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Your thoughts Mr. Mullen

houseofwolves

New member
Hi, I posted in the cinematography and lighting section, but haven't got one hit. Could you possibly take a look at the post made by me on lighting a black room. This will be on film, possibly 500ASA, but if you can recommend something else, I'm open. Thanks.

I would repost it here, but I think i'll get flammed for spamming considering I've posted it twice.
 
I didn't answer your question before because I found it confusing. What's a "fan light"? A light passing through the spinning blades of a fan?

Why does it have to be low-light? Just lighting a face in a black room, you can use a ton of light or very little light and get the same image brightness depending on how you expose the film, so the only reason to use low light levels is when balancing with something naturally low in level that you can't change, like a candle or flashlight in the scene.

Otherwise, what difference does it make if you point a 5K at someone and shoot at f/8 or a 1K at someone and shoot at f/2.8 other than depth of field? Just because a light is big and powerful doesn't mean that the subject will render as bright, otherwise, you could never shoot under real sunlight and make it look like moonlight using day-for-night techniques.

Or when you saw "low light" you actually mean that you want the face to be dimmer than normal brightness?

I only bring this up because when I was a beginner shooting Super-8, I shot a face on b&w with a 1K pointed hard at them, through moving leaves for a shadow pattern, and underexposed to look like moonlight -- and someone saw how dark the shot was and said "boy, you must have used really low light levels!" -- when the opposite was true. Beginners have to get rid of the notion that a dark scene is lit with low levels and a bright scene is lit with high levels of light. What matters is exposure, how you expose to make something look in terms of brightness, and also the key-to-fill ratio, how much fill light you use to control contrast.

So in terms of using these different lights, it just depends on the look you want. A direct kino has a certain softness to it, a tungsten through a frame of diffusion has another effect, etc. What is the effect you want? In other words, how soft is the key light on the subject, what direction is it coming from, how bright does it look, how much detail in the shadows do you want, and what color are the lights, etc.? And to answer some of that, you have decide what look you want but also what that light is supposed to be simulating, if you are going for a naturalistic look versus a theatrical look.

As for the angelic look, try heavily backlighting the subject from above with your brightest light (almost more of a top light but slightly behind), open up the iris on the lens all the way and expose for the shadows, and use some diffusion of the lens like a ProMist.
 
Hi. I apologize for my confusing questions. But you hit right on the dot. I am talking about a regular room light that has a fan coming from the ceiling. I wanted to imitate that light on my subject. So a light coming from above, but I know the lamp burns different from the lights I would use.

Thanks for all the great info. You are right, I always expose for the brightest light on the subject, when I should probably underexpose or overexpose using a reading from another area.

So let's say for instance, I had a very strong back light in the far distance (this is hypothetical situation and nothing to do with my weekend shoot) that was putting out a F16 on the light meter, and the subjects face was putting out f8. To get a certain effect I would set the iris to f16 to underexpose the subject and get more shadow on his face right?

Same goes for that angelic look, if the shadow on his face is putting out only 20ft candles, and the back light shining atop his head is putting out 120ft candles, I would set the iris to 2.8 or something to get that effect with the lighting right? Thanks, and I'm sorry, I'm just trying to get this right. Maybe I will do something tests this weekend and postpone my shoot for another weeekend. Thanks again.
 
Hi, just one other question.

How would I expose daylight to give a night moonlight effect? I would definitely like to try that out this weekend. Thanks.

Oh, and I don't think I mentioned above, yea, for my shoot, I would like to have the subject look very low lit. So just light him up with lots of light and fill, but expose for the fll or possibly the shadows right? thanks, and sorry for all the questions.
 
You haven't explained what you mean by "low lit". Look, either a subject is normal in brightness, overexposed, or underexposed, and either it has a lot of fill light, barely any shadow detail, or black shadows. So what do you want? A normally-exposed face with very dark shadow areas or black shadows? An underexposed face but aways with some shadow detail?

A face that meters at f/8 but is exposed at f/16 will be two-stops underexposed. Now if there is a backlight, then the two-stop underexposed face will feel less underexposed than a face with no backlight that is two-stops underexposed, because at least the backlight provides a bright highlight in the frame to balance against the dim face, but either way, the face is two-stops underexposed, which is dark but not black. Of course, if the backlight meters at f/16 and you shoot at f/16, it won't look like a bright backlight.

In terms of the angelic effect, basically you can't backlight too much, you want to get as much backlight as you can and expose as brightly as you can and let it burn-out as much as possible (thus also getting more shadow detail) and use some lens diffusion to exaggerate the halation effect.

Day-for-night generally means shooting tungsten-balanced film (or setting a video camera for tungsten-balance) and shooting in daylight uncorrected for a blue-ish cast, and underexposing, maybe by two stops, and shooting more in backlight for more shadows and contrast. That's a very simplified version.
 
thank you for the replies.

I wante a normally exposed face with very dark shadows. I will give the daylight to night time shooting effect a try with your tips. Thanks.
 

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