A newbie question!

[cadboll]

Hi all.

My knowledge is very limited as will become very apparent!

I have been experimenting with lighting over the last number of months but have been running into problems and am not sure how to resolve them. Hopefully you will be able to advise.

Stopping Key-light from shining on the background.
I have put the key light/fill light at the 45 degree angle from the subject that has been suggested in various books/sites, but find that unless my background is black, I am unable to stop it from spilling onto the background and creating havoc! I am using softboxes for both key and fill light. I find that when using the reflector for a fill light I don’t get the coverage on the face that I need. Can you advise?

Getting the ‘blurred’ background effect.
After researching books/internet, I have learnt that this has to do with depth of field. The idea is to have a shallow DOF. Despite my best efforts, I am unable to replicate this. Would the camera I am using have anything to do with this – it is a Sony TRV900E – it is a few years old! Someone told me it might be to do with the chip inside the camera, but I wasn’t sure whether it was true or not.

I have also experimented with f-stops, but by using a lower f-stop, i.e. f2.4, I'm finding that the exposure is greater, and no effect on blurring the background!

Could you also advise as to the distance of subject to background and camera to subject in an ideal situation. Is it best when starting out to work with a dark background?

With the key/fill light spilling onto the background (when I'm not using a black background), when I put a lamp on to 'fill' the space on one side the colour looks awful!

As you can see, I'm no expert on this - but would really love to be able to get the lighting right. Any advice/help will be very much appreciated!

Thank you.

 

[Olliwood]

Wether you can prevent your lights from spilling into the background naturally depends on how strong your light is (wattage) and how far the background is away - this is why e.g. it's always hard to light very tiny rooms, it's harder to seperate the actor from the background. And of course it'll be easier to prevent this spill if you were using hard sources like fresnels...
It's correct that your DoF depends on the size of the chip and your MiniDV chip is MUCH smaller than the size of a 35mm image. Still you can decrease your DoF by either opening up the lens and/or using longer lenses ( I'm not sure if that's the right word for what I mean - I'm not from the US). But I can tell u that you won't be able to achieve a DoF similar to regular (35mm) films. There's the option of using a so-called 35mm adapter (e.g. from P+S Technik ( Germany )). This adapter imitates the 35mm image by projecting the image on a groundglass-kindof-thing, your camera then records this projected image and you got your shallow DoF, besides the adapter adds a little extra grain what will make your images look a bit more like real film. But of course you'll always be able to tell the difference...

 

[Lazlo]

On the subject of the key light:

Don't get boxed into the idea that the key light has to be at exactly 45 degrees from the subject. The important thing to remember with the key light, is it's purpose, which is to highlight a given character/characters in a scene. This can be achieved in many many ways. As far as spill, control it with flags, and barndoors. And also, direction. That is, sometimes you get strange and awkward looking spill if the light is too horizontal, try shining the light from a high angle (more elevation). There are many many light sources that come from above. Ultimately, light looks awkward when the audience can't think through what source would produce the light on the subject. As long as you can justify the source, sometimes spill is good. On light intensity, it is generally harder to justify softer sources, since the majority of light we encounter is harsh/hard. This isn't to say avoid it, or that it doesn't exist in real life, which it obviously does. In the, it's all about what looks natural. Observe how light falls on subjects in real life.

On the subject of "blurred" background effect

If you're using (as I'm assuming you are) a consumer/prosumer camera, open the F-stop as wide as possible, and back up from your subject, and shoot zoomed in as far as you can (with the lens also open as much as possible). That's the best you can do without buying 35mm adapters for your camera, or just shooting film.

hope this helps some...