Monday Night Roundup

It's Monday night and class has just wound down. It was a long and satisfying day, though it seems to have disappeared in a blur now that I'm sitting down to think about it and pick out tidbits of takeaway moments.

I believe we all became one with the light meter by the end of the day - at least, it started to register as such on everyone's face as they took a reading and looked satisfied that what the meter was suggesting was something meaningful. That was a great moment to experience. It seemed to happen around the second half of figuring out the ISO of our classes SDX900 - and it was interesting that the moment of zen occurred while we were using the meter to solve a problem that's really more about camera than about lighting. Perhaps it was working the problem of light backwards, from shutter-speed to f-stop to ISO that made it all click together. Or maybe it was the discussion earlier in the day about powers of the square root of two. Or perhaps it was all the coffee some of us had been drinking. But I believe I heard an audible click when everyone truly believed that the light meter was a viable tool for lighting with video.

Clicks are good.

There was also a moment of happiness around the time that everyone accepted that light hardness or softness was (at least in large part) based on the relative size of the lighting instrument to the subject being lit. That was also a very nice click.

Tomorrow brings our first day of getting out of the sound stage into the real world to play with lite in situ. I'm sure there will be many more wonderful moments and lots of good clicking sounds.