POV: Shooting

Day1: My first shoot day was tuesday.
I had picked up the kit on Monday and tried out the lights and checked batteries etc so I could make the most of the first day.

Once my talent was ready I went to turn on one of the lights to get started and it flickered but didn't turn on! I tried another plug and the same thing happened. I tried another light and the same thing happened. I tried them in another room and it happened again! They had worked the day before so I was baffled. I looked through the instructions which didn't help and then tried again. Gave the light a wiggle and it turned on. Thank God. There seems to be loose wiring or something inside because it keeps happening but only when they are moved or adjusted.

So the first day was very experimental. I got the bedroom and bathroom sections of Voyeur, Dark Voyeur and Shadow done.

When I reviewed the footage though there was banding and it was grainy. I asked Dylan what he thought and he had some very useful basic information.

He told me that the ISO should go up in multiples of 160 and for indoors you should be around 320 - 480 max. Less for outdoors.
There's also the aperture to consider which is what determines how much natural light is let in, the more natural light the less grain which is caused by the camera putting light in digitally.
For night time and dark shoots you preferably need a lense of around 2.8 to shoot without grain. Once I found the aperture on the 7D I discovered the minimum it could do was 4.0 which Dylan said should be ok as long as it's well lit. When shooting though I found this number changed depending on how much light was in the scene and sometimes it could go down to 3.5 and sometimes wouldn't go any lower than 5.0.

After looking at the footage aswell I found I wasn't particularly happy with it all and it was darker than I had thought it would be. So I decided it all needed re-doing.

Some stills from Day 1

Dark

Dark

Shadow Play

Dark Voyeur