@Brian202020 any news on your GH2 vs Af100 comparison. From what I saw from the philip bloom shoutout it looked only marginally sharper than the dslr and the worst DR of them all. You can see the worst clipping in the highlight behind the woman. Now it was just highly compressed 1080p and she could be moving also, but it was the worst image http://philipbloom.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/3.jpg her skin look like plastic. If he used the same compression in all his jpg http://philipbloom.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/9.jpg there just no comparison.

To be fair @Brian202020 even with those breakthroughs I won't replace my AF101. At least until the GH2 has NDs, XLRs, HDSDI, waveform monitor, peaking etc :) If only Vitaly could be convinced to hack the AF. That really would be a glorious day for me.

Re; the minimal noise ISO sequence 160, 320, 640 etc. Bloody annoying that the ISO bug affects the same range. Could it be somehow related?

If you look at all the 1080p example in the Philip bloom shootout, the gh2 only lost to the c300 and f3. very very close in detail and sharpness but they have an edge in dr. so it is more like a $ 10000 plus camera than a $ 5000 one at least in image quality.

@danyyyel
Yes, the hacked GH2 is like a hot-rodded Nissan Skyline GT-R. While it's not in a league with the Ferrari's and Lamborghini's, it can easily take on the BMW's and Mercedes of the video world.

@mpgxsvcd, the test samples you provide:

1. What was your method and reference point for exposure?
2. Did you leave original exposure and change profiles, or adjust exposure for each profile and/or shot?
3. The right side of the roll of toilet paper was over exposed in varying degrees between the profiles. Did exposure appear to be retained at the time you recorded, or was that revealed after footage was acquired?

Thank you.

@kholi
I'm not sure why you'd use an ND filter indoors, unless you're shooting with the lens wide open @ ISO 160 and still blowing out the highlights?

@LPowell

Common method for all walks of pre-planned set or location shooting. Either an ND or a Black Pro-mist, both of which do different jobs for specific times. Pro-mists or Magics help to tame highlights, not just blown but the overall tonal shift from dark to light. Of course, Pro-mists are heavier and are used for this purpose less than for the purpose of softening the appearance of make-up, flawed, flesh, etc.

In this case, I'm specifically talking NDs to smooth over the values between 75 and 100 IRE, where 75 isn't blown out but can be pretty contrasty depending on the situation. It's also pretty common to use an 0.3 exterior night or pro-mist to help with street lamps, stop lights, so on and so forth. However, Ahtiril is right, it isn't "exactly" diffusion which I do not like.

@Ahtiril

DO not confuse fact with preference, of course. I still work and train under DPs that shoot modern cinema, at least two of which have had major motion pictures in theaters this year. ND is practice, but the amount is to taste. 80's Soap was never ND, it's mist filters. ND is in no way as strong as Pro_mists, but still offers a level of diffusion for highs that is acceptable. No, it's not EXACTLY diffusion, but it does help with highlights subtly. Some DPs still choose to use Classic Softs for look.

I do agree about light temperature, I choose not to avoid Tungsten light because anything short of Kino's is hard work to bring back the color in human skin. So that is to be considered, of course. I'd also choose to get as close to a look in-camera (with anything sub RED EPIC) as possible.

I brought up the scenario because I need to choose my run-n-gun ligthing package for my feature, and I cannot afford to carry large 4x4 Kinos around everywhere. The situation is more than likely to have just one 4x4 Kino with Daylight and Tungsten options, 1 x 4x4 Diva, 1 x 800w Joker, 1 x 200W Arri SunGun, and then a basic kit of Tungsten light:

2 x 1000w pancake chimeras
2 x 150w Arri Fresnels
1 x 1000w Open Face Arri Unit
1 x 650w Arri Fresnels

Then augment with LEDs, specifically 4 of the larger lite panels with extra batteries and a Kino Car Kit

Even now that I list that off, it seems like too many units to carry around in my broken Civic... and I haven't even gotten to the grip gear to support that.

@kholi
I like the softening effect of Black Pro-Mist filters in sunlight where you've got more than enough light to work with. But I wouldn't want to sacrifice any indoor light to an ND filter - the more light you can capture in the shadows the better. A quality ND filter shouldn't soften the image; it will just make it darker all around.

@Athiril

Not meaning shadows, I meant highlights. My phrase might have been off, my bad.

Even a quality ND (I've got a set of Tiffen and Schneiders, although they have their own effects...) will still have destructive effects once you hit certain stops, namely sharpness. And then, maybe that's more the effect that's happening versus diffusion. Again, though, sorry for the out of place verbiage.

On order of placement: I've gotten the IR placement wrong a few times... was so glad when we moved to IR/ND combos, and even then it's a right and wrong way.

@brianluce

They won't do any serious protection. In fact, the amount of shift is more negligible than the amount of resolution loss; it's almost silly to worry about. It's just become a way to work that satisfies me, but more than likely isn't justifiable enough to continue doing so with smaller cameras. One of those "voodoo" methods unproven that I picked up from other DPs. I wish there was a super light Classic Soft, but even the lightest is too heavy for me.

kholi you're talking about indoor shooting and then run and gun shooting.. I got away with indoors with 2 cheap 2K blonde lights indoors bounced off ceilings or corners to fill a good sized room for even lighting extremely well, it was f/4 or f/5.6 I think ISO 250 or 320 (probably 320) and 1/50th back on a HVX variable frame rate camera.

They aren't that heavy and unportable. And are inexpensive on bulbs etc. I think they're around 15,000-30,000 lumens.


The 100W LED packages (100x1W LEDs assembled into one unit for your convenience) are about $40 each iirc, they are rated at 8000 lumens. You could get a number of them at the price of one light, they are small and light. Put a small cheap PC HSF on the back, cheapo light stands with a weight at the bottom and a LED driver and power supply and you're mostly good to go depending on how you want to light.

Plus they'd be easy enough to completely insulated and seal from water, plus can be run off batteries for remote location shooting with no AC power available.

How do you want to light indoors? Even light coming from everywhere (bounce) is easy, but needs a bit of lighting power, more dramatic direct lighting needs much less. You can use magnifying sheets the ones that are $2 used to enlarge magazines, books, newspapers for reading, theyre fresnel sheets for spotting the light smaller. Or reverse the lights into a bounce card for a bigger light source.


Everyone needs a good polariser. I use them all the time in still photography in overcast/diffuse situations such as in rain forest, they cut grey off everything (diffuse glare), and increase colour purity, far more useful than the cliche cloud effect.

Side by side example I shot, both film scans treated equally:

Image contrast is no problem and is good, what you want is to balance lighting contrast.

search for 100W LED on ebay, they are $40, they are just the LED package, they are 8000 lumens already wired together for you, so you only need to put a couple together if you want to get a lot of lumens from one source, or split them up and have it coming from multiple sources.

Like this http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/100W-White-High-Power-6600LM-LED-Lamp-Light-AC-Driver-/330605811498?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4cf9a4572a#ht_4010wt_952

Otherwise for spot lights, you can get some LED lenses to put on singular LEDs which can get a very very narrow beam so you can have a small very intense spot from quite some distance. The lenses are cheap since they are so small. They don't add any weight unlike big fresnel lights.

You dont want to be wiring individual LEDs together, it'll take forever, the above includes driver circuit. You could build a driver circuit of much more power though and keep it with the power supply and run cables to the light. Or attach batteries + small driver to the light stand.

Obviously you need to investigate before jumping on and buying a bunch of that stuff and not being able to put it together, also PWM circuits allow you to dim LEDs without altering their colour, simple circuits to build if your handy, or can also be bought.


Ceiling bounce or ceiling corner bounce works very well, I like to use 2 lights per room, opposite ends r corners for nice even coverage.

You can use hard direct lights in day time to fill nasty shadows, I used to use direct flash no modification to shoot in mid day for photo portraits. Just play with the lighting, you can move the light away from a longer distance to get more coverage around subjects to avoid casting shadows on selves, they shouldn't cast any shadows back in daylight since your fill won't be stronger, so the hardness is generally not a problem.


I got 40x 1W white LEDs for about $13 delivered too... so for dimmer situations.. outdoors... I might have a rig up on some thin pvc pipes, wooden dowels or something to create four poles connected to the two ones off to the sides and just run strings of LEDs pointing down, a cheap lighting grid from above, you could use white shopping bags as diffusing material but its a PITA and will prolly catch wind like a kite, plus its just going to knock intensity down from reflection, you got so lighting coming from so many points no real need for diffusion I reckon

You only need some mild active (low power) cooling for the 100W packages that are packed together so tightly etc.

Obviously it's not buy and go, some time deciding what you need, how much light you want (work this out by determining the exposure level you want, what that is in lux, what area size you want that to be lit like that, convert that to lumens, then get enough lumens and also calculate what distance the lights need to be at to give that coverage size.. covering more.. is a waste of lumens and you'll need more power than what you calculated originally etc.. you can stick lenses on of course), designing it, buying it, waiting for shipping, building it, testing.. etc.



edit: Have you seen Gabriel? They avoided mostly wide shots, and the sets you saw were all in parking lots, and were the entire sets. They basically had no budget for hardly anything.