I'm a cameramn based in Berlin. This Spring/Summer I had the chance to travel to Baghdad twice for a production. I am going back soon and I am faced with tough technical problem. We are going to shoot patrols at night in Baghdad, which offers very little (soemtimes no ambient light). Usually, there is some light coming from headlights etc, and we had decent luck shooting wide open at 1/25th with 18db gain. Looks very filmy. At 30, the grain is too crunchy. We looked at image intensifiers, but at 700 pounds a week and the ungainly length, it doesn't make sense. Does anyone have any experience with discrete lighting techniques? On board camera lights are out of the question. I was looking for something along the line of LED lighting etc--at least to illuminate faces etc at close range.

Any thoughts are appreciated.

Tucker berlin

-- M Tucker (tucker@nomados.net), August 25, 2003