Tungsten Kit but massive outside window

L

lev

New member
Hi guys,

I am involved in a small documentary shoot which involves an interview with somone in their office. I had a look at the location and found the room they want to use for the interview is quite long and narrow and has an external window running along the length of it letting in daylight. There are NO drapes/blinds!

We were thinking of rocking up with a tungsten kit, doing a simple soft-box setup, turn off the office fluros and draw the drapes. All we have then is tungsten. Easy.

Now we have this massive daylight source and a bunch of tungsten lighting. I thought we might ditch the lights and somehow use the daylight with reflectors to work some magic, but if it's a crappy overcast day we don't think we'll get enough light to bounce around much. I have not dealt with this before and would appreciate some input from you guys on how to tackle this correctly. The worst part is, it would be my luck it's a really bright sunny day when I'm catering for an overcast one or vice versa.

Thank you in advance

Lev.
 
Hey Lev-
What you need is some CTB gel. You can get it from places like Bhphoto.com, filmtools.com, etc. My lowel lights even came with a few little sheets of it. Basically what it does it converts the 3200 K color temperature of Tungsten lighting to 5600 K which is daylight. That way you can effectivley use the window as a light source and throw in the gelled tungstens whereever you need them without worrying about mixed temps. Hope that helps.
Peace,

-Harry
 
I'll be interested to hear Walter Graff's approach to this. I recently posted some screen grabs from an interview with a small window (draped with curtains and covered again with duvatene flags on C-stands) and Walter noticed and commented about the "blue spill" on the guys sportcoat.. I'm not sure what I could have done differently either. Look forward to Walter's response here.
 
The one thing you have to avoid at all costs is direct sunlight streaming in the window and hitting your subject. The result will be harsh and contrasty. So you need to figure out the time of day when there's no possibility of direct sunlight. It could be morning or afternoon, but they'll be sometime when even if the sky is clear, the light will be indirect. If you're really backed into a corner and have to shoot in direct light, you'll need a large diffuser between the window and the subject. Overcast? A large bank of windows on an overcast day will act like a big softbox.

In either of these cases, a large reflector will do a good job of providing fill as long as you can position it near the subject. If you have matte silver or sunlight (silver/gold) refectors, you should be able to get some good bounce, although white would probably work as long as it's not too dim. The alternative is to use a tungsten light for fill, gelled with full or 3/4 CTB to match the daylight.

If the windows are actually in the shot, you'll need to scrim or ND gel them if you want to see detail outside. Ideally, you'd use the bank of windows as a big soft key (as long as the light is indirect), use a reflector or CTB-gelled fixture as fill, and keep the window out of the shot.
 
dudeguy37 said:
Hey Lev-
What you need is some CTB gel. You can get it from places like Bhphoto.com, filmtools.com, etc. My lowel lights even came with a few little sheets of it. Basically what it does it converts the 3200 K color temperature of Tungsten lighting to 5600 K which is daylight. That way you can effectivley use the window as a light source and throw in the gelled tungstens whereever you need them without worrying about mixed temps. Hope that helps.
Peace,

-Harry
Click to expand...

Yes, adding CTB (color temperature-blue) to the tungsten lights will match daylight. However, CTBs eat up light, i.e., lower the intensity of the light output. One full CTB gell lowers light output by 64% (transmission of 36%). If you have the quantity of light to handle the lowered output, then go with CTB on the lights. Make sure that you white balance to daylight.

You could go the other way and use full CTO (color temperature orange) or "85" gell on the windows to balance to the tungstens. This takes a considerable amount of preparation prior to shooting and may not suit your "small documentary"

An other way is to get some flurorescence lights that have a color temp of daylight and use them. There are a lot of threads on this forum that discusses the use of fluro lights. I have been using fluros more and more and love them. They make daylight color temperature compact fluros that screw into standard sockets. You could get some of the clamp type work lights from Home Depot, put in daylight balanced compact fluros and have yourself a realativly inexpensive daylight kit. I would use foamcore to bounce the light onto the subject though.

I too look forward to a response from Walter Graff....
 
Lev,

There are several ways around your challenge, here are some alternatives for your consideration. Good luck!

DOING ALMOST NOTHING

If you're shooting during the day, and don't have a lot of resources for cutting and or blacking out the windows completely, I'd use them as your key source and 1/2 - full CTB your tungsten kit for side fill and rim / backlight. It's likely the lowest-cost way of using the location as it is.

CUSTOM LOW-COST LIGHT CONTROL

You don't give the window dimensions in your post - what do you mean by "narrow"? If it is a full wall "transom" (e.g., 16'W x 16"H) near the top of the wall only, I'd likely build an opera flat that would cover the outside dimension and then staple goods appropriate to your needs (e.g., duvatyne, CTO, ND) to the pine frame. Building this exact device would cost less than $20 in material and could be hinged to deploy from the back of a pick-up or smaller. A couple of baby plates would be built into the back of the frame for stand-supported mounting.

ONE THE WAY THE PROS WOULD DO IT

Shooting toward the windows without bringing your interior within three to five stops and you'll almost certainly blow them out. If you're on the ground floor and have the spend to do so, you might look into ND'ing the glass.

GAM and others make temporary adhesive products like WindowGrip that allow up to ND9 (.9 = 3 stops) directly to the location's glass. These are practical if you plan to shoot the window and don't want to see a wrinkled overhead-mounted diffuser outside.

ANOTHER FASTER PRO METHOD

Another conventional option is to temporarily block the windows from outside with conventional diffusers like griffolyn / gridcloth / polysilks (diffuse), duvatyne (flagging) on large rigging like a 20 x 20' overhead on mambo-combos. The best aspect of this solution is that as the day goes on, you can change the goods as your light changes. A good pair of grips can build-out and apply material to a 16 or 20' frame in minutes. From a cost standpoint, the sewed-goods can be rented almost anywhere, while you cannot typically rent gel as it is billed as expendable supplies.

e
 
I'm kinda new around here but I've done a bit of lighting. Why not simply find a better location? Are you locked into using this unsuitable space? Figuring out how to light a situation like this is great academically speaking but if you're doing a "small documentary" do you really want or need to light a room like you're shooting a feature film with a lot of time and resources? Try not to get caught up in the "look what I can do" mode of thinking, or as someone else once said, "don't worry so much about how to do it, worry about whether you SHOULD do it."

Failing that, I'd figure out a way to use the predominant light source, ie, the windows, as your main light and then used gelled tungsten light for fill.

John E.
 
I have blacked out windows before from the inside just using standard black garbage bags. The will statically stick to the window glass without tape making them pretty easy to put on and take off.
 
I would think that unless you have the resources to effectively control the light from that window (ie scrim, gel, curtains, etc..), you would do well to choose another location.

in addition to matching color temp and avoiding harsh and contrasty light, a big problem with a huge unfiltered window is that the lighting will change as the sun moves across the sky and the interview won't cut together well.
 
Well, I'm amazed by the amount of responses. Thank you!

The window is a full height window about 9 feet tall and goes the whole length of the room. It's on the 3rd story and the lifts are tiny, so we cannot bring much stuff up or scrim from the outside.

The added thing I perhaps should have mentioned is timing. We don't have a lot of time to set up this shot. The person being interviewed has a key part in this and is at this location for the time we have and that's it. Hence we cannot change locations or sound too "needy" for lack of a better word.

I have never had the need to colour-correct lighting as usually we have no outside influences like daylight or office fluros, so we just get lighting of the right temperature and that's that.

It turns out there won't be any DIRECT sunlight coming into the office as the time will be noonish on and the sun will be overhead and chances are it will be overcast anyway.

I like the idea of colour-correcting the tungstens or even looking into some daylight fluro tubes we can hook onto some stands. As a matter of interest, what do the ENG crews do when they have to do run-and-gun interviews in office locations with outside daylight, fluros and not a whole lot of lighting equipment on hand? I assume they just use the daylight and reflectors and do the best they can. I can't see them covering windows, setting up massive scrims, colour correcting a whole bunch of lights etc.....then again...you learn something new everyday....so maybe they do, hehe.

Many thanks again for your time.

Lev
 
Yes the run and gun would be using Full CTB gel. Using the window light as key, as Barry said would be a nice solution. In this case I'd use a white foamcore as fill and some reflector with full blue for the background. If not possible, use your softbox and other lights corrected with blue as usual. If the box is over than 700W, it's quite possible it will be able to compete with the natural daylight as is (any problems, just close the frame).
 
Eng crews, most with rather powerful camera mounted lights color correct these lights to match shooting conditions.
 
Just some thoughts,

If you shoot telephoto, out towards the window, keep the med/cu shot from chest up, and place the talent a few feet from the window, you don't have to ND the entire window. Just the smaller section that shows up in frame. The ND will cut the outside source enough to where you can bring up your fill, and get a decent exposure of what ever's outside.

Also, dependent on watts of your tungsten, you don't have to use full blue. 1/4 to 1/2 should be fine. Diffuse it, bring it just off frame, and near the opposite angle of the sunlight. Single source is always better, but you might be able to double up on light, as long as it's diffused.

Those are some tricks I use when shooting out windows.

-CJ
 
I'm writing an article for my newsletter on just this so I will not give it all away here but here is an example of how I handle it. In the shot here, the left side of this room is wall to wall window and its four pm so the sun is outside the window. Solution, close the blinds, let the sun light him and use no lights of my own.

http://www.bluesky-web.com/cannelli.jpg
 
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