Jason Kirsch

Please be patient as I try to explain my question clearly... This seems like such a simple question but  it's a bit hard to articulate without knowing the right terms and I've never met someone that can answer it with conviction. I also generally do this by "feel" but sometimes I'm a bit off and want to tear my skin off for it.

I'm wondering the technical height to place the camera relative to a subject in order to obtain the most even POV (minimizing any upward/downward angle). For instance, a frame that fills a face, do you place the camera height where the center of the lens is 1/2 down the face (technically), if a perfect center position is what you want to achieve. Or, when capturing a wide of two people seated at a table... if you measure the height of the heads of the subjects (assuming they're the same height), do you put the camera half distance to the ground in order to get a perfect angle (assuming the tilt is balanced)? Is the horizontal image plane the middle of the lens, assuming there's no tilt?

Now I understand that distance to subject is a variable here, but really looking for a time-effective method to prevent any vertical angle off centered in the shot. Thanks in advance!

All of these have the subjects in front of darker walls. American Apparel ads often use brighter colored design so the difference in level between the light reflecting off of the subject and the background isn't as apparent and more natural looking. 

Check out the cinematography on the movie We The Animals.

I use the Dracast 728 RGBs and they're fine if there's little ambient light but most of the time when I've thought about using color ambient light isn't a factor. I haven't seen anything that's low-cost, low weight that puts out a high output.