Competing with daylight

[Darren Levine]

i use the 4x55watt units, so around 900-1000watt equivalent, and yes they do a pretty good job, but to know if they'll compete with the raw sun depends on at least two factors: what the exposure is of that window, and how close you can place your key light to the subject. But like you mentioned about the HMI, putting that much light on the subject can be a bad thing: squinting. even if the light is soft, if their eyeline crosses it, it's still a lot of power.

I'm sure you'll be able to find a workable situation, but be certain to ask the subject if it's too much for them, and watch them like a hawk to see if they're squinting and if yes to either, start backing off on the light

by the way, is this for an interview, a narrative, etc...? is the subject moving around, etc... etc...

[Charles Papert]

Originally Posted by Shaun Roemich

As always, Charles is 100% correct. I however have yet to perfect the skill of NOT destroying "expensive" ND on the roll trying to apply it and have met VERY few folks shy of Big Industry film/dramatic people who can.

I tend to ASSUME when these questions are asked here that it is typically small crew applications. I don't normally have the good fortune of working with folks of Charles' calibre (or that of his team) so ofttimes it just isn't worth the hassle, nor the expense of TRYING to cut ND roll gel and ending up with tears and ragged edges and flapping in the wind.

Of course, one can also use a mister bottle filled with water and a squeegee to apply the film to the window to minimize/eliminate rippling.

The water bottle application process is the standard one. It's actually a lot harder to tape gel tight enough to avoid wind issues if you don't go that route. Yes, it's something of a learned skill but it's not rocket science, I've seen it done perfectly well on student films if enough care is taken. It does get expensive and take time though, so I try to avoid it when possible.

I do try not to come on here and just casually announce "this is how you should do it" when it's something that I know is out of the reach of most people regarding either budget, personnel or experience. I think that in many cases it's worth knowing the "right" way to do something so that you can figure out alternatives and cut corners accordingly. A lot of things that I work on are actually quite tight budgetarily and I rarely get to do things the right way (which is to say, the quickest and easiest solution vs one that takes much more discussion, planning and sometimes risk yet has a cheaper bottom line).

My involvement in some discussions like this comes down to warning of certain implications that may not be obvious to what appear to be easy solutions. For instance, in this discussion we are wondering about how to get enough punch out of a given unit to compete with daylight. Yes, one can simply walk a source closer to the subject to get more lumens out of it. For an interview this may be fine, but if the subject is walking around at all, the result will be that the falloff from the unit will be much more severe and will essentially "give away" the source. A larger source from a greater distance will be more consistent (if that is the goal).

[Oren Arieli]

I should have mentioned that this was for interviews, so I have the luxury of getting 'up close and personal' with the light. I have a 9 bulb fluorescent 1x1 panel that fits 4 large 85w spiral bulbs (due to socket spacing). I've used that before, so I've had the equivalent of 17,000 lumens of 5500K light, but even at close distance and with a smallish 2x2' softbox, I figured that I was still 4 or 5 stops off from keeping the windows exposed (hot, but not blown out).
Gelling a single window (especially on a tight shot) wouldn't have been an issue, but I'm using a parabolic slider that reveals a wider sweep of the background (and a 2nd window).

If I did decide to go the HMI route, what size would you recommend? (keeping in mind, that I'm a one man crew).

[Darren Levine]

funny thing, my prior post i had almost entirely written about interviews because i thought you were doing interviews, but then went back and saw you never mentioned interviews and rewrote it.

if you're going to be pointing HMI levels of light at the interviewee, be careful how hard and how direct it is, again because of squinting.

[Shaun Roemich]

Originally Posted by Darren Levine

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if you're going to be pointing HMI levels of light at the interviewee, be careful how hard and how direct it is, again because of squinting.

As well, as strange as this may seem, HMIs CAN emit light in the UV spectrum, causing "sun" burns... We had a Mole Richardson DigiMole assigned to the national satellite truck at the Canadian public broadcaster and I accidentally gave a sunburn to talent who were outside but under cover for an extended period of time. The corp's solution was a UV blocker gel.

[Daniel Epstein]

For interviews against an outside window I have doubled up Kinoflo Diva 400's (Sort of a Diva 800) as a powerful but softish daylight balanced key and more Diva's as a fill and put N9 on the window and found it can be enough light to get a decent balance for the outside but not always. I had a project which was shot quarterly in the same location for a while. The winter only needed ND for a few hours on a bright day. The summer needed ND most of the day. Partially cloudy days were difficult as the intensity changed a lot. The ND was usually worth the time to put up and I charged the client as needed. Sometimes we could save the pieces sometimes not. Different companies rolls are different prices. Barbizon has a no brand roll which was around $100 compared to Lee and Rosco rolls of $135. Your prices may vary. Considering how much it costs to rent some lights the ND is a good deal.