vision 2 with a Nizo Pro

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Hello,

I'm a newbie to this forum and a newbie to filmaking and I could really do with some pointers. I will start shooting my first super 8 short next week, I will be using a Nizo Professional (with a Nizo 461 M as backup) with vision 2 film stock at 24 fps. I decided to go for Vision 2 negative stock because:

a: most of the film will take place either outside at sunrise or inside a train in the early morning, so it will be relatively lowlight.
b: i heard, though i don't understand exactly why, that negative film is more forgiving of exposure errors, and is better for telecine.

I will shoot tests of both 200t and 500t next week and see if I can post them. My question is:

1: Do I absolutly need an 85 daylight filter? Even on the train where there is a mixture of artificial and dawnlight? And if so, do I need to bore holes in the cartridges in order to release the internal daylight filter in the Nizo Pro? I'd rather not have to buy an external 85 filter because i will also need a wide-angle lens in some of the train scenes.

2: I know everyone says to use a seperate light meter, but I am a beginner and would like to keep things as simple as possible on the shoot. I understand from other posts that the nizo pro will read the 200T as 100ASA, if I take a reading from the internal light-meter, then switch to manual and go up 1/2 an f-stop, will that work out as the slightly over-exposed result which is supposed to be good for this stock?

I very much hope someone out there knows the answers, or can point me in a good direction, trying to find this stuff out via google just leaves me more and more confused.

all the best,

joby

[Alex]

To see if you 85 filter is being activated, put the film in the camera for testing purposes.

Put the camera in auto exposure, then move the filter switch from the indoor setting to the outdoor setting. If the light meter shifts approximately 1/2 to 1 f-stop, then you have control over the filter.

Assuming you do have control over the filter, I would use it for mixed light situations. I would not worry about the one stop overexposure for the following reason.

Odds are that if you have mixed light, you have outside sources of light that are brighter than your interiors. Should these exterior sources of light end up in your frame, they will drive the meter to underexpose, so that one stop of overexposure will help to some degree protect you from underexposing.

If you want to stick with the meter in the camera, I still recommend locking it by switching it to manual exposure even if you don't want to change the setting. Just remember to take a new exposure reading for every time you either change angles or
the framing.

You can also "average" your readings if necessary.
Take an automatic reading that favors the brighter background exteriors, then take another reading that completely misses the those same background exteriors.

Now it's up to you to decide the ideal "average" exposure for your scene. Lets say when you took a reading in which the exterior light sources are being read, and your camera meter gives you a reading of f 5.6-f8.0, but when you pan the camera away from those outside bright sources the f-stop reading drops to f2.0.

That would tell me that the ideal setting is from f2.0 to aproximately a 2.8-4.0 split.

I hope that helps.

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thank you very much for your informative reply, I will heed your advice. Because I'm not familiar with some of the language of photography, could you explain what you mean by "a 2.8-4.0 split"? Does it mean setting the exposure needle between 2.8 and 4.0?

thanks,
john

[Alex]

Originally posted by joby:
thank you very much for your informative reply, I will heed your advice. Because I'm not familiar with some of the language of photography, could you explain what you mean by "a 2.8-4.0 split"? Does it mean setting the exposure needle between 2.8 and 4.0?

thanks,
john

<font size="2" face="verdana, sans-serif">Yes that's exactly right. You probably already know this but the smaller the f-stop number, the more light it is letting in.

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cheers! Now to put it to the test....