Let's start from a fundamental principle: the electronic image, which is recorded on magnetic tape, can be manipulated like the photographic image, which is generated by photochemical means.
However, when working in video, the management of light is delivered to the automatic controls, and generates a series of vices and shortcomings in the image creator. Automation has generated a kind of laziness in creation, a certain lack of rigor and control of the technical possibilities of the instruments of the director of audiovisual products.
Sometimes filmmakers passively accept the image delivered by the camera, as if it were the product of technological doom. Instead of resolutely facing the limitations of video cameras to achieve lighting work with contrasts and nuances, they limit themselves to looking for lighting procedures that allow them to obtain acceptable results in any circumstance. And this is losing creative possibilities.
To change this situation, we must stop treating the video camera as a director of photography, and think of it as a cinematographic device dedicated to capturing the images that are put in front of it, not to condition them.
It is perfectly possible to recover the aesthetic values of traditional lighting procedures and respect the abominable technical parameters that the video signal must follow.
What steps to take
The first step is to recover the photographer's tools: the most important thing to assimilate the video camera to a cinema camera is:
- establish a basic factor of sensitivity to light;
- determine an equivalence between the behavior of the camera and that of the film: if this factor is known it is possible to turn the iris of the camera into a creative ally, and not a restriction.
Use the light meter
Once the ISO/ASA value is established, we can use some of the photographer's tools, such as the light meter used to find the "speed" of our camera. So we can manipulate the light with traditional media, to bring the image to extreme conditions without exceeding the strict limits imposed by video work.
When the photographer who works in video has a light meter as a tool, he can determine the light levels according to his aesthetic needs, handle with some precision the contrast ratios of his image, adjust the highlights and find appropriate equivalences for the levels of underexposure or overexposure that he wants to achieve at a special time.
In short, this procedure allows to recover the possibility of doing a rigorous visual work, controlled and structured according to the parameters of professional photography.
Note on the author:
* Director of Photography, Colombian.
