Interior shoot lighting help

P

Philo

New member
Hi people, I am a new comer to this forum and have found the information in here to be very valuable to my

I am currently shooting a short and am having a dilema with exposure and white balancing the camera. I am only using a Panasonic NVGS-70 handycam, but it has some good manual functions and is 3ccd, so it is working okay for me.

I am working inside a house with 2 actors. I follow one actor over to a window where the sun is coming directly in, the camera pans to see her peering out. It overexposes straight away. I then pan to the 2nd actor who is sitting down and off to the side of the window, with a type of China lantern behind her. The white balance seems to jump everywhere and am getting a bright orange glow from that light, that is directly behind her. The camera is slow to differenciate between the 2.
What do I white balance to, the window or the china lantern, how can I keep this picture consistant.
I have a couple of Tota lights and 1 Omni light as well to use.
I am chasing a very naturally lit scene and don't want light coming from all directions of the house, any ideas what I could do?
Do I need to turn the china lantern off and use my own lights, any suggestions? :laugh:
 
You can't match daylight light levels with the incandescent units you're using. The sun you're dealing with is putting out about 5,000 footcandles, and your interior lights far less than that. You'd need real big HMIs (expensive, daylight-color temperature lights), perhaps, a 4K through a silk to match the window light. You're best bet is a manual iris-pull (which you may not be able to do on that camera), and putting CTB (daylight correction gel) over your tungsten and incandescent units. Also, try shooting at a time of day where the sun isn't so strong through that window. Or re-block so that both subjects are lit with the same source.
 
If you can, shot the scene at night (night for day) and use a similar color temperature (3200k ?) light on the outside to emulate the sun. This way, you will have similar color temperature light sources (China ball) and the difference in illumination levels between your exterior and interior won't be as large. This is assuming that all your lights are similar in color temperature, if not then use appropriate gels to compensate (CTB / CTO).

If you can, turn off both auto white balance and auto iris so that you can avoid the camera making changes in the middle of a scene.
 
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