How to Mathematically Figure out how to take a good image without looking at the display or into the camera on manual settings

[Zach Goodwin2]

Calculate the field of view:

https://www.scantips.com/lights/fieldofview.html

Use the Hyperfocal Distance:

https://www.photopills.com/calculators/dof

Rely on the Sunny 16 rule:

http://anderphotography.com/workshops/astrophoto/exposure.html

Use a manual lens and measure from the sensor to the subject:

Use White Balance Presets and use them based on the time of the day:

 

[Mako Sports]

 lol at the same time this is the exact same thing as recording audio for video and not monitoring it with headphones. 

[Zach Goodwin2]

Well yeah of course it can be:

 

 

And this is all without one of these which you may need, a light meter:

 

 

But here again it is very easy to take a picture on an iPhone, just pull it out, go to camera, click to focus, and then press a button.

[IronFilm]

2 hours ago, Mako Sports said:

 lol at the same time this is the exact same thing as recording audio for video and not monitoring it with headphones. 

Thank for your saying what I'd have said!

Also, if you produce a film and expect one person to be your entire sound department, then "this" (monitoring without headphones) is kinda what is going on an uncomfortably large proportion of the time!

As booming is right up there with the 1st AC as the two toughest technical crew jobs on set. 

So you'll have most of your focus on booming during a take (especially if it is something really tricky, such as an unrehearsed roving gimbal shot with lots of bouncing dialogue. Or worse, improv dialogue!), which doesn't leave much spare attention to focus in on listening to the headphones you're wearing. Also, the usual setup is boom into my left ear and all the wireless into my right ear (because you're listening out for completely different things on the boom channel vs wireless during a take, thus you separate them). 

Ever tried watching half a dozen video monitors displayed on a single monitor? No, not with a stack of neat little boxes within the monitor screen for each individual camera feed, this is with all six camera feeds overlaid on top of each other! A garbled mixed up picture. 

Sounds like total nonsense huh? How could you even judge exposure for each one individually, or know if it is framed precisely accurately, or if there is a stray coffee cup in the frame or not, or if the skin tones are good?

Welcome to my world. 

Of course with a good base of theoretical knowledge (such as @Zach Goodwin2 started this thread about) and your gut feeling (built up over years of experience), then you can dial in your settings during setup pretty well and fly along on auto pilot. 

And the more expertise you pick up, the better your "auto pilot" can be during a take itself while booming it.

For instance if I hear a spike in clothing rustle in my right ear (if I hear it in my left ear.... we've got a MAJOR costume issue! Which should've been addressed in pre-production ideally), should I freak out? Well, if I see out of the corner of my eye a couple of the actors hugging in the scene, but they were not the ones with dialogue during that same moment of clothing rustle, then I can probably feel confident the ISO track of the speaker at the moment was fine itself. (and if I've got the boom spot on, I can be even more confident there is nothing to worry about for the edit!)

Plus between takes, when you've got free hands, you can be more attentively listening out for problems to nip them in the bud before it develops into a real issue. And you can be checking playback, doing PFL to check if the vital tracks are all sweet. Although.... if you're flying solo, you often might not have time to scrub through playback and listen to the parts you want to. As you're also got to be standing by ready, and able to respond to any changes.

(this is also why sticking to on set protocols and not deviating from the usual patterns is important, for example I could be listening to playback of the previous take with my ears but my eyes are on the 1st AD. Waiting to see him say "turnover", but if this take the director or cam op decides to shout "roll sound" instead I might never know! I can't hear them. And I'm not looking at them either. So there I am standing looking like a deaf idiot due to not hearing them as they "wait on sound" because they didn't follow normal procedure of the 1st AD calling it out. Of course I'll eventually clue in, but it is quite frustrating & embarrassing. This could be avoided if boom op and sound mixer are kept as two separate roles)

So, could one person be the entire sound department for a film? Well heck, you have old school street photographers shooting with film, relying on the theoretical and their gut instinct, not even needing light meters!

So it is "doable", but is it a good idea? Nope. 

You wouldn't ever run the camera department like that in this day and age. 

If you wouldn't dream of rolling up cam op / 1st AC / gaffer all into one role, then please don't do this for sound either. 
 

[Nikkor]

Narcissism to it's maximum, is this some kind of parody?

[BTM_Pix]

You're probably too young to have seen some of the work of the classic British photographers of the 1960s Zach but some of them reached such a level of mastery of the maths that they didn't even have to point the camera at the subject.

This guy is a good example and its worth digging out the longer form of this documentary about him to see where you could go with these techniques yourself.

 

[Matt Kieley]

14 hours ago, Zach Goodwin2 said:

Well yeah of course it can be:

Film cameras at least have viewfinders. You still have to check your framing and composition.

[Zach Goodwin2]

12 hours ago, Nikkor said:

Narcissism to it's maximum, is this some kind of parody?

No it isn't.

[Andrew Reid]

Thank fuck for live view!!

[kye]

On 2/27/2020 at 4:55 AM, BTM_Pix said:

You're probably too young to have seen some of the work of the classic British photographers of the 1960s Zach but some of them reached such a level of mastery of the maths that they didn't even have to point the camera at the subject.

This guy is a good example and its worth digging out the longer form of this documentary about him to see where you could go with these techniques yourself.

 

I'm working up to this.  I find that the GH5 viewfinder has served me well with good visibility in bright sunlight, but I've moved to using the flip-out screen as I can't see nearly as much and have to develop other ways to got framing right.  I hope to progress to being able to use a camera without any video at all one day, and that's why I bought the Micro - at some point I just know that I'll have to take the plunge and leave the house without any monitor for it at all and then I'll be forced to compose, exposure and focus blind.  It might take me some time to really build my skills that way, but it's worth it in the end I think.