I'm shooting an interview and behind the person is a window over looking the city. I was trying to keep the city in the background exposed well and the subject lite ok. I dont have professional lights and just use diy home depot stuff or mostly chinese light lanterns just to bright faces (especially as I'm a one-man crew). How much lighting am I going to need in order to do this do you think? I know also shooting earlier or later in the day will be needed too.
Keeping Subject and Window looking outside both exposed
- Thread starter grantw
- Start date
I don't know any cheap alternatives to gels. I think you'd be better off to close the blinds and have very little of the window in frame. Also, the light through the window will be very blue if you use tungsten lights for key and fill and are balanced to them, worse if they are worklights, whose color temperature is less than the standard 3200K of movie tungsten lamps. Gelling them towards daylight will lessen or eliminate that effect. If that doesn't make sense to you just ask and we'll walk you through it.
stuckfootage
Well-known member
One inexpensive solution might be to rig up a big cheap reflector to get that daylight bounced to the subject's face.
I guess I should say that you can use fiberglass window screening as a cheaper alternative to ND. You have to be careful though because if it is in focus and you're shooting on HD especially you could easily get the crawlies. Also, it's difficult but not impossible to stack it because you get moire patterns. I don't know how many stops it's good for and its density varies from maker to maker.
Experiment and be sure that what you want to do actually works in your hands.
Experiment and be sure that what you want to do actually works in your hands.
Chris S. Alexander
Well-known member
I agree. If you have enough light coming in from the window, a nice reflector might do you well. The camera's dynamic range also might present a problem. What are you shooting on?
Chris S. Alexander
Well-known member
I agree. However he said he's using DIY stuff. I doubt he'll have access to daylight temp lights.
If you shoot at night you might be able to keep your city background, or if you shoot in the late afternoon/evening with less light intensity outside.
If you shoot at night you might be able to keep your city background, or if you shoot in the late afternoon/evening with less light intensity outside.
Barry_Green
Moderator
Window screen material, or car window tint stuff. The only way to pull off what you're trying to do is to cut the light coming in that window. Even then, you're still going to have a problem because the light outside is going to be blue, and you said your lights were home-depot type stuff, which would presumably be tungsten/orange.
The "right" way to do this would be with some combined ND/CTO gel that would cut the window light down, and also turn it tungsten-colored.
The "right" way to do this would be with some combined ND/CTO gel that would cut the window light down, and also turn it tungsten-colored.
Right. Lee and Rosco make combo gels if you want to go that way:
http://www.rosco.com/us/filters/cinegel.cfm
And yes, worklights are lower still in color temperature. Somewhere between 2700K and 3200K and noticeably yellow compared to tungsten movie lights. I'd white balance on the worklights, gel the window for density and color and let window go slightly blue. I'd also think hard about whether to have the window prominently in frame at all.
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I like a big china ball with the highest wattage daylight balanced CFL lamp you can find plus a bounce card as a cheap fill solution for that kind of situation. Although they are hard to find, there are 105 watt CFL's out there that put out nearly as much light as a 500watt tungsten lamp. Shooting early or late when the outside light is lower helps, but you could have a much shorter available time to shoot the scene as the light changes faster.