Beach beauties

[Dave Plake]

K... got a fun one here but need some advice. I am shooting 7 models on the beach in Hawaii. I want to shoot them backlit and bounce in fill, but what about shooting some front lit stuff? Harder to control but? What do you reccomend for fill? UltraBounce?.. or flexfill, maybe gold flexfill? 12x griflon? I want a nice warm sexy vibe. Also filters. Director likes razor sharp images, and the girls are beautiful and young, but black pro mist etc to take the edge off? I am shooting with vision 2 250D. Any thoughts on setups and which direction to face in relation to the sun would be of great help. Would like to try a few different things. There will be no lights but we wil hopefully be shooting on sunny days.

 

Thanks!

[Mike Williamson]

If you can pick the right time of day to shoot with it, hard front light can be very beautiful, especially when you've got attractive people to start with. I'd suggest staging some shots into directly frontal sunlight when the sun is lower in theh sky, maybe an hour after sunrise or an hour before sunset (that's a guess). With that kind of a set-up, you don't really need fill and you'll get some of that sharpness from the light without the unattractive shadows. You could also overexpose a bit which would help burnout skin imperfections if you're worried about that.

[Matthew Parnell]

Magic hour stuff always looks good pretty much from any angle with minimal fill.

 

Cheers,

Matt.

[oscar jimenez]

Depending on personal taste. For Beach I do always like to use at least 2 42x42 hard / soft bounces for backlight. For fill on wide shots 12x12 silver / white can do ok. I personally dont like gold, looks and feels forced ( a little bit too much ) if you are doing close ups or medium shots, a 12x12 silk comes pretty much handy and the 42x42's make a beautifoul backlight and kickers, if they are too hard, just pan them away a little or take them a few feet far. a flexfill always handy for edgy litght on faces, not that hard, and for eyelight reflections on talent, since you are working on film, keeping a frame rate of 36 or 40 fps makes women look gorgeus, and if you have a fan for hair flying, 60-80 fps always looks great a polarizer for shure, the warm tone can be later added in post. A 45 degree shutter always looks nice on that sort of stuff.

Good luck

[Guest]

I would not use the 250D, too noisy, not a good stock.

 

I would use 5245 or the new Vision 2 50 ASA. Even at magic hour it works great, shoot at 5.6 or there abouts and you'll be fine.

 

R,

[Michael Nash]

For filtration you can use something like a lower grade of white promist rather than black, to add a little "glow" or halation without softening the image too much. It just depends on the look you want -- your director wants sharp, but you're inclined to use filters. Ask yourself why -- for softening, to hide detail, or to add halation? Or some combination of these? There's a filter out there for pretty much whichever effect(s) you're after.

 

For frontal light, I find an added element can be to stage your subjects in front of something darker or of a complementary color. Like warm sunlit figures against a blue sky, green foliage, or an area that is naturally in shadow. It helps your subjects visually pop forward in frame and avoids making them look flat against a similarly-lit background.