compensating for varying outdoor light while shooting indoor

KarlSutton

KarlSutton

Well-known member
I'm currently going through a color correction where I'm having to adjust levels constantly to compensate for varying degrees of light coming through windows.

When I shot it I blocked as many of the windows as I could, but there were still many uncovered and it was a day where it was cloudy then sunny then cloudy etc.

While I was shooting I kept adjusting gain & iris on the cameras to keep the shots as constant as I could. Now that I'm editing this it's a bit of a mess.

What could I have done during shooting to avoid this? Blast the subject with my key light? I've got another scenario like this coming up next week & want to be better prepared. Thanks.
 
Since your editing yourself, maybe post some screenshots of the scene?
You basically have three choices:
If the shoot allows it, stop when the light changes, start again, when it changes back.
If budget allows it, and you really need the natural/daylight look, blast the windows from outside with HMIs through silks.
If (art) direction allows it, leave out the windows in your framing, block them out and light it from scratch.
 
I agree with what's been said. I have had a lot of luck by ND'ing the windows and using daylight lights for interiors, if it's a interior day scene. I have had the trouble you describe when I mix light. Even when I CTB tungsten it doesn't work as well as say daylight kinos or hmis. Try not to mix light color temperature and you'll do better as the daylight changes.
 
Thank you for the advice - I did mix temps naively, learning a lesson the hard way there. I do have access to a set of 5600K fluorescent lights that I could use, 2 big soft boxes & 1 smaller one. I've never used them though. I always rely on my Rifa 55 w/egg crate. Just like the look. If I gel that for daylight would that be better than using the fluorescents? I believe the art direction will be to utilize the natural light, but with it being spring in Tennessee that is hard to predict.
 
You will loose quite a bit of light if you gel the Rifa. It may not be powerful enough. You could try investing in the Rifa EX system and use the FLO-3 adapter with the large Lowel fluorescents but they're VERY fragile. I believe it would be brighter than gelling.

But if you have the fluorescents already, you should use them! They can give a very nice look. Perhaps you could do a practice setup and see if you are satisfied with the way it looks. If not, figure out what the problem is.... you could even make a temporary eggcrate for the fluorescents.

The fact is if your ambient light is coming from the windows, and they are changing in levels of brightness, there's not much you can do. If you can block the windows off and create your own ambient, you're in control.
 
I'm no pro and I'm yet to actually deal with this kind of situation but I soon will. I'm talking about shooting daytime interiors with light coming in through windows when you have only Tungsten lights to work with. Done a great deal of research on gelling the windows with CTO vs gelling the lights with CTB and I'm leaning strongly towards the former. Is there any reason one should go for the latter over the former?
 
If you're only at a location for a short period of time, it may not be worth your while to gel the windows since it takes much longer and requires much more precision than putting some CTB on your lights. Agree with your stance, if I were in that situation my preference would be to gel the windows. Not only do you not lose a couple stops of light from your units but you get the added bonus your (potentially extremely bright) daylight being almost a stop darker.

But nobody really does either of those anymore. Most daytime interiors are lit entirely with Kinos and HMI's.
 
Moseph said:
If you're only at a location for a short period of time, it may not be worth your while to gel the windows since it takes much longer and requires much more precision than putting some CTB on your lights. Agree with your stance, if I were in that situation my preference would be to gel the windows. Not only do you not lose a couple stops of light from your units but you get the added bonus your (potentially extremely bright) daylight being almost a stop darker.

But nobody really does either of those anymore. Most daytime interiors are lit entirely with Kinos and HMI's.
Click to expand...

With Kinos you will still have to deal with gelling of windows right? Only this time ND?
 
Kino Flos come in 3 color temperatures - 2900°, 3200°, and 5500°. The latter is essentially the same as daylight at most times of day, so no gels on the windows are necessary for fixing the color. You may throw some ND on the windows just to keep them from blowing out, or even to make everything outside perfectly exposed & visible. (I generally don't like that look though, I find that having windows a stop or two over works nicely if you have a camera that can handle the highlights well. It really depends on what the scene and script call for though.)
 
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