I shoot at a set in the clients home and she has a large wall sized vinyl mural background permanently mounted to the wall. While it is not shiny, if the lights are close it glares a lot off the mural, so it's meant I have to keep my lights way off to the side so I get some shadows. Anyway, my question is if anyone here knows of a good paint that I could put on the vinyl without destroying it that could help reduce the glare? Thank you!
Anti reflection clear coat paint?
- Thread starter wbrock001
- Start date
Bruce Watson
Veteran
Yes. Often in copy work (copying a painting, for example), people will polarize the light, and shoot through another polarizer. If the two polarizers are set 90 degrees apart you get no reflections at all. This is done to eliminate reflections while letting you place the lights where they need to be to pickup textures. The downside to this is that polarizers take a big chunk out of your lumens, so you may need considerably more light than you would have thought. But this technique will surely knock down your reflection problem.
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Thank you! I'm not doing the painting, they are... We tested the stuff on a shiny vinyl color print and it just removed the shine/gloss. Didn't change the color or anything. So they're going to paint it themselves on a small part to see if it makes the desired difference, if it does then we're good to go. But I will check on the polarizing sheets, though I don't know if I have enough light to lose that many stops in the shoot room. Its a great non-destructive technique but my kinos and the lighting I have probably aren't bright enough to compensate.
Bern Caughey
Veteran
I'd try Dulling Spray first.
Might work and it comes off if the underlying surface is waterproof. I find it hard to apply evenly over a big surface though.
Actually what we used was "Dead Flat Varnish" from Sherwin Williams, and the client just called me and said it looks great, no light reflection and no damage to their vinyl printed mural...so far so good. They painted it on with a good quality brush, and I told them a couple coats if there were any issues. It was $85 for a gallon of the stuff. The mural is 7.5x18 feet. They tested the light reflection with 500 W work lights, which should be a good representation since I was using Kino Deva 400's and was getting glare up the wazoo before the application of the dead flat varnish. So I'll know for sure when I go on set tomorrow to setup how well it worked. I'll report back... Thank you for all of your suggestions.