Hand held lightmeter and shutter speed settings

[Alex]

Generally, doubling the film speed puts you close, so you could start with 18 FPS equals 1/36, or 24 FPS equals 1/48...

however, It might make even more sense to
consider 18 frames as 1/48, and 24 as 1/60.

Beaulieus tend to be even more restrictive, however, they don't split the light between the viewfinder and the film plane, so it's probably a wash.

I believe slight overexposure in general is better than underexposure.

You must also evaluate how much backlight is in your shot and incorrectly affecting your camera exposure meter.

-Alex

[tom hardwick]

It's so convienient to use the inbuilt meter it might be worth using that as your guide but opening op by half a stop or so for each scene. So set the aperture manually for each shot (as you should do anyway) and apply the compensation that you know gives good results.

But I differ in my views from Alex. I always very slightly underexposed K40, believing that a more powerful projector would improve things but that a washed out transparency film had lost the information for ever.

In all my years of transferring film to video I've always found that underexposed footage is easier to correct for that than overexposd and washed out footage.

tom.

[mattiec]

I just started using a Bauer C2a super. I got back my first test roll and the film was underexposed (I used the built in meter). I am not sure of the accuracy of the meter and want to use a handheld lightmeter next time.
My question is: At what shutter speed should I set my light meter using 18fps? 24fps? Do I need to compensate for any "viewfinder light syphoning" etc.?

[Alex]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Courier, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by tom hardwick:
It's so convienient to use the inbuilt meter it might be worth using that as your guide but opening op by half a stop or so for each scene. So set the aperture manually for each shot (as you should do anyway) and apply the compensation that you know gives good results.

But I differ in my views from Alex. I always very slightly underexposed K40, believing that a more powerful projector would improve things but that a washed out transparency film had lost the information for ever.

In all my years of transferring film to video I've always found that underexposed footage is easier to correct for that than overexposd and washed out footage.

tom.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Slight overexposure does not necessarily mean you are "washing out" your picture.

Darker green tones, darker haircolors, and darker clothing, along with shadows in scenes tend to "suck out" the brightness in anything that is immediately in it's vicinity...

by "slightly" overexposing the picture, the dark tones in the shot don't overdominate the lighter tones.

...sometimes, electronic noise is picked up during telecine transfers to video if you "boost" the picture brightness.

Film projection is an entirely different procedure than telecine video transfer of your footage.

Slight underexposure for projection purposes makes good sense...but not for video transfering.

When you blast a lot of light through a tiny film frame via a projector, you are effectively increasing the contrast ratio....a no no for a good quality video transfer.

Good quality film transfers don't blast light through the image, instead they "scan" the image for detail...thusly, that ever so slight overexposure helps the scanner pull out more detail in the picture.....

-Alex

[Nigel]

I agree with Alex. You could also buy a meter with Cine speeds if your's doesn't already.