HockeyFan12

I guess I can't relate to the genius part, but otherwise I know what you mean. Fwiw, a no budget short can get attention. I've seen it happen. Little projects that are very modest by this site's standards getting people signed to CAA, etc. and resulting in seven-figure feature deals almost immediately. 
I've been very interested lately in what online communities in past years have birthed significant mainstream talents. YouTube has launched a host of actors but fewer filmmakers (which makes sense given the platform). Vimeo has launched a few filmmaking careers, but even fewer than it seems. Vimeo is sort of the new festival scene: very cool to be part of and show off on, but deceptively hard to leverage toward getting in somewhere lucrative unless you're already in somewhere lucrative through other means and just need to manufacture visibility.
But with YouTube, by the time you're Markliplier or Pewdiepie, by the time you're being begged to produce your own show you're already making millions a year... and you can get to be those guys organically. 
YouTube is the stronger platform. By far. For in front of the camera talent, not directors, though. :/ Where do directors go to shine?
I haven't seen a lot of new talent emerging from Reduser, etc. though there are some established all stars there already and great discourse. Communities that existed earlier than that are very interesting, though. A lot of directing talent emerged from dvxuser, though many of the users there were behind handles and didn't publicize their success so much once they went mainstream or their connection to that site was since forgotten. But a number of very slick visual filmmakers started there. Not slick by this site's standards, but hey, they were shooting on minidv. Super talented people.
The other community that launched a ton of talent is Channel101. They were big on dvx100s, too, but the production values there are poor by comparison. Intentionally so. But the writing is GREAT on that site. Better than on most commercial content. A lot of incredibly talented writers and comedians started their careers there with content that was messy and cheap but brilliantly written and conceived and with amazing storytelling. Of any community, that was the most impactful.
None of these talents started rich.
What does this say? That if you have all the money in the world it doesn't help unless you can create something great. So if you have a great eye or are a great writer, pretty soon someone with all the money in the world will hire you! It also says that storytelling is the most important talent of all, but technical skill is useful, too. And if you're rich, hire the best of both, collaborate. It's the tried and true method...
Which gets down the bigger point: both of those communities started around narrow goals: make something that looks good or make something that's funny. Commercial content is usually made by people with unbelievably narrow aptitudes. Like, someone who just shades fur but who shades fur REALLY well. Or someone who edits a certain kind of scene in a narrow subset of a genre. A guy who lights cars. But REALLY freaking well. Even the hottest directors are those with known and inimitable styles. And they're all working together in a slow, inefficient, but highly effectively system nonetheless that combines all their talents into something greater than the sum of their parts (ideally). That's why people get signed to CAA for their short films: either they show they can do something no one else can do or that they can mimic what someone else can do that there's a supply for. That's it. Again, narrow skill sets. Used to create a bigger product.
This site doesn't cater to that kind of person. This is a site for people who want to know how to do it all. And do it all for cheap. This site is for punks. For rebels.
And no surprise it's harder to launch a brilliant career on that, even if "that" includes a skill-set encompassing many potentially lucrative careers, if narrowly applied.
So the question is, why do we think this way? Why are we thinking with so many brains when all we need is one good one?
Broad as our interests get, they always begin with one dream. One thing we want to communicate. One idea that would be impossible to realize due to money, due to narrow-minded investors, due to how slowly commercial sets run, due to how big or slow older cameras are or how outmoded productions technique can be. Conventional wisdom says it's impossible. But we're still dead set on learning how to make it possible. So we learn and learn and learn. We post here. Read here. Post elsewhere. Read elsewhere. Absorb tech. Absorb culture. See where they meet. We're the Steve Jobses (or Kanye Wests), seeing where technology and culture are heading and where they intersect and ignite. We see the big picture no one else sees. But we're also very cursed. Cursed because we can only show other people what we see by painting it ourselves.
And yet we're getting caught up squabbling over which brush to use.
This site is where we explore our interests, sure. But it's those interests that brought us here in the first place. They don't emerge from this community. You know what you need to do now because you knew before. That's the problem with resources like this: passions trickle down into tangential debate. That original passion is diverted into tribal politics, when we should just be taking information as information and opinion as opinion.
You like a GH4, I like a C300. Our opinions vary and so do the goals that led us to be so passionate about such silly things as that. We didn't get started because we liked GH4s or C300s. We got started because we had big, brilliant, original goals. And those goals aren't silly. What if Steve Jobs got stuck on a messageboard debating what brand of a certain component to use in the Macintosh instead of making the Macintosh? There are hundreds of thousands of GH4 users out there (I'm guessing). There's only one you. And you picked the camera up because you wanted to do something with it. It's not about the camera. It's about you. 
This website brings people together but it distracts us from what brought us here in the first place. Its strength is the talent and motivation of its members; its weakness is that same passion being wasted on bickering and self-doubt. There's a wealth of information, and we came for that. Let's take it and leave the rest behind. The other brains. The other voices.
In moments like these I think we need to ask ourselves: what, exactly, do you want to do? Why did you get into this field in the first place? What do you need to know in order to do it.
Find out.
Then do it.

I guess I can't relate to the genius part, but otherwise I know what you mean. Fwiw, a no budget short can get attention. I've seen it happen. Little projects that are very modest by this site's standards getting people signed to CAA, etc. and resulting in seven-figure feature deals almost immediately. 
I've been very interested lately in what online communities in past years have birthed significant mainstream talents. YouTube has launched a host of actors but fewer filmmakers (which makes sense given the platform). Vimeo has launched a few filmmaking careers, but even fewer than it seems. Vimeo is sort of the new festival scene: very cool to be part of and show off on, but deceptively hard to leverage toward getting in somewhere lucrative unless you're already in somewhere lucrative through other means and just need to manufacture visibility.
But with YouTube, by the time you're Markliplier or Pewdiepie, by the time you're being begged to produce your own show you're already making millions a year... and you can get to be those guys organically. 
YouTube is the stronger platform. By far. For in front of the camera talent, not directors, though. :/ Where do directors go to shine?
I haven't seen a lot of new talent emerging from Reduser, etc. though there are some established all stars there already and great discourse. Communities that existed earlier than that are very interesting, though. A lot of directing talent emerged from dvxuser, though many of the users there were behind handles and didn't publicize their success so much once they went mainstream or their connection to that site was since forgotten. But a number of very slick visual filmmakers started there. Not slick by this site's standards, but hey, they were shooting on minidv. Super talented people.
The other community that launched a ton of talent is Channel101. They were big on dvx100s, too, but the production values there are poor by comparison. Intentionally so. But the writing is GREAT on that site. Better than on most commercial content. A lot of incredibly talented writers and comedians started their careers there with content that was messy and cheap but brilliantly written and conceived and with amazing storytelling. Of any community, that was the most impactful.
None of these talents started rich.
What does this say? That if you have all the money in the world it doesn't help unless you can create something great. So if you have a great eye or are a great writer, pretty soon someone with all the money in the world will hire you! It also says that storytelling is the most important talent of all, but technical skill is useful, too. And if you're rich, hire the best of both, collaborate. It's the tried and true method...
Which gets down the bigger point: both of those communities started around narrow goals: make something that looks good or make something that's funny. Commercial content is usually made by people with unbelievably narrow aptitudes. Like, someone who just shades fur but who shades fur REALLY well. Or someone who edits a certain kind of scene in a narrow subset of a genre. A guy who lights cars. But REALLY freaking well. Even the hottest directors are those with known and inimitable styles. And they're all working together in a slow, inefficient, but highly effectively system nonetheless that combines all their talents into something greater than the sum of their parts (ideally). That's why people get signed to CAA for their short films: either they show they can do something no one else can do or that they can mimic what someone else can do that there's a supply for. That's it. Again, narrow skill sets. Used to create a bigger product.
This site doesn't cater to that kind of person. This is a site for people who want to know how to do it all. And do it all for cheap. This site is for punks. For rebels.
And no surprise it's harder to launch a brilliant career on that, even if "that" includes a skill-set encompassing many potentially lucrative careers, if narrowly applied.
So the question is, why do we think this way? Why are we thinking with so many brains when all we need is one good one?
Broad as our interests get, they always begin with one dream. One thing we want to communicate. One idea that would be impossible to realize due to money, due to narrow-minded investors, due to how slowly commercial sets run, due to how big or slow older cameras are or how outmoded productions technique can be. Conventional wisdom says it's impossible. But we're still dead set on learning how to make it possible. So we learn and learn and learn. We post here. Read here. Post elsewhere. Read elsewhere. Absorb tech. Absorb culture. See where they meet. We're the Steve Jobses (or Kanye Wests), seeing where technology and culture are heading and where they intersect and ignite. We see the big picture no one else sees. But we're also very cursed. Cursed because we can only show other people what we see by painting it ourselves.
And yet we're getting caught up squabbling over which brush to use.
This site is where we explore our interests, sure. But it's those interests that brought us here in the first place. They don't emerge from this community. You know what you need to do now because you knew before. That's the problem with resources like this: passions trickle down into tangential debate. That original passion is diverted into tribal politics, when we should just be taking information as information and opinion as opinion.
You like a GH4, I like a C300. Our opinions vary and so do the goals that led us to be so passionate about such silly things as that. We didn't get started because we liked GH4s or C300s. We got started because we had big, brilliant, original goals. And those goals aren't silly. What if Steve Jobs got stuck on a messageboard debating what brand of a certain component to use in the Macintosh instead of making the Macintosh? There are hundreds of thousands of GH4 users out there (I'm guessing). There's only one you. And you picked the camera up because you wanted to do something with it. It's not about the camera. It's about you. 
This website brings people together but it distracts us from what brought us here in the first place. Its strength is the talent and motivation of its members; its weakness is that same passion being wasted on bickering and self-doubt. There's a wealth of information, and we came for that. Let's take it and leave the rest behind. The other brains. The other voices.
In moments like these I think we need to ask ourselves: what, exactly, do you want to do? Why did you get into this field in the first place? What do you need to know in order to do it.
Find out.
Then do it.

Those look great. I loved shooting 135 and 6x7 but large format was too expensive for me. Maybe start processing and scanning yourself? It'll slow you down more and save you money, too. The Nikon 5000 is seriously good. I used to own one and it has driver issues but once you solve them it and the Nikon 9000 scanners are spectacular. But very slow... I wouldn't get a flatbed scanner for 135.
Or try underexposing on the D80? It's not a bad camera I just don't think it's quite what you're looking for. Maybe save the money for more film. If I shot people I would shoot on a Leica Rangefinder, no question. Tiny, sharp, and no thunk or heavy shutter so with good technique you can use lower shutter speeds. I love rangefinders and 135 has great texture, looks more organic than larger formats. But I'm not really interested in stills these days. If I were I'd shoot film probably.

I really liked the tonality of the D70 (at the expense of very grainy shadows), but if you're looking for a clean highlight roll off, I'm not sure that's the camera, either. I did like the look of it. Less digital looking than the 20D and subsequent Nikon and Canon cameras... but noisier. I remember the highlights clipping just like with any other digital sensor, though. 
I think you might be stuck with film tbh. But there are worse things than that.

Eep, I’m not sure exactly what to write. A lot of this is on a case-by-case basis.
A few things I’ve found useful for corporate work are:
When shooting talking heads, light primarily with an offside 3/4 book light close to camera that serves as both eye light and key and then put some negative fill on the other side of the face just off-camera. That way you can get both soft light and contrast and dial in any skin correction in post or with a promist filter. If you do choose to use a fill light (a hair light, diffused of course, could also help) keep it very soft and from camera direction, not 180º away from the key, to maintain shape. Keep both lights approximately at camera height to avoid raccoon eyes.
Overlighting is fine... if you're then removing light–doing the HMI through every window thing or Kino Flo in every corner and then turning off or dimming anything that’s behind the camera so you’re always working with a backlit scene or an offside key. I spoke extensively with Phil Abraham about how he lit the Sopranos and the approach to many interiors was rather DIY. On sets they had huge banks of dozens if not hundreds of 60w incandescent lights above the stage (facing 40º down toward the talent) that functioned as soft backlights and offside keys. Each corner of the room had one pointed toward the middle of the room. Only the lights in front of the camera were turned on. Anything behind the camera was turned off. Of course, there were also practicals and bounce cards for fill. When they turned around, they’d just flip which lights were on and which were off so it was always backlit/side-lit. At least that was the basic approach that was fined tuned with smaller units. That's for the interior sets but you can use the same techniques on locations with high ceilings.
You can do the same thing even in a corporate setting even for b roll even when you see the ceilings. Cameras are so sensitive these days and color correction so powerful that lighting with practicals is fine. Say you have a room being lit with overhead fluorescent lights. If you want some shape to the room, just use the switches in the room or flags or trash bags or whatever to turn off or flag off all the lights behind the camera. Then you’ll get the natural light working as a soft offside key. If you want to light talent standing in front of that so that their faces aren't dim, just use the same principles as the book light/negative fill combo (maybe a lone LED heavily diffused and as close to the talent as you can bring it, dimmed down a lot, and then negative fill on the other side just off camera). Bring CTO/CTB and plus and minus green to match the LED to the practical lights. 
Remember, the softness of the light correlates with its perceived size by the subject. A 4’x4’ light at 4 feet will be as soft as a 1’x1’ light at one foot (though the falloff will be quite different). One good trick to get a DIY book light for interviews is to first take a 1x1 LED panel and diffuse it with a piece of 216. And then gel it to match the color temperature of the space. Set is aside. Then take a c-stand and hang a 4’x4’ piece of diffusion (I like 216 or half grid cloth) and bring that wherever you’d want your book light to be. This will be the front of your “DIY” book light. You can easily hang 4’x4’ diffusion that functions just like a 4’x4’ frame just by keeping cuts of it around rolled up in a trash can or box and then extending the c stand's gobo arm so it's parallel with the floor and raising it up and then hanging the cut of diff from number 2 clamps at the top corners. You’ll have to weigh down the bottom corners with a clamp at each corner, too (number 2 clamps). Then position the LED behind the DIY frame and use barn doors to reduce spill (a true book light would have a tent of flags around it, but that’s slow) and turn it on. Move the light until the LED is just far enough to evenly illuminate the 4’x4’ frame. Then dim the LED to adjust brightness. Quick and easy book light and you can store that all in a small car.
Don’t be afraid to use flags and nets. If you’re using soft light, just bring flags. You can dim soft light with solid flags and it won't change the shape too much. 
Buy lights and play with them. Learn on set, but just shoot stuff for fun whenever you want to try a new technique. 
For narrative, if not storyboarding then at least defining the axis of action clearly can help. As far in advance as possible. Because this will let you place your key light for most of the scene (in theory). My friend who worked with Deakins described his approach as being too time-intensive to replicate on an indie scale, so I won’t bother describing it. One approach he really liked that can be replicated on a small scale is Elswit’s. He would often have a hard key light or back light 3/4 to camera then carry that with a much softer source that blended into it in terms of color temperature and direction, maybe 45º or less rotated toward camera. So he could get a lot of contrast in a scene and always get an exposure on the face by sort of modifying the Ridley Scott Blade Runner look of using a single source, but then sort of softening that source by using it to motived the fill. Filling from key direction, not from the opposite side. (But still tweaking with bounce boards etc. for the close ups).
That also lets you do fewer light changes between set ups if you basically only have one direction where the lights are visible and you can’t point the camera. Then you can use a common technique for exteriors and cheat your close ups by rotating the actors rather than moving the lights. This technique is of course great for day exteriors. Shoot with the sun behind you. Rotate actors a bit so the backlight then becomes an offside key for their CUs. You can use bounce cards etc. too. If there’s not too much wind and you’re shooting really close like CU or XCU or something, you can do the c stand trick to hang a weaker diffusion (251 or something) between the subject and the sun to soften the sun light a bit. 
Or for overcast days, bounce light using a 4x4 bead board silver side (or silver reflector) to create a subtle offside key and use negative fill camera side, for instance, to shape the key further. Or bring a battery-powered LED with you.
Scout. Mirror boards are brighter than 18k HMIs. They’re fairly expensive to buy and heavy as hell, but on an indie budget they’re very affordable. Bounce one of those through a window and move it. Maybe put some diffusion against the window. Easy way to get a cheap big gun in day interiors. But you need to time things up so the sun is in the right approximate place.
So always scout the sun path for day exteriors and even interiors if you have time. There are apps like Helios that help. That can save you money. But of course if you’re not set on shooting in one direction or the other you can follow the same principles on the fly.
I dunno, that’s about it. Also, when in doubt, diffuse your light. Especially lights behind the camera. I like hard light but if I see more than one hard shadow on a wall I know someone screwed up. One hard light is usually enough, but since so few people use hard light these days it can be cool.
Oh, and look for darker walls to shoot against. White walls make lighting so much harder.

That's fair. Definitely not a kind of photography I do a lot of. When I dabbled in it I used a Leica rangefinder and would focus through the rangefinder rather than setting hyperfocal distance and compose through the rangefinder. But I decided it wasn't for me. In retrospect, maybe my slow ability to focus hurt. Hyperfocal technique is more instantaneous. 
@mercer I'm not that into photography but I found the 5D Mark III to be a solid stills camera when I had one. Yes, the Sigma has better image quality at 100 ISO and it's small. Bt that's IT. Everything else about it is much worse. Like crazy worse. And it also has this magenta/green noise that needs to be filtered out in lab color space and sometimes can't be so you really have to be careful. The battery life is awful and shot-to-shot time is the worst I've experienced. If I cared much about photography I'd buy an old MFDB and tech camera lenses.Bbut I don't, and this is the next best thing. If you want it for one thing (hyperfocal street photography, or I'm trying to get into some really abstract stuff–the shots I posted were test images to see how the detail is) it's great for the money. I wouldn't start with one. 
If you really want to challenge yourself, I'd get a spot meter and shoot slides on an old (like 1960s) SLR without a working on-camera meter. That's how I learned to expose. In the lab, they can change the exposure on C41 when they print it and it has tons more dynamic range. If you want to get really good at photography and exposure (not of people, necessarily, because they move too fast) pick up a manual focus Nikon camera and use an external light meter. Or challenge yourself a bit less and get an old Nikon SLR (the FM2 is great) and use TTL metering.
For small stills cameras, the Fujis are really nice.

That's fair. Definitely not a kind of photography I do a lot of. When I dabbled in it I used a Leica rangefinder and would focus through the rangefinder rather than setting hyperfocal distance and compose through the rangefinder. But I decided it wasn't for me. In retrospect, maybe my slow ability to focus hurt. Hyperfocal technique is more instantaneous. 
@mercer I'm not that into photography but I found the 5D Mark III to be a solid stills camera when I had one. Yes, the Sigma has better image quality at 100 ISO and it's small. Bt that's IT. Everything else about it is much worse. Like crazy worse. And it also has this magenta/green noise that needs to be filtered out in lab color space and sometimes can't be so you really have to be careful. The battery life is awful and shot-to-shot time is the worst I've experienced. If I cared much about photography I'd buy an old MFDB and tech camera lenses.Bbut I don't, and this is the next best thing. If you want it for one thing (hyperfocal street photography, or I'm trying to get into some really abstract stuff–the shots I posted were test images to see how the detail is) it's great for the money. I wouldn't start with one. 
If you really want to challenge yourself, I'd get a spot meter and shoot slides on an old (like 1960s) SLR without a working on-camera meter. That's how I learned to expose. In the lab, they can change the exposure on C41 when they print it and it has tons more dynamic range. If you want to get really good at photography and exposure (not of people, necessarily, because they move too fast) pick up a manual focus Nikon camera and use an external light meter. Or challenge yourself a bit less and get an old Nikon SLR (the FM2 is great) and use TTL metering.
For small stills cameras, the Fujis are really nice.

Very nice shots. I still don't see the Sigma as a great street photography camera (your focusing/composition method is the same as you'd use with large format, requiring a lot of light and knowledge of hyperlocal distances, and again I wouldn't rate it past 100 ISO). But those look great. Great eye. And I do think the highlight roll off is a lot closer to slide film than you'd get on other digital cameras. Both in your photos, and just in my experience. 
But it doesn't look like color negative, which is softer in the highlights than slide film or digital. I REALLY don't think these are the right cameras for Ed, especially when I find film to be so good for photographing people. And frankly I find color negative better in both low light and mixed lighting... also in difficult lighting...  than anything digital. (I'd recommend he check out a Mamiya 7, but 6x7 is far slower than 135 for low light.)
I think where the Sigmas do shine is in rendering difficult textures. The photos I posted are not very good, sort of test shots, but if you download them and zoom in to 100% you can see that difficult textures are rendered better than you'd expect from an APS-C camera, let alone a tiny point and shoot. I think a D800 and excellent lens could get similar results, but that's expensive and big, and even then I'm not sure. 

My bad. Yeah, the DP2 Merrill is slower than a medium format rangefinder but faster than an RZ67 or something. WAY faster than large format. But also way less control. Best texture of anything for its size, though. IMO better than 6x7 film. The magenta/green low frequency noise can be fixed by doing noise reduction in lab color space but it's still a pain. Not a perfect camera.
If the DP2 Classic is a lot faster than that, then it might be a decent street photography camera.

I finally got a tripod working so I took some photos. The DP2 Merrill has big problems (the LCD is terrible, shooting photos is so slow... it really is awful for street photography IMO) but the sharpness with difficult textures can't be beat.
Blurry grass up front is due to a strong ND filter. These aren't the best photos I took but it illustrates the DP2's strengths best.
Unfortunately shadows have serious green/magenta banding at a very low frequency. The camera has a really messy rendering up close, too, not quite aliasing but just odd banding sort of. But the detail on these is great imo. Even higher megapixel Bayer sensors will suffer a lot under similar circumstances. 
ButI wouldn't dare rate it faster than 100 ISO.

I haven't noticed this to be the case at all. Most sets I end up with are overlit, if anything. I suppose for some day exteriors this is true, but I'd argue those don't need to be lit.

Eep, I’m not sure exactly what to write. A lot of this is on a case-by-case basis.
A few things I’ve found useful for corporate work are:
When shooting talking heads, light primarily with an offside 3/4 book light close to camera that serves as both eye light and key and then put some negative fill on the other side of the face just off-camera. That way you can get both soft light and contrast and dial in any skin correction in post or with a promist filter. If you do choose to use a fill light (a hair light, diffused of course, could also help) keep it very soft and from camera direction, not 180º away from the key, to maintain shape. Keep both lights approximately at camera height to avoid raccoon eyes.
Overlighting is fine... if you're then removing light–doing the HMI through every window thing or Kino Flo in every corner and then turning off or dimming anything that’s behind the camera so you’re always working with a backlit scene or an offside key. I spoke extensively with Phil Abraham about how he lit the Sopranos and the approach to many interiors was rather DIY. On sets they had huge banks of dozens if not hundreds of 60w incandescent lights above the stage (facing 40º down toward the talent) that functioned as soft backlights and offside keys. Each corner of the room had one pointed toward the middle of the room. Only the lights in front of the camera were turned on. Anything behind the camera was turned off. Of course, there were also practicals and bounce cards for fill. When they turned around, they’d just flip which lights were on and which were off so it was always backlit/side-lit. At least that was the basic approach that was fined tuned with smaller units. That's for the interior sets but you can use the same techniques on locations with high ceilings.
You can do the same thing even in a corporate setting even for b roll even when you see the ceilings. Cameras are so sensitive these days and color correction so powerful that lighting with practicals is fine. Say you have a room being lit with overhead fluorescent lights. If you want some shape to the room, just use the switches in the room or flags or trash bags or whatever to turn off or flag off all the lights behind the camera. Then you’ll get the natural light working as a soft offside key. If you want to light talent standing in front of that so that their faces aren't dim, just use the same principles as the book light/negative fill combo (maybe a lone LED heavily diffused and as close to the talent as you can bring it, dimmed down a lot, and then negative fill on the other side just off camera). Bring CTO/CTB and plus and minus green to match the LED to the practical lights. 
Remember, the softness of the light correlates with its perceived size by the subject. A 4’x4’ light at 4 feet will be as soft as a 1’x1’ light at one foot (though the falloff will be quite different). One good trick to get a DIY book light for interviews is to first take a 1x1 LED panel and diffuse it with a piece of 216. And then gel it to match the color temperature of the space. Set is aside. Then take a c-stand and hang a 4’x4’ piece of diffusion (I like 216 or half grid cloth) and bring that wherever you’d want your book light to be. This will be the front of your “DIY” book light. You can easily hang 4’x4’ diffusion that functions just like a 4’x4’ frame just by keeping cuts of it around rolled up in a trash can or box and then extending the c stand's gobo arm so it's parallel with the floor and raising it up and then hanging the cut of diff from number 2 clamps at the top corners. You’ll have to weigh down the bottom corners with a clamp at each corner, too (number 2 clamps). Then position the LED behind the DIY frame and use barn doors to reduce spill (a true book light would have a tent of flags around it, but that’s slow) and turn it on. Move the light until the LED is just far enough to evenly illuminate the 4’x4’ frame. Then dim the LED to adjust brightness. Quick and easy book light and you can store that all in a small car.
Don’t be afraid to use flags and nets. If you’re using soft light, just bring flags. You can dim soft light with solid flags and it won't change the shape too much. 
Buy lights and play with them. Learn on set, but just shoot stuff for fun whenever you want to try a new technique. 
For narrative, if not storyboarding then at least defining the axis of action clearly can help. As far in advance as possible. Because this will let you place your key light for most of the scene (in theory). My friend who worked with Deakins described his approach as being too time-intensive to replicate on an indie scale, so I won’t bother describing it. One approach he really liked that can be replicated on a small scale is Elswit’s. He would often have a hard key light or back light 3/4 to camera then carry that with a much softer source that blended into it in terms of color temperature and direction, maybe 45º or less rotated toward camera. So he could get a lot of contrast in a scene and always get an exposure on the face by sort of modifying the Ridley Scott Blade Runner look of using a single source, but then sort of softening that source by using it to motived the fill. Filling from key direction, not from the opposite side. (But still tweaking with bounce boards etc. for the close ups).
That also lets you do fewer light changes between set ups if you basically only have one direction where the lights are visible and you can’t point the camera. Then you can use a common technique for exteriors and cheat your close ups by rotating the actors rather than moving the lights. This technique is of course great for day exteriors. Shoot with the sun behind you. Rotate actors a bit so the backlight then becomes an offside key for their CUs. You can use bounce cards etc. too. If there’s not too much wind and you’re shooting really close like CU or XCU or something, you can do the c stand trick to hang a weaker diffusion (251 or something) between the subject and the sun to soften the sun light a bit. 
Or for overcast days, bounce light using a 4x4 bead board silver side (or silver reflector) to create a subtle offside key and use negative fill camera side, for instance, to shape the key further. Or bring a battery-powered LED with you.
Scout. Mirror boards are brighter than 18k HMIs. They’re fairly expensive to buy and heavy as hell, but on an indie budget they’re very affordable. Bounce one of those through a window and move it. Maybe put some diffusion against the window. Easy way to get a cheap big gun in day interiors. But you need to time things up so the sun is in the right approximate place.
So always scout the sun path for day exteriors and even interiors if you have time. There are apps like Helios that help. That can save you money. But of course if you’re not set on shooting in one direction or the other you can follow the same principles on the fly.
I dunno, that’s about it. Also, when in doubt, diffuse your light. Especially lights behind the camera. I like hard light but if I see more than one hard shadow on a wall I know someone screwed up. One hard light is usually enough, but since so few people use hard light these days it can be cool.
Oh, and look for darker walls to shoot against. White walls make lighting so much harder.

Eep, I’m not sure exactly what to write. A lot of this is on a case-by-case basis.
A few things I’ve found useful for corporate work are:
When shooting talking heads, light primarily with an offside 3/4 book light close to camera that serves as both eye light and key and then put some negative fill on the other side of the face just off-camera. That way you can get both soft light and contrast and dial in any skin correction in post or with a promist filter. If you do choose to use a fill light (a hair light, diffused of course, could also help) keep it very soft and from camera direction, not 180º away from the key, to maintain shape. Keep both lights approximately at camera height to avoid raccoon eyes.
Overlighting is fine... if you're then removing light–doing the HMI through every window thing or Kino Flo in every corner and then turning off or dimming anything that’s behind the camera so you’re always working with a backlit scene or an offside key. I spoke extensively with Phil Abraham about how he lit the Sopranos and the approach to many interiors was rather DIY. On sets they had huge banks of dozens if not hundreds of 60w incandescent lights above the stage (facing 40º down toward the talent) that functioned as soft backlights and offside keys. Each corner of the room had one pointed toward the middle of the room. Only the lights in front of the camera were turned on. Anything behind the camera was turned off. Of course, there were also practicals and bounce cards for fill. When they turned around, they’d just flip which lights were on and which were off so it was always backlit/side-lit. At least that was the basic approach that was fined tuned with smaller units. That's for the interior sets but you can use the same techniques on locations with high ceilings.
You can do the same thing even in a corporate setting even for b roll even when you see the ceilings. Cameras are so sensitive these days and color correction so powerful that lighting with practicals is fine. Say you have a room being lit with overhead fluorescent lights. If you want some shape to the room, just use the switches in the room or flags or trash bags or whatever to turn off or flag off all the lights behind the camera. Then you’ll get the natural light working as a soft offside key. If you want to light talent standing in front of that so that their faces aren't dim, just use the same principles as the book light/negative fill combo (maybe a lone LED heavily diffused and as close to the talent as you can bring it, dimmed down a lot, and then negative fill on the other side just off camera). Bring CTO/CTB and plus and minus green to match the LED to the practical lights. 
Remember, the softness of the light correlates with its perceived size by the subject. A 4’x4’ light at 4 feet will be as soft as a 1’x1’ light at one foot (though the falloff will be quite different). One good trick to get a DIY book light for interviews is to first take a 1x1 LED panel and diffuse it with a piece of 216. And then gel it to match the color temperature of the space. Set is aside. Then take a c-stand and hang a 4’x4’ piece of diffusion (I like 216 or half grid cloth) and bring that wherever you’d want your book light to be. This will be the front of your “DIY” book light. You can easily hang 4’x4’ diffusion that functions just like a 4’x4’ frame just by keeping cuts of it around rolled up in a trash can or box and then extending the c stand's gobo arm so it's parallel with the floor and raising it up and then hanging the cut of diff from number 2 clamps at the top corners. You’ll have to weigh down the bottom corners with a clamp at each corner, too (number 2 clamps). Then position the LED behind the DIY frame and use barn doors to reduce spill (a true book light would have a tent of flags around it, but that’s slow) and turn it on. Move the light until the LED is just far enough to evenly illuminate the 4’x4’ frame. Then dim the LED to adjust brightness. Quick and easy book light and you can store that all in a small car.
Don’t be afraid to use flags and nets. If you’re using soft light, just bring flags. You can dim soft light with solid flags and it won't change the shape too much. 
Buy lights and play with them. Learn on set, but just shoot stuff for fun whenever you want to try a new technique. 
For narrative, if not storyboarding then at least defining the axis of action clearly can help. As far in advance as possible. Because this will let you place your key light for most of the scene (in theory). My friend who worked with Deakins described his approach as being too time-intensive to replicate on an indie scale, so I won’t bother describing it. One approach he really liked that can be replicated on a small scale is Elswit’s. He would often have a hard key light or back light 3/4 to camera then carry that with a much softer source that blended into it in terms of color temperature and direction, maybe 45º or less rotated toward camera. So he could get a lot of contrast in a scene and always get an exposure on the face by sort of modifying the Ridley Scott Blade Runner look of using a single source, but then sort of softening that source by using it to motived the fill. Filling from key direction, not from the opposite side. (But still tweaking with bounce boards etc. for the close ups).
That also lets you do fewer light changes between set ups if you basically only have one direction where the lights are visible and you can’t point the camera. Then you can use a common technique for exteriors and cheat your close ups by rotating the actors rather than moving the lights. This technique is of course great for day exteriors. Shoot with the sun behind you. Rotate actors a bit so the backlight then becomes an offside key for their CUs. You can use bounce cards etc. too. If there’s not too much wind and you’re shooting really close like CU or XCU or something, you can do the c stand trick to hang a weaker diffusion (251 or something) between the subject and the sun to soften the sun light a bit. 
Or for overcast days, bounce light using a 4x4 bead board silver side (or silver reflector) to create a subtle offside key and use negative fill camera side, for instance, to shape the key further. Or bring a battery-powered LED with you.
Scout. Mirror boards are brighter than 18k HMIs. They’re fairly expensive to buy and heavy as hell, but on an indie budget they’re very affordable. Bounce one of those through a window and move it. Maybe put some diffusion against the window. Easy way to get a cheap big gun in day interiors. But you need to time things up so the sun is in the right approximate place.
So always scout the sun path for day exteriors and even interiors if you have time. There are apps like Helios that help. That can save you money. But of course if you’re not set on shooting in one direction or the other you can follow the same principles on the fly.
I dunno, that’s about it. Also, when in doubt, diffuse your light. Especially lights behind the camera. I like hard light but if I see more than one hard shadow on a wall I know someone screwed up. One hard light is usually enough, but since so few people use hard light these days it can be cool.
Oh, and look for darker walls to shoot against. White walls make lighting so much harder.

Eep, I’m not sure exactly what to write. A lot of this is on a case-by-case basis.
A few things I’ve found useful for corporate work are:
When shooting talking heads, light primarily with an offside 3/4 book light close to camera that serves as both eye light and key and then put some negative fill on the other side of the face just off-camera. That way you can get both soft light and contrast and dial in any skin correction in post or with a promist filter. If you do choose to use a fill light (a hair light, diffused of course, could also help) keep it very soft and from camera direction, not 180º away from the key, to maintain shape. Keep both lights approximately at camera height to avoid raccoon eyes.
Overlighting is fine... if you're then removing light–doing the HMI through every window thing or Kino Flo in every corner and then turning off or dimming anything that’s behind the camera so you’re always working with a backlit scene or an offside key. I spoke extensively with Phil Abraham about how he lit the Sopranos and the approach to many interiors was rather DIY. On sets they had huge banks of dozens if not hundreds of 60w incandescent lights above the stage (facing 40º down toward the talent) that functioned as soft backlights and offside keys. Each corner of the room had one pointed toward the middle of the room. Only the lights in front of the camera were turned on. Anything behind the camera was turned off. Of course, there were also practicals and bounce cards for fill. When they turned around, they’d just flip which lights were on and which were off so it was always backlit/side-lit. At least that was the basic approach that was fined tuned with smaller units. That's for the interior sets but you can use the same techniques on locations with high ceilings.
You can do the same thing even in a corporate setting even for b roll even when you see the ceilings. Cameras are so sensitive these days and color correction so powerful that lighting with practicals is fine. Say you have a room being lit with overhead fluorescent lights. If you want some shape to the room, just use the switches in the room or flags or trash bags or whatever to turn off or flag off all the lights behind the camera. Then you’ll get the natural light working as a soft offside key. If you want to light talent standing in front of that so that their faces aren't dim, just use the same principles as the book light/negative fill combo (maybe a lone LED heavily diffused and as close to the talent as you can bring it, dimmed down a lot, and then negative fill on the other side just off camera). Bring CTO/CTB and plus and minus green to match the LED to the practical lights. 
Remember, the softness of the light correlates with its perceived size by the subject. A 4’x4’ light at 4 feet will be as soft as a 1’x1’ light at one foot (though the falloff will be quite different). One good trick to get a DIY book light for interviews is to first take a 1x1 LED panel and diffuse it with a piece of 216. And then gel it to match the color temperature of the space. Set is aside. Then take a c-stand and hang a 4’x4’ piece of diffusion (I like 216 or half grid cloth) and bring that wherever you’d want your book light to be. This will be the front of your “DIY” book light. You can easily hang 4’x4’ diffusion that functions just like a 4’x4’ frame just by keeping cuts of it around rolled up in a trash can or box and then extending the c stand's gobo arm so it's parallel with the floor and raising it up and then hanging the cut of diff from number 2 clamps at the top corners. You’ll have to weigh down the bottom corners with a clamp at each corner, too (number 2 clamps). Then position the LED behind the DIY frame and use barn doors to reduce spill (a true book light would have a tent of flags around it, but that’s slow) and turn it on. Move the light until the LED is just far enough to evenly illuminate the 4’x4’ frame. Then dim the LED to adjust brightness. Quick and easy book light and you can store that all in a small car.
Don’t be afraid to use flags and nets. If you’re using soft light, just bring flags. You can dim soft light with solid flags and it won't change the shape too much. 
Buy lights and play with them. Learn on set, but just shoot stuff for fun whenever you want to try a new technique. 
For narrative, if not storyboarding then at least defining the axis of action clearly can help. As far in advance as possible. Because this will let you place your key light for most of the scene (in theory). My friend who worked with Deakins described his approach as being too time-intensive to replicate on an indie scale, so I won’t bother describing it. One approach he really liked that can be replicated on a small scale is Elswit’s. He would often have a hard key light or back light 3/4 to camera then carry that with a much softer source that blended into it in terms of color temperature and direction, maybe 45º or less rotated toward camera. So he could get a lot of contrast in a scene and always get an exposure on the face by sort of modifying the Ridley Scott Blade Runner look of using a single source, but then sort of softening that source by using it to motived the fill. Filling from key direction, not from the opposite side. (But still tweaking with bounce boards etc. for the close ups).
That also lets you do fewer light changes between set ups if you basically only have one direction where the lights are visible and you can’t point the camera. Then you can use a common technique for exteriors and cheat your close ups by rotating the actors rather than moving the lights. This technique is of course great for day exteriors. Shoot with the sun behind you. Rotate actors a bit so the backlight then becomes an offside key for their CUs. You can use bounce cards etc. too. If there’s not too much wind and you’re shooting really close like CU or XCU or something, you can do the c stand trick to hang a weaker diffusion (251 or something) between the subject and the sun to soften the sun light a bit. 
Or for overcast days, bounce light using a 4x4 bead board silver side (or silver reflector) to create a subtle offside key and use negative fill camera side, for instance, to shape the key further. Or bring a battery-powered LED with you.
Scout. Mirror boards are brighter than 18k HMIs. They’re fairly expensive to buy and heavy as hell, but on an indie budget they’re very affordable. Bounce one of those through a window and move it. Maybe put some diffusion against the window. Easy way to get a cheap big gun in day interiors. But you need to time things up so the sun is in the right approximate place.
So always scout the sun path for day exteriors and even interiors if you have time. There are apps like Helios that help. That can save you money. But of course if you’re not set on shooting in one direction or the other you can follow the same principles on the fly.
I dunno, that’s about it. Also, when in doubt, diffuse your light. Especially lights behind the camera. I like hard light but if I see more than one hard shadow on a wall I know someone screwed up. One hard light is usually enough, but since so few people use hard light these days it can be cool.
Oh, and look for darker walls to shoot against. White walls make lighting so much harder.

Eep, I’m not sure exactly what to write. A lot of this is on a case-by-case basis.
A few things I’ve found useful for corporate work are:
When shooting talking heads, light primarily with an offside 3/4 book light close to camera that serves as both eye light and key and then put some negative fill on the other side of the face just off-camera. That way you can get both soft light and contrast and dial in any skin correction in post or with a promist filter. If you do choose to use a fill light (a hair light, diffused of course, could also help) keep it very soft and from camera direction, not 180º away from the key, to maintain shape. Keep both lights approximately at camera height to avoid raccoon eyes.
Overlighting is fine... if you're then removing light–doing the HMI through every window thing or Kino Flo in every corner and then turning off or dimming anything that’s behind the camera so you’re always working with a backlit scene or an offside key. I spoke extensively with Phil Abraham about how he lit the Sopranos and the approach to many interiors was rather DIY. On sets they had huge banks of dozens if not hundreds of 60w incandescent lights above the stage (facing 40º down toward the talent) that functioned as soft backlights and offside keys. Each corner of the room had one pointed toward the middle of the room. Only the lights in front of the camera were turned on. Anything behind the camera was turned off. Of course, there were also practicals and bounce cards for fill. When they turned around, they’d just flip which lights were on and which were off so it was always backlit/side-lit. At least that was the basic approach that was fined tuned with smaller units. That's for the interior sets but you can use the same techniques on locations with high ceilings.
You can do the same thing even in a corporate setting even for b roll even when you see the ceilings. Cameras are so sensitive these days and color correction so powerful that lighting with practicals is fine. Say you have a room being lit with overhead fluorescent lights. If you want some shape to the room, just use the switches in the room or flags or trash bags or whatever to turn off or flag off all the lights behind the camera. Then you’ll get the natural light working as a soft offside key. If you want to light talent standing in front of that so that their faces aren't dim, just use the same principles as the book light/negative fill combo (maybe a lone LED heavily diffused and as close to the talent as you can bring it, dimmed down a lot, and then negative fill on the other side just off camera). Bring CTO/CTB and plus and minus green to match the LED to the practical lights. 
Remember, the softness of the light correlates with its perceived size by the subject. A 4’x4’ light at 4 feet will be as soft as a 1’x1’ light at one foot (though the falloff will be quite different). One good trick to get a DIY book light for interviews is to first take a 1x1 LED panel and diffuse it with a piece of 216. And then gel it to match the color temperature of the space. Set is aside. Then take a c-stand and hang a 4’x4’ piece of diffusion (I like 216 or half grid cloth) and bring that wherever you’d want your book light to be. This will be the front of your “DIY” book light. You can easily hang 4’x4’ diffusion that functions just like a 4’x4’ frame just by keeping cuts of it around rolled up in a trash can or box and then extending the c stand's gobo arm so it's parallel with the floor and raising it up and then hanging the cut of diff from number 2 clamps at the top corners. You’ll have to weigh down the bottom corners with a clamp at each corner, too (number 2 clamps). Then position the LED behind the DIY frame and use barn doors to reduce spill (a true book light would have a tent of flags around it, but that’s slow) and turn it on. Move the light until the LED is just far enough to evenly illuminate the 4’x4’ frame. Then dim the LED to adjust brightness. Quick and easy book light and you can store that all in a small car.
Don’t be afraid to use flags and nets. If you’re using soft light, just bring flags. You can dim soft light with solid flags and it won't change the shape too much. 
Buy lights and play with them. Learn on set, but just shoot stuff for fun whenever you want to try a new technique. 
For narrative, if not storyboarding then at least defining the axis of action clearly can help. As far in advance as possible. Because this will let you place your key light for most of the scene (in theory). My friend who worked with Deakins described his approach as being too time-intensive to replicate on an indie scale, so I won’t bother describing it. One approach he really liked that can be replicated on a small scale is Elswit’s. He would often have a hard key light or back light 3/4 to camera then carry that with a much softer source that blended into it in terms of color temperature and direction, maybe 45º or less rotated toward camera. So he could get a lot of contrast in a scene and always get an exposure on the face by sort of modifying the Ridley Scott Blade Runner look of using a single source, but then sort of softening that source by using it to motived the fill. Filling from key direction, not from the opposite side. (But still tweaking with bounce boards etc. for the close ups).
That also lets you do fewer light changes between set ups if you basically only have one direction where the lights are visible and you can’t point the camera. Then you can use a common technique for exteriors and cheat your close ups by rotating the actors rather than moving the lights. This technique is of course great for day exteriors. Shoot with the sun behind you. Rotate actors a bit so the backlight then becomes an offside key for their CUs. You can use bounce cards etc. too. If there’s not too much wind and you’re shooting really close like CU or XCU or something, you can do the c stand trick to hang a weaker diffusion (251 or something) between the subject and the sun to soften the sun light a bit. 
Or for overcast days, bounce light using a 4x4 bead board silver side (or silver reflector) to create a subtle offside key and use negative fill camera side, for instance, to shape the key further. Or bring a battery-powered LED with you.
Scout. Mirror boards are brighter than 18k HMIs. They’re fairly expensive to buy and heavy as hell, but on an indie budget they’re very affordable. Bounce one of those through a window and move it. Maybe put some diffusion against the window. Easy way to get a cheap big gun in day interiors. But you need to time things up so the sun is in the right approximate place.
So always scout the sun path for day exteriors and even interiors if you have time. There are apps like Helios that help. That can save you money. But of course if you’re not set on shooting in one direction or the other you can follow the same principles on the fly.
I dunno, that’s about it. Also, when in doubt, diffuse your light. Especially lights behind the camera. I like hard light but if I see more than one hard shadow on a wall I know someone screwed up. One hard light is usually enough, but since so few people use hard light these days it can be cool.
Oh, and look for darker walls to shoot against. White walls make lighting so much harder.

I guess it's my misunderstanding then. What I mean is that I've noticed a trend toward over-lighting and using power windows to cut the image rather than flags and negative fill. I blame it more on fast schedules and recent trends toward soft light (and an over-reliance on power windows) than on bad DPs... after all, often it's the gaffer, not the DP, designing the set up, and everyone seems to light like this these days so of course they're gonna approach things this way. And to be fair to DPs, if that's the look clients want, it's what they're going to try to get. But I do agree that setting yourself apart from that is a great idea.
IMO, if you have an M18 out every window or a soft M90 or Mach Tech on every corner of the room, which is what most people seem to do these days, everything will look pretty good and you can make minimal adjustments, but it will always look a little "flat"and indecisive. Not that it looks bad, just that it looks a little "safe." But to me that's over-lit, not underlit, even if there's a lack of contrast. IMO it's a trend toward "lighting the space" rather than "lighting the frame."
I agree with you to the extent that I prefer the 1980s hard light look, artificial as it was. But it was a lot slower and required vastly more preparation.
For certain scenarios, though, it's unavoidable. As much as I criticize the approach, sometimes it's easier to blast a space with light than it is to gel every window and approach it more "artistically" and selectively.
I have a few techniques I've learned that I think are helpful to avoid this tendency but it's not worth getting into them here.
One area I do agree that there's too little lighting is in day exteriors. Contrast the look of Jurassic Park's exteriors to anything today. But I can't say I really miss this style as much. It looks a little cheesy and that was a product of older film stocks lacking shadow detail. I do agree that day exteriors are if anything, often underlit, today. But imo unless your budget is pushing you to move like crazy, it's easier to just schedule around the best light and use negative fill and bounce rather than setting up an 18K HMI or something, plus who can afford that on a small budget? 
I did work with one DP who just surrounded dialogue scenes during the day with huge diffused HMIs. There was one tucked in every corner, including a 12k. I'm not sure he placed them very carefully but I have to admit it looked great. Sure, it was over-lit, but it worked, and made the faces sort of pop and shine and you got nice catch lights, too.

I guess it's my misunderstanding then. What I mean is that I've noticed a trend toward over-lighting and using power windows to cut the image rather than flags and negative fill. I blame it more on fast schedules and recent trends toward soft light (and an over-reliance on power windows) than on bad DPs... after all, often it's the gaffer, not the DP, designing the set up, and everyone seems to light like this these days so of course they're gonna approach things this way. And to be fair to DPs, if that's the look clients want, it's what they're going to try to get. But I do agree that setting yourself apart from that is a great idea.
IMO, if you have an M18 out every window or a soft M90 or Mach Tech on every corner of the room, which is what most people seem to do these days, everything will look pretty good and you can make minimal adjustments, but it will always look a little "flat"and indecisive. Not that it looks bad, just that it looks a little "safe." But to me that's over-lit, not underlit, even if there's a lack of contrast. IMO it's a trend toward "lighting the space" rather than "lighting the frame."
I agree with you to the extent that I prefer the 1980s hard light look, artificial as it was. But it was a lot slower and required vastly more preparation.
For certain scenarios, though, it's unavoidable. As much as I criticize the approach, sometimes it's easier to blast a space with light than it is to gel every window and approach it more "artistically" and selectively.
I have a few techniques I've learned that I think are helpful to avoid this tendency but it's not worth getting into them here.
One area I do agree that there's too little lighting is in day exteriors. Contrast the look of Jurassic Park's exteriors to anything today. But I can't say I really miss this style as much. It looks a little cheesy and that was a product of older film stocks lacking shadow detail. I do agree that day exteriors are if anything, often underlit, today. But imo unless your budget is pushing you to move like crazy, it's easier to just schedule around the best light and use negative fill and bounce rather than setting up an 18K HMI or something, plus who can afford that on a small budget? 
I did work with one DP who just surrounded dialogue scenes during the day with huge diffused HMIs. There was one tucked in every corner, including a 12k. I'm not sure he placed them very carefully but I have to admit it looked great. Sure, it was over-lit, but it worked, and made the faces sort of pop and shine and you got nice catch lights, too.

From what I understand, industry rates for commercial/corporate dry hire non-union camera ops (not even good ones) run about $600/day, significantly more with a kit.
Editing/vfx/color maybe $300-$500/day, more if you use your own computer.
Heck, I know DITS making $1500/day regularly.
Sound, $700/day wet hire.
And that's before a 4-10X agency mark up (what the agency or studio charges the client).
But your potential client isn't hiring at industry rates for a reason. I'd just ask them roughly what their budget is. I wouldn't undersell yourself at $100/day. That'll make them suspicious that you don't value your own time, and they won't value yours.
I wouldn't try to take home a full rate for your first job, but I also wouldn't undersell yourself. Ask them roughly what their budget is or bid a little high and let them negotiate down. At least then they will recognize up front that you respect yourself. But the reason it's a difficult question to answer is that there's absolutely no standard or good answer for this kind of work. Which is why I wouldn't feel bad asking them what their budget is.

I guess that's true. I find Netflix requirements strange (the F55 raw looks worse to my eye than "4k" Alexa prores, which Amazon and YouTube will accept, although both are good) but jumping early on the 4k HDR bandwagon is a big part of their business model and makes sense. Even if compression kills it now, in ten years they'll have a huge library they can re-encode. 
I do think they're pretty much the only "mid range" company that has a large portion of their content originating in raw. The rest is mostly limited to the very high end and one-man-bands.

From what I understand, industry rates for commercial/corporate dry hire non-union camera ops (not even good ones) run about $600/day, significantly more with a kit.
Editing/vfx/color maybe $300-$500/day, more if you use your own computer.
Heck, I know DITS making $1500/day regularly.
Sound, $700/day wet hire.
And that's before a 4-10X agency mark up (what the agency or studio charges the client).
But your potential client isn't hiring at industry rates for a reason. I'd just ask them roughly what their budget is. I wouldn't undersell yourself at $100/day. That'll make them suspicious that you don't value your own time, and they won't value yours.
I wouldn't try to take home a full rate for your first job, but I also wouldn't undersell yourself. Ask them roughly what their budget is or bid a little high and let them negotiate down. At least then they will recognize up front that you respect yourself. But the reason it's a difficult question to answer is that there's absolutely no standard or good answer for this kind of work. Which is why I wouldn't feel bad asking them what their budget is.

From what I understand, industry rates for commercial/corporate dry hire non-union camera ops (not even good ones) run about $600/day, significantly more with a kit.
Editing/vfx/color maybe $300-$500/day, more if you use your own computer.
Heck, I know DITS making $1500/day regularly.
Sound, $700/day wet hire.
And that's before a 4-10X agency mark up (what the agency or studio charges the client).
But your potential client isn't hiring at industry rates for a reason. I'd just ask them roughly what their budget is. I wouldn't undersell yourself at $100/day. That'll make them suspicious that you don't value your own time, and they won't value yours.
I wouldn't try to take home a full rate for your first job, but I also wouldn't undersell yourself. Ask them roughly what their budget is or bid a little high and let them negotiate down. At least then they will recognize up front that you respect yourself. But the reason it's a difficult question to answer is that there's absolutely no standard or good answer for this kind of work. Which is why I wouldn't feel bad asking them what their budget is.

From what I understand, industry rates for commercial/corporate dry hire non-union camera ops (not even good ones) run about $600/day, significantly more with a kit.
Editing/vfx/color maybe $300-$500/day, more if you use your own computer.
Heck, I know DITS making $1500/day regularly.
Sound, $700/day wet hire.
And that's before a 4-10X agency mark up (what the agency or studio charges the client).
But your potential client isn't hiring at industry rates for a reason. I'd just ask them roughly what their budget is. I wouldn't undersell yourself at $100/day. That'll make them suspicious that you don't value your own time, and they won't value yours.
I wouldn't try to take home a full rate for your first job, but I also wouldn't undersell yourself. Ask them roughly what their budget is or bid a little high and let them negotiate down. At least then they will recognize up front that you respect yourself. But the reason it's a difficult question to answer is that there's absolutely no standard or good answer for this kind of work. Which is why I wouldn't feel bad asking them what their budget is.

From what I understand, industry rates for commercial/corporate dry hire non-union camera ops (not even good ones) run about $600/day, significantly more with a kit.
Editing/vfx/color maybe $300-$500/day, more if you use your own computer.
Heck, I know DITS making $1500/day regularly.
Sound, $700/day wet hire.
And that's before a 4-10X agency mark up (what the agency or studio charges the client).
But your potential client isn't hiring at industry rates for a reason. I'd just ask them roughly what their budget is. I wouldn't undersell yourself at $100/day. That'll make them suspicious that you don't value your own time, and they won't value yours.
I wouldn't try to take home a full rate for your first job, but I also wouldn't undersell yourself. Ask them roughly what their budget is or bid a little high and let them negotiate down. At least then they will recognize up front that you respect yourself. But the reason it's a difficult question to answer is that there's absolutely no standard or good answer for this kind of work. Which is why I wouldn't feel bad asking them what their budget is.

I hear you. I never much enjoyed shooting on a dSLR.
For photographs of people and things, I'd take a Mamiya 7 or a Leica rangefinder with Portra over anything else. The Sigma has a nice formal look, though, with great texture. Gursky might like one.

I agree that the Alexa renders in a duller way than film, in just the way you mention.
To that extent, the Sigma DP Merrills aren’t a great film replacement, either. I’m really not sold on how skin tones look, and the over/under is more similar to slide film than it is to color negative.
But the image is about as detailed as (and much less grainy than) a good 6x7 Velvia scan, with good color rendering and highlight rendering and nice high frequency detail, too. 
For landscapes and still life it’s a viable alternative to a Mamiya 7 with slide film. For candids and street photography where you want more texture and character, I’m not at all sold.
The LCD is really bad, unfortunately.
Somewhat like large format slide film, the DP2 Merrill has a transparent look to its image. It doesn't look like film or digital, it looks like the scene you shot (if you expose carefully)... Given its size and price, that's reason enough to recommend it to landscape photographers in particular. But no, it's not a direct film replacement, and behaves more like slide film than color negative.
Worth a try, though. I really like mine.