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Lighting a glass house


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Hi all,

We are planning to shoot a house filled with glasses on all sides. What are the techniques used to shoot glass windows? How do you avoid light and camera reflections when shooting a character inside the glass? Attaching some pictures for reference. Thank you 

 

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This can be so challenging. Some suggestions:

  • If your camera is at eye level, if you keep the lights high, their reflection can usually be out of frame. For rooms with low ceilings, linear lights like tubes can help with this.
  • Avoid shooting perpendicular to any window, or you'll see yourself.
  • Daytime is much more forgiving that night shots. If you intentionally blow out the sky, you can usually hide a light reflection in that part of the frame, since you can't get brighter than white.
  • If you use box-shaped soft lights and make a window frame "cookie" with tape, it can sometimes look like you're seeing the reflection of another window, instead of a light.
  • Lighting a scene with practical lights means that the reflections at least won't ruin the illusion (although they may still ruin the composition).
  • 90-degree corners are "retro-reflective" meaning that they will *always* reflect right back to you no matter what horizontal angle you get them from. If you're seeing the camera in a 90-degree corner, the only solve is to obscure the camera, obscure the corner, or shoot from an extreme low/high angle.

If you're planning on shooting through the glass, bring a polarizer and a ton of large solids. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

You can hide a lot of reflections behind solids, including crew and equipment you might not want to move. They are also very useful when you want to show the reflection of your talent while isolating them from the reflected background.

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