@shian you're right the card wasn't angled correctly. It was shot using 'smooth'. Both camera and card were handheld so the spot meter tends to jump around quite a bit.

I'm going into a six day outdoor/forested area shoot in september and one thing I'm particularly interested in is techniques in dealing with sky highlights in the background. ie. using double net scrims to knock down that light.

I know we have the highlights warning in the GH2, and it would be great to have a waveform monitor on set because in the example above it clearly shows whats happening with the sky peaking through the trees, but we wont have that luxury. Is there a technique using a handheld lightmeter to help measure those hotspots in the sky?

@shian can't wait for that tutorial you described in your second to last post! The one about showing how to light for a 5 stop range and different grading options!

@stonebat I have no idea. You'll have to ask someone more knowledgeable than me. My understanding is that the f/stop is a ratio. The ratio is between the diameter of the aperture in the lens and the focal length of the lens.

This is where T-stops differ, as T-stops are measured through the lens, and are a bit more accurate. T stops measure the amount of light transmitted through that particular lens.

A still from today's shoot for the 5 stop zone tutorial - straight out of the cam using Apocalypse Now 444 release candidate.

CHEERS @driftwood and @cbrandin this patch is insane! I just hope the tutorial I shot with it can live up to the images.

@shian Wow. That looks really really good. Is that with Smooth -2?

Stunning! Can't wait to see this :-)

@sicovdplas Noir is my specialty. Use a two light rim scheme.

Not handy. But do a search for techniques that employ using a kicker with a rim light.

It sort of depends on the camera. When shooting film, you of course want as much in camera. For digital, I always try to get as much as possible in camera, to an extent. It all depends on the limitations. Keeping everything within the zones is good, as it preserves information and with our digital cameras we don't get that nice rolloff, so want to keep as much as possible. But I keep the idea of the look on set, oftentime I might actually add a "LUT" in the monitor by adjusting to how I will grade it. See it sort of as film back in the old days (when it was very slow), where it was important to get a properly exposed negative for it to look well. Same thing with white balance: Set it correctly unless you 100% sure there won't be any changes made in post, as tinting it away from white is "easy" but tinting it to white is hard. But for me, I aim to get a picture that is within the zones on set to be easy to work with, but to still have the idea of how it will look. As I say, I try to get 75% on set, while color grading will be much more about setting contrast, tinting and getting nice saturation.

@shian

FYI here's a good example of lighting setup diagram. Yes it's for photo, but it would be great to see diagrams for video setup. Thanks.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/polvero/sets/72157615873440953/

Still working on the edit. I should have the full tutorial up this week. I haven't even started on the grading, but here is a comparison. The footage has been white balanced, and the black levels brought to 0, but that's the only correction.

Shot with no lights: ND .9 on windows, and silver reflector bounce outside window for key.

Exactly the same only with diffused 202 (Half CTB) hair light and fill.

@gabel you thats what i try to do, really apreciate the feedback!

The problem with budgets, and complex scenes is shadow handeling for me. And ofcourse lighting the main targets, which most of the time are moving, how do you guys fix light setups for moving talents?

@sicovdplas I encourage you to keep experimenting, and eventually work to get an internship, or anything that will get you onto a real film set. The first day I spent on a major film set was a game changer. I would also suggest that; if after that experience, things don't immediately make sense... to maybe rethink things. I used to spend hours trying to figure out the same things you are asking. And the moment I saw an experienced DP setup a scene, a light went on (excuse the pun) and everything instantly snapped into place, and I understood how to light. I don't mean that I just understood that particular setup, it was more like an understanding of how to control light. The rest of it is developing your artistic skill.

To qualify that: I didn't walk into that experience as a complete noob - I had a driving hunger to understand Cinematography from way back. I began lighting in 3Dmax back in 2000 when a home computer really couldn't compute Global Illumination in a realistic time frame, so every shadow and bounce had to be animated by hand using objects that would ultimately remain invisible. As a result I got very good at analyzing light in the real world, and re-creating it in the computer. But I was clueless as to how to reproduce this on set where the flags, lights, and light stands were visible. So I moved on to miniatures, and began building snoots, and diffusers, and flags and such out of cardboard, and I would light action figures and such, and started with static scenes, and moved on to figuring out how to light a moving scene. After that, I was primed with a basic understanding, so that when I stepped onto that set, and saw how everything I had learned correlated to actual film production, everything just clicked. But you never stop learning, There are still times when I see someone else employ a technique that had never occurred to me, and I just marvel at it, take a quick mental note, and file it away.

To see what I'm talking about with action figures, peep this. I didn't have fully articulated figures like these (Oh, what fun I would have had) but the concepts are the same.

But if all this seems beyond you, don't get discouraged - as embarrassing as this is to admit, I used to really suck at this, and to prove it, here is an old crappy reel of mine from 2007 when EVERYTHING had to have a vignette on it, (face palm). I DPed everything in this except "The End" (2000 wrote and directed, and starred - it was a Marilyn Manson phase...let it go. - I did DP the candle/laptop stuff, cuz the DP said it was stupid and would never work and walked off set.. needless to say, it worked.) and Training Wheels [2002 I was editor, Post Sup, ADR, and 2nd unit director/DP - so I shot the girl riding in the passenger seat, the plane taking off, the sunset, and the bike on the bridge out the door of the van, and I mixed the audio for the dialog scenes, all of it looped.] And 99% of this is all shot on a Sony PD150. (Blame "Rotten" on my Art School friends and mushrooms.)