How to avoid light reflections?

V

vision_filmz

Carbonite Member
Im working on editing a project I shot where we used small led lights for catch light in the models faces. Problem is that the locations that were used you can see the reflection of the led in the walls, curtains, etc.....

Outside of me editing around that, for future tips how can I used these lights and minimize reflections while still lighting my subject?
 
Reflective surfaces reflect, that's what they do. You have to use extremely broad soft sources to avoid specular reflections. For example when I light a car for beauty I will suspend a 20X 20 as close overhead as I can get it. Above that I will use multiple 6K space lights. Go outside on a cloudy day and look at how nicely lit your car is. On a sunny day there will be specular reflections from every surface.
 
vision_filmz said:
Im working on editing a project I shot where we used small led lights for catch light in the models faces. Problem is that the locations that were used you can see the reflection of the led in the walls, curtains, etc.....

Outside of me editing around that, for future tips how can I used these lights and minimize reflections while still lighting my subject?
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In your specific example I would be positioning the source lamp where it cant be seen. ie angle, distance and placement, concealment.
Then I would also use a cutter, flag, barn doors or something like black foils so the source cant be seen reflected elsewhere.

FWIW : "Angle of light incidence" is a valuable rule that every D.P should know and use to advantage. (Its your friend one moment and your enemy the next..but it needs to be understood)
 
Ditto what David W. Jones and Shooter said. Also, to reverse engineer your question, sometimes you can use pesky reflective surfaces to your advantage when you don't have lots of light at your disposal. Instead of blasting a big light onto a reflective surface, simply let it reflect an off-camera source. You can place darker subjects in front of these surfaces and get very moody, noir-ish results.
 
Depending on the shot and distance between the camera and your actor, you will want to get your catch-light light source as close to your actor as possible while still being out of shot, and dim the catch-light down so that all it's really doing is adding a catch-light to the eyes.

Some of the newer compact LED lights are more directional than the older ones, which makes it easier to localize the reflections: CheesyCam : Z96 vs W12 LED Video Lights

Keep in mind that most of these small LED sources run very blue ( i.e. 6500 K ), so you may want to add 1/4 - 1/2 CTO to bring them closer to a 5000 - 5400 K balance, and you may want to add a small amount of diffusion if the catch-lights are not even. ( You can also mask the light if you don't want square catch-lights )

...One other thing I would like to mention, that comes from my original large format ( 4x5 and 8x10 view camera ) studio work, is to always put your own eyes where the camera lens is in order to judge exactly what your lighting is doing. Some things you might not notice on the video monitor, but you will definitely see them with your own eyes.
 
always put your own eyes where the camera lens is in order to judge exactly what your lighting is doing. Some things you might not notice on the video monitor, but you will definitely see them with your own eyes.
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+1

sounds simple - but the best tips often are. Sometimes hard to remember things that become automatic. Thanks for thinking to share.
 
Its an excellent tip and the way I put it to a client that says "will that show up on film?"... is...

"if you can see it ..the camera will see it"

Inevitably...we fix it in post ( because they dont know how to see it until we get to post).
 
Thank you everyone for the EXCELLENT posts, very informative. Also anyone else can post their tips and tricks as well as this is very helpful!
 
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