Dark bar: 50mm prime + B&W = success!

Laurence wrote on 5/31/2012, 2:56 AM

I went this evening to reshoot some b-roll at a pretty dark bar. The last time I went in I got really lousy noisy blotchy footage. Anyway, this time I decided to use 35mm and 50mm 1.8 primes, a tripod, my Z96 lights and the camera set for black and white instead of color. The footage looks outstanding! I'm not sure how much of it was the primes and how much of it was the black and white. I shot a couple of color shots so that I could see how they looked and they actually looked very good as well. I believe I have a new recipe for dark dimly lit spaces!

Comments

farss wrote on 5/31/2012, 7:24 AM

"I'm not sure how much of it was the primes and how much of it was the black and white."
The primes.
One of the things that bugs me about some of the large sensor cameras is the kit zoom lens that comes with them is woefully slow. End result is all the goodness of the larger sensor is lost in the lens. Obvious solution is fast primes except not at all practical for most of what I shoot.

Bob.

Laurence wrote on 5/31/2012, 8:07 AM

My HVR-Z7 has a lens problem that is going to cost me somewhere between $600 and $1200 to fix, so I've been using the DSLR. Most of the time it's great, but there are some times like yesterday afternoon when I really miss the features of the camcorder. I was shooting in a recycling warehouse and needed shifting focus. Since the DSLR doesn't have a useable autofocus, I set the aperture to f16 for a deep depth of field. When I got the footage home, it was really noisy. I will fix it with Neat Video and it will look almost ok, but if I shot it with the Z7 it really would have been a lot better.

On the other hand, last evening with the primes at 1.8 and the DSLR in black and white I captured shots that wouldn't have looked anywhere near as nice with the HDV camera.

It is really the speed of the lens isn't it. I can suddenly understand why people will sink so much money into a fast zoom lens with a limited range. The primes let you get that look for a lot less money, but switching out lenses every time you want to zoom like I did last night sure is a pain.