Entries by Tim

Understanding Color Spectrometers

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Color spectrometers are important for testing the color quality of lights used in your video and film projects. Many common color indices — such as CRI and TLCI — only tell a small fraction of a very large picture. Without fully looking at the color quality of your lights you may find out in post that you used a low quality light for your scenes, which ended up destroying the color in your image.

This article discusses how to use the average color spectrometer, what color characteristics to look out for, how to understand all the data and graphs, and how to take the spectrometer to the next level such as comparing light from a fixture before and after adding gels like CTO, minus green, and others.

In future articles we will look at specific spectrometers — such as Sekonic C700, UPRTek CV600, Asensetek Lighting Passport Essence Pro, and Asensetek Lighting Passport Standard Pro — along with their specific features and some of their limitations.

“Save the Cat!” Screenwriting Book: Chapter Four Summary

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Structure is the single most important aspect of a screenplay. It is the bones of your story. It will also help you pitch/sell your screenplay as well as make sure that you retain writing credit for it no matter how much other writers change dialog, characters, and scene order.

We continue our “Cliffs Notes” summaries of “Save the Cat!” by Blake Snyder, with this article covering Chapter 4 where he covers the various beats that make up the structure of a screenplay.

Aputure C300d LED is Finally Here!

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Back in April Aputure released an LED fixture so impressive it won Best Lighting Product at NAB 2017. The LED fixture overcomes many shortcomings of most other LEDs on the market: it casts a hard light, yet can easily accept common light modifiers to make it soft. It is so compact and lightweight that you can use it in even the most remote locations. Since it can be battery powered, line power and generators are no longer part of the conversation. These are just some of the amazing features of this light. Read more to see all it can do!

ZERO Follow Focus Lens Gear

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The ZERO follow focus lens gear ring by Broken Anchor Design overcomes all of the problems other lens rings have: it centers itself, is seamless, fits many lenses, and attaches in seconds. No other lens gear ring can do this, which is why we’re so excited to see that Broken Anchor Design has finally made it happen.

Cool-Lux SHIFT Baseplate Review

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We got chance to review the Cool-Lux Classic Cool-Rig, which has the innovative SHIFT Baseplate at its center. What’s impressive about this baseplate is the built-in shoulder mount /chest support that flips down, making the transition from tripod to shoulder quick and easy.

Also part of the rig (and review) are the Cool-Lux walnut grip, universal cheese plate, and three prong battery mount, and well as their carbon fiber iris rods.

Complexities of Bicolor LED Lights: An Extensive Color Analysis

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Bicolor LED lights sound like a great idea. However does mixing dissimilar lights result in high quality color across the entire range of color temperatures? Or will the entire range of light be sub-par from the manufacturer compromising the LED diode in order to make the two emitters mix?

We extensively tested a bicolor LED from a very well respected LED manufacturer to better understand the issues. We measured the CRI (Ra), CRI (Re), TLCI, CQS, TM-30-15, and color temperature to determine how the color quality stacked up across all levels of brightness (dimming) for the entire color temperature range.

The results are very … illuminating!

New Aputure LEDs: Review of the COB120T and M9 [Video]

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Aputure has done it again with two amazing lights: the tungsten balanced 1.5kW point source Light Storm COB 120t and the daylight balanced “camera mounted LED” Amaran M9. Both have VERY high CRI (Ra)/ CRI (Re) / TLCI / CQS / TM30-15 results, with some of the best R9 (saturated red) values of 160 different LEDs that we’ve tested.

LED Ribbon Lights: Flexibility In Creating Your Own Light

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LED ribbon lights are thin, flexible and have limitless possibilities on-set to light your video projects. They now allow you to place light anywhere, including in the palm of an actor’s hand, a prop, or taped to a wall or railing. We cover how to work with ribbon LEDs, review three common brands along with their CRI values, and then suggest useful LED ribbon accessories.