Lighting Vs White T-shirts

mjdorris

mjdorris

Well-known member
Hi All,

I'm working on a PSA campaign that has various people in white t-shirts that have a small slogan across the center coming on the screen and talking about my client. I'm having mixed success with my lighting set ups--obviously the t-shirt blows out way before the face of the subject is properly exposed.

Can anyone help out with some suggestions on how to light for this? Is it best just to have tons of light on the subject and deal with some clipping on the t-shirt? I was really struggling yesterday while filming a darker skinned pair of clients who had a spot meter reading of about 40% on their faces when the shirts began clipping out at 100%.

Any advice would be helpful as I have about 6 more of these shoots to do and a few of the ones I've done could look a lot better.
 
well since you can't always avoid white, in most cases you light for the face and scrim down the shirts. Haven't done a ton of white shirts in a group though. Scrimming usually works best for interviews though. If it's one person at a time, you can easilly scrim from the neck down on each person.

cheno
 
Try using an open end net to block the light on the shirts. Half scrims on the lights would help.Or try to Knock down the power of your key slightly and bring in a 300 or 650- and use tight barndoors to only light faces.

Yo Chenopup- I was typing the same time as you, sorry to duplicate info. ........
 
it's been a really trying experience so far--i get about 15 minutes for set up and we shoot for 5 minutes. It's all community leaders donating their time to help with the PSAs, so I don't really get the time for a proper set up.

Sorry for nooby questions, but by scrimming down the shirts do you just mean trying to reduce the light that hits the shirt? It's a little run and gun sadly so I don't have much opportunity to shape the light, but I appreciate these tips. I'll try a half scrim!
 
Can you have the shirts re-printed on a light grey T-shirt?

I've done that before. When lit it reads as white, but still lets the flesh tones look normal.
 
go in before your 15 minutes of rushed lighting and use a stand in to light the shot properly.

Scrimming down means using scrims to kill light in selected areas without changing color. A scrim can be a circular metal mesh that you place behind the barn doors and in front of the lens, or it can be a net, which is like a solid, but... well... not solid. Those can be rigged on CStands or whatever equipment you have available to you.

Barn doors also help alot.

If you don't have scrims or nets, you can try ND gel clipped on very carefully. If you don't have ND gel, then you can get REALLY crazy and layer 1/2 CTB and 1/2CTO on top of each other, which in theory equals a single ND .6 gel (right... two stops?)


If none of this works (and it will work), you could always shoot on film :-P
 
Thanks for info! I'm going to try blackwrapping and Barndoors for the next shoot, seems like the quickest solution but it might be hard to execute. It's really true what everyone says about grip and supplemental gear being as important as the lights you have!
 
I'd try to blast the faces using an ellipsoidal for key and maybe even fill. You can use the shutters to control light more efficently than barn doors, and blurring those hard edges will help, too. If it's too harsh, you can use modest diffusion and you will still have a lot of control.

If you're up close, using an obie-style light might help, because the inverse squares will be working in your favor.

The half scrims are really nice for lighting two subjects with one source, or a moving subject, but I think you want a pretty hard falloff. Better than bare fresnels, but I don't think you'll get great results.

Also (depending on the look you want and your post options) if you choose to blow out the highlights you might try a glow effect in post. If you're shooting on a grey or dark background, it could give the clipping a softer, organic look.
I ran the process on one of my digital still photos that had way too much latitude as an example.
glow.jpg
 
Can you borrow all the shirts and wash them together with a new pair of black jeans?

I know it's probably no help, but the 3 strip technicolor process also had difficulty with whites getting contrasty. The process of dipping the white fabrics in tea was called "teching it down".

That's where digital is still most painful to look at. The #&@^$ whites...
 
light as best as you can, try to avoid clipping the whites passed 105% or 110 at max, and then use your curves to bring them down and soften them in post. This will solve your NO setup time issue and will give you better results. I.e. without having time to scrim, flag, net, etc..

you would be suprrised how much information there is in over exposed whit when you play with the curves a bit.
 
thanks again for all the information! i'll let you know how the next shoot goes.

PaPa--what suite are you using in post? what effect do you use for playing with the gamma curve?
 
I use Nattress' curves in FCP. This helps, but cannot recreate info that is lost. Also, do a search for 'Captain's Blowout fixer'. It works, but takes a lot of time to accomplish. Probably better just to shoot it the best you can, basic edit and pray for the check to arrive...
 
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