BARRY CHEONG | CINEMATOGRAPHER

Hi Everyone! It’s been a long time since I’ve made a post but I just wanted to announce that I’ve become an official ambassador for Lightbridge and to briefly talk about the new Table Top Essentials Kit that will be available starting today. As many of you know I’ve been an active user and big advocate of reflected lighting for close to 7 years now. I probably sound like a broken record at this point but it really has changed the way I work and approach lighting. Getting to participate in the early phases of a new kit, especially one focused on table top, is a full circle moment for me. I had shot numerous food based productions over the years, but around 2017 I started doing a lot more of it. I started carrying small mirrors - random dollar store ones or recycled from makeup compacts (the hinges made them easier to aim!). I really loved the way the light felt, reflecting hard sources onto food and other surfaces. Further confirmation that I was onto something was the way clients were responding. With no technical knowledge themselves, it was light that just felt right. That’s when I remembered I had heard of other DP’s in the city working with early versions of the Cine Reflect Lighting System. I continued down the rabbit hole… While my recycled mirrors, cobbled together, was working I was interested with the idea of having different types of surfaces, with varying light qualities, and a way to standardize the rigging. I decided to dip my toe in and purchased a starter kit (still available as the C-Start kit). It came with a selection of different reflectors, some rigging, in a simple box. After a year I rounded out my kit and have continued on my reflected light journey to this day. With the launch of the Table Top Essentials kit it gives others a chance to begin their own journey like I did mine. The kit includes 7cm No.1-3 reflectors, a 15cm No.4 reflector, 2 of the new T-wheel mounts, a booklet with some information about CRLS, and a cleaning cloth. It’s designed as a starting point for photographers and those who are doing small and detailed product work. Thank you to Jakob and team for including me in this launch and supporting my work!

Hello people of Instagram! It’s been a while since I’ve made a main post here, yikes! 😅 In conjunction with Lunar New Year I wanted to share some images I got to make with @rainaandwilson for this fun little spot we did together. Happy year of the Dragon! Directors: @rainaandwilson Production: @fuzereps 1st AC: @shanepikelin Gaffer: @igor.is.alive Key Grip: @bromandudeson Prop Stylist: Rene Drexler Food Stylist: @melodie.sadeghi

For the past 5+ years I’ve gotten deeply involved in food & product based commercials and branded content work. While I’ve been very grateful for those opportunities, have enjoyed the work and intend to continue, I think people often forget that I can do other things! There was a time when I was doing a larger diversity of projects including some narrative work. As the year moves along I thought it would be fun to look back at some older work and put out into the universe I want to re-diversify. I’m not sure a feature is in the cards but I would love to tackle some shorts or a web series again! Get at me if you have a script! These frames are from a short film called Poison in the Water, directed by @romeocandido and starring @mattawells and Sofia Wells which we shot in January 2016. It was funded by the now defunct BravoFact grant and maybe the last “bigger” short I did. Remembering the creative and technical details is a bit murky now but we shot this over 2 days on a Red Epic Dragon and ZEISS Superspeeds. I had originally intended on Ultra Primes, maybe for a cleaner look, but either due to budget and/or availability we arrived at Super Speeds. Looking back at it I’m pretty happy how it looks. I also employed diffusion on the lens. There was an element of fantasy and I think some halation probably felt right at the time. Tiffen Glimmer Glass feels familiar but i don’t remember strengths or if I also used something else 😅. Lighting wise this was before any good LED fixtures existed. It’s amazing to think how far things have come! Instead we had a mix of Kino Flo fluorescents, HMI’s and probably some tungsten too. The kitchen scene I think was an M40 through the window which I vaguely remember softening with shower curtain’d hampshire or something super light for the coverage. Key in the therapist scene was a 4bank Kino through a 4x frame and HMI’s through windows. For the closet scene I think it was just a small Kino above the door frame to edge out Matt and Sofia, practicals and something to light the other room in the deep BG. IG only allows me to post 10 frames but there’s a few more I wanted to share so more in the next post as well as crew credits!

A fun spot I worked on earlier this year with director @tonylanzphoto and @_thecolab for No Name. Fairly straight forward approach with some simple but effective in camera effects. We initially setup a single roll of seamless but because of the curvature of the bottle, we had to extend that to two rolls, as we were seeing a dead spot from off set. I lit this with 2x Amaran F22C’s, no diff, into an 8x8 Ultrabounce overhead. I always prefer to start lighting product, especially anything that is particularly reflective, from overhead with a large source. The hope is that the top source wraps enough to also provide the frontal light while avoiding the possible complications of seeing unwanted reflections if you were to tackle it frontally. The top light, in this instance, also helped to quickly light the background evenly without any additional lamps. We still wanted more frontal fill and found we could introduce a 3/4 source without seeing any offensive reflections. This ended up being an Aputure Nova P300C book light configuration (Ultrabouce floppy/Gridcloth combo). Art dept used 2 wood boards painted the same yellow colour to create the simple but really effective conveyor belt effect. The textured confetti they got was also super fun and looked great on camera! Shot on C300mk3 and Vespid Primes. Production: @_thecolab Director: @tonylanzphoto Prop Sylist: Renée Drexler Food Sylist: @annabelle_waugh Gaffer: Igor Alves

A couple of frames from a recent overnight shoot. With so much studio based work these days it was nice to be back on location! (Open to more location work! 😅) Shooting in spaces like a grocery store you almost never have the ability to kill everything and light from scratch so just have to do your best to control what you can. We had a pretty small package so I tried to setup as much neg fill as I could (a 12x solid and 12x black side ultra bounce were the 2 largest fabrics) blocking out as much of the overhead and frontal camera side light as I could to create better contrast. After that adding some cross and or backlight with Skypanels or Aputure 300x’s. C300 and Vespid primes combo with Black Satin 1/2 on the lens. Grade was done in DaVinci Resolve. Thanks to @jamestse_studio and team for having me and to the crew - Ian, Warren and Judy. BTS clip by @hellosamchow .

Some frames from a spot for Presidents Choice PC Everything Pan with Director @tonylanzphoto and @_thecolab . @avec_martine pulled together a really awesome set and props which gave everything a really awesome colour contrast against the colour of the pan. C300mk3 Vespid combo with Black Satin filters. Look was enhanced and tweaked further in Resolve to give it a little more pop. A go to mix of CRLS reflectors, Dedo E-flect and a large diffusion placed 3/4 back of the action. Food styling by @annabelle_waugh . Thanks to the crew Igor Alves and Dryden Lanz for another great collaboration.

Had the opportunity to work on some interior design spots with director @angusfergussonphotography and @_thecolab . These are some frame grabs from the final. It was really great to be on location (I spend so much time in studio these days lol) shooting these beautiful spaces. Camera was a C300mkiii with DZO Vespid primes (a lot of 16mm and a bit of 21mm for the wider shots) which we often had on a Kessler Shuttle dolly (typically on 5ft speed pipe). Lighting was pretty minimal. Most of the time we just played an @aputure.lighting 600D in a Chimera 5ft Octa which we would sometimes double diffuse with shower curtained full or 1/2 grid cloth. Sorry I don’t have any BTS! I did the colour in Resolve where we aimed to balance out the colour, keeping the feeling of the space quiet and subdued but still creating a nice but soft contrast. Thanks to the crew @ryanvilaca @igorisalive and Thomas Lee for all their collaboration this day!

It’s peach season here in Ontario. Gonna mess around with making some syrup! This was another high speed shot I worked on recently (Same as Strawberries from a few posts back). The blue surface was accomplished by placing a blue card behind the action and using the reflected angle into the mirror shooting surface. Camera was a C300mk3. Graded in Resolve. Director: @angusfergussonphotography Food Stylist: @darasutin Prop Stylist: @avec_martine

I was kindly invited to collaborate with Photographer Ronald Tsang on his creative back in the spring. We spent the day making this! This was my first time working with the new(ish) Sony A7S3, which I have to say puts out a pretty robust image and handles grading quite nicely! Nice to see a 10bit format in this camera. We shot this all on a single DZO Vespid 50mm lens which covers the full frame sensor. Lighting was an Aputure 300D2 Spotlight and some CRLS Reflectors as a key and the fill was an Aputure Nova 300C dialled with some cooler colour temp coming through some Full Grid! Also the first time working with the Nova. It’s quite punchy! Prop stylist Emily pulled this awesome cyan teal backdrop that really worked well against the warmer light from the Spotlight and warmer tones of the dumpling skins. I did the colour grade in Resolve incorporating a Kodak 2383 Print emulation into the mix and aimed to enhance the teal/orange look we created in camera and also create a nice glowing soft highlight roll-off while still having a lot of contrast! Love how it turned out! Directed by: @tsangphoto Food stylist: @mikeefood Prop stylist: @em_howes Editor: @1308_pictures

Always fun shooting high speed slow-mo! In 2022, outside of Phantom, there’s still a fairly sizeable gap that exists for high frame rate cameras that produce a sharp, low artifact, good dynamic range Log image, and if you need higher than HD capture that list gets even smaller. The Alexa Mini’s 200fps in HD is quite good, with no crop to your lenses. The Red V-Raptor’s 4K 240fps is very good and a massive improvement over DSMC2. Even the 3K 320fps is quite usable. The Sony a7s3 will do 240fps in HD although I have not shot or tested that mode. For another lower cost option the Canon C300mk3’s 180fps in HD (s16 crop), which this clip was filmed with, is actually pretty good. The trick I find is shooting it in RAW. The XFAVC with all its internal professing renders an image too soft for my liking. The other key to successful product/food slow motion, when you can’t afford a Phantom, at least in my experience is to favour impacts and drops. While of course not the same thing as shooting 500+ frames, that a Phantom can offer, sometimes you can still achieve the overall feeling and mood you’re after. However, for something like mid-air falls through frame you’ll need the real deal. What’s your favourite high speed camera? Which cameras did I forget to mention? Director: @angusfergussonphotography Food Stylist: @darasutin Prop Stylist: @avec_martine Thanks to the crew, @igorisalive @ibrahim.abusitta Graded in Resolve.

Summer studio day! (Shot in March 😅). More faked daylight exteriors shot inside. I’m quite happy with the feeling of sun on the grass in Frame 2 which was an Aputure 600D with F10 fresnel and some CTS gel. Directed by: @pudgeco BTS video: @hellosamchow Thanks to the crew - @igorisalive @ryanvilaca @ibrahim.abusitta

Here are grabs from some recent work from earlier this year which tackled the challenge of trying to re-create daylight exteriors inside. I’m quite fascinated and interested in the challenge, constantly observing what nature does, but then having to tackle space, equipment and budget limitations, but really in the end asking myself “do I buy it?”. The trickiest aspect is getting the fill light right. I unfortunately didn’t get a lot of BTS shots of the setup but in the quick video you can see the amount of stuff it can take to give a somewhat convincing feel! Directed by @pudgeco . Thanks to the crew @bradschollfilms @ryanvilaca @ibrahim.abusitta !