The smoke from burning flares is highly toxic so you would not want your actors and crew working in it.

They are primarily for lighting. There are various places that this technique is used at the end of the movie.

First, when Bravos blows up the convoy, Posey fires an illumination flare into the sky.

Second, when they blow up all the bad guys in the bunker after soaking them with gasoline, there are multiple explosions and fires. The flare's high intensity light, combined with the red color and the erratic flickering is the perfect solution to this lighting dilema.

The downside is that dripping flare juice can really ruin the rest of your day!

RB

NRG vs. Lowel
 

I recently visited Zotz and came across thier 4k light setup the price was great but I never used this brand. I usually use the Lowel DP set and have had no problems with them. I know there are a lot of people that are not fans of Lowel but How does NRG compare.

Lighting school site (photoflex sponsored)
 

Looks interesting. Step by step lessons on lighting specific setups.

Web Photo School

Aaron

I signed up a while ago... great for lighting-retarded people like me. Lots of great ideas.

Kino Flo lamp question
 

Hi folks,
I have the Kino Flo Diva Lite 400 and I have a lamp case that came with it. However, I can not carry more than 6 lamps in that case and I have a total of 10 lamps. Is it okay if I left the other lamps in my Kino Flo Fixture as storage? Or, do they have to go in the case? I think I've seen people leave them in the fixture when transporting equipment from location to location.

Comments? Thanks.

I certainly would not worry about transporting the fixture fully lamped. I have a Lowel Caselite 4 and only remove the lamps if I'm changing color temperatures. Just make sure all of the lamps are secure in their sockets.

Nick,

Keep four 3200k lamps in the fixture, carry four 5600k lamps in the kino box along with one spare 5600k and one spare 3200k. that will fill the six slots in the carring case with a complete change of color temp along with one spare bulb for daylight and incandecent.....

each fixture is fully covered.

where to get longneck tracklight bulbs
 

looking to get longneck tracklight bulbs that are 3200k and would match well with GE SPX35 florecent bulbs.

Advice needed for Caselite purchase..
 

I'm very tempted to get a Lowell Caselite for interviews, simply cause of the ease of setup and the cool running of the lights. I still, however, need a little more advice. So far I know I can switch the Caselite to 240V functioning with a switch (Why does B&H sell a special Euro version of the Caselite if this is the case??) . All I'd need to do is get 240v bulbs and a plug adapter to run over here. Sweet. Now,

- Is buying as a kit a good idea, or should I just get the fixture and buy the stand separately?

- If I need to buy another stand, what would be a good one to get (I assume it needs to be small enough to fit in the Case?)

- This will be my key light and probably the only light I'll be able to afford for a while, so should I go for the Caselite 4, or would that put out way too much light for interviews and is more suited to lighting the moon from earth?

- Can the Caselites be scrimmed easily? If so, that might be a good solution to the problem above?

- And finally, is there anything about the Caselights that aren't good? Or flourescents in general I guess. They seem to be a great idea. Less power, cooler, bulbs last longer, and with the Caselite easy to set up..

Thanks
Aaron

A question concerning on camera lighting.
 

I have a question about lighting. I need to find a good on camera light that is around $100, that will get the job done. I mainly shoot rollerblading videos right now and I am about to start doing some work for a few clients. Mainly I need a good on camera light to film at night with my friends. Anyone have a good light suggestion. I'm searching B&H but I'm not sure what to purchase. All help is appreciated.


David Woodland.

Search is your friend.

What are you using for on camera light?
 

I would post this in the lighting section but I am not sure if the HD10u and its variables such as chroma noise or HD resolutions make any differance so I am wondering about specific to the HD10u users what you have had good luck with.

I have spent about 2 hours reading through the lighting section of the forum and still dont know if I need Barn doors, Softbox, battery belts, a kit, used equiptment or what

Heres what I have to shoot in near future (2 weeks not alot of time to shoot samples/experiment in spare time):

HD Wedding & Music video for band " Pranx " ( younger kids with great sound but not the cash flow for high end music video, even though I think we can manage a quality video)

I know I will probably need to rent some lights but for now I was wondering what you all use as an on camera light and the +'s & -'s

Thanks

Here is my bag of tricks
 

Mark !

Here is what I use for my portable lighting solutions:

http://ottawa.hn.org/EQUIPMENT/hd10_...the_field.html


If you have any comments please let us know.


-Chris.

On camera light
 

Any input on a good on camera light for the XL1s?

Lighting for Home Tours
 

I've been doing video tours for a couple of months now, and have been using a 500w light from Home Depot. It's cheap and working ok, but I hate carrying it around from room to room. I don't charge a lot for the tours, and think I could save a lot of time if I had a camera mounted light. I need it to be bright enough, but spread out over the room. Also I would liek it to be run on battery, I think I read some posts about getting cheap power from a pack from pep-boys, will this work? Thanks for the help.
-Todd

For home tours, you may want to look at something like the Frezzi or LTM on-camera HMI lights. A 24w HMI might give you enough light (about 100w equivalent) as well as being proper color temperature to mix with the windows. The challenge will be that when you move the camera, the shadows will also move, which will be a very different look and probably not a high-quality look. A softbox may help even that out, but will substantially cut the light output.

A 24w HMI should be around $800 or so...

Michael,

A perusal of the thread topics on this Forum or a Search will get you more than you want to know.

Jupiter lights question...
 

I'm shooting a lot of indoor interviews and would like to purchase some lights for a typical 3-point light setup. I don't know much about lighting, but have rented tungstens in the past. However, I want to buy lights...renting every week is becoming tiresome. So...will 3 650 Watt Jupiter lights work for this typical 3-point interview set-up? Or what should I get? Thanks.

Best Wishes

Weston Master II
 

I recently found an old Weston Master II Universal Exposure Meter with an old Leica still cam in some dark recess of my house. Here's My question; ignoring the whole school that light meters are for film (because i'm gaffing now and I want perfection), i was wondering if this thing has any chance of still giving accurate readings. Is there any way to test it short of having a working light meter?

It's old, so it shouldn't work, but it's heavy, so it should work. My belief that heavy things are made well will endure despite all experience. It was rarely used, my grandfather probably never even touched the camera. Thanks for your time!

The meter should not be relied upon for any type of exposure. Those early cells were not to designed (or more accurately, capable) of lasting this long. Give the meter a honored place on your bookcase and get yourself a modern meter. But even if we could wind the clock back 40 or 50 years, you still wouldn't have a meter than was known for it's accuracy.

lighting feedback
 

Hey all, this is my first post in the photon forum.
I was just looking for some feedback about my recent horror movie shoot.
We had a lot of outdoor night time shots and it was very challenging.
Our no budget lighting rig consisted of a 1000w metal halide that we modified and a couple of cheapo 500w quartz smith victors.
Camera was a xv2000 with anamorphic lens.
The pics are screen grabs that have been resized and compressed.
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/...5/f6a0e8a1.jpg
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/...1/f6a0e896.jpg
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/...9/f6a0e898.jpg
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/...6/f6a0e89d.jpg
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/...d/f6a0e89a.jpg

Here's a pic of the MH rig.
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/...0/f6a0dcc2.jpg

Movietone vs. Kino Flo TrueMatch
 

Hi,

I'm comparing MovieTone fluorescent lights with Kino Flo.
I have some cheapie Sylvania 3500K lamps (75 CRI) that are to
be replaced with something better. MovieTone claims to be
the same as Kino Flo :

http://www.flo-co.com/flo-co.html

"Movie Tone lamps are color correct and have no Green Spike. The High Output Lamps or H.O.'s are an excellent replacement
lamps for your Kino Flo fixtures. They match the Kino
Flo output in every way and include the Impact resistant
safety shield. "

However, a click on the spectral chart of the Kino Flo "True Match"
lamps reveals, guess what, a big green spike :

http://www.kinoflo.com/sales_catalog_2004/lamps/001_lmp/truematch.html

and the spectral plot :
http://www.kinoflo.com/sales_catalog_2004/lamps/001_lmp/kf3200.html


So, what lamps are actually compared ? Do the MovieTone lamps have the big green spike ? Are MovieTone actually better than TrueMatch ?

Thanks for any info,

Gints

Ok. Here's the reply from FloCo, the makers of the MovieTone bulbs :


The H.O. 32K are very similar to Kino Flos KF32 lamp in both color temp and brightness.

When we say there is no green spike it is meant in reference to motion picture film photography, which can be very sensitive to the green value in fluorescent lamps.
We only put enough green in the lamp to make it color correct. But it is easy in a high output lamp to have excessive green that will result in a green hue on the negative.

Hope this helps.

Thank you


Ferdinand Metz
The Fluorescent Company Inc.
Flo-Co Inc.
661 269 2065

Shooting spotlight subjects on stage
 

Hello,

I have little experience vtaping performers on a stage. I read a lot of good posts on this forum about influencing the stage lighting for video recording, but I didn't see many solutions from the camera side.

This weekend, I attended a stage Chinese performance at San Francisco'sPalace of Fine arts. The front stage lights were nearly spotlights and created strong specular highlights on the bare-headed actors and their shiny silk garments, especially the white
garment on the lead actress. On my digital camera histogram, the highlights were always pushing the right edge, leaving the midtone details on the actors largely in the shadows. The gap between the highlights and midtones was HUGE. What do you do for such lighting conditions ? Would a polarizing filter help ? That may help some of the glare from a perspiring bare scalp, but probably nothing for siky garments. On a still camera, I can rotate the filter around a bit, but since the actors duck in and out of the spotlights, it's a chore ! Are there any solutions
from the camera/video side ?

This is the essence of the problem with filming many stage shows and I don't think there's much you can do. My approach is to shoot a lot of tight shots such that I can expose to keep things from blowing out a lot. You need to ride the iris control. Then you can edit in some brief wide shots where you allow the bright areas to blow out more. Do what you can in post to bring out some detail in the shadows.

The trouble is that we theatrical lighting designers use the huge contrast range that you describe to create dramatic effects on the stage. There is just no way that DV can deal with that.

Color Temperature Info
 

www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/support/h2/temp.shtml

http://videoexpert.home.att.net/artic1/240ctemp.htm

www.3drender.com/glossary/colortemp.htm

www.cybercollege.com/tvp028.htm

Excellent -- thanks James,

Used gear in NY?
 

Are there any interesting places in NY where I can try findind some used light heads? Lowel or similar?

Names please!


Carlos

you might want to try reading the classifieds (or posting) on craigslist.com
http://newyork.craigslist.org/
you can post in the wanted section, or poke through the ads...
good deals there and will be local to nyc. otherwise, check b&h photo they have quality used equipment sometimes

White Balance - various (Expodisc, coffee filters, Pringle's lid, etc.)
 

Hi,

On the Nikon SLR forum, a fellow posted some white balance measurements for various devices.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1025&message=11648779

> There was too much variation in the earlier colorimeter readings,
> possibly because I was making them outdoors under cloudy
> conditions, and/or the battery was getting tired. For the
> following I changed instruments and instead used a Minolta color
> temperature meter and a new Sekonic 558. For a 3200K adjusted
> source I found the following (numbers in parens are relative f/#
> values):
>
> Source: 3200K [0]
> Expodisc: 3240K [-2.7]
> Styrofoam Dixie Cup (6oz) 3050K [-3.0]
> Coffee Filter (1): 3130K [-1.2]
> Coffee Filter (2): 3060K [-1.9]
> Coffee Filter (3): 3020K [-2.1]
> White Lid: 2730K [-3.1]
> Pringle Lid (translucent): 3150K [-0.3]
>
> It appears that in terms of a device for establishing exposure, the
> white-type soft lid or 3 coffee filters come within a half stop,
> although both appear to skew the WB, and the white lid would throw
> the WB off by a significant amount. Evidently many users find they
> can "live" with color balance off by 200 degrees or so, so hey, if
> it works...
> Actually, the styrofoam cup did relatively well for establishing
> exposure, but would probably result in slightly cool images if used
> to establish WB. OTOH both the Pringle lid and a single coffee
> filter seem to be reasonably good for white balance, but neither
> could be used to establish exposure if an 18% gray card is what you
> expect. Both would create a WB that would result in a slight
> cooling effect to the image.
> The calibrated white density of my Expodisc is 0.74, so the -2.7
> figure above is off a little, ideally it should be -2.45. There
> appears to be a slight proximity effect that occurs, possibly due
> to the prismatic light gathering front surface (the light source
> was directed, not integrated). Also the coffee filters seem to be
> nonlinear in their light attenuation as they're stacked up, and I'm
> not sure why--possibly fiber orientation or something.
> A similar study using a 6000K source might be worthwhile--stay tuned.
> -RogM

lighting for title sequence
 

hello all

I have worrked in the cg buisness for a while now and i am starting to expand my artist pallete towards film and photography.
I have simulated it for years in the computer, now i wanna do it for real!

i am intrested in recreating the lighting schemes from such title sequences as se7en and mimc....

http://www.imaginaryforces.com/html/...ects&q=5&id=82
http://www.imaginaryforces.com/html/...cts&q=5&id=110

though i know pretty much nothing about ( set ) lighting ,and other than doing it in computer graphics, i would like to know what types of lights might be used to do this type of effects

perhaps what are some lights that i could purchase?, i dont believe that i need an entire light kit?

and yes i also know that the majority of sequences look is done in post , wich i have a lot of experience using ! , basicly i want to achieve the best footage before manipulating it in the computer

though at times it looka like a flash light shining down on the subject might pull it off!

There is no easy answer for this. As you seemingly know a certain
look is created through many layers from the art department,
cinematography, film stock, film processing and in the case of
se7en extensive post work with color corrections and such.

You are perhaps asking the wrong question? I think this has
nothing to do with lighting for title sequences. This has everything
to do with getting good lighting in general (as you lateron in your
post acknowledge).

This is not an easy thing! Lighting is like any art form which takes
tools but much more important experience and a good eye for
how good something looks and how it may be improved.

You usually do need a light-kit with all sort of extra goodies to
shape the light (reflectors, bounce boards, hard en soft lights,
gels, flags, scrims etc. etc.) in the way you want. There isn't a
single type of light to create what you are looking for since it is
layer upon layer of carefully crafted looks. So yeah, sometimes
one flashlight might do the trick, other times it may take 10 or
more lights depending on the situation. There is a reason they
have a huge amount of grip and lighting gear on the big
productions.....

There are some books on the subject etc., but I'm not sure what
the best way would be to proceed on this. Anyone else have
some thoughts on this?

using shallow DOF to get that nice look>> for starters
 

I found this site which really helped me to understand everythihng.

http://smad.jmu.edu/dof/

excellent site about lighting, DOF and other interesting stuff
 

http://www.deviantart.com/view/4666522/


Just wanted to let you know about this excelent site about lighing when shooting photos.

dawn for sunset
 

I will be shooting an urban street scene which is supposed to take place late in the day. To reduce the outside distractions I am planning on shooting it just after dawn. I am just wondering if there are any "gotchas" I should be looking out for, or any tips. I don't need the golden hour glow--just a sense that its late in the day. The fact that the sun will be on the wrong side of the sky is not a problem.

If you have more than one shot or scene, film it backwards (time wise). The sun will be getting higher in the sky and if you shoot it chronologically the shadows will give you away.

cloudy..
 

I'm doing my first 3-cam interview shot tomorrow.. Weather.com just told me it's gonna be sunny and CLOUDY (with capital letters..). One of the guys is black and the other white.
I don't want to interrupt them all the time since the whole idea of the program is to have some kind of flow in their converstaion.
How can I reduce the damage? We'll start early in the morning and I'll use some reflectors to bounce some fill. But my guess is that when the sun clouds up the faces will go black.. With three diferent camera men adjusting, the light will be all over the place for a while.. (post difficulties..)

any tips? Thanks.

Lighting Indoors
 

Hi, I'm not sure if this is a stupid question or not. But--when you light indoors using a 3200K light source, I'd imagine that the light coming from windows would appear blue. In this case, would it be better to filter the light, or would it be better to use some sort of filter over the windows?

Also, I notice that, in lower budget movies in particular--windows tend to be overexposed, you can't see out them. In higher budget films, this usually doesn't happen. How would you go about correcting this? Again, would you use some sort of filter over the window, to lower the amount of light coming in? Or, would it be better to raise the light level inside to match the amount of light coming in from the window. If so, how much light would this require--and would it be plausible?

Thank you.

Matthew Overstreet

You can do either the window or the lights. Using color correcting gels over the lights might be more practical as you can reuse the gels more easily than the film on the window. However, if it's really bright outside and you don't have a bunch of lights, you may want to buy some film for the window to filter the color and knock a few stops off the light at the same time.
How much light it takes to even out the scene inside and outside depends on how bright it is and how far the talent is from the window. You can always try to shape the natural light to light your scene but it can take quite a bit of umph to match a sunny day. Lower budget films either don't have enough light on set, wanted the effect (for whatever reason) or didn't know the difference. Bigger budget films buy (or rent) the right lights and filters and have plenty of professional lighting guys around to make the call.

amateur
 

hi there
getting into film making as part of my degree, have borrowed an xl1 and 3 300w sachtler lamps. im ok with cameras but i know squat about lighting. what sort of things do i need to put the lamps to best use, bearing in mind money is sparse?
can anyone recomend a book or resource to help get me started?
sorry about pathetic newbie questions
thanks,
alex