blasted sun!

[Peter_Gaudry]

I was shooting a scene on Saturday that was a mess. I was at the bottom of a flight of stairs in a subway. I was shooting up the stairs to the lady on the top stair. Behind her, precisely behind her is the frigging sun.

The camera reacts and blacks out her entire front. So the stairs are clear, the sky is clear, and she is pretty much a sillouhette.

I know this is classic camera behaviour, but can anyone advise me on the fix. Unfortunately lighting wasn't available on the day, which I presume would have fixed this by blasting some light on her from the front.

Anything I could have done in camera?

 

[Shaw]

Re: blasted sun!

You could try the backlight feature. I'm not sure how well it works as I haven't tried it myself.

For a fix for your current footage you might try:

Duplicating your footage
Desaturating it (so you have a B&W image)
Inverting it
Run a small level gaussian blur the soften the edges
Use this as a mask to tweak the shadows

Some software has decent cabilities for this sort of thing out of the box with no mask required. I have a more detailed (and infinitely more precise) method that I'm currently putting into a post production tutorial.

 

[Barry_Green]

Re: blasted sun!

The fix is, as you guess, to add light to the front. Even if it's from a white bounce card, that's the only way to "fix" this situation. Without adding light, you're facing an impossible contrast ratio, so you could either iris way up so that your subject is properly exposed, but the background will incinerate to white... or you could expose for the background, leaving your subject a silhouette. Which is what you got, right?

Can't solve that one without some light, either by blasting an actual light, or bouncing some light with a mirror, a silver bounce card, or even a white piece of foam core.

 

[J.R. Hudson]

Re: blasted sun!

Barry said it best. Gotta get some light in there. Of course, depending on the mood of the scene (cinematic style), sometimes a sillouette can be be the right move.

 

[HansK]

Re: blasted sun!

[quote author=Peter_Gaudry link=board=lighting;num=1098751107;start=0#0 date=10/25/04 at 17:38:27] The camera reacts and blacks out her entire front. So the stairs are clear, the sky is clear, and she is pretty much a sillouhette.

[snip]

Anything I could have done in camera?[/quote]

Sounds like you had auto-exposure turned on. Turn it off and set the exposure manually to expose the woman. The background will be blown out but that's what your stuck with without being able to light the woman.

 

[Peter_Gaudry]

Re: blasted sun!

Educational and inspiring as always guys - thank you sincerely!