Indoor lighting techniques

F

Five Stones

Member
I'm wondering what is the best way to shoot indoor scenes in which windows come into play? I don't want the windows to look blown out totally but a little doesn't hurt. I heard you can get window film to change the color temp of the outdoor light to match the indoor. I've also heard about ND screens to put outside the windows as a way to decrease the light intensity so the indoor lighting can compete.

Does anyone have thoughts or ideas that could help me with this?
 
I think you've answered your own question.....

CTO gels will change daylight to 3200 K & ND gels will cut the light intensity
 
You'll still need the strongest ND filters you can find and plenty of indoor light, plus you have to shoot during evening time just to have a chance at not having a blown out window. You'll be surprised at how powerful the sun is.
 
If you need to, yes. The CTO is used to change daylight to 3200 as CharlieG said which means you can now use tungsten lighting indoors. Conversly you can use CTB on tungsten lighting fixtures to bring them up to 5600 degrees to match the daylight. Finally in the color realm if you have HMI lights you need no color correction gels.

The ND is used to bring the exposure value of the outdoors into range of the medium your using. If your shooting 35mm film you have about 9-10 stops of useable lattitude. I know several people will say film has 12 to 13 stops, to each thier own on how they determine that. My experience says yes there is 12 stops there but I really don't like much beyond the 9 stops.

Since this is the HVX forum lets concentrate on exposing your scene for the HVX. I've pushed the hvx and gotten as many as 7 stops of lattitude out of it, but again I really didn't like what I saw above six stops. So for saftey sake I'm going to say there is 5 stops of lattitude to work with. I find the camera and lens to be optimized at f5.6, so thats where I'd place the key light value on my subject.

So now you have a few choices to make, mainly how do you want the exterior outside to appear. The brightest point of your scene that isn't clipped can only go two to three stops over your key value of f5.6 which means I can take my highlights to an f11 maybe an f16 before I have lost all detail. But an issue with this is your exterior may compete for your veiwers attention over the subject, not good. So you may need to bring the exterior down to f5.6 or even lower so it's not brighter then your subject and taking away from your point of interest.

If you decided to maintan your key at f5.6 then your shadows will hold detail to about f2.8, so you have two stops below your key expousre. I normally try to bring the exteriors down to an avverage exposure level of 1 stop below my key, unless the daylight is important to the story, or what is happeneing in the exterior is important to the story. Then use depth of field to help concentrate the audiences attention on the subject of the story, instead of drifting to the great outdoors.
 
They sell CTO and ND combined. You can buy CTO with a designated ND strength... not to mention CTO already has a 2/3rds stop cut in light. The best are the large rolls which you can use a squeegee to apply to the window.

This isn't the huge roll but its an example of a combined CTO and ND3 gel
http://www.filmtools.com/31-lee-s207.html

Here is a large sheet of CTO and N.6 combined- might be just what you need~!!
http://www.filmtools.com/31-lee-r208.html

Other options include
1) Waiting to shoot during times of the day which are not as bright. Before sunrise, after sunset.
2) Using HMI's inside and lighting to a high F-stop
3) Using REALLY powerful Tungsten lights inside (if HMI not available), using CTB, and lighting to a really high f-stop. This is not easy because CTB drops about 2- 2 1/2 stops!!!


If you light the hell out of the interior, you can stop down the lens and cause the outside to be less 'blown out'.


EDIT: Gopher beat me to a good answer! :(
 
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