Controlling Hard Lights

By Author: James Hill
Total Articles: 26
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With the dawn of the twentieth century digital technology helped motion picture and photography. A filmmaker or a photographer doesn’t just use a camera these days but various other equipments and technology for a perfect shot and production. Today a matte box has become an integral part for a film maker or a photographer along with various kinds of filters. But due to simple design of a matte box many camera users are confused over the matte box and lens hood. Matte box though has a simple design its cost may differ with the facility of adding number of trays for filters. Many wonder whether to invest in such equipment in the first place but the price may depend upon the size, modifiers, filter trays and brand of the matte box.
The main purpose of matte box is to shield the lens from direct or unwanted light source. It helps serve two purposes firstly it shades the camera lens from flares and hard light while it also helps to improve the ability of lens’s to handle contrast.
As a film maker/ photographer you would be moving your camera very often which would put your lens in different trajectories of light ...
... source, this would sometimes lead in to overexposure or under exposed. A matte box thus helps us to minimize and control the exposure during constant movement of your camera.
Secondly, a Matte Box would provide you with slots for your filters during your shoot. A good habit of using camera would be getting the strongest possible footage while on the set. This means, that rather than spending innumerable hours in the process of post production, filmmakers and photographers are diverting more of their time and energies on getting closer to their final image as possible during the actual filming process.
If you can commit to the glance at your film at an early stage, then the use of different filters is a great way to style and colour your film/photograph before the footage is even inserted into an editing system.
Less expensive matte boxes may not have many slots available for filters maximum it may have only one rather instead of two, but expensive matte boxes usually gives you the facility to hold at least two filters. This allows you to use any assortment of filters like the 85b filter, polarizing filters, ultra violet filters, ND filters, colour filters, ND graduated filters and others.
Matte boxes built for DSLR’s and smaller digital video cameras mainly come in two sizes. They either are made for 3×3 filters or 4×4 filters. There are also larger sizes as well, but these are the two most commonly used sizes by various camera men.
Matte box thus helps the camera users control excess lights, flares and hard unwanted lights.