Gunther,

The eBook is awesome and insightful and has everything plus more than I was hoping for. Thanks for producing it and LRT

I do have a few questions that I'm still a bit confused about however.

1) SHOOTING TIPS :
I am most intrigued about the wide open aperture concept. It sounds like there are obviously some great advantages, but it goes against everything I have ever learned about with lenses ( my background is 15 years dealing with motion picture and HD "High End" $100K camera systems and lenses)

A) ALL LENSES --All of them Film or Stills have a sweet spot that is NEVER wide open. ALL LENSES look there worst wide open, so is that just a given is a compromise that you accept and deal with? Also I have shot a lot of TL and have never shot wide open? Even for shooting the stars I usually shoot @ around a F3.5-F4 range--even a F5.6. I have put a bit of stop on the lens for focus only. Just to give the stars a bit more of tack sharpness. I'm sure you know of the trick with any lens where you can look at a subject and purposely rack the lens extremely out of focus , but then stop the lens down to a 16 or 22 and see that the image now is a lot sharper ( it's just a point to show you how a stopped down lens effects focus / DoF. Like I said I'm very intrigued w/ your method and plan on trying it out.
What method do you use to ensure over all good focus. Do you just rack to infinity?

B) Do you just rack the lens to a measured out distance to to your subject ( say if your foreground subject is 15 feet do you just set the lens to 15' or just go with infinity?) Stills lenses are not like cine lenses --as in there are no datum lines for specific distances, so you never real know where that 15' is.

2) REFERENCE AREA:
A)Do you always define your reference area in the sky or can you do it off of the ground---or is the objective like you said- to try and find a place that has a consistent brightness (Is it consistent brightness or just consistent exposure? )
B) What do you do if you know and or want clouds whipping across the frame--then you can not avoid inconsistencies? I have some shots that I want to re-do in LRT, but I'm not sure I have any spots that are free from some slight inconsistencies? I never shoot a cloudless skies--for example?
C) Can your Reference area be a very small part of the sky?--How small is too small for that area?
D) Again, Does the Reference Area always need to be the sky? I see on one of your screen grabs you have ski, ground, and shadow all in the Reference Area?--Can you explain that further? If all this is combined with a moving camera ( I have the DP Stage Zero and TB3), then that seems like it will make the whole Reference Area damn near impossible to find an area that WILL NOT have ANY constant exposure/ brightness w/ out any inconsistencies?
E) May be you can write up a work flow on just the Reference Area for your most extreme case scenario of a lot of thing moving and changing and with the camera moving--that would be great to see how you work through that!

HOLLY GRAIL WORKFLOW:

A) I first saw your method in the video tutorial ( the 3rd one I believe) and it seems a little "easier" or straight forward than in the eBook? In the video you show how to "Match Total Exposures" and that's that--- then all good and you move on, but in the book you say it's just a "starting point" and that it's not or does not appear to be sure fix for exposure jumps? I'm just mentioning it because I was so excited off the video tutorial, because in my head I was thinking that there should be a way to do that in LR4, but did not know of the "Match Total Exposures" option. After reading the ebook it seems A LOT more involved and less reliable?

May be I'm worrying and over thinking all these Q's, but that my nature. Please let me know your thoughts and advise on the items I posted here.

All the best and a huge thanks to all your efforts and great support.

Bryan

Hi Bryan, thank you for your feedback, I'm going to try to clarify your questions.

1) SHOOTING TIPS :
I am most intrigued about the wide open aperture concept. It sounds like there are obviously some great advantages, but it goes against everything I have ever learned about with lenses ( my background is 15 years dealing with motion picture and HD "High End" $100K camera systems and lenses)

You are certainly right with what you say but don't forget that we are shooting to deploy a video in 1080p (usually). So we don't even come close to the high-end areas of our lenses. Shooting wide open is certainly a compromise and not always applicaple - but it gives beginners a good starting point to get flicker-free sequences. More advanced users some times use the lens twist technology or manual lenses to be more flexible with the dop.

2) REFERENCE AREA:
A)Do you always define your reference area in the sky or can you do it off of the ground---or is the objective like you said- to try and find a place that has a consistent brightness (Is it consistent brightness or just consistent exposure? )

No, I try to find a reference area that reflects constant brightness. This could be in the sky but mostly (with clouds) it's rather on the ground or on a place with more constant lightning.

C) Can your Reference area be a very small part of the sky?--How small is too small for that area?

I wouldn't make it too small, this could lead to unwanted measuring due to noise etc.

If all this is combined with a moving camera ( I have the DP Stage Zero and TB3), then that seems like it will make the whole Reference Area damn near impossible to find an area that WILL NOT have ANY constant exposure/ brightness w/ out any inconsistencies?

Normally it's not a problem to find a good reference area, you can even animate it for motion controlled shots (see EBook).

A) I first saw your method in the video tutorial ( the 3rd one I believe) and it seems a little "easier" or straight forward than in the eBook? In the video you show how to "Match Total Exposures" and that's that--- then all good and you move on, but in the book you say it's just a "starting point" and that it's not or does not appear to be sure fix for exposure jumps? I'm just mentioning it because I was so excited off the video tutorial, because in my head I was thinking that there should be a way to do that in LR4, but did not know of the "Match Total Exposures" option. After reading the ebook it seems A LOT more involved and less reliable?

Normally it's as easy as in the tutorial. But sometimes the Match Total Exposures algorithm does not match with 100% accuracy - in that cases I manually adjust the exposure in small steps until it's right. Normally that works and there is no need to fiddle around with the other controls.

Just try to work with some of your sequences and you'll see that in practice it might be a lot easier than it seems in theory!

All the best
Gunther