LOST TRIBES

[Matt Pacini]

My point was, that if I'm metering off the gray card, and then underexposing one stop, but Alex is metering off a face, and shooting AT exposure, we are both setting our camera to the same exact F-stop, but I'm saying I'm underxposing, and he's saying he's not.
That's what I mean by different methods of exposing ending up meaning different things, in regard to how it relates to descriptions of under, or overexposing.
It's not as simple as just saying something is being underexposed, as Alex correctly was inferring.
If you are averaging the total light falling on your scene, without considering what is most important, (like if you want the highlights to retain detail, but not the shadows, or the other way around, or if you want a flatter lighting, etc.) then you would have a point, but only the clueless meter this way, especially since rarely do us low budget shooters have absolute complete control over the lighting. We're always using practicals in the scene, or the light coming in through the windows, instead of shooting on sound stages, and controlling every aspect of illumination.
A good example of what I'm talking about would be if you're shooting someone walking down a dark alley at night, and you only light the actor with a backlight, or a sidelight, and almost everything else in the shot is black. If you expose for his face, and meter the highlights, that would be the best way to meter, but if you tried to average the whole scene, you would open up to the point where the highlights would blow out, and you wouldn't have deep, rich blacks. (Assuming that's the look you would want).
Point is, it's a creative decision. Go onto www.cinematography.net and you will see industry pros going over this stuff too, and I'm talking about DP's that shoot big budget 35mm films that we go see in theaters.
So I didn't make this up, eh? (That's my Canadian impression, like it?)
Matt Pacini

[mattias]

> It's not as simple as just saying something is being underexposed, as Alex correctly was inferring.

yes it is. *if* we're talking about whether k40 should be underexposed or not, which we are (and which it should). if you measure a white surface (or just brighter than 18%) and expose at the reading you *are* underexposing. you might say things like "since i'm shooting a white surface, i must overexpose by two stops," and that is a perfectly sane thing to say, but for the sake of this discussion, you're *not* overexposing. there's always an f-stop that is "correct," meaning that it will render all medium gray areas of the scene as medium gray on the film. saying that k40 should be underexposed simply means that it should be exposed in a way that renders the medium gray areas darker than normal.

and an explanation of why this would only be a valid point if i was "averaging the scene without considering what's important" would be interesting to hear. especially since this is a very bad way to get a reading and thus would be one of the hardest ways of getting a controlled underexposure. and being an "industry pro" (whatever that means. i've done paid cinematography work) myself, i always use an incident meter and a spot meter, so i haven't been "averaging" for years. ;-)

otherwise, i agree with you both 100%.

/matt

[yak]

hi matt,
id like to buy a copy aswell, but i need a PAL-version, so what are we gonna do there?

[Matt Pacini]

Hmmmm... Sorry, I don't have any PAL versions.
I wish I did. I've been getting these at 50 copies at a time, so if I were going to sell a PAL copy, I would just be going to one of those services with a single tape, and that wouldn't really be worth while, to tell you the truth. Do they have any conversion services where you are?
Sorry, this has been the first PAL request.
Actually, I wish that we would switch over to it. It's so much better, and would make everything so much simpler!
Matt Pacini

[mattias]

your first pal request? come on, the only reason i'm not constantly bugging you about it is because you've already said there is not pal version. ;-) i'm sure there are hundreds of pal users who would *really* like a copy.

/matt

[Alex]

PAL transfer prices have come down and some places either charge the same price for duplication once you make a PAL Conversion Master, or at most, one dollar more per PAL VHS copy.

I thought in Europed multi-standard VHS decks were commonplace and much lower priced than in the U.S.

Info on the multi-standard deck could help break the above PAL impasse, as could finding good pricing on a good quality PAL Conversion Master from NTSC.

-Alex

[MovieStuff]

Multi standard PAL/NTSC decks are, indeed, very common. Multi standard PAL/NTSC televisions are not. Just because someone has an NTSC deck in Europe doesn't mean that they can watch the video on a PAL monitor anymore than somone with a PAL deck in the US could watch the video on an NTSC monitor. The monitor has to be compatable as well.

Roger

[yak]

ok, i see there is a problem, so put it back on super 8, hahahah, no serious, what about mpeg 4?
yak

[avortex]

Personally, I'm a PAL user, and I bought Matt a NTSC copy because the quality of an NTSC-PAL conversion sucks. I'm going to watch the copy in friend's multistandard deck, and probably I copy it to a SuperVCD for watching at home (DVD players usually read all standards)without any loss of quality.

[Alex]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Courier, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by MovieStuff:
Multi standard PAL/NTSC decks are, indeed, very common. Multi standard PAL/NTSC televisions are not. Just because someone has an NTSC deck in Europe doesn't mean that they can watch the video on a PAL monitor anymore than somone with a PAL deck in the US could watch the video on an NTSC monitor. The monitor has to be compatable as well.

Roger<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Perhaps they make multi-standard video decks that not only playback the tape in any format but also convert it to the television you have available.

Othewise, what is the purpose of a multi-standard deck?

-Alex