Sunny / Indoor setup
 

Hi,

I have been trying to nail my setup for an upcoming wedding, I will be filming the groom walking in from his car to the hall. I expect it to be a very sunny day and as soon as he enters the hall he will be greeted by lots of family members so I need to be able to quickly adjust my settings. I was thinking about maybe quickly going from ISO 200 to 800 and as soon as we enter the hall going from 5.6 to 1.4 as it's really dark. Are there any other tips that you give?

Re: Sunny / Indoor setup
 

Practice before the groom arrives.

It's quicker & easier to adjust just aperture rather than ISO & aperture together. Another option would be to use a wide aperture with a variable ND filter adjusted for the correct exposure when outside & then adjust the filter down to nothing as you go inside.

Re: Sunny / Indoor setup
 

That's a good tip. It also keeps the "look" between shots. If you're at f/5.6 outside and suddenly f/1.4 inside, your depth of field will be very noticeable to the viewer. Keep it as open as possible f/1.4 and use the ND and keep that focus on the groom. You'll have plenty of opportunities for shots of the guests later. Your focus here is the groom and that f/1.4 aperture will allow you to do just that.

Re: Sunny / Indoor setup
 

Sounds like a great idea, I was looking at this filter LIGHTCRAFT FADER MKII - 77mm FADER VARIABLE ND FILTER and was wondering if you had any experience with it.

It should work with the Samyang 35mm f1.4

Re: Sunny / Indoor setup
 

You provided no link but if that is a genuine LightCraft Workshop FADER ND Mark II then they are decent quality & a reasonable price for the quality of under £100. Until LCW started selling variable ND filters the only ones avaialble were from Singh-Ray at about £400! Tiffen do a decent one at about £200 However there are a lot of fakes & rip offs available of very variable quality. I have ordered direct from LCW in Hong Kong via eBay & had them delivered in under a week

Light Craft Workshop FADER ND mark II (MK2) Filter 72mm | eBay

If I wanted to buy cheap then I would be very tempted to try one of these at just £12.93 They even do a 2-pack, 3-pack or 5-pack at even cheaper individual prices.

When we were based in the South of France we needed to use ND filters all the time otherwise we would have been shooting outside at F22 but I have hardly needed to use one since we returned to the UK. The situation of moving to bright to dark where you want to keep shooting is a good situation to use one as you can with practice roll your finger on the filter to smoothly adjust exposure which is not possible simply by adjusting aperture unless your lenses have been de-clicked. You do need to practice though to make sure that your finger doesn't get in front of the lens.