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Comment by klodolph | Hacker News Reader

I think beyond “it’s not the camera that makes the difference” we need to have a discussion about lighting.

A shitty camera and shitty lens in fantastic lighting will give good results. The best camera with the best lens in awful lighting will give bad results.

Kind of like microphones, that way. Like how the Apple video was shot on an iPhone (except it had great lighting and a ton of production work), there are hit songs with parts recorded on iPhone. They aren’t advertised like that. But it happens. The advantage of the iPhone is that it’s already in your pocket, and for something as intimate as singing, that proves to be a major, major advantage. Your producer may try to get you to recreate that beautiful performance in the studio, but audio quality doesn’t matter as much when you compare the recording of a good performance to the recording of a much better performance.

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The amount a good camera can tolerate bad lighting has significantly improved over time, as has the minimum quality of an average camera.

Not that long ago you needed a great camera and great lighting to get a great result, now there’s a lot more flexibility available. Decent camera + great lighting or decent lighting + great camera both work well enough for the general public not to notice anything wrong.

A lot depends on how you're viewing the content too. Lots of stuff that looks good on a tiny phone screen looks like trash on a monitor.

And forget about printing, not that anyone other than dedicated photographers do that these days.

I think people are using "lighting" two different ways in this conversation.

Assuming there are decent light levels to begin with, "lighting" means the play of light and shadow that makes your subject pop, that makes their face look like it has depth, then generally makes everything look attractive. This has nothing to do with your camera, and cameras have not gotten better at this, because cameras are irrelevant to it. When TV shows are lit well today, this is the lighting that's usually being talked about.

The other thing "lighting" means is "light that isn't too low". This was harsh studio lighting in the 1920's for example, and why even in the 1960's studio scenes couldn't be "naturally" lit -- and which was a major focus of lighting TV shows well in the 1960's, for example. But which we don't worry about anymore -- TV shows are generally shot at "real life" brightness levels today.

The larger point is that today, when we say that it's the lighting that matters for a shot more than the camera, we're usually referring to the first type I'm describing -- the artistic lighting. Cameras have not gotten any "better" at that. What has happened is that they've enabled shots at low lighting that weren't possible before, but that's only relevant in low-light conditions -- and you still need to distinguish between good/bad artistic lighting even when the light is low.

Light levels and “artistic Lighting” are linked through a camera’s dynamic range.

Harsh studio lighting wasn’t just about the total amount of light it was also attempting to compensate for limited dynamic ranges. Getting everything evenly lit was an exacting process which has simply become less demanding.

The artistic side of lighting is just as complex and relevant as it ever was. However, as sensors get closer to human capabilities setting things up gets closer to what you see is what you get, which is extremely helpful. There is still a disconnect which must be accounted for to get the best results, and plenty of new options to play with. But fewer gotchas mean decent lighting is generally fine.

I think what probably confuses people is that since everything was so dark they think that "wow the iPhone handles low light really well", but actually that only has to do with exposure. If you look at the behind the scenes shots they still had massive LED panels lighting the scenes.

Lighting is also over-emphasised, in my opinion. The unfortunate truth is that it's everything. Production design and talent are HUGELY important. If you have an amazing art department, costume design and beautiful people your camera and lighting team can be on autopilot and it will still look pretty great.

Grip is also huge for high production value camera movement — and you'll see on the BTS video Apple absolutely don't skimp here. Pretty funny putting a $1000 phone on a $200,000 (at least! I'm not a grip guy, but that's the region) crane.

I think the point here is not the effort it takes to make good lighting - but the cost. A normal person will not have 10x2000w ARRI panels. But they will look at this production and think that they will get the same result because hey it was shot on an iPhone.

Absolutely. I suppose what I was commenting on was a pattern I’ve observed that goes something like:

1. My videos don’t look good, it must be because I don’t have a good camera/lens 2. I have a good camera lens, but my videos still don’t look good, it must be because I don’t have good lights

And a lot of people just stop there because lighting is a lot more work and a lot less fun (for most people) than buying expensive cameras, but for those that do pursue lighting, there’s a third stage:

3. I’ve got a good camera, good lights AND I know how to use them AND STILL my video looks a bit underwhelming

That’s when you realise location, art, talent etc are massively important too.

Ie you could have a truck full of Arri lights and if you have bad production design and inappropriate talent it will still look bad.

True true :)

> Your producer may try to get you to recreate that beautiful performance in the studio, but audio quality doesn’t matter as much when you compare the recording of a good performance to the recording of a much better performance.

Nobody is going to keep your iphone recorded song in their playlist.

Is a laptop mic close enough?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deathconsciousness#Composition...

Eheh, you have no idea what I keep in my playlists.

I've seen bands perform where the harmonica guy sounded like a feedback loop, the guitarists didn't agree if they had to play major or major chords and people still clapped.

However when you're not drinking and dancing you care more for the actual quality of what you're hearing.

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