Grabs from interview lighting test

Chris Stearns

Chris Stearns

Well-known member
Here are some grabs from a test shoot I did today. I wanted to see if I could get away with using worklights and bounce cards to light a one-person interview. My subjects will most likely not be sitting in high-back chairs, and the backgrounds will be further behind as well.

The 1st and 3rd shots are straight out of the camera. I CC'd 2 and 4 really quickly just for fun.

Shot with a DVX100B, scene file 5, factory settings.

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Brandon Rice said:
the shots look real flat... see about getting a little more backlight.
Click to expand...

Yeah, flat's what I was thinking too. Limited space plus the high back on the chair made it difficult to light effectively from behind.

I shot this test really to show myself that I seriously need to consider upgrading my lighting gear. My light kit is a pretty sad conglomeration of worklights, clamp lamps, photofloods, and bounce cards. It's cumbersome, takes a lot of time to get satisfactory results, and it looks rather unprofessional.

I've been immersing myself in the lighting forums gathering information over the last few weeks and have decided to invest in a couple fresnels, either a 650w and a 300w or a 300w and a 150w. Plus I'd like to add a couple used Totas to my kit and ditch the worklights altogether.
 
looks really bad, i dont know how you would change it

manual focus with a wider iris and turn up the colors, color temp +7

make the reds look like red and the blacks like black
 
You need a lot more lighting control to get away with this tight of environment. Other than the bit of shadow from the cap, there is almost no difference in the two sides of the subjects face. Move your key much further to one side and flag off most of the spill from the background. Then add a couple of slashes of light to the background, but keep it fairly low in relation to your subject (its distracting and uninteresting at the same time). A kicker would really help, but that chair has gotta go. Finally, never let you talent wear a white shirt!
 
Thank you, khmuse, great info there. And yes, white shirts are a bane to the camera. I just did a concert shoot where one of the frontmen wore white while the rest of the band was either wearing black or olive drab. I had to choose between over-exposing his shirt, or not being able to see the other band members.
 
barn doors do wonders for interview lighting setups. Try and make some yourself if you can (i know there are some DIY tutorials out there).

And I agree with what others said, a backlight would make it look way better.
 
Well it doesn't look that bad to me considering...I really like the last grab, although yeah, the background is a bit 'boring'
 
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