The New Semester

As the new semester begins, I hope this blog will see lots of use, both from the new students as well as the 546 cinematography alumni who's insight and advice is inspirational to the current students.

Thank you all for participating.

EX3 with PRIME lenses

I visited a 546 set for the first time after the switch from 16mm film to XDCAM EX, and I was surprised to see the cinematographer using the Letus35 adapter in front of the lens that comes with the Sony PMW-EX3. I'm personally against using lens adapters (especially the ones that go in front of the camera's lens) for many reasons:

1. Degradation of picture quality that one gets after putting two sets of lenses in front of each other.
2. The static grain that one gets from the ground glass looks artificial and not organic.
3. The adapter loses light so one will need more light or open the stop more.
4. The possible vignetting that one can get because of the prime lens and / or the adapter.

I remember once Chris told us that the whole point of getting EX3s for 546 was because of the fact that the lenses are interchangeable, but I also remember him saying that there won't be any lenses for the EX3 at PEC in the near future. So since they (DPs) can rent lens adapters and prime lenses, I thought I should suggest something that I discovered while I was researching for another project that I shot on the XDCAM EX.

I once was picking up equipments from Birns and Sawyer and I saw one one order that has a 2/3" ENG-type HD camera with a set of Zeiss Digiprime Lenses. Now the EX3 is a 1/2" camera, so you'll need to get the Fujinon ACM-21 adapter to be able to use 2/3" lenses on it. If you still want to use 35mm PL-mount lenses, I'd recomment the P+S Technik PRO35 adapter. It still cuts down light but at least it sits on the Fujinon ACM-21 adapter and not on another lens, and it's the best adapter out there.

Here are the lenses:
http://www.birnsandsawyer.com/_camera-rentals/lenses/?filter=HD%20Primes

Here's the adapter: (couldn't find it on Birns & Sawyer's website)
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/576005-REG/Fujinon_ACM_21_ACM_21_2_3_Lens_Adapter.html

Here's the P+S Technik PRO35 adapter:
http://www.birnsandsawyer.com/_Camera-Rentals/HD-Accessories/P+S-Technik-Pro-35.aspx

Here's a demo of the PRO35 setup:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8PdxMWX3z8

I'm sure there are other vendors with other price ranges out there, and there are probably other lens sets too, but I'll leave that to your research.

Enjoy and have a happy shooting!

Fady

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Yours,
Chris

Question on Shooting Dark Skin Tones

Today I received this question by eMail:

Just wanted to ask you a couple of questions with some ways to light darker skintones.  Today in our test shoot we found ourselves spending more time trying to light darker faces and getting their features to show without lighting up the room way up.  Coog wanted candices room to feel really dark but it was tough to bring them up, keep the light soft and also keep the light off the walls.  A big issue was that he wanted to stage them against the wall.  Dont get me wrong it made sense from a directors point of view so im not saying anything about that.  Im just wondering if there are methods to like darker complextions and standards. 

 

We also ran into the issue of figuring out blocking, then purposefully light everything 1/2 stop under to get a moody darker feel in the room, then the actor would walk back in and we realize we cant even see her at all because her complextion is like almost 2 1/2 stops under when spotted! Her skin tone being that dark was something we did not take into consideration when we lit the first setup. 

 

Coog was mentioning he wanted the film to feel very much like City of God which i love.  I noticed just right now watching it how they are lighting their actors.  It almost looks like theres some kind of oil on their skin to bring out the spectral bounce coming from the light off their skin. are they putting something on the actors faces or am i crazy?  If we could do something similar but not too much it would help so much!