AboutAlessandro Machi Expertise Have experience in both video and film, plus videotape editing, archiving, and remastering. Experienced in live event cinematography plus interviews. Have provided Video Post Production Services for independent film & video productions that have been distributed both nationwide and worldwide. Not too familiar with all the various Hd formats although I did operate an HD B-roll camera for an HD independent feature.
Regional Emmy Winner, also an Emmy Internship Scholarship Winner when I first finished college back in the mid 80's, plus several dozen super-8 filmmaking awards and for video productions as well.
I currently offer YouTube uploading tutoring that includes a critique and technical review as well. If you live in Los Angeles and would like to learn more about this educational service send an email to info at slingshotpro.com
Recently finished cinematography work on the film Dali, Dali, Dali which is now in post production.
Experience 25 years of Film & Video Production & Editing Experience including low budget & quality control. I enjoy filming in Super-8.
Organizations Founded Action! Film and Video Production Club while in College.
Publications www.Opednews.com
Education/Credentials Four Year College Program, was one or two classes short of graduation.
Awards and Honors Regional Emmy Winner, 8 Time Vision Award Winner, Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Internship Winner, Film Festival Winner for several different Super-8 Films,
Past/Present Clients Sony Pictures, Prudential Jon Douglas, In Defense of Animals, Humane Society of the United States, Ivy Gullickson
Question I'm just curious what meter you perfer for outdoor filmaking (of landscapes and
such) I know my question is rather vague, I'm not giving a specific lighting
situation but I'm just wondering what system works best in most situations.
Thanks
Answer Hi Anthony.
When Hollywood lights a scene for a movie, it's usually a meticulous process requiring the placement of lights in several different locations. Each light adds it's own distinctive affect to the overall look of the scene. Because each light handles a different task, incident metering at several locations throughout the frame helps an experienced director of photography make decisions about whether a key, fill, or backlight should be scrimmed, dimmed, refocused or flagged, and what f-stop the camera should be set to.
Metering the landscape scenario that you have asked about can be accurately measured by using an internal camera's automatic exposure metering system as long as you follow a few basic rules and are willing to take notes the first few times you shoot and then make the necessary corrections on future shoots.
One has to make sure that the camera's metering system is accurate to begin with and that the camera is actually correctly rating the ASA of the film. You probably won't know if your film camera is rating the film correctly until you shoot some film and then review it after it has been processed and transfered to video.
To begin, you will first take several different reflective readings of the frame you plan on filming. Your goal is to find the brightest parts of the scene, and then the darkest parts as well so that you can determine the contrast latitude of your frame (the amount of f-stops between what appears to be the brightest and what appears to be the darkest part of the scene). Next you will determine which part of the frame is most important to you as you will now set the exposure based on what in the scene matters most to you. Sometimes what matters most is the overall best f-stop selection, other times it's a particular part of the scene be perfectly exposed irrespective of how that adjustment affects the darker and lighter parts of the scene.
But it isn't quite that easy. Although you now know the f-stop contrast difference, what you have to also figure out is how far off your automatic metering is based on the gray scale that reflective metering is based upon.
Here are some things to look out for as you meter different parts of your scene. If there was a white building brightly glowing because of the sun's rays, the automatic reflective meter in your camera may actually give you an incorrect reading of as much 1 to 3 f-stops underexposed. If the building was instead black, the automatic reflective meter in the camera may incorrectly overexpose by anywhere from 1/2 of an f-stop to 2 and 1/2 f-stops. If both a white building and a black building appear in the shot, the average reflectance of both may offset each other and help your camera's automatic metering be more accurate. This basically means that reflective metering is to be primarily used as a guideline and you will need to learn how much to over and underexpose based on how much the camera's automatic metering is being "fooled" in any situation.
So why would anyone want to do reflective metering from an automatic internal camera meter versus just using an incident meter? One reason is you don't have to leave your camera gear unattended as you walk into the frame, take a few incident readings, than walk back to your camera position, all of which can take anywhere from a minute to 2-3 minutes. It's not wise to leave cameras unattended for several reasons and to be able to make the readings right from the camera position, especially if your crew is very small is usually a quicker and safer approach.
An internal camera's automatic reflective meter also enables one to use the camera's zoom lens to get additional readings whereas many spot meters don't have zooms or have very minimal ones at best.
Lets say you have taken your camera's automatic f-stop readings and have made an f-stop selection and then find out after viewing the processed film that you were way off, now what? The point isn't to be perfect with your f-stop selections the first time you shoot, it's to always learn from your mistakes so with each and every shoot you do the window of really dumb mistakes gets dramatically smaller.
No matter what result you get on your first film shoot, unless the processed image is completely black or completely overexposed you should be able to figure out what incorrect setting you had and make the necessary adjustments for the next time. If you choose to take several readings from the camera's built in automatic metering system, you should have enough information to guage the proper f-stop setting, especially if you also take them at a couple of different zoom settings.
Once you have selected the ideal f-stop, I would then recommend keeping the camera in manual exposure mode at the already selected f-stop for that particular take. Prior to your next shot, you would make a new calculation based on new automatic exposure readings unless you are certain that nothing has changed to warrant a new set of automatic exposure readings.
I hope that gives you enough information to get started, and good luck!
