tips for changing light conditions.

mastermind

mastermind

Well-known member
any tips and tricks for shooting outdoors with changing light conditions? Specifically 2 situations actually:

1: shooting on a sunny day from 6am-6pm with light going from soft to hard gradually

2: shooting on a cloudy day with light changing constantly

Not the basics such as bouncing, closing down, and using nets but more like little tricks you may have learned from experience or heard from someone else.
I guess my previous post about negative fill comes into play here.

thanks
 
Re: tips for changing light conditions.

I'd say, when you're dealing with sun that is intermittent, try to always shoot in the shade, and perhaps add your own key light instead of relying on the sun which isn't always around. This way you can control your K:F ratio a little better. Id want to take more light readings in these situations.
 
Re: tips for changing light conditions.

Shooting outdoors presents numerous problems, including changing sky cloud formations, the potential for overcast vs. sunny, and the constantly-moving sun and what that does to your shadows.

You need to determine what look you want: shadows or no shadows. If you have an overcast day, and you want shadows, you're going to have to bring your own lights into play -- a bounce card will do absolutely nothing on an overcast day.

If you think you might have overcast and you might have full sun, you have to pick which look you want to go for (soft or shadow). You can turn a harsh sun into a softlight by using a large silk or butterfly, but you may still see hard shadows on objects in the background.

There aren't really any "tricks", it all comes down to using the sun as your key light, and then using bounce cards, mirror boards, silks or butterflies to shape that light to do what you want. And if you need daylight-balanced hard light sources, that's where HMI's come in.
 
Re: tips for changing light conditions.

I like to use 1/2 China silk on ext. work with changing conditions.

It is not as soft as full silk, so it is less extreme.

I generally like to have at least a 12x (usually 20x) frame of it, that chases the sun's position.

Also, a smaller frame of it with 2 1.2k HMI pars can give you a nice soft sidelight.

I am a big fan of the 1.2k HMI pars because they are a cheap rental, low on power, and punchy as hell.

Here are some pictures that show how you can "chase" the sun throughout the day:
I started the day with this setup (7am):
http://www.silver-gold.com/new/pgl/master009.JPG
Nothing but sun giving the actor's a hard rim.

Our next setup was this:
http://www.silver-gold.com/new/pgl/ian001.JPG

Coming into the closeup, I softened up the sunlight, and added a more controlled edge with a 1.2k HMI VNS PAR

As the day progressed, the silk followed the sun:
http://www.silver-gold.com/new/pgl/misc003.JPG
http://www.silver-gold.com/new/pgl/misc011.JPG
Some harder hair light was provided by 2 HMI PARs, One bouncing off some foam core for fill.

Once we got all our shots off, the director went back to his wish list. On it was a hand held take of the men's closeups . . . a problem because the sun had all but set. So we reproduced the characteristics of that setup with more HMI action:
http://www.silver-gold.com/new/pgl/misc017.JPG

One thing I like to do is have an assistant taking pictures with a digital camera taking a wider shot of what the movie camera is recording, that way I can, like in this case, reference the conditions if need be.


Kevin Zanit
 
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