Lighting on overcast exterior day?

Riku Naskali · January 12, 2005

I was wondering how much can you get away with lighting on overcast weather outside?

Personally I like to give some life to the image by using hard kickers. It looks nice to my eye, but do you think it looks too lit? Since there is no logical hard sources for lighting on overcast weather, it's really hard to judge how much can you cheat. And I think using soft light really does nothing to the already dull image. Negative fill is of course useful, but usually I don't have huge solids...

Sometimes I also treat overcast as base illumination and start building my own sourcy "sun" light based on it.

Any thoughs?

Kevin Zanit · January 12, 2005

I am fine with adding a hard kick in an overcast situation to add some life to things. Do it myself all the time.

I will generally bounce a hard light, like a PAR into a 2x2 or 4x4 mirror to really edge them out. I like it to be more of an edge than a hair light. The hair light can be going to far from what?s appropriate in that situation, but you can still totally get away with it.

I think the real question is should there be a hair light or edge light? The answer is never the same, but it sounds like to you it just "feels right", thus trust your instincts. Who cares if it?s motivated or not, if it feels right, it is right.

Kevin Zanit

Adam Frisch FSF · January 12, 2005

You can add a kick as long as you don't show too much sky or have the kick to overpowering, in my view. There however is something a bit strange with a strong edgelight and a solid sky in a wide frame...

As you yourself suggested - negative fill or soft bounce-fill are useful tools. In the photo submitted I simply used a very frontal fill (just above the camera) from a 1200w HMI in a Chimera to just get that slight soft fill into the eyes that helps her stand out a little from the

background and the light the grey sky would have cast on her.

Bob Hayes · January 13, 2005

I tend to do most of my over cast fixes in the close ups. 4x4 negative fill. A soft key light to help the contrast and give the eyes some sparkle. A soft subtle kicker that is barely noticeable.

Jonathan Spear · January 13, 2005

Hey Adam,

Cool pic. What was your setup for that shoot?

Thanks

David Mullen ASC · January 13, 2005

Sometimes you have no choice but to add a strong light -- for example the "sunrise" scene on the hotel balconey in "Sheltering Sky", shot on a rainy morning. Even Storaro can't always wait for the perfect weather.

Bob Hayes · January 13, 2005

I?m mostly trying to make overcast days look less threatening. However I was working with Michael Douglas in Bermuda and Cigar Aficionado magazine showed up for a still shoot. The weather had been gorgeous, blue skies and turquoise seas but when they started to set up the sky grew cloudy. I thought. That?s too bad this is just going to look dull. They may even have to reschedule. Instead, the photographer pumped up the key enough to really make the sky look dark, foreboding, and stormy. The Polaroid?s looked great.

Adam Frisch FSF · January 13, 2005

Hey Adam,

Cool pic. What was your setup for that shoot?

Thanks

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thanks.

I just had two 1200w HMI's, but just one for this shot. Very simple. We were on a barge, so I was limited to the size of genny I could bring. Naturally, the sky is crazily ND Grad-ed, that's what sells it.

Getting the sky dark is an old stills-trick just like Bob said. Stills guys are spoiled with flash photography. It's considerably harder to achieve on film unless you want to kill your talent by sticking an 18K under their nose...

January 14, 2005

for this particular sequence for what u have told as a a script writer and cinematographer i would like to suggest you to light up the scene to deliver the impact of the emotion ,logic lighting and mixe it up with reality see to that where the emotion of the script dosen"t gets tracked out.

Michael Nash · January 14, 2005

Watch any of the zillion TV shows and movies shot in Vancouver and you'll see a lot of different ways to deal with overcast exteriors. The typical approach is to "sweeten" the closeups as Bob suggests, with negative fill and soft modeling. The trick here is "soft," since hard light can start to look fake if not established in the wide shot.

Another trick under overcast skies is to fly a large silk or double overhead to cut down on the top light, giving you a chance to add soft light from the sides without building up the overall stop in the foreground more than the BG. When the BG is just slightly hotter in the CU's, it tends to not feel so flat and overcast.

Try to design the wide shot with enough contrast so that there's less of a noticeable change in contrast between the wide and the CU's. That can be done by adding some edge lighting, and even building silhouettes into the frame.

Rolfe Klement · January 15, 2005

A minor issue - I have had problems shooting with 7218 on overcast skies unless I ND Grad it out - less problems, funny enough, with 5218 - and be careful of doing TK on Rank Cinetel kit with 7218 of grey skies - get it done on Spirit

thanks

R

Riku Naskali · January 16, 2005

for this particular sequence for what u have told as a a script writer and cinematographer i would like to suggest you to light up the scene to deliver the impact of the emotion ,logic lighting and mixe it up with reality see to that where the emotion of the script dosen"t gets tracked out.

Ummm what :huh: