Beautiful Salisbury Cathedral

You forget, at least I do, how lucky we are to have widescreen and how lucky we are to have HD! You count your blessings (my pun!) when you are lucky to be filming over a couple of months in surely one of the most beautiful of all Cathedrals; I mean how did the masons, glaziers and carpenters of Salisbury build their Cathedral? Awesome that’s the word. Anyway back to the filming bit: two examples the other day made me realise how technically lucky I am with the current kit we have. The widescreen aspect ratio – for framing a CU on a chorister on one side of the frame, my depth of field is non existent so behind you have an immediate smudge of out of focus warm candlelight, behind that a stained glass window. Don’t forget and as I have said many time before, use your colour temperature – my camera set to 4300K, the chorister backlit by the pale blue daylight coming through the stained glass window. Terrific stuff. And my other point, we have more latitude on HD – in other words the range that you can see acceptable detail in both under and overexposed areas – than on SD. The face of a clergy member looking down in prayer, with my camera low, I can still see detail in his face and yet high above him the vaulted fanned ceiling of the nave, 4 or 5 stops brighter is still rendering me detail. Always set your bars correctly in the viewfinder, monitor the shadows – then in this example at least, if you see detail in the face you should see it on the screen. And if it is just too dark? Well to be honest I do click in 3db gain once in a while,  just to help me out. No one will really notice, you get the shot and in any case viewers will be looking at your wonderful pictures and listening to the beautiful singing, with the 800 year old accoustics! Happy Easter…….

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