The Beginning: Filming at Dawn

I must be nuts! I'm standing in the dark atop the New Jersey palisades looking out over the Hudson River at the New York City skyline waiting to film a sunrise. The temperature is in the low 20s and nearby flags are rippin' in the 25 mph wind. Using long lenses are out of the question. Still, it's beautiful!


My camera is a Sony EX3 XDCAM sitting securely on a Manfrotto 526 head and 536 carbon fiber legs. The combination might seem a bit overkill for smaller camera, but the wind is strong and at the telephoto end of the lens, there is still some vibration, so I've set up my tripod near a statue to help block the wind.

The sky is just beginning to glow and clouds are soaring across the horizon. Right now it is pretty dark, yet, as I'll be creating a time lapse, I'll need to take into consideration what the exposure will be when the sun is up above the horizon. If I set the camera to auto, it will make things brighter, but the gain will shoot up to compensate for the darkness, creating a grainy image. Experience tells me to put the ND filter on, pick an f-stop and let nature do the rest.


The EX3 lens has some issues when used above f- 5.6 so I'm keeping the iris at f-4.8 and using a Formatt .09 graduated filter in my Chroiziel matte box to knock down the sky. The sky is usually 3 or more stops brighter than the backlit skyline, so unless I want a the buildings to be totally silhouetted, I have to compensate for that. I've also inserted a Schneider 486 Tru Cut filter to cut down on infrared contamination. (More on this at a later date).


Great action is happening even before the sun rises above the skyline, with rays of light bursting through the clouds. The golden light is bouncing off the glass buildings and the exposure is changing by the second. There are a few zebras in the viewfinder, but mainly in the highlights of clouds and the image appears to be holding.


The view is so breathtaking that I almost forget that my hands are about to fall off from the cold. I vividly remember problems I would have using tape based cameras in extreme temperatures and I am thankful for direct to SxS card recording.


Back in the edit room the results were worth the pain. The images are amazing. One of the more telephoto shots has a slight vibration from occasional wind gust, easily fixed with some stabilization. One hour later, I'm still cold and we are heading out to shoot hospital exteriors. Yikes!
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