Advice on outdoor light control

G

Granville

Well-known member
I am considering investing in some silks, scrims, etc. for an upcoming outdoor shoot (interviews). Anyone have knowledge and experience to share regarding an essential kit?
I am thinking three 4X4 panels but am not sure what range of stop control would be most useful.

My main aim is to soften and diffuse when the light gets to hot.
 
If you're in direct sun place you subject so the sun is behind them. It will be one potent backlight, hairlight or kicker, depending on its height and angle off the camera/subject axis but your subject won't be squinting. You will need to bounce some sunlight for fill. You can use a dozen things for this but a flexfill is handy for field interviews.

If you want a particular background, you might wind up with the sun in front of your subject. In this case you will need to fly something, ideally, like a 6'X6' frame with an appropriate textile on it. One support makes it a butterfly, two an overhead.

I don't know if your interviews are on the fly, where your kit has to be small and highly portable, but there are flexfills that will sort of work. Get one that has a translucent panel that you can place between the sun and your subject.

In my experience those are not ideal as I'll explain now. When you're using a textile over your subject your choice of the many kinds available means you have to be clear what effect you want.

Silks, China silk or the more durable polyester similar ones, can cut the light by a couple of stops. White grid cloth, except for the quarter stop variety (which inexplicably cuts about 0.6 stops) is similar and rags like muslin can cut even more light. Under one of these your subject will look like they are in open shade.

If you expose for their face the background will be very bright and potentially blown out.

I think a better choice is vinyl - half frost, HiLite, for example. These diffuse the sun somewhat while preserving some of its specularity and look and they transmit a lot of light, typically only cutting half a stop or so. Under one of these your subject won't need to squint and the background looks okay. They're similar in effect to opal. They are also silent in the breeze, while gels and grid cloth (unless it's the soft, silent type) can rattle too much for sound recording.

I forget to mention gels, actually. A 4'X4' open frame skinned with grid cloth or opal or 1/2 white can work too but not as nice as a textile or vinyl.

See if you can talk someone into demoing some of this stuff so you can experiment with the camera and see for yourself what you like.

Good luck and tell us what you discover.
 
Good post slondon! I'll also add that when you use diffusion like silk, the color temperature in the shaded area increases (becomes cooler/more bluish) so if you're not careful as far as white balancing, you can end up with overly warm skintone when you bounce lights or an overly cool background. That's another reason why translucent reflector really doesn't work all that well for diffusion as is it simply too strong and can mess up your WB.
 
Thanks all

Slondon, you really got the essence of my question. I appreciate the thoughtful reply. Do you know a good source for the textile / vinyl solution?
 
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