How to light those rooms?

[Stefan Hoefinger]

Hey!

I need some help because I am going to shoot a corporate video in a hairdresser saloon. I am going to shoot it with a Sony EX1 but with lighting i am not a pro.

MOst rooms cannot be shaden so there is daylight in all rooms. Picture of the rooms can be seen in the attachment. Most rooms are very light and the ceilings are in all rooms white! There are also small fixed lamps but they can be turned of. The lightnig should be pretty fancy but we want to shoot the video pretty bright, white, over lighted and clean but not too blue!

How would you light it? I would light it with 5 x 250W HQI daylight lamps. Is that enough? How should it light it? Direct or indirect about the ceiling, reflector, polystyrene, etc? How about silver reflectors?

Thanks a lot!

[Paul Cascio]

I'm certainly not one of the experts, but I would guess that your best bet would be to bounce as much light as possible off the ceiling. This will provide a soft, even light. I'm anxious to see how Nino or some others would do it.

[Chris Medico]

My question would be.. What do you want the lighting to look like? Are you going for an even flat look or are you going to texture and depth on faces?

[Perrone Ford]

Well, unless you're trying to do something pretty dramatic, I'd say it looks like you've got PLENTY of ambient light. I'd probably hardly use anything but bounce cards and maybe a softbox to key a 1 or 2 shot with. Wide shots look like they should be fine.

Have you metered these rooms at all? How much light are you actually working with in there? Looks like 75-150fc based on these photos. If so, count your blessings!

I too am curious what the pros are going to say. I'm really just getting into this lighting thing.

[Nino Giannotti]

To start, are you going to have people in the picture or are you just doing an architectural interior of the rooms? This might change things a lot. You should also tell us if you have any budget for lighting rentals, a few daylight balanced bulbs is not going to do the job especially if the lights will be in the picture.

Under normal condition I would suggest bouncing HMIs into white reflectors but
you already have some very light walls; the very last thing that you want is to put even more light on those walls, any light source will have to be controlled so it can be directed only where you need it. I would suggest HMIs inside large softboxes with grids to control the direction.

Also do you know what time of the day you’ll be in each room? This will also greatly affect your shot.

Do you have access outside the window or is this on a higher floor. Sometime throwing an HMI fresnel from the outside to simulate sunlight coming in the room make the place come alive.

The place looks kind of dull, consider using some fresnels 3.2k tungsten lights to selectively add some warmer colors or even add some warming gels to the 3.2K lights.

More information will get you more suggestions.

[Stefan Hoefinger]

Yeah persons are seen!

I will use 5 * 250W HQI Lights. But they are like 800W I think!

What do you think if I would mix it with normal video lights with 5600k foil?

THANKS

[Nino Giannotti]

Originally Posted by Stefan Hoefinger

Yeah persons are seen!

I will use 5 * 250W HQI Lights. But they are like 800W I think!

What do you think if I would mix it with normal video lights with 5600k foil?

THANKS

I've never seen HQI bulbs light used for photography, what sort of fixture are they in?

What "normal video lights" do you have. By foil I imagine you mean CTB filter. Keep in mind that if your fixture is 3.2K you will lose over half the output by converting the color from 3.2K to 5.6K.

Do you know who shot those stills? Looks like they use lights and they did a very good job in making it look natural. Whoever did it they knew how to photograph architectural interiors.