Lighting Situation

[Alex Konveski]

What do you do in instances when a subject is moving closer to a light source? A example I have is if someone walks into a room and at one point in the shot moves right up to the window. Everything will be fine but as the actor moves to the window he or she will start to get brighter in terms of exposure. Do you usually control this? Or most of the time does it work? I know if its sunlight of course it will be hot but that feels natural to me. Its more of if the sun isn't coming through the window can film handle the exposure as the subject moves closer?

 

[Kim Welch]

Can you afford to test

Can you afford to test

Is it possible to do a test?

 

[David Mullen ASC]

If the light is coming from the side, sort of 3/4 frontal, then you can use a series of net flags to bring down the light as the actor gets closer to the camera and source.

Otherwise, you may have to do an f-stop pull as the actor is getting closer to the light. To some degree, you don't have to completely compensate, they would logically be a bit darker when they are farther from the window and a bit brighter when they are next to the window, so even if there is a 3-stop change, for example, you may only need to do a 1-stop pull on the iris to compensate and just let them be a bit underexposed at the beginning and a bit overexposed at the end.

It also helps of the light coming through the window was farther away so there was less fall-off over distance.