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Wide open at night


G McMahon

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Hello all,

Looking at shooting on 16mm on city night exteriors. Lots of head lights passing frame.

 

From knowledge, if you shoot wide open, is that when you get a mirror image of highlights through frame (if you can recall, city driving shots in the movie swingers have a pair of head lights mirrored in the scene). I also been told by using mattes on a matte box at night can act as a secong iris, is that true?

Am I better off getting the fastest lens that budget can provide and stop down one?

 

Thanks all,

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If you're shooting directly into lights, I'd recommend staying away from super speeds, and going with standard speed primes. I wouldn't recommend going wider than T2. You may find the look you want somewhere between T2 and T2.8.

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Some standard speeds are only T/2.8. I'd go with Super-Speeds (if Master Primes were not an option) just in case some places are really dark and you need to open up. Or modern T/2.0 lenses like Cooke S4's or Ultra Primes.

 

As for the inverted reflection, that usually happens when you put a filter in front of the lens.

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  • 1 month later...
I also been told by using mattes on a matte box at night can act as a secong iris, is that true?

 

 

Yes, the mattes can under certain circumstances act as another iris - a Waterhouse stop, so called because the first stops used for controlling exposure were just holes drilled in sheet metal, invented by John Waterhouse.

 

If the mattes change the shape of the bokeh then they might also affect your exposure but it would have to be a pretty drastic change of shape before you'd really need to worry. This is to check - point the camera, with the matte on, at a distant point source, such as a traffic light or car head light, throw it out of focus and if the resulting disk has any square corners you might want to think about going to the next size up on the matte.

 

 

further reading:

 

Waterhouse stop

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterhouse_stop

 

Bokeh:

http://www.vanwalree.com/optics/bokeh.html

 

 

 

HTH,

 

 

Kim Sargenius

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I think David Mullen has hit the nail on the head. You could run some tests

though and see what results you get. I had T1.9 running through my head

like one of those Cookes but its so close to T2.0. I do not have this exper-

ience with motion picture film but so many fine craftsman have been there

and so they know what they are talking about. Would video be a better for-

mat for what you want to do? Maybe DOF would be a problem then or may-

not.

 

Greg Gross

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