Re: need advice about shooting dance with video

From: Imageimage@aol.com
Date: 03/29/01


Dans un courrier daté du 29/03/01 15:50:17, bud@skynet.be a écrit :

<<What really is 
necessary is to have an image in the back that has a luminosity value 
as close as possible to the luminosity of the subject in the 
foreground - for the camera.>>

Obviously we still have the problem with the sensitivity of cameras, though 
consumer cameras at less than 1 EV have existed for several years now - with 
numeric cameras still a bit behind. If the screen itself is not bright enough 
(or too uneven) to film the screen by itself, obviously we can't film it 
better with dancers present.

But my point is that the problems are not limited to insufficient light. 
Correct exposure is always a problem when strong contrasts exist, as they 
almost always do on stage.

Traditional lighting for dance often uses strong side lighting (and this is 
even more likely in the case where we want to separate the dancer from the 
backdrop). Even forgetting the screen behind, the camera is incapable of 
capturing the range of brightnesses present on the dancer. Even if the 
brightness of the screen is at exactly the same level of brightness as the 
center of the performers, this is no help if the camera if taking its 
exposure from the halo of strong side lighting.

All the factors interplay. Actually many cheap cameras are more sensitive to 
low light than most professional cameras. But if we can't correctly override 
their automatic exposure, the results are artificially limited.

David



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