Faking Sunlight with a small crew

[indiana wilson]

I am shooting in Costa Rica in a few weeks, and the weather forecast is not looking great. The show is supposed to be bright, sunny and tropical (think the white lotus s3, lots of beauty shots). Unfortunately, it looks like I will have rain. I have a small GLX crew on this one, and my biggest guns are an Aputure 600d and 600C, and my biggest frame is an 8×8.

To try and get some more life in my images of talent, my plan so far is to overhead rain cover with the 8×8, use the 600d as a “Sunlight” back/kicker, and put the 600c into a bounce to fill.

We are going to shoot tight and shallow on long lenses to try and sell the effect a bit more.

Of course, I would love to fly in the 18K’s, but it’s just not possible on this one. I would appreciate any insight anyone has.

[Aapo Lettinen]

sounds like a good plan. getting the 600d as punchy as you can and then bouncing the 600c.

if you have lots of extra electricity available you can try to hunt down some cheap tungsten lights. I used to use 1k vnsp par cans to throw small "sunlight spots" on the background if there is patches of foliage or building walls etc where it would show nicely and then use 2k blondes or fresnels for main characters, possibly banked side by side to get over 5kw out of one bank at a time.

and if not having anything other high power for key light or mid ground lighting multiple people etc, just bank all the tungsten gear I have (could be redheads or small 650w to 1kw fresnels or other assorted stuff with some occasional 2kw thrown in the mix) behind a single small frame like 3x3 or 4x4 to get from 4kw to 8kw of warm tungsten light as key. in the case of this shoot they would be needed to be gelled up to from 4200 to 4500k and a bank like that is slow to move so not sure if the "everything tungsten we have behind the frame" approach would have any use at all in this shoot, of course could use it as "semi-fixed" side key light and then have more freedom with the other lights when having one extra high power light on set. 1/2ctb gelled tungsten often works pretty nicely as "sunlight" when combined with hmi or cool led lighting so if there happens to be some leftover tungstens available of 1kw to 5kw range then they might be very useful still.

But at least the par cans or other very very punchy lights for background might actually help with the look if there is foliage or buildings on the background where tiny spots of "sunlight" might work. One might not help yet but from 4 to 8 should start to show up and probably they would look good even ungelled to get all the punch you possibly can out of them. Or if possible to throw a 5k or 10k for background punch.

Overcast days are grey and dull so adding more contrast to the background often helps a lot in any case... depends on the light levels how well a tungsten fixture would show compared to the ambience but again if there happens to be extra electricity available it is often easy to have some extra tungsten lights with you, even slightly powerful ones like 5k or 10k, because they are cheap to rent or borrow as people rarely use them anymore for main shoots (slow to run big cables) and they are just sitting on the shelf waiting for better days

Edited May 8 by Aapo Lettinen

[Albion Hockney]

if you over expose an overcast day and manage the fill side to create contrast. you can create a sunny feeling for sure.

just manage your backgrounds.... don't show wide open vistas of overcast light instead treat the sky like a big soft source and find backgrounds with texture. keep in mind sunny days don't always have hard light in every frame.

600d as a little backlight in tighter shots will work okay for interiors. I might try to swing for a 1200d or m18 for one of your key lights. maybe even an M40 which can be handled by a crew of 2-3 if you don't use many lights.

Edited May 8 by Albion Hockney