Hard Source

[octopoli]

Hello,

I have a question on hard sources. What light would create the best hard source of sunlight? I am shooting a student film and we want to pump in hot sunlight through these two windows of a house. Right now we have two 4k HMI fresnals and I was wondering if that is "punchy" enough to give the right look. Would it be better to go with a par light with a spot lens?

Also in terms of exposure I'd like the light to be blown out (noon sunlight) so I was originally thinking of letting it go 4 stops over. I saw some work in class that a fellow student shot and he explained he had let the light blow out and it looked very nice.

My concern is we tested out the new vision 3 250 and I noticed at 3 stops it started going white and at 4 it really went to crap. On kodaks test their was detail 6 stops over, however it was a mini dv transfer so I don't think I was getting the full latitude of the stock.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Well, sharp and punchy are two different things. A 4K HMI fresnel is sharper than a PAR, but not as punchy. In terms of brightness, even an 18K HMI isn't as bright as the real sun, but as long as you are not directly competing with sunlight in the room, the 4K HMI fresnel should work fine. And at full spot, it would be spotty, just less sharp.

Truth is that to get that crisp projected light look of sunlight, you almost need to be looking at a 4K Xenon instead. The shadow patterns aren't quite as perfect as with a fresnel, but the beam has that sharp-edged look like sunlight, and the light falls in parallel rays rather than spreading rays.

How much overexposure is just a matter of how bright you want it to go. Three-stops over is a good amount for "really, really hot but with detail" on color negative film, two-stops over is safer with more detail. Four to five-stops over is pushing things towards burned-out whiteness. But how much you want it to burn out depends on if it's a back or edgelight, or a frontal light, and if frontal, just a small slash below the face, etc. Because that will determine how much detail you want to hold - a hot backlight, you don't even meter the backlight usually, you just do it by eye, let it burn-out of that's what you want.