diffusion

[Jared Hoy]

just curious to what diffusion strenghts people like over others and in what situation.

[Michael Nash]

It's completely relative to the light source I'm using and the softeness required. I like to have ALL of them! :P

 

Seriously, I'd feel extremely limited without at least the standard set of Opal, 250, and 216. I'll take variants like 251 or gridcloth, as long as I still have at least three different densities.

 

But it bugs me when someone tries to put a lightweight diffusion like 250 or Opal in front of a hard light like a 1200 PAR, thinking that it's making the light soft. It's not. It's still hard, just with a little more spread a slightly softened shadow. So that's how I like to use Opal and 250, to "blend" or soften the edge of the beam, not the shadows.

 

I love 216. ;)

 

I like a 4'x frame of 250 in front of a 4' 4-bank Kino. I like a 4'x frame of Opal or even Hampshire Frost near the subject for beauty closeups. I like bounces even better.

 

For big frames (12'x and such), I like 1/2 gridcloth.

[David Mullen ASC]

I like to have Opal, 250, 251, 216, Light Grid, Full Grid, and Bleached Muslin on 4'x4' frames. If my crew is less experienced, I tend to simplify things and use mostly 216. Sometimes I'll have a 6'x6' or 8'x8' frame of Light Grid and if I want it to be softer, I put a 4'x4' 216 frame between it and the light.

[David Mullen ASC]

I sort of have the OPPOSITE problem with stretched fabrics -- they seem an inefficient and uneven way of softening a light. If you go to where the actor is standing and look back at a silk or a muslin frame, you can still see some of the hard light in some sort of way, either leaking through the gaps in the weave or creating an annoying star-shape (which is why I almost never use silk except outdoors, and even then, I prefer Half Soft Frost). This suggests that the light is not being evenly spread and softened compared to plastic diffusion.

 

Grid Cloth is about the only fabric-based diffusion that seems fairly good about efficiently softening a light since it has such a dense weave. Muslin is so heavy that it effectively softens but I've occasionally had to double-layer Muslin because I was getting some hardness to the light leaking through the weave.

 

But lighting through silks on a set makes almost no sense to me because of the star-shape it creates in the frame -- you figure that the subject is being lit by a fuzzy star-shapes source, which is hard to wrap your mind around once you start flagging it, etc. The only time I'd use a silk on a set is to soften a soft light, like if I had a bunch of space lights in the grid and wanted to soften them further by floating a large silk on a frame under that.

 

Otherwise, all that really matters is the degree to which the light is softened, other than any color that might be picked up by the technique being used, so it doesn't matter whether the light is bounced or shone through a frame IF the net degree of softness is the same (obviously it probably won't be). So I can't understand any aversion to plastic diffusion since all it is doing is softening the light, making a point source into a broader source. Why would one soft source be better or worse than another soft source if the color and the degree of softness is the same? If you like silks, I can only surmise that you like some hardness to the source left mixed up into the softness, sort of like how a net diffusion filter on a camera allows a sharp image and a soft one to be overlaid.

Edited November 12, 2004 by David Mullen

[David Mullen ASC]

F-stop, why are you hiding behind a pseudonym anyway? I'd love to know who I was talking to. You've been around all of these major UK cinematographers so maybe I've heard of you or maybe we'll start seeing your work (or have seen it) and it would be great to connect the dots. I'm not really confortable holding long conversions over many months, if not years, with an anonymous person. We've had Remi Adeferasin post here, as well as Tony Brown, Geoff Boyle, and other pros from the U.K.

 

Not to target you specifically since I like your posts, but I'm thinking of making a rule of ignoring anyone's posts which aren't signed. Obviously I wouldn't know if they are lying about their name but I just have a real problem with people who post strong opinions and then hide behind a pseudonym because it suggests that they are afraid to have their name attached to their opinions. We're supposed to be a community of filmmakers and cinematographers here, and it's hard to bond together if we're all posting anonymously.

Edited November 12, 2004 by David Mullen

[Michael Nash]

I also don't have the cloth in frames either- I think that's half the problem with them in ruining the softness. I personally have them wrapped closer to the barn doors so there's absolutely no "hardspill"- I love that sculptural feel to handling softlight and I have to handle it myself and that's something I learned doing still portraits.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Tim, it sounds like you like a harder quality of light -- not that that's bad. I don't think there's any light smaller than a Big Eye tenner that you could diffuse on the barn doors and call it "soft." :P

 

That "dullness" you mentioned earlier with plastic diffusion is EXACTLY what I want when I'm softening a light! For me the whole idea is to take the "sourcey" edge off the light and make it appear more like ambient light (unless it's supposed to be specifically motivated).

 

But then I'm a big fan of a very indirect, ambient quality of light, accented by harder highlights. I try to knock down the sourcieness of the light and control modeling and snap with the lighting contrast ratio, rather than with the shadow edges. Naturally that doesn't happen with every scene or with every light source, but I'd rather have a light be too soft than too hard. To me a hard light just signals the presence of a light source, and if that source is not specifically motivated (as one that has a hard quality), then the hardness just destroys the illusion. As you can tell I'm after a more naturalistic quality that you then control, rather than an artifical "portraiture" type of lighting.

 

I'm completely with David on the issue of fabrics and silks. I can't stand the double shadow you get with silks. But there is an interesting quality you get with lighter weight diffusion, or with two diffusion frames. You can get an almost "three dimensional" quality to the soft light with a lightweight frame near the subject. Part of the harder light punches through and falls off farther, while some of the light gets softened and wraps more while falling off quickly. This can be epecially great on faces and give a "depth" to the light. But I still prefer plastics like Hampshire or Opal for this instead of fabric, because it blends the two types of shadows more uniformly.

 

I think part of this difference in approach may be your experience will stills, vs. motion picture lighting. Sometimes with movement in the frame even the slightest hard shadow will catch your eye and destroy the beauty and naturalism of the soft light. That's why I always err on the side of softness and less light, rather than go too hard or too hot.

 

But that's me. ;)

Edited November 12, 2004 by Michael Nash

[David Mullen ASC]

Obviously if he is putting silks on barndoors, not large frames, then the star-shaped diffused pattern is not an issue, but then, like you said, it's not a particularly soft source no matter how heavy the diffusion material is.

 

Once you've evenly filled the material on the barndoors -- let's say that it becomes like a 1'x1' frame -- it can't get any softer until the size of the source (the frame) becomes larger. I'd call that more of a semi-soft light, like the way the light from a 2K Zip is a semi-soft effect. I suppose if the light had a physically large front -- like a Big Eye 10K -- then the spread of the barndoors are bigger and thus the diffusion is larger, but that's a pretty hot light to work close to talent with material right on the barndoors. And backed off, it's still not a particularly soft source. Same with something like a 12K HMI.

 

There's no right or wrong degree of softness to lighting, obviously. I like soft keys with a lot of fall-off, but I like contrast and sharpness too generally, so my films have a wide variety of soft, semi-soft, and hard lighting just to keep things interesting for myself.

 

It's interesting that Alec Mills was mentioned -- I remember his article on "Licence to Kill" and how he wanted to return the Bond films to the glamorous hard key light look of the earlier Bond films, and he was right... the movie had a certain spy noir ambience, the same as Meheux' photography of "Goldeneye". Personally, I think the last one shot by Tattersal is quite attractive and slick, like a perfume or Rolex commercial (I'm envious of that type of work), but I think the Bond films should carry some of the noir-ish elements of good b&w photography to fit with the spy themes. I'd probably model the look more on "Goldeneye", which in turn was modelled on films like "The Third Man". But then, who knows what the on-set politics are for lighting these actors...

[David Mullen ASC]

Well, it's true that some of the Roger Moore Bond movies were a little overly romanticized, in particular, with the diffused close-ups, not so much the wide shots -- but on the other hand, they are part of the era in which they were shot. I guess we should just feel lucky that they weren't overly flashed and fog-filtered to suit convention.

 

I don't have anything against the later Roger Moore Bonds photographically -- "Moonraker" has a certain cold elegence now & then, but that's mainly due to Ken Adam's excellent production design -- but they aren't particularly stylish either. They just get the job done -- moody when necessary, high-key when traditionally appropriate. But the work is not inspired. I think John Glen was always more comfortable shooting action sequences...

 

The "tiredness" of the series over time is generally what the DP's shooting for the first time with a new Bond tend to be trying to avoid, so in a sense it goes back to square one. Then the new Bond gets older, the lighting starts to be more cosmetic than anything else, etc.

 

The Bond series is so old now the question is whether to be more retro or more contemporary, with pitfalls either way (although I vote to be more retro rather than make another Bruckheimer copy.)

 

By the way, Watkin worked from far back with his lights, but he used very large diffusion frames often.

[Ken Zukin]

Really interesting thread guys...I've been reading the discussions on this forum for a couple of weeks now, and it's making me re-evaluate how I light things.

Today for example, I had to light a guy for an interview on a University campus.

I placed him in the shade, pulled out a 200w HMI Par, put the fixture in an extra small Chimera, and placed it just out of the frame - probably about three feet from his face. The resulting light seemed flattering and pretty soft to me.

Are you guys saying that if I had blasted this light through, say a 4' X 4' piece of diffusion, it would have been noticeably softer?

Thanks in advance,

Ken Z.

[Michael Nash]

Softer yes, but a 200W HMI would have disappeared behind a larger frame under ambient daylight. You would have needed a bigger light to fill up a 4' frame and get the same level. Maybe a 575 backed off a bit.

 

But a 4' frame three feet away from someone's face is REALLY soft. I mean, the light would practically wrap all the way around the guy's head that close!

 

So yeah, the rule is that the larger the source, the softer the light -- which is relative to distance. The softness of a small chimera 3 feet away might be the same as what you'd get from a 4'x4' frame seven feet away, or a 12'x12' frame 25 feet away.

 

And with more distance the light falls off slower (with more distance). So you could create the same softness of light you got with the small chimera, but have it cover a group of 10 people, by using a much bigger light through an 8' frame about 15 feet away.

[David Mullen ASC]

A 4'x4' frame of diffusion will be softer than a 2'x2' frame (like the front of a small Chimera would be the equivalent of probably) IF the light filled the 4'x4' frame evenly, as opposed to making a hot spot in the center of the frame because the diffusion material was not dense enough or the light was too spotted or too close to the frame. And if both frames were the same distance to the subject.

 

When putting any diffusion in front of a light, the diffusion becomes the light source, not the light behind it, and how soft a shadow it creates is determined by the size of this source relative to the distance to the subject. The other factor is whether the diffusion material is completely and evenly filled with light from corner to corner, because if you get a hot spot in the center, that hot spot area is the effective size of the source, not the whole frame. This is why you can control the softening effect by switching between different types of diffusion material on a frame, but once you achieve maximum evenness in filling the frame, you are just cutting the light output by making the diffusion even denser. At that point, you should be moving up to even bigger frames if you want the light to be softer, or moving it closer to the subject to increase its relative size compared to the subject.

 

The other factor is that while a medium-sized frame close to the subject may create just as soft a shadow as a larger frame farther back, the degree of fall-off will be different. If the frame is very close to the subject, the subject leaning farther or closer to the frame will create a visible change in brightness, whereas if the frame were larger and farther back, there would less of a dramatic change if the subject leans to one side or the other.

 

One trick I learned from reading about Watkin is to cut patterns in diffusion frames to create a combination of hard and soft light. In "Jesus of Nazareth" he used some big carbon arcs shining through big frames of diffusion with diamond-shaped holes cut out of the material to create diamond-shaped patterns on the actors, matching a windows in the temple set. So you get a realistic mix of hard and soft light, like sunlight and skylight mixing together. Although Lawrence Olivier apparently was so incensed at how long Watkin was taking to set this lighting effect up, he said he should be fired. But the lighting was very memorable. Even greater though was the shot where Jesus emerges from the archway after being whipped (Pilot's POV); the background is so burned up that Jesus seems to be shimmering into view.

[David Mullen ASC]

No, I haven't used milk glass except when it was part of a location or set.

 

I have used Lightboard, which is an interesting material, a very dense styrene foam panel about an 1/8th inch thick used for insulation in Europe. I forget the European name for the product. It's thin enough to shine light through it, like foamcore without the paper, and it doesn't affect the color of the light. The effect is sort of like bleached muslin.

 

Speaking of Maxibrutes, while I know you aren't supposed to shine them hard onto sets or people because of the multiple shadows, I've noticed that Storaro will do that (with his Jumbos) and I tried it once on a feature shining through a window. It's an interesting effect because normally with a multi-paned window the cross pieces will cut a lot of the light from, let's say, a 10K, but the multiple bulbs of a MaxiBrute gets around the cross pieces. You get kind of a fringy pattern on the wall but it almost looks like dappled sunlight rather than the theatrical look of a fresnel throwing a pattern of a window on a wall.

 

Hard lighting in color is tricky for me because it requires that the art direction be better because colors will pop out more with this approach (many of Core's movies have a desaturated color pallete). And when shooting HD, it can just get too soap opera looking.

[Michael Nash]

I think Ericson Core is a perfect example of what we've been talking about here. I can't stand that kind of hard light! Don't get me wrong, I'm not putting down Core's talent or ability. It obviously takes a lot of skill to sculpt such hard light, and there are little lessons I pick up from observing his work.

 

It's just as a matter of taste. That style of lighting is just so theatrical and artificial, it just destroys the experience for me. He did some cool expressionistic stuff in 187 , but by the time he got to The Fast and the Furious he just lost me. The night stuff there looked so harsh and fake I just couldn't watch anymore.

 

Of course there are times when a more theatrical approach is just right for a film, and you try to apply it judiciously. For example I really love Elliot Davis' lighting, and he went pretty darned theatrical with the colors in Thirteen, yet I felt it was right for that film.

 

We were discussing Jeffrey Kimball in this thread, and I too love his single-source sidelight with ambient fill (even if it does get a little repetitive). He's especially good at working the fill as foreground to create depth through semi-silhouettes. I caught Top Gun on TV a couple weeks ago and had forgotten just how gorgeous that movie was.

[DavidSloan]

This is a great thread guys, I learned some new things! :)

 

I think that learning how to light with truely non directional, soft light is pretty tough. My first inclination is to use semi hard, to hard light, because 1) that's usually all you learn to do in film school. 2) it's easier to judge what you're doing by eye 3) It's more stylized thereby a lot of young inexperienced DP's, such as myself, use it because it has a "wow, that looks cool," factor. It's frustrating because I want to light like Cries and Whispers but I always get Casablanca! lol well not that extreme, but no where near Cries and Whispers, yet! :ph34r:

 

 

 

 

D.S

Edited November 14, 2004 by DavidSloan

[F Bulgarelli]

I really like Adefasin's work on Elizabeth. I understand he likes to use different color silks and other types of fabrics. Does anyone know more about his technique.

I also like what Lubensky did in Great Expectations to light Gwineth Paltrow, specifically the nude scene where Ethan Hawk (?) is drawing her in his studio.

 

Francisco

[DavidSloan]

Fstop:

 

I agree that contemporary low budget Hollywood soft lighting is really boring, has no "soul," unique voice, etc...but in the hands of the masters it's the best, imo.

 

I feel that hard lighting is easier because you can sculpt it, mold it by eye, create patters on walls, etc...where as with soft lighting it takes a lot of experience, and sophistication to be able to create subtle contrasts, dark corners, etc...and trust that it will render beautifully on film. I always return to Sven Nykvist because his lighting is magical, poetic, and artistic and he uses extremely soft lighting. I think that the first step for most DPs is hard lighting, because it's the most obvious approach, but I see friends of mine who are DP and are really good make a slow shift towards soft lighting as they mature.

 

As far as the film school thing goes-I don't mean to say that hard lighting is a film school approach but all you learn about in text books and school is how to light, hard. Hard key, hard back light, hard kickers, etc...no one teaches the beauty, realism, and subtley of soft lighting. Perhaps students are not experienced enough to see the nuance of it. Like I said, it's easier to get excited about an 8:1 contrast ratio when you're lighting on set, then a 3:1.

[David Mullen ASC]

I think hard lighting is quite difficult to do well, but I think what David S. is talking about is that beginners like students who first start lighting with movie lamps tend to use them hard because they haven't learned the art of grip work needed to soften and flag them.

 

First you tend to point them hard ("wow, I get to use real lights!"), then you tend to add diffusion to the doors ("gee, these lights are awful harsh!"), then you learn to bounce or shine them through frames ("gosh it looks pretty!"), light spilling everywhere ("hmmm... looks kinda flat!") THEN you learn about flagging soft light to direct it and restore contrast ("I'm gonna win an Oscar!"), and THEN MAYBE you get bored with that and start using hard light again ("OK, I didn't win... f--- the Oscars, I'm going to go off into the deep end with hard lights and party-colored gels!"), but this time applying what you learned about grip work, etc. (by which point you have retired to teach at some film school.)

 

When I go speak to students, I'm always a little appalled about how little they know about grip equipment and how to use it.

[DavidSloan]

@David: you hit the nail on the head! That is exactly what I'm talking about. It takes more experience, and sophistication to appreciate and understand how to tame soft light. Hard light is almost primal because it's obvious, immediate, and can give results, fast. When you shine a 2k into a frame and it's EVERYWHERE, what the hell do you do to make it interesting? Most young DPs get stumped and return to hard lighting, with their trusty blown out kickers lol. Even lighting soft with hard lights for punch is not the same, but lighting soft all the way through, and making that interesting...ooof!

[David Mullen ASC]

I love soft lighting but I use hard lighting as well -- real life gives you plenty of examples of hard lighting, from direct sunlight shining through a window, to a room with track lighting, a speaker lit with a follow-spot, someone hit with a car headlamp or flashlight or police searchlight, rooms with bare lightbulbs, streets with a single streetlamp -- even a single candle flame is a hard source.

 

The trouble with talking about soft lighting too generally is that there are many degrees of softness possible, from putting opal on barndoors to shining MaxiBrutes through a 20'x20' frame. Even natural sunlight will vary in softness depending on the weather.

 

This is one reason I'm a big Storaro fan, who is neither exclusively a hard or soft lighting guy. He thinks of a light as being a point or a broad source and uses either depending on the dramatic needs of the scene. Often a scene will be lit from one side in that Caravaggio-style of his, with no fill, but that side light may be hard or soft. In fact, Carravaggio did the same thing!

[DavidSloan]

Lighting a US sitcom would be the ultimate dream for me...

I sincerely hope you're kidding, m8. :ph34r:

[Michael Nash]

Sitcoms are lit the way they are in part because they're filmed with multiple cameras. It's a unique talent to provide a good key, fill, and edge from multiple angles for multiple actors with multiple marks, without creating too many distracting sahdows and keeping some dimension to the set. There also tends to be a convention or style to keep the lighting high-key for those shows, and you can get away with harder light when there's more of it! A hard shadow doesn't appear quite as hard when there's another light filling it in some.

 

And I don't think soft lighting should be confused with FLAT lighting, although they do sometimes go together. Soft doesn't always mean Matlock-rerun, Ferris-Beuler's-Day-Off flat. I'm not saying those examples were done badly, just that they deliberately went for a softer, flatter, high-key look.

 

Darius Kondji is a good example. Even if you're tired of his look, you have to admit that Seven was mostly soft light yet still had a deeper film-noir-ish look. Lots of deep shadows and decent modeling; anything but flat.

 

I mentioned in another thread about defining a "source quality" in the design of the light, just as you might select a key/contrast palette and a color palette. Some films might benefit from soft light to tell the story, others a mix, and still others might go exclusively hard. And that works within the context of a style or aesthetic you're using to tell the story. "Friends" could hardly be described as "naturalistic" lighting, it's by choice and design a more theatrical approach (it's literally a stage play happening in front of cameras and an audience).

[David Mullen ASC]

I don't watch sitcoms but I wonder what stage-bound multi-camera, live-audience show has been the most realistically, naturalistically lit? Or which have been the moodiest?

 

Not that you could call "Barney Miller" natural-looking, but I recall it had a certain grittiness -- a "dirtiness" that was surprising for a sitcom of its time.

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

The sitcom "My Family" was pretty sharp and contrasty.

 

Have a look at these stills.

 

Phil

[J. Lamar King IMPOSTOR]

Personally, I've been playing with hard light a lot more lately. I'm bored with whipping out the Kinoflo all the time. I've always liked 'COMBAT!' but I'm loving it lately. Hauser's work on that is so incredible, sometimes I can't even figure out what exactly is going on with the lighting. It's so expressionistic. However, it's extreme and you couldn't use it all the time.

 

I also liked Daryn Okada's work on "Mean Girls" I saw some Haiwaii 5-0'ish topper shadows on the walls.

 

I would really like to learn to light like Conrad Hall lit Tom Hanks house in "Road To Perdition." It's just this ambience that is coming from everywhere and on top of that there are these little kicks and hits on the walls and floors. Uber Naturalism.

[Ken Zukin]

Karl Freund was born in 1890 - so when he lensed "I Love Lucy" in the 1950's, he was a pretty old guy. He was in his 60's - at the time, that was considered OLD. He probably just wanted to keep his hand in it, but go home every night at 7 PM. I think he was the DP on "Key Largo," one of my favorites.

Best,

Ken Z.