Lighting from INT to EXT - Day

[Nelion McCaldin]

gday,

I'am having a problem with exposure when shooting from inside a patio/porch to and exterior garden. I'am shooting with a DV Canon XL1. In the way of lights i have 2 blondies and 3 red heads + gels. Unfortunately no HMI's. I was at location today playing around with the blondies directed towards the INT but still geting a massive blow out from the garden. Any tips on balancing the light out or at least reducing the exposure so i can still catch the details from both areas.

Thought some screenies might help. Although taken from outside you can see the shadow under the patio/porch. Black arrow is the direction of the photo.

Any help would e greatly appreciated.

Cheers

Nelion


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[Matt Sandstrom]

i'd put nd and cto on the windows, but there seems to be more than a few and not that small either. something i have never tried but would love to is to use mirrors to reflect hard sunlight through the windows which can then be bounced to where you need it. good luck.

 

/matt

 

oops, no windows. i guess i stopped reading at "inside". :-) well even more reason to use mirrors then, or just foamcore since it's so open.

 

/matt

[timHealy]

If you don't have HMI's then I'll have to agree with using bounces, but you could also use a 12x12 or 8x8 in the garden. 4x4 or 1x1 mirrors could work but you would need nets/ND/thin diffusion to slow it down. The blondes could work for closeups with full blue through perhaps large 4x4 diffusion frames. You could also let the background go a little overexposed or perhasp use large nets, say 12x12 or 20x20 to slow down the background BUT that becomes trouble if the sun hits the netting. So try that with caution.

 

Best

 

Tim

 

 

PS all numbers are in feet!

[Michael Nash]

Small tungsten units are worthless competing against sunlight.

 

In lieu of HMI's, reflectors are your best bet. "Shiny boards" diffused through frames of Opal or 250 can give a natural look in situations like this. You'll need several rigs from different directions to fill in the sapce naturally.

 

But the easiest workaround is to simply frame your shots where you don't have to compete against as bright a background. For closeups, you've got a lot of shaded foliage in the BG to work with...

[Nelion McCaldin]

Thank you all for your input,

 

I tried a few different methods you all suggested with some good results. We have decided to shoot late afternoon so the 'background hedge' is in shadow. That eliminates the over exposure and actually looks great. I then used reflection as you all suggested to spread some natural light on the subjects as i still had enough daylight to do so. Also worked very well and i can still have my hedge in the background :D

 

Thank you again for your help. I shoot this time next week so it was just in the nick of time. B)

 

Cheers

 

Kif