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One doesn’t always want or need shadow detail. I mean, a silhouette shot is a black shape with no shadow detail.
In my case, I had plenty of shadow detail, this was 100 ASA film stock, well-exposed, and I was flashing the negative 15%. But the prints went through a skip-bleach process to increase contrast, so I deliberately shot a low-contrast negative and in the video transfer from a low-contrast IP, I had to simulate the higher contrast of the theatrical prints by crushing the shadow detail down or else everything would look flat.
Larger formats use longer focal lengths for the same field of view so have less depth of field, so yes, you have to stop down if you want to counteract that.
Generally that means more light… but larger sensors tend to handle higher ISO settings because the increase in noise is less obvious, so you can partially compensate for the lower depth of field by increasing the ISO — you could, for example, go half and half, boost the ISO a little, boost the light level a little.
However, some people shoot larger formats precisely because they like the shallower depth of field.
I know it’s hard but if you’re a beginner in the industry, you want to me known as the person who maintains a positive attitude even when things get tough, not the person who is only pleasant when the hours are pleasant. However, if you’re not being paid and the job is terrible, then I don’t think anyone would object if you left for a better job that paid.
First of all, many times on overcast days there are NOT distinct cloud formations. Here is a shot I did in the movie “Northfork” in Montana where there were great dark clouds rolling in just as I arrived that morning so I rushed to get the shot — within a half-hour it was a solid grey.
Second of all, if the goal was to make the whole story look like it took place in one day, you probably don’t want a lot of variation in skies from shot to shot over the course of shooting for many weeks.
It’s just numbers, I wouldn’t waste too much time overthinking it. You get a set of lenses for a particular camera / format that range from wide-angle to telephoto and you work with those every day on the set, you don’t spend every day converting focal lengths in your head.
If the conversion factor is 1.5X, where you’d use a 35mm in Super-35, you’d probably use a 50mm in Full-Frame (52.5mm is the exact equivalent to a 35mm when going from a 24mm wide sensor to a 36mm wide sensor.). However, the conversion from Open Gate in a regular Alexa to Open Gate in an Alexa LF is more like 1.3X. So if you like a 32mm on a regular Alexa in Open Gate, you’d use a 40mm on an Alexa LF in Open Gate (41.6mm to be exact if the conversion is 1.3X — I’d have to look up the specs again for both formats to make sure that’s correct.)
The difference in depth of field is due to the focal length and again, the amount you have to compensate is the same as the conversion factor, so if the factor is 1.5X then your larger format needs to be stopped down by 1.5-stops to match depth of field to the smaller format.
If you shot in Super-16, you’d have a whole different set of focal lengths to deal with.
If you are talking about regular screw-base Edison socket practicals, there are tungsten bulbs as high as 500W (photofloods) but once you get above 100W you probably should be switching the socket to a porcelain base for safety reasons.
With 500T stock or ISO 800 digital cameras, it is rare to need to go higher than 100W in a practical lamp. The only time I put a 500W photoflood in a practical lamp was when I was shooting on 40 ASA Kodachrome Super-8!
The ability to dim an LED will make it more popular than HMI’s over time; the main issue today is just output. Even today, a Source-4 LED Leko is not as bright as a Joker 800 Jo-Leko. I will be happy not to deal with HMIs in the future. However, I will miss tungsten fresnels!
Polarizors only kill reflections at a specific angle and besides, you generally want the exposure at night to capture low-level practical sources in the background, you don’t want to use a filter that reduces your exposure. You have to first think of it as if there were a mirror there instead of a window, you want to be at angles to it that only reflect things that belong in the shot, so if you need light in a certain area, you work with the set dresser to get practicals where you need them. Then when you do have to shoot more directly into the glass, and the camera & dolly is reflected, you have to hide them with black, maybe black on the wall behind them and black on the dolly or tripod, black on anything bright on the camera, cover any LED lights with black tape, crew wears black, flag the light off of them, etc. And keep in mind that you may see in reflection where your black area begins on a flat wall so it has to be done neatly unless that whole area is flagged off from light.
No, the colorist shouldn’t alter the color and exposure to neutral as a starting point, they should start with what the cinematographer created. If the scene had an 18% grey card in the shot under light that was intended to be of normal exposure and neutral color in the scene, sure… but that never happens!
Now I’m talking about the coloring the final cut. Sure, a test with a grey card or scale in it where the cinematographer says “time to grey card or scale”, especially when the test is comparing multiple types of cameras, etc. then yes.
In the days of film, I’d shoot a grey card or scale at the head of a scene and tell the dailies colorist to time for the card so that they would know what the neutral starting point was to judge my footage — otherwise if my footage was deliberately orange or blue, etc. they might correct it back to neutral without any reference frame. But generally that approach isn’t done with digital since we have some sort of LUT as a starting point for dailies and monitoring.
