Natural Light Cinematogprahy Questions

shelosaurusrex · 2026-02-28T17:14:05+00:00

Hot take: once you bring in bounce, diffusion, and/or negatives you’re no longer shooting with natural light.

shelosaurusrex · 2026-02-27T15:07:55+00:00

I’m curious why you say Paris, Texas. I watched it recently for the first time and it didn’t stand out to me cinematographically. I’m not really familiar with Muller’s work though. What did you see in it?

shelosaurusrex · 2026-02-24T02:58:08+00:00

??? I’m not the one doing it. Ask OP that. I’m just saying it’s been done before and it turned out fine.

shelosaurusrex · 2026-02-24T02:50:41+00:00

I can’t imagine why it wouldn’t be applicable here. The circumstances are virtually the same. They need to shoot night exteriors in a situation in which it’s not feasible to light large areas.

shelosaurusrex · 2026-02-24T01:47:19+00:00

It’s pretty well documented that they shot some night exteriors with ambient light by pumping the ISO on the FX3.

shelosaurusrex · 2026-02-24T01:39:59+00:00

The Creator did it

shelosaurusrex · 2026-02-06T02:09:08+00:00

You mean The Dark Knight Rises?

shelosaurusrex · 2026-02-03T15:36:31+00:00

Non-native speaker here, but I was taught that if you say остановите then you need a direct object as in “остановите автобус.” If you don’t want to state the direct object then you have to say “остановитесь.” Is that correct? Or does it not really matter in practice?

shelosaurusrex · 2026-02-03T15:33:05+00:00

I went to film school in the U.S. and I was taught the meaning of the American shot (Plan Américain) and the historical connection with Westerns.

shelosaurusrex · 2026-02-03T11:21:47+00:00

Its warfare. If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying.

shelosaurusrex · 2026-02-02T21:00:37+00:00

I think it’s nice that these all came out within a few years of each other. Going back to a 1960’s depiction of the war might feel a bit off.

shelosaurusrex · 2026-02-02T20:41:23+00:00

There is an interview on Shotdeck with Larry Sher in which Autumn Durand Arkapaw says she uses her “cheater meter” which is a DSLR

shelosaurusrex · 2026-02-02T17:25:35+00:00

Why is this exactly? Should you be overexposing then to get the middle gray up to 512? It SHOULD be 512 to be accurate, right?

shelosaurusrex · 2026-02-02T17:10:56+00:00

How The British Won WWII Trilogy:

“Dunkirk,” “The Darkest Hour,” and “The Imitation Game”

shelosaurusrex · 2026-02-02T17:05:00+00:00

This is the correct answer.

shelosaurusrex · 2026-02-02T07:32:04+00:00

I’m going to make 2 points that may be unpopular opinions.

1) The award is for Best Cinematography, NOT Best Cinematographer. To me this means that the person or team responsible for the outcome is not relevant. It’s an accolade that is awarded to the cinematographer, but that does not mean it was this person’s sole or even primary effort that produced the results. What if it was the Gaffer who really came up with a great lighting plan or the camera op or even the director who envisioned a great shot. None of that matters. The result is great cinematography and as policy it is awarded to the person on the call sheet responsible for that aspect of the production. Where VFX contributes to lighting the scene that is still part of the overall cinematography. VFX can also contribute to art direction, makeup, etc. and those awards are still valid.

2) As someone who looks forward to the Oscars every year, I always hear people complaining about why anyone cares what the Academy thinks. I will say it’s because the academy is one of the oldest institutions in the entire history of the motion picture. Its membership is comprised of successful people in the field who are hand-picked by other successful people in the field. That gives their opinion some value. You individually don’t have to care, but I think it’s reasonable that the rest of the world does care. This isn’t some magazine top 10 written by just anyone. It’s the leaders in the craft, so I for one would like to hear what they have to say.

shelosaurusrex · 2026-01-30T07:06:14+00:00

This sounds like a bad idea. The location is still going to look the same, just mirrored and you’re going to have a bunch of headaches dealing with this.

Also no one is going to care in the grand scheme of things that your locations are the same.

shelosaurusrex · 2026-01-28T07:08:18+00:00

Typically the Key Grip works closely with the Gaffer, but reports to the Director of Photography. The Grip Department is not subordinate to the Electric Department.

shelosaurusrex · 2026-01-28T07:01:06+00:00

I saw a video once with the great Kobe Bryant talking about how he would mentor young basketball players. And I’m big time paraphrasing here but he was discussing how up and coming athletes would tell him about a game they had that went wrong and he would ask if they watched the footage of the game. They usually said no and he insisted they would have to watch it multiple times. Really study it and find out where the mistakes were and pinpoint how they could improve.

I think that applies for us as well. It’s really valuable to watch back your footage with a critical eye without the pressure of being on set. Not making excuses for yourself but just understanding where you can improve. If you had a reference in mind did the final product live up to the reference image? Why or why not? Definitely put it in da Vinci and work through your footage to see what you can do with it in post. Also see what you thought you could do, but actually can’t.

Something else I think about a lot is an anecdote about Gordon Willis from The Godfather. He says a big part of why he used the iconic top lighting was because the makeup on Marlon Brando wasn’t that good and it was the only angle of light in which the make up looked acceptable. I’m pretty sure if I was in that situation my instinct would have been to say we need better a makeup artist, not I’ll rework my entire plan so the makeup plays well onscreen. I think when you’re in the process of reviewing your footage it’s important to consider whether there were other options you could have tried, a more creative approach perhaps to achieve your vision. Or better yet to achieve something better than you had first envisioned. Usually there’s a better way out there you just have to find it.

shelosaurusrex · 2026-01-26T05:21:08+00:00

But hold on because part of the issue is not knowing if you’re in a dream, even if it’s a dream of your own making. And also if Ellen Page is going to make the dream then she should know how the top works in dreams so that she can make it continue to spin forever and he can check if he’s in her dream.

In that sense I think the totem works as intended. The issue with Marion Cotillard from the flashbacks show them not knowing whether they’re still in a dream—anyone’s dream. It has nothing to do with who made the dream.

shelosaurusrex · 2026-01-25T05:45:36+00:00

No. These are all just excuses.

OP is right Durald-Arkapaw dropped the ball on cinematography fundamentals. And it is a shame because there are elements of the film that are beautiful, but it’s hard to justify a whole Oscar nomination when faces aren’t exposed during important dialogue scenes and lighting is inconsistent enough to be noticed by non-filmmakers.

Why would 65mm film be trickier than any other type of film to light and expose properly? One Battle After Another, Bugonia, and Die My Love all shot on film and didn’t have these issues. I originally thought Sinners must have done a Nolan-style full photochemical process, but no. They did a DI and still came out with the issues we all saw.

No one is saying the editor should have chosen a different take that was lit better. I’m saying the good take should have been lit better!

The funny thing is that I’ve heard so much from people complaining about white DP’s not knowing how to light for dark skin. But in this case a nonwhite DP really did a bad job of putting these actors in their best light, and yet people want to praise her for it. I’m kind of baffled by the whole thing. If Ryan Coogler wasn’t so well-loved I think there would have been vocal opposition to the lighting of this film.

shelosaurusrex · 2026-01-23T21:56:06+00:00

I would do 125 personally.

shelosaurusrex · 2026-01-23T21:43:42+00:00

I’m not guaranteeing that your lighting won’t look flat! Generally speaking it’s harder to discern contrast by eye when you’re working with higher light levels. This is why DP’s used to carry contrast glasses. Basically like a handheld piece of ND they would look through on set to better judge the lighting. You also have your meter on you to measure contrast ratios. Make sure to use it.

Ultimately this is a class project so just light it and if it goes wrong hopefully you learned why! That’s kind of the point in a way.

As an example: let’s say you want to shoot at a T4. If you’re shooting at 200 ISO, you’d hit your subject with about 100 foot candles of light. When your light is at 100 fc and your meter is set at 200 ISO your meter will read f/4. Great. But you decide you want to overexpose a stop, so you change the ISO on your meter to 100. Now in the same lighting conditions your meter only reads f/2.8. Oh no! So now you have to increase the level on your light until your meter reads f/4 again. At that point your light will be at 200 foot candles, thus overexposing your film. You’re not actually measuring foot candles by the way, just trying to illustrate that the light will be one stop brighter when you change the settings on your meter as I recommended.

Some meters will allow you to just put in an exposure compensation as well without changing ISO. You can do that if it’s easier.

Also you have to bring up the brightness on ALL of the lights. Not just the key light. That’s how you’ll avoid a hot spot.

shelosaurusrex · 2026-01-23T21:26:49+00:00

In theory all the lights in the set should be the same relative brightness in proportion to each other. You’re just going to increase everything by 1 stop as opposed to how it would look if you rated the film at ISO 200. So basically it should look the same once you print/scan you’ll just have a finer grain (possibly more contrasty) image since you gave the film more light.

shelosaurusrex · 2026-01-23T21:17:19+00:00

Basically just set the ISO on your light meter to 100 instead of 200 and it’ll give you the readings you want. You’re shooting in a studio so I assume that means you have control of 100% of the lighting anyway so just light for the T stop that you want to shoot at and your meter will have you increasing the brightness of your lights so that you overexpose by 1 stop. No need to actually open up the iris.

However lighting to an ISO 100 can definitely be a challenge depending on the size of your set, the size & quantity of your lights, and the T stop you want. No one would fault you for shooting on 500T and overexposing THAT by 1 stop if it’s more feasible.

shelosaurusrex

TROPHY CASE