally the inverse square law. (Closer to the source, the steeper the drop. The further from source, the more gradual the drop.) Contrast ratio is separate. I would love to chat with this professor. Because contrast is dependent solely on a balance of more intense and less intense bodies of light that the subject sees. In the flash-photography example, if the camera had rotated around the subject 90°, there would be lots of contrast. But inside a white sphere, that would be truly flat. Inside a white sphere with an extremely intense hardpoint can be just as contrasty as the photography setup, if the intensity was strong enough. His example of the spotlight/floodlight is not an accurate interpretation. The inverse square is simple to explain. No light rays ever travel in perfect parallel, so they naturally spread from one another. And that spread is described in the inverse square law. It's a logarithmic line that has a constant rate of fall-off. You can't circumvent the law. But you can stretch or compress the line closer or further from the light, which is what we see when we spot and flood a light. An extreme example is a laser. Measured within a few meters, the fall-off rate doesn't appear to change. But over a couple kilometers, you'll see that it spreads and drops in intensity under the inverse square law. A floodlight's intensity drops so fast near the lamp that it appears to have a lower falloff. If you funnel all that light down a directional tube, the logarithmic line is stretched over a longer distance, and that same intense drop-off will appear further from the fixture. By learning the laws of light (1: Inverse square law, 2: Law of reflection, 3: Law of refraction), and understanding them, you'll be able to identify for yourself what is anecdote, misconception, or false claims. Analyze the laws within your setups and it'll get easier.

A few times I had some Quasar crossfades flicker unexpectedly. It turns out it was the hand dimmer they were plugged into. This article says that X10 or Power Line Carrier (PLC) dimmers can flicker LEDs, because the loads are so small. The hand dimmer I was using was a rotary style. If you can test some dimmers with Quasars, you'll have cheap flicker.

When it comes to lighting faces, I could explain better in person. Not so brief with text. But I'll try. If your bedsheet key is washing out the face. Then it is seeing too much of the face and needs to circle the subject until you get the texture you want. If you end up seeing your light gimmick in the shot, then back that source away. I almost always use walls, or back the stands up to walls. The larger and further your key is, the more it becomes a push for the whole room, not just your subject. And then it is more akin to a window. Same for kickers, if desired. Fill is different. Fill is the rest of the room that isn't the key. So by definition it is naturally larger than your key. I've filled by bouncing an LED panel into walls and dimming to taste. Some people don't worry about fill, but for commercial work, it is a must. I hope this is helpful.