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Exposing for car explosion on 16mm


Olle Knutson

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I will in a few days blow up a car on film...  but it my first one so I am looking for advice on how to expose the scene. In the scene a person will walk or run towards the camera and the car will explode in the background. Its important to see the persons face

It will be shot outside during the day and most likely will be cloudy and grey as hell, I live in Sweden. I can choose whatever ASA Kodak sells but im thinking 250D or 500T. No lights will be used if I can avoid it!

So what do ya think???

here's a previous explosion set up by my pyro guy and also what ours will look like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL1NpdobyH

 

heres another one thats fun to watch  https://youtu.be/7dyN-SwP4Gc?t=71

 

Screenshot 2020-02-18 at 15.44.34.jpg

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Kind of simple I think.  Since it's daytime, you would expose for the ambient daytime lighting (you really have no choice) and all will be fine.  Whether you add lighting for the face is up to you.  In your example frame, it does look like they've placed a light on the left of frame.

If you were shooting at night on 16mm and using the full frame there would be the concern that the fire will bleed into adjacent frames in a weird way.  I don't think this would be an issue during daytime.

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On 2/18/2020 at 6:08 PM, Bruce Greene said:

Kind of simple I think.  Since it's daytime, you would expose for the ambient daytime lighting (you really have no choice) and all will be fine.  Whether you add lighting for the face is up to you.  In your example frame, it does look like they've placed a light on the left of frame.

If you were shooting at night on 16mm and using the full frame there would be the concern that the fire will bleed into adjacent frames in a weird way.  I don't think this would be an issue during daytime.

So just expose like I would expose without an explosion? 

 

 

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4 hours ago, Olle Knutson said:

So just expose like I would expose without an explosion? 

 

 

In the daytime, yes. 

And maybe even at night.  The last time I photographed fire at night I shot digital at 800 ISO / T2.5 and it looked pretty darn good.  I didn't really have a choice as I needed to light a very large outdoor set.  As I mentioned before, with 16mm film there is a chance that the overexposed fire can bleed into adjacent frames (night only), but this probably won't be visible if you are cropping to 1.85:1.  It will appear only if you are using the 16mm full frame area which isn't done that often these days.  

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On 2/20/2020 at 5:22 PM, Bruce Greene said:

In the daytime, yes. 

And maybe even at night.  The last time I photographed fire at night I shot digital at 800 ISO / T2.5 and it looked pretty darn good.  I didn't really have a choice as I needed to light a very large outdoor set.  As I mentioned before, with 16mm film there is a chance that the overexposed fire can bleed into adjacent frames (night only), but this probably won't be visible if you are cropping to 1.85:1.  It will appear only if you are using the 16mm full frame area which isn't done that often these days.  

Bruce!! I just wanna let you know everything went great.. almost!! Im glad we rolled three cameras at the same time because only one of them caught the explosion. The other two i unfortunately managed to **(obscenity removed)** up ?

1985875949_Screenshot2020-04-24at21_17_18.thumb.jpg.1c86abc842cbc8fe6f3eea4ffd18d374.jpg

 

heres the iphone shot just for fun https://vimeo.com/411535703/f400c44475

 

Thanks alot!

Edited by Olle Knutson
forgot to thank bruce
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