Doing a job next week with individuals who MAY wear spectacles, and I know I am/will get reflections from their spectacles . . . oh yes, I will want them to look directly into camera.

Problem: How do I design OUT these reflections in a controlled lighting enviroment?

Tried a few things already. Best so far is the talent look sideways into camera. Problem here is that the person looks kinda shifty!

So . .. any ideas?

TIA,

Grazie

Couple of solutions.

Move the lights around, so they don't reflect. Don't forget to move then in three dimensions, not just two.

Ask the people to NOT wear glasses. (Unless they are reading from a teleprompter?)

Ask if they have 'low glare' glasses to wear. This helps a little.

Spray glare reduction on the glasses, AFTER asking their permission. This will add a slight 'fog' to the lenses... and washes off. SOME people use hairspray, I don't reccomend that. There's a company that makes a spray for glasses, can't think of it off hand.

Good luck.

Hi Richard!

"Move the lights around, . . " Yup been experimenting . .

"Ask the people to NOT wear glasses. .. " Yeah, thought this too.

"Ask if they have 'low glare' glasses to wear. This helps a little." . . interesting . . .

"Spray glare reduction on the glasses, AFTER asking their permission. This will add a slight 'fog' to the lenses... and washes off. " . .. ok . .. .

"SOME people use hairspray, " YIKES! Noooo....

"There's a company that makes a spray for glasses, can't think of it off hand. " Oh! That's a new one .. . !

"Good luck. " Thank you,

Grazie

I find that either a soft cross key or soft top light works best when dealing with glasses/ sunglasses. Make sure the the cross key is more to the side of your subject rather than toward camera (I hope that makes sense). You'll end up with a "split" on the face as opposed to the key wrapping around the face, but with a little fill it should look fine.

You might want to check out the December '04 issue of American Cinematographer. There's an article on Ray that discusses how Pawel Edelman approached lighting Jamie Foxx in sunglasses all the time.

Hope this helps.

Matt - thanks1

Yeah, kinda hard to visualise your recipe. You gotta rough "drawing", layout of this? I did have a soft key oin one siode of my partner's face and still got a glint in her specs .. hmmm... ?

Got the Dec '04 article . .thanks for the pointer to it!

Grazie

Another old photography trick is to have the person tilt the glasses downward slightly by lifting them up at the earpiece. This puts the reflection of the axis of the camera lens. I've done it with still photos but not video.

-gb-