Outdoors lighting

[Spartacus]

First get the Nikon and then run some tests, all posters here might be right or wrong depending on your very scene.
If you don´t have the money for proper lighting gear, adjust the script, eg in an urban setting at night scout the most lit parts of the city.
When filming in the shade in daylight check for dark backgrounds, this along with a short DoF and the soft bounced light of the shadow area hitting your actors will in a lot of situations create enough dimension for a nice looking picture.
Basically: if you don´t have the lighting power to give the actors one stop of extra punch, choose a BG that´s one stop under the actor, you may call it a negative punch...

 

[janmi]

So no-one knows the answer to my lumen-question?

And of course I will experiment with differrent light, like I've previously said...

 

[Giallogreg]

If I bounce light from a white umbrella, how many lumens would you estimate I need to make a difference during late afternoon shade (conditions will of course vary)? 2000? 4000? 6000? 8000? The umbrella will be about 2 metres away from the person.

If you want bounce lighting outdoors you'll need a super bright daylight balenced source. At the very least you would need a 6k HMI for bounced exterior lighting in the shade. Youd want to use a large piece of foam core instead of the umbrella.

 

[janmi]

Ok, thanks for the advice.

 

[RyanT]

I lit an outdoor daytime shot with 4 600w tungsten PAR 64s 4 feet from the subject with no gels/diffusion and achieved a pretty cool two-sun effect. It took three of them just to get me to a 1:1 ratio. It never would have worked if I had to cut two stops for CTB.

You should be using whatever Sean has in his picture!

If you put four pars on one person you're going to have 4 different shadows, plus 1 if the sun is directly hitting them....Then if you don't correct for the tungsten it's going to look very very orange. Those two things alone I think would call a lot of attention to your lighting. Just doesn't sound like that would work very well, but hey, maybe it fit the story...not sure.

Outdoors though...big lights or bounce, this is always the case. If you have to ask as well, you should probably be hiring someone who knows their stuff. The 4k+ range you will definitely be paying some cash for not only the light, but the correct equipment to get your genny to power the light. It's just...uh...bit more effort than anyone is probably used to.