Stop motion / Day ext in studio & lens choice

[Joaquin Castro]

Hi everybody,

 

I´m shooting an animated short and I´m struggling to recreate daylight in a studio (midday, dusk, sunset, etc)

My main problem is skylight, I don´t know how to approach it really. Not sure if for midday (for example) using a big 12x12 silk over the set would be enough, or if complementing it with some punchier sources such as kinos, or if I should add an extra big blue source to tint shadows, etc etc

Any articles or help regarding day exterior on studio wether it´s stop motion or live action would be really helpful

 

My other question is which kind of lenses (in technical aspects) would be the best. Is manual aperture very essential? If it is, what about manual focusing? Because manual lenses ussually don´t have autofocus and I don´t think touching the camera to focus would be the best. Any lens model (zoom) or set to suggest? Camera will probably be Canon 5d mk iv, 6d or 70d

 

Thanks ahead of time for any thoughts or help!

[David Mullen ASC]

I've never heard of autofocus being used for stop motion work, you want very precise control and you don't want the focus to hunt between set-ups/frames, so any adjustments are done manually and have to be planned in advance, otherwise you'd leave it in the same spot. If you want a "rack" focus during a scene, it would have to be plotted over a number of single frames so that when played back at 24 fps, it looked like a smooth shift in focus over the course of a few frames, not a jump that happened between two single frames. So you need a solid camera support in order to adjust the lens without moving the camera.

 

Skylight should be very soft and overhead, and cooler than hard sunlight, the relative balance (how blue for the skylight, how warm for the sunlight) is a creative choice and it also depends on the base color temperature you are working in.

[Joaquin Castro]

I've never heard of autofocus being used for stop motion work, you want very precise control and you don't want the focus to hunt between set-ups/frames, so any adjustments are done manually and have to be planned in advance, otherwise you'd leave it in the same spot. If you want a "rack" focus during a scene, it would have to be plotted over a number of single frames so that when played back at 24 fps, it looked like a smooth shift in focus over the course of a few frames, not a jump that happened between two single frames.

Thanks David! Just wanted to say your old posts about Manure and Big Love have been the biggest help up to the moment. When I referred to autofocus I meant using it through Dragonframe and adjusting it milimetrically, but what you say makes more sense I think.