Saikat Chattopadhyay

Please let me know if this is the right section to post this. I was trying to learn to light these type of shot(s): 1. Wide Angle Night Interior (mostly living rooms) : I honestly don't have any specific references hence I am looking for usual approaches from different DOPs who prefers naturalism. What type of lighting you would prefer if you need to place the fixtures far away and get a nice fall off at the same time. From sets where I worked as AC I saw multiple fixtures with 8* flags ,which doesn't light up faces as expected. It would be nice if someone can help with examples from Films/narratives.

Thanks for the lovely insight Chris, also is it possible to share the prompts for 2nd or 3rd Image?

Kindly ignore if the topic is irrelevant. As a student of cinema and cinematography,what I have noticed the advancement in tech is more of a concern in cinematography rather than the aesthetics or in some case, story. Films like Nope or TV series shot in virtual production,or something like Way of Water . Hence I wanted to ask in what way we are going to see evolution of Cinematography in next decade or two ,and should we still study films by Freddie Young,Vittorio Storaro ,Frederick Elms, Chris Doyle,Bruno Delbonnel,Claire Mathon etc. where the aesthetics is still kept under consideration? Also the people who are starting out in cinematography ,would need to add some more skill set under the belt ? Thanks in advance. Saikat C Cinematographer | Colorist

Thank you for kind words. Yes I did the grade as I am also a colorist myself.

Hi, I am dropping my reel here which includes shots from the projects in my film school. I would really appreciate if I get honest opinions and/or any suggestions which might help me get better. Also if I am on right path of choosing cinematography .

Hi , I will be shooting my Diploma film next week and most of it is inside a room and a hallroom,hence I am looking for some suggestion on how to setup lights indoors.Apartment is high up hence lights cannot be placed outside and using lights inside is a challange because of bounce and less control.Also Director wants both uplifting and gloomy scenes . I am looking for suggestion rather doing a recce because I cannot do it due to rental charges. I have only seen the location and took some snaps. As far the lighting kit goes ,I will be using Apurture 600D as primary and 3 other 200 W Godox LED lights along with diffusers,CT gels,flags and one china lantern (pretty low budget). Including a folder of my previous projects in school for reference (not sure if it is relevant anyhow). https://www.dropbox.com/sh/d5vhuhfh6gekjr3/AADEJhZvSwwXcQiLM0yG_yH3a?dl=0

Thank you for the suggestions ,I watched the trailers of both films and they look astonishing and seem to be very interesting . Will definitely watch and study them !!

Hi everyone, I am not sure if it is a right question to ask or has been asked before! Pardon me for that. I am looking for movie recommendations (or it can be short film/tv series/tvcs) which has some good example of natural interior night time lighting and shows contemporary era (not period) to light my upcoming project. All the movies I usually watch have very high contrast night lighting generally. However I found the night interior scenes by Helene Louvart and Robbie Ryan are bit on the naturalistic side. It would be very helpful if you can recommend some more. Thanks in Advance.

https://juanmelara.com.au/ This guy manages to do both and he worked on pretty high budget commercial I guess. So if you are good at it may be you can .

Isn't the stops of dynamic range dependent on ISO? Like in the native ISO dynamic range is equally spreaded on both Shadow and Highlights . However,as we stop down the ISO we get more stops in shadows rather Highs and opposite result for ISO increment? I came across this great video by John Hess. He tested with different ISO to measure stops .

Although I am from Electronics Background but I am not sure about my answer: A digital sensor might not measure any wave property i.e. wavelength or frequency . Tools like Spectroradiometers can but they cost more than mid range cine cams. Sensor has photosites(in short diodes) and 2,4 or more photosites make a pixel. Photosites convert photon energy (light energy) to electric and voltage is measured in sensor . That measured voltage is sent to ADC and other components . RAW data doesn't have any chroma subsampling and workflow is same as David mentioned because there is no chroma component before bayer pattern. However, RAW can have compression just to save space. In Y'CbCr/YUV the CbCr components are 'Chroma Difference Blue' and 'Chroma Difference Red' ,which actually means how much they differ from the green component while keeping the luma same. However,I don't have any idea about how much chroma component is there in luma or how it is calculated ,I just know in subsampling the luma component is kept aside and YUV Broadcast model was first coined to keep BW and color TV models running at same time. Hope this helps,corrections will be appreciated.

I am not sure but I think a log can also be a multi gamma function. Brands modify the shoulder and knee regions in log gamma to squeeze more and more details . However, a gamma is not color space or equation ,it is the power in the equation. In a CRT input output response is denoted by something like I=V^y (think 'y' as gamma,I don't have greek letters in my keyboard) . For the time being you can refer to this article that I found recently ,it is very informative and easy to grasp: https://www.thebroadcastbridge.com/content/entry/5246/looking-deeper-into-log-gamma

I use to study mainly commercial works by DOPs from their website or from the Ad itself . This happen to include DPs from my country as well and I quite go through their works a lot. However , I started noticing that the direction and overall intensity of light on set look exactly same in almost all (I mean Ads in same Genre) . Only some difference in set design is there to confuse you . My only guess is what Stephen mentioned ,that the light setups are already there and they just go there and roll the camera. Most of them just show off with the cameras they touch ,which are eventually setup by some other guys . There is a DP ,working in high budget commerial ,said that he uses False Color to get perfect color in his works when asked in an interview. However, this might happen because of the unnecessary deadlines by client or agencies and also the fact that these guys take everything for granted . Their 'people-won't-find-mistakes-anyway' attitude is also a big concern .

Thank you for this informative piece!! Yes, Barry Lyndon is definitely a bliss to watch . But in the Church Scene from the blog the light fixtures were very prominent unlike this scene,even the DOP mocked about it by saying 'it was like multiple Suns out there'.

Thanks for the other explanation ,that has helped a lot. The fact that confuse me is ..if the light has to go out of frame then it must be in some angle and the direction of light will be changed accordingly . So in that case Sun position will be a considering factor as well!!