Search Results for 'no'

[Laurent]

Thank you very much for the detailed and factual explanation. Many lighting tutorials usually present one technique as the only true one because they are convinced of only one method. But you are right. There is no right or wrong.
Thank you so much for your time!

[dmullenasc]

Adjusting white balance on camera is the same idea as using a filter on the lens, it shifts everything one direction or the other, it doesn’t change a difference in color between two sources of light. Now whether you want the daylight to look white, blue, partially blue or the tungsten to look white, orange or partially orange by how you set the white balance is an artistic decision. There is no right or wrong answer. Generally when dealing with this issue, it is both a lighting decision (controlling color balance between sources) and a color temperature setting decision in order to create the look you want. You may decide you like the look of 3200K practicals and 5600K windows with the camera set to 4300K for example.

[dmullenasc]

There is no right or wrong approach. Sometimes you want a color cast or to see a color temperature difference, sometimes you don’t, sometimes you just want to adjust the degree of difference while keeping it. Sometimes you want orange or blue light on faces. I only mention 1/2 CTO gel on windows as a technique some cinematographers use to partially correct daylight towards tungsten rather than completely correct it by using Full CTO or 85 gel. There is no right or wrong approach!

[Max A.]

Hello Mr. Deakins and all the cinematographers over this fantastic forum. I hope you Mr. Deakins and Mrs. James are well.
It’s a long time no writing a post (it’s a weird period of my life) but every day I check the forum and the website to find interesting things to learn from you.

Today I would like to ask you, if it is possible, something different and in specific your thought about a situation (I don’t know if you had one in your career) where production or a director calls for an interview to hire a cinematographer for a project, but when you are there the director has already a very detailed script treatment (with visual strategies, colors, mood and lighting, camera movements, shot-list, and even storyboard with angles) and he or she wants to stick with it.

In that case, should we be pure “employees” and executors? I mean, I love doing this role (and maybe I’m too ambitious for my real level) and there are long periods when my phone doesn’t ring, but it seems a bit “reductive” and not so much stimulating going to the set and setting light and camera for shots where I don’t give a minimum of myself as a person and as a human being.

I know that we are collaborators and that a motion picture product (a short film or a feature or a commercial etc.) is a result of collaboration, I know that there is only one director, but this mode of seeing a cinematographer seems to me a bit “disposable” and also a bit “underestimate”

I’m not in this kind of situation, but I saw a similar one and then I felt like talking about it and asking you and your thought about it.

As usual, I want to thank you for your time and your availability. I know you are very busy so I will of course understand if you can’t reply.

I apologize for my bad English.

I wish you a peaceful day.
Max.

[dmullenasc]

We mention gels on windows because we’re talking about the color temperature issues when mixing daylight with tungsten practicals. A camera filter would just shift everything in one direction, not reduce the difference between two sources of different color temperatures.

[ravikantrai]

That is so interesting! I was initially reluctant to post this topic haha. Because I know what’s normal or not is not a basis of any creative decision with cinematography but I was just curious about the “why” and the history of it.

[Stip]

It seems like 50mm was – and still is – the easiest (and cheapest) to design and build to achieve good image quality at fast apertures.

The ‘Double Gauss’ design was invented in 1817 by Carl Friedrich Gauss as a telescope lens and later refined by many others like Taylor Hobson in the 1920’s (later resulting in the Speed Panchros). The current design, presently found in inexpensive but high quality fast lenses like Canon EF 50mm 1.8 or Nikon AD 50mm 1.8, can be traced back to 1895 to Paul Rudolph and Carl Zeiss (the first Zeiss Planar lens).

From Wikipedia:

“The design forms the basis for many camera lenses in use today, especially the wide-aperture standard lenses used on 35 mm and other small-format cameras. It can offer good results up to f/1.4 with a wide field of view, and has sometimes been made at f/1.0. The design appears in other applications where a simple fast normal lens is required (~53° diagonal) such as in projectors.”

 

So the projection thing would make sense not just for the viewer experience but also on a technical level!

[Laurent]

Roger is the expert and writes about it:

The angle of the light to the light to the bounce can alter the size and the shape of the source you create. Whether a lamp is above and rigged to the ceiling or on the floor on a low boy or ‘turtle’ is usually just about space and convenience.

You can double the muslin but it doesn’t make so much difference. The light going through it could be a problem though, and bounce around to interfere with the contrast of the shot.

If I have a series of lamps bouncing off a wide reflector I may, repeat may, dim the lamps to the sides and also warm them up to create a softer fall off and a warmth reaching into the shadow area. I might do that but it is no means necessary.

The distance the bounce source is from the subject controls the ‘softness’ of the light but also the fall off. If you want the wall behind your subject to seem as brightly lit as they are then you have the bounce at some distance away but if you want to isolate a face you then move it close.

The curve I might put into an array of small bounce boards or muslins is to ‘funnel the light when I need to. It doesn’t affect the subject as much as it does the background.

The height of the bounce is a choice made when looking at the natural source you are adding to or emulating. You might also change the height depending on how the light falls on your subject, whether that is an object or a face.

 

 

[Laurent]

 

Ah, OK. Thank you for the images. Really nice 😉
So for the ‘boy with the guitar’ at the top of the image, no gel was used and the front field was lit with tungsten lighting(?).

           The store-bought LED bulbs can have a bit of green in them though.

Which bulbs/brands are “neutral” for you?

And how many watts do you normally use?

 

[dmullenasc]

I still use tungsten bulbs in lamps, partly because the Astera NYX bulb is on the large size and looks odd in a period show inside a lamp. But sometimes I’ve used normal daylight LED bulbs in lamps on location with a lot of daylight windows. I’ve even used daylight LED candelabra bulbs in chandeliers & sconces sometimes. The store-bought LED bulbs can have a bit of green in them though.
Like Roger, I often embrace the color temp differences but on a few locations, I have added 1/2 CTO to windows to reduce some of the difference.

Here is a quick test I just did showing that uncorrected daylight feels a bit bluer when it is less bright and washed out:

[Roger Deakins]

If I wanted the daylight and practical sources to be the same color temperature I would gel the window with CTO or use a daylight bulb in the lamps. I may have worked like that in the distant past but I more usually allow for some difference in color between light sources,  as it more naturally appears to the eye. I just came from doing a remaster of ‘Thunderheart’, a film I shot many years ago now, and I noticed how I often used a bare tungsten bulb in locations that were primarily lit by the daylight coming through the window or doorway. I was bouncing tungsten sources off the ceiling or the wall to augment what the bare bulb was giving me and using the color variation as part of the ‘look’. My ‘moonlight’ was an HMI source, a Musco light, and I combined this with firelight allowing the color difference to be what it was, only using an 81EF on the camera to set the relationship in the middle as far as my tungsten balanced stock was seeing it.

[Laurent]

Thank you so much for your detailed and helpful replies!

You write:
I always control color temperature on set and definitely NOT in post processing. How do you deal with color temperature? Maybe it’s a matter of observing how the color of natural lighting changes throughout the day, or how it varies from one artificial lighting source to another.

But how do you deal with it when the daylight comes from outside and you use table lamps with tungsten lighting inside? Do you work with color gel filters, etc.? Or what do you recommend to prevent an unbeautiful color cast from coming?

(The topic of mixed lighting fills entire tutorials. But there are 1000’s of opinions about it, so I’d really be interested in your expertise).

Thank you so much!

 

[Roger Deakins]

I’m not someone who dwells too long on the question of what might be considered normal. However, if you look through a 35mm still camera and compare that image with what you see through your other eye, you can judge for yourself what appears to be ‘normal’.

[ravikantrai]

Thank you Dave, that’s really helpful and informative. It’s interesting that entire sets were built around something like a “normal” lens!

[Roger Deakins]

The distance the bounce source is from the subject controls the ‘softness’ of the light but also the fall off. If you want the wall behind your subject to seem as brightly lit as they are then you have the bounce at some distance away but if you want to isolate a face you then move it close.

The curve I might put into an array of small bounce boards or muslins is to ‘funnel the light when I need to. It doesn’t affect the subject as much as it does the background.

The height of the bounce is a choice made when looking at the natural source you are adding to or emulating. You might also change the height depending on how the light falls on your subject, whether that is an object or a face.

I always control color temperature on set and definitely NOT in post. How to handle color temperature? Maybe that is all about observation of how natural light can change color during the progress of a day or how it varies from one artificial source to another.