Blocking out sunlight?

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N3D

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I was wondering if dozens of A4 sized black sugar paper would do the trick. Any one have any ideas?

Need to figure out a way to join the papers seamlessly. I am also searching for rolls of paper but even those would need joining in some areas.

Need something cheap and easy to assemble.

Any help is appreciated, thank you!

Here is an image of the potential window :)
front two beds.jpg
 
What are you trying to do? Block the light or lower the intensity of the outside light coming in?

If you want to completely block it then I would suggest duvytene or commando cloth. This is thick curtain type of material that does not allow light to penetrate. It's not cheap but can be re-used and has lots of practical applications for lighting. In some cases I've used full sheets of thin cheap 4x8 wood panels from the exterior to also block light.

The cheapest "black" option is to shoot this scene at night. :happy:


If you're only looking to reduce the intensity of light coming in because you don't have enough lights to balance out the contrast ratio between indoor and outdoor you can also use ND (neutral density) gel sheets on the windows. They are available in different strengths and can be doubled up if needed.
 
You can get black sugar paper in A2 and A3 - schools use it for this purpose lots. Insulation tape on the rear side allows limited unsticking and restocking. It's even quite long lasting too - and pretty cheap.
 
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starcentral said:
If you're only looking to reduce the intensity of light coming in because you don't have enough lights to balance out the contrast ratio between indoor and outdoor you can also use ND (neutral density) gel sheets on the windows.
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What strength would you recommend, best option to start with let's say? Would 0.6 be too much?
 
drapeama said:
What strength would you recommend, best option to start with let's say? Would 0.6 be too much?
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This is not an easily answerable question. How much ND you need on windows depends on the weather, time of day, light level inside, and camera settings. Best thing to do is to have rolls of the common strengths (0.3, 0.6, and 0.9) and once you're lit, audition them to see which one will work best.

As for blocking out sunlight completely - duvetyne if you're not going to actually see the windows, combat cloth if you will.
 
drapeama said:
What strength would you recommend, best option to start with let's say? Would 0.6 be too much?
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.3 is 1 stop, .6 is 2 stops, .9 is 3 stops,... you can't really arbitrarily pick the strength that's best to start with because it depends on many factors; like what your brightness is outdoor will be, what your level indoor will be, and what working contrast ratio you want between your interior and exterior. So there is no real best option to start with. Generally when you expose for your subject indoor with lower wattage lighting your scene ourdoors is going to be blown out looking. You either work with higher power lighting indoors to balance it out (like HMI's) and/or you combine that with use of ND gels on the windows to knock down the outdoor light intensity. This is where working with lightmeters or understanding how to balance out your ratio comes into play. For example outdoors you might measure f45 on a bright sunny day. Indoors you will probably measure f2.8-f5.6 with the ambient light leaking in and maybe a few indoor lights turned on. That's a difference of at least 8-10 stops. If you knock down the light coming in from outside then you knock down your ambient as well so need more lighting to raise up your interior ambient again. Balancing your indoor and outdoor lighting can requires a fair amount of equipment, power, and time to get it setup.

However, the person who started this thread was asking about blocking out the light. I'm assuming he/she means blocking it out completely. This is what I use regularly to block light or even hang up and act as a huge black flag for negative fill, etc..

http://www.rosebrand.com/subcategor...D4Ysk6XI7vJ488nfOm0fnIyR8oyZHeiPV7RTJ4bDR2Q==
 
Yes im looking for ways to completely BLOCK out sunlight.
The cheapest soloution is Black sugar paper.

im concerned whether or not this will completely block out light. Or will it slight allow some light through.

Duvetyne is an expenisve approach. Otherwise i would have used that. Wood panels seem like an exhausting approach.

I am grateful for your suggestions and im still open to any help.

Ned.
 
Duvetyne isn't THAT expensive. It's sold by the yard or pre-packaged, or you can take a roll from a rental house and they'll charge you for however much you use. You can reuse it many times, something you probably can't do with paper. I though $60 or so was a lot for the pre-packaged piece that I got a while back (not sure how many square yards since I've cut it up but it's more than enough to cover that window) but two years later and I can't count the number of times I've used it.

But you definitely will need commando cloth if you're going to be seeing the window in your frame and you have very low interior light levels. Duvetyne decreases the light to a negligible level but it's not thick enough to block everything.
 
Moseph said:
Duvetyne isn't THAT expensive.
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A quick check lists a couple of source, which seem to be about $7 US per yard... 50 yards at about $377 US... that's 'expensive' in my cheap book...

I personally would think about a foam cutout sized for the window, from Home Depot... if total block was required.
 
well if you need 50 yards of it, yes it adds up but $5-$7 per yard is pretty average price. I think I paid $57 total for 54" wide and 10 yards of it. As I might have mentioned I had the entire perimeter of an old barn to black out and found it was cheaper to buy 4x8 sheets of plywood for $7 each and screw that up from the outside.

Anyway obviously everything is subject to what budget you have available. If you have no budget then shoot at night,..
 
j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
A quick check lists a couple of source, which seem to be about $7 US per yard... 50 yards at about $377 US... that's 'expensive' in my cheap book...

I personally would think about a foam cutout sized for the window, from Home Depot... if total block was required.
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It IS expensive, especially here in rainy London.
Foam seems like it would be difficult to stick up and cut, any ideas how you would do it?
 
Cmon guys, if $50 - $100 is really too expensive to buy some fabric to black out some windows then A.) how long is the scene? B.) Does it make sense to just shoot at night?

In this example its a small bedroom - how long can that scene really be?
 
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