Shooting 16mm on the beach, help!

BobbyMiller · Apr 22, 2004

Hi,
I need some tips on shooting on a beach with 16mm film, I have put together a site with some test images on the beach and need some help figuring things out, the site is:
www.riggedproductions.com/16mm.htm

Thanks for your time!

FullSaileee · May 7, 2004

Re:

Re:

Well let’s see best advice I can give you is if the sun is behind the subject use a bounce board from front, I recently shot EXR 100 D color negative film. make sure you have a matte box use ND filters to maintain continuity I would say use ND3 filter shoot at 22 but make sure you keep taking readings as you know your light will be constantly changing when you drop a stop remove the filter since there is only going to be a difference of 1 stop with ND3 the continuity would not be so much noticeable since you will be using a filter you will be shooting at a 16 if you still want to shoot at 22 I would expose for 32 “ remember this when using ND3 filter” during transfer I would suggest instead of one light go with the best light transfer.

Remember only remove filter if you lose about 1 stop I can help you even more if I knew you shot ratio.

MarkG · May 7, 2004

Also, obviously, be very careful to keep sand out of the camera, or it could really spoil your day...

FilmUnited · May 10, 2004

A few things...

What type of film stock will you be shooting with?
Also, I saw that the sun was not directly but mostly overhead in most of your test shots. I have not read the script, but is there a reason you do not want to shoot around magic hour? You mentioned that you want the film to be nicely lit, so the first thing you can do is get the nicest light... early in the morning or late in the afternoon.

The other thing about shooting in the middle of the day is that the light is so bright that you often have to stop down to 16 or 22 even with an ND filter in the camera. On a sixteen mil lens at that stop your depth of field will be huge, which may not be bad, but if you hope to achieve that "film look" often produced by longer 35mm lenses at lower stops, it becomes nearly impossible under such bright conditions where everything is in focus. It really depends on what is best for your story.

If you are shooting close-ups under harsh light, be sure to utilize any silks, nets, or bouncecards at your disposal.

Also, the old Bolex cameras are very prone to light leaks and sand leaks, so if you are shooting on the beach I would reccomend taping up the camera thouroghly before shooting.

good luck,

Corey

laurent.a · Jun 10, 2004

use a bounce board from front

That's one of the best advices, you should try to give the face some light some how, its is a very normal situation in such a case. DOPs know that the more light you have, the more light you need...

talking about filters, in such a situation :

You can use low contrast filters or black promist to reduce contrast hignlights/shades.

You can use a polarising filter to darken the sky but it has to be set for each shot, and works according an angle of about 45 to 50° between sun, subject, camera, so all angles of view don't work or match.

b/w you can use a yellowish or orange or red or coral (make tests) filter to darken the sky

you can use degrading filters like neutral or yellowish or redish or orange or coral (make tests) if you like greenish skys. watch out with pan/zooms shots !.

scubba · Jul 13, 2004

what is the look you are going for?
What is the contrast you want the scene to have?
do you mind the sand blowing out?
do you mind the face to sink into darkness?
first you need to set your exposure in your mind. I would recommend to have the face at key. you dont want to face direct sun, or you will have to use a double net during the day. this will take the harsh highlights out of the face.
my advice is to bring the man into 3/4 back sun position and brighten up one side of the face with a rosco. you decide whether you want to have it blue or orange/ straw. but dont bringt it in too close, cause this is only your fill. Too much fill cuts your contrast and renders the picture flat.

Your readings:
if you rely on a spotmeter and blindly follow its readings you are fu**ed. You need to interprete the reading like this: measure the highlight in your pic. in this case the sand. it will blow out badly but that's okay. in your meter you can set this reading to highlight and it will show few stops less for the key which is the face. if your sand reads F64 and you know that this is the highlight you can tell that the key has to be about 2-3 stops lower: somewhere around F11. Take a incidental reading at the face height. Now bring up the light (with bounce board) or take it away (net and scrims) until you reach the key level.
Okay, in this case I have admitted the sand to blow out. If you want it all to be in the straight line of the sensitometric curve of your film then you need to bring up the face level as it is not probable that you have a scrim large enough to cover the sun hitting the sand behind the man...am I right?
In such extreme locations you cant get away without losing at least some contrast, even with the new vision2 stocks. No device other than the human eye can handle 15 stops of light range.

hope this helps. at least this is how I did it

scubba · Jul 13, 2004

as for fthe lens:

if you want to crush your depth of field and still be able to stop down the lens far enough in order not to use too many NDs you will need to shoot with a rather long lens which will render handheld shots rather impossible, impossible to look at. the framing might be allover the place.
If your shots are all locked off you will be fine when shooting most of your stuff at 75mm and up. I grant you have a switar or kern optics lens. those are good lenses but never use them at the bottom or top end.
Same goes with the aperture: it is in general never a good idea to use iris setting at the extreme settings. Ok, on a royal cooke lens and the canon workhorse this might be okay even when covering super16, but the lens' resolving power ususally drops at high F stops. you might even have a chart available on the web that shows you the deterioration that comes with the stopping down. same goes with the lens wide open. of course this would help with ciritcal depth of field and deep depth of focus.

so here you will have to decide:
-moving or locked off shots
-long or short lens
-aperture settings: what is the working span I want the iris to be set to
-will I have to rack focus: will the lens breathe (this is not the same at any focal lenghtbut can easily be tested)
-will I even zoom during the shot?

as for the shutter:
I dont know exactly which bolex you are using but I recall that they are using a prism shutter instead of a mirrored one. this basically means that you have a loss in light in the prism. you need to compensate for this in your shutter setting otherwise you will permanently underexpose 1/3 of a stop. Or set the ASA 1/3 stop lower (ASA66 in your case).
this might be the reason why you are getting different readings for your cameras as the bolex meter might already be compensating for this loss.

the film:
are you using a reversal stock? remember that reversal is far less forgiving for contrast issues and exposure mistakes. it is a film with a narrow latitude which tends to blow out way quicker. in your situation it will probably be gentle and allow for 4 stops of latitude before blowing.
On reversal stock you generally dont want to overexpose since this will give you more density whereas a negative needs to be overexposed in order to have the film more dense.

Maybe I did not pay enoug attention and you mentioned which camera and stock you are using, but this are just general pieces of advice for the use in such conditions.

Kevin_Zanit · Jul 13, 2004

" . . . generally dont want to overexpose since this will give you more density . . . "

On reversal it gives you less density. Thus I would recommend you underexpose just slightly. This will give you a little more density to work with.

What stock are you shooting?

Pretty much what Scubba said you should do.

The biggest issue you are going to run into is the extreme contrast you will encounter. You may want to get an incident meter for this one. There will be so much contrast variation that a TTL meter is just taking in way to much.

You may want to try and shoot at a time when the sun is at a nice angle, kind of raking the beach. Rather than a real topy look.

Bring some bounce cards (or if you can, get a decent size frame of Ultra bounce. This stuff is great).

Kevin Zanit