Shooting into a mirror at the bottom of a pool

Bennett Cerf · May 15, 2009

I'm working on a spec commercial where we have a man racing a dog in pool. The director would like to have a shot for the spot where the camera looks directly up at them swimming. We will have a red camera in an underwater housing which is 28" long. We'd have to have a really wide lens to get that angle and it'll look really warpy. I'm not sure I like the perspective of it. I'd like to shoot on a longer lens using a big mirror. so I can put the camera at a bigger distance from the subjects. Does anyone know where I can get an optically smooth mirror that's like 4' by 4'. Store-bought mirrors have that thick glass on the front of the silver that does odd things to the image (like doubling and strange refraction). That might be fine since we're in a pool to begin with, but I'm wondering if anyone knows of an optically smooth mirror that I could rent that is that size.

David Auner aac · May 15, 2009

I'm working on a spec commercial where we have a man racing a dog in pool. The director would like to have a shot for the spot where the camera looks directly up at them swimming. We will have a red camera in an underwater housing which is 28" long. We'd have to have a really wide lens to get that angle and it'll look really warpy. I'm not sure I like the perspective of it. I'd like to shoot on a longer lens using a big mirror. so I can put the camera at a bigger distance from the subjects. Does anyone know where I can get an optically smooth mirror that's like 4' by 4'. Store-bought mirrors have that thick glass on the front of the silver that does odd things to the image (like doubling and strange refraction). That might be fine since we're in a pool to begin with, but I'm wondering if anyone knows of an optically smooth mirror that I could rent that is that size.

It seems you're looking for a front silvered mirror. I know a guy around here who could make you one. Thus I'm pretty sure they do exist. But for rental, hm... They'd be pretty expensive to rent I guess, as they're very easily scratched!

Cheers, Dave

Ian Choplick · August 8, 2009

I've done this a while back with plain old household mirrors we bought. Wasn't looking for extreme clarity, so the kind of mirror wasn't a factor. The one thing I would caution is, that while we were trying to remove the large mirrors from the water, one broke in half. Just something to consider if renting or considering purchasing an expensive mirror.

David Rakoczy · August 8, 2009

It doesn't seem (to me) as though you need a 'perfect' mirror as the water itself is going to diffuse things a bit already. Especially if they are swimming and the surface of the water is in motion.