soft lighting for chromakey studio

[sadude]

Im thinking of using 2 of these 2ooowatt skylight to light up my chromakey studio.

My studio will be 6m X 6m with a white background and infinite edging.

Will this light be sufficient for the chromakey studio or should i be thinking of some other type of lighting methods.

Has anyone had success with soft lighting for chroamakey?

 

[David Jimerson]

That's an omnidirectional light, which won't be ideal, especially in a space that small. It's kind of small, too, meaning it will create small hot spots on the background.

You want longer lights which cast only toward the chroma screen.

 

[RyanT]

How tall is your green screen and will it be one or two of the walls?

1 meter = 3 feet right?

This could work pretty well, depending on if this can be squeezed between the talent and the screen. If so it'd give you a nice soft light on the screen and a soft backlight/hairlight to help separate the talent. People do use spacelights all the time for studio applications, especially those 2k units for smaller spaces.

Also as far as softlight for chromakey, really that's all anyone uses to light the background, as you want it to be as even as possible. So the softer the better.

For your talent though, they obviously need to be lit separately and the lighting is dictated by what will be composited behind them.

The only reason I might suggest a different unit is if you'd ever want to go all daylight in the studio. With cameras like the red and their sensors being daylight balanced, it's often times much better to light everything at 5600 degrees Kelvin. The spacelights are very difficult to gel though and it isn't an easy swap out. What you could do instead is get yourself two image 40's or image 80's with tungsten and daylight tubes. If you do think you'll do a lot of red work and you already have some hmi's or big tungsten units to gel blue, it might be a good route to go.

 

[sadude]

Thank you everyone for you help.

How tall is your green screen and will it be one or two of the walls?

1 meter = 3 feet right?.

That's about right. The back wall which is the one i will be using for chromakeying is just under 20ft across. The height will be about 10ft.

Also as far as softlight for chromakey, really that's all anyone uses to light the background, as you want it to be as even as possible. So the softer the better.

thats good to know. Ive seen some studios where they use lots of red heads to light the background, but its too much work to get them right. It causes lots of spots on the chromakey and makes the room very hot.

The only reason I might suggest a different unit is if you'd ever want to go all daylight in the studio. With cameras like the red and their sensors being daylight balanced, it's often times much better to light everything at 5600 degrees Kelvin. The spacelights are very difficult to gel though and it isn't an easy swap out. What you could do instead is get yourself two image 40's or image 80's with tungsten and daylight tubes. If you do think you'll do a lot of red work and you already have some hmi's or big tungsten units to gel blue, it might be a good route to go.

Thank you for mentioning the colour temperature. I was worried about that. The sales guy said they don't have a blue gel for that unit and the colour was simillar to that of a red head. 3400k.

Ive seen a studio where they have hooked up those image 85's and got a really nice even light on the chromakey. I always thought they were kino flow lights hung up there. Like the ones i would use out on a shoot. That would cost me a lot of cash. I can only guess that those image 85's were cheaper than portable kinoflow kits or even generic ones?

By the way. i was thinking of using white as the key colour so that i can leave it in som videos instead of replacing it with a background. But do you think it might be better to go blue and replace the blue with white in the videos if they require white? Which is the better chromakey colour to use?

 

[sadude]

The same guys that sell the skylights also sell these. They are called u-flow. Is this simillar to a image 85?

 

[RyanT]

I don't have any experience with that unit, but as far as looks goes, it looks like the same sorta deal. Color temp and CRI wise though...probably a different story.

Redheads are not the right unit for this job, because as you said, they create lots of hot spots and it's difficult to light the screen evenly with such hard light.

One thing you can do though is add +green gel to whatever lights are lighting the background, it'll help get you a cleaner key. Kino flo also has a line of super green tubes or super blue tubes which do pretty much the same thing. If they're just going to hang in a grid to light the screen, no reason not to get em.

The image 85s aren't cheaper than the more portable 4x4's and other kino units you've probably used. They're probably more expensive if anything, because they use 8 tubes instead of 4...They're just ideal for hanging in a grid because you only have to hang the light and the controls are all nearby. You don't have to worry about hanging the ballast somewhere different and having all this feeder cable running everywhere. Just makes it a bit more simple.

Don't use white though. If any of your actors wears white clothing, or if they have any sort of eyelight, or anything gets anywhere near peaking, then your key will just turn into a mess. Use green.

All the studios I've been in will repaint for white or green. You can just key out the green and replace it with white, it just makes post a little more tricky.