overcast day - negative fill? whose done this?

[rayortiz313]

Hey guys,


I know on a sunny day you can get some drama with backlight or whatevers.... but I dread setting up a shoot outdoors and discovering that its mostly cloudy.

WHat are the general techniques for dealing with flat lighting during day exteriors? Negative fill with a piece of black foamcore- does that work? I def dont have a portable light strong enough to help (Im working no budget robert rodriguez one or two man crew style) I'm gonna do some tests but is there anything I should know?

 

[Noel Evans]

Negative fill works to add contrast on the subject. The bigger the better in this situation otherwise its only of any use on your tighter shots. My only issue with neg fill only is that the subject whilst modelled can end up at the same levels as the background / rest of the scene as it's often forgotten.

Before you go into that though, what other tools do you have at your disposal for this?

 

[Mitch Gross]

The difficulty with negative fill on an overcast day is that you need something fairly huge to make a difference. Unless you're in a tight closeup you'll need at least a 12x12. If you're in no-budget land, my suggestion is to use staging and location to provide the drama in your lighting. Locations are your friend. Just walking under a shady tree or next to a building can help considerably.

 

[JPNola]

The difficulty with negative fill on an overcast day is that you need something fairly huge to make a difference. Unless you're in a tight closeup you'll need at least a 12x12. If you're in no-budget land, my suggestion is to use staging and location to provide the drama in your lighting. Locations are your friend. Just walking under a shady tree or next to a building can help considerably.

What Mitch said ^^.

You are better off positioning the camera and subject so that the background is of lower luminance ( darker ) than the subject. A powerful, daylight color balance key light is helpful. But it isn't often that shooters have such at their disposal.

 

[rayortiz313]

The difficulty with negative fill on an overcast day is that you need something fairly huge to make a difference. Unless you're in a tight closeup you'll need at least a 12x12. If you're in no-budget land, my suggestion is to use staging and location to provide the drama in your lighting. Locations are your friend. Just walking under a shady tree or next to a building can help considerably.

Yeah, that's kind of what I'm learning... Shot under a highway overpass and got good soft side light on my last thing. Kind of amazing how well it worked.

I was just hoping to add to my bag o' tricks, but between looking up tutorials on it and the advice from you guys, it seems like the negative fill thing is not for me and my mode of working, since a helper holding some black foamcore isnt enough to do the trick. I have a personal theory that when using not-super-high-end cameras, low key lighting is not optional.

 

[CharlesPapert]

I honestly would rather have either overcast or partially overcast days when shooting day exteriors, as you can maintain consistency much easier over many hours and you aren't fighting the travel of the orb. Neg fill is great but as noted above, you need size and personnel to achieve it. But, you need plenty of the same to properly combat sunny days, unless you have really careful planning and a flexible schedule!

 

[Samuel H]

(I'm 100% ashamed to write here after the pros who already stopped by, but let's try...)

I shoot one-man-crew or just-one-helper 95% of the time. As others said: shooting like this, the trick is to get the location right. Find the spot where both the framing and the lighting are acceptable to begin with. You don't have a full crew waiting for you to decide so you can take your time.

But in any case: if you can have a helper, definitely bring a big 5-in-1 reflector (I think this cheap one is the one I use the most, but there are bigger and better ones if you prefer that). They fold down relatively small, and you get lots of options, including negative fill and diffusion. As others have said, it will only work on relatively tight shots. And you do need someone to hold it.