1 The Director of Photography – an overview

130 Practical Cinematography
in the viewfinder is near enough what you will get on film, assuming
you judge the exposure correctly. If you are worried about setting the
exposure, either swing the matte box away or take it off and, using a
spot meter, take a reading through the filters as you have set them.
Neutral density filters
Neutral density filters are used to open up the aperture at which you
will shoot the scene.This may be because you wish to reduce the depth
of field for dramatic reasons or simply to improve the definition of the
lens. Most cinematic lenses work best between T5.6 and T8, though
these days it is nothing like as critical as it used to be if using modern
lenses.The most common ND filters, as they are always referred to, are
the 0.3, 0.6 and 0.9 NDs, where a density of 0.3 exactly halves the amount
of light entering the lens and therefore you must open up one stop for
every 0.3 of density you have added to the front of the lens.
Low contrast filters
Low contrast filters, as you would expect, reduce the overall contrast
of the scene. They do this by bleeding some of the light from the highlight
parts of the scene into the shadows and thus lightening them.They
usually come in a set of five filters, simply marked LC1, LC2, LC3, LC4
and LC5.
The light LC filters are also useful in certain situations for creating
a more flattering close-up (see the section on ‘Matching shots’ later in
this chapter). Beware though, if you use too strong an LC filter you will
get a veiling or milky look to the image.
Ultra contrast filters
Ultra contrast filters are similar to low contrast in that they will bleed
highlights into shadows, but they will not cause halation or flaring
around light sources or spectral highlights as will an LC filter. They
also reduce the definition far less than a low contrast filter. The LC filter
works with light in the image area – the ultra contrast filter works
more with the incident, ambient light. They come in a range of eight
filters marked 1 ⁄8, 1 ⁄4, 1 ⁄2, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.They are very good at bringing up
shadow detail when used with a video camera; I have achieved quite
spectacular improvements to the shadows when using these filters on a
Sony DVW 790 camera. The same has proved true when I have shot
using HD (High Definition) with both the Sony HDW 900 and the
HDW 750.
Fog filters
Fog, in reality, is caused by water droplets suspended in the atmosphere.
This causes the image to be degraded more and more the further
away from camera the subject is. This is simply because it has
more water to penetrate. Fog filters attempt to emulate this effect.