Underexposed Face - Eye light

[Boris Kalaidjiev]

Hello everyone, 

Is there a trick on how to keep someone's face underexposed by 2-4 stops but also give them a nice eye light so there is still life in the eyes? It is really hard to just pick up the light in the eyes without contaminating the whole background. I am mainly talking about interiors and not close ups. 

I've tried to light a 4x8 poly and keep it 10ft away from my subject very dim so that the eye could maybe pick-up the big poly without it being strong enough to actually light up my background. But the eye couldn't pick it up. 

 

Any tricks or ideas? 

P.S I also tried giving the actors eye drops so his eyes would be a bit more watery thinking that, that might be helpful but no effect so far.

 

Thanks!!

[David Sekanina]

I placed a 1.5m soft dome just 2-3 feet away from the model at a very low setting, so the reflection of the light in her eyes is as big as possible. Would i have placed it 10ft away, the reflection would be much smaller.

You could also use a spotlight modifier or a Fresnel with barn doors to highlight just the eyes - but to me this always looks a little bit like Star Trek TOS or a Michael Bay movie ?

 

 

Edited July 10, 2023 by David Sekanina

[Boris Kalaidjiev]

The portrait looks nice! 

The spotlight idea you mean just to be eye level and to spot/cut it dead on the face? If that's what you meant then i run into the problem of having a weird shadow from the head on the wall behind. But it does help pull out the eyes a lot because then you see the actual light in the eyes. 

What would you suggest if you had a medium shot / medium wide shot? 

 

Thanks!

[David Sekanina]

Oh yes, you wrote not a close up. A small bounce board out of frame reflecting light upwards into the eyes maybe?

[Stewart McLain]

Pretty sure what you're looking for is an Obie light.  https://tiffen.com/products/obie-light 

Of course, you don't have to use that specific brand.  Just the basic idea - a small low wattage light on camera that's only purpose is to reflect in the eye and not to provide illumination to the subject.  This is good article on eye lights with some other ideas beyond the one I just mentioned:

https://theasc.com/blog/shot-craft/eye-lights

[Guillaume Cottin]

I am not sure if there even is a perfect trick to do this. The lower the light levels, the harder it is to create an eye light that will not have an effect on the rest of the lighting.

Assuming you like a round eye light, my go-to tool is obviously the Rosco Dash and Dot diffuser mounted on the camera or close to it. It’s fast to set up and looks great even on a medium. But for wider shots, i would use something like a 3ft lantern in which I would probably put a 60w COB (60c) dimmed way down, or even just a NYX bulb if you want to go even lower (adapting the bulb socket to a Bowens softbox).

I would put it on the key side and at the most reflective angle possible and as far away as possible.

In your case of under-exposure it’s just a matter of getting it very dim, as we are not illuminating the subject but using the reflection of the source in the eyes.

[David Mullen ASC]

There is no single trick. For one thing, as the shot gets wider, the eyes are smaller in the frame so there is less of a reason to bother with an eye light.

On "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" we didn't shoot close-ups, our singles tended to be waist up or elbows up in size. I often used a Litemat 1 under the lens to bring up the eyes but kept dim to not flatten contrast too much.

The eyes are highly reflective so to some degree there might be a happy moment where the camera and light is far enough to not be adding too much film while still creating a bright reflection.

Here is a shot I did where I couldn't use the Litemat 1 under the lens because the camera was on a slider pointed at the actor, so I used a "placemat" LED taped to the tripod head under the lens, basically a small white card with LiteRibbon taped to it, about 6"x6", maybe larger.

I zoomed into the frame to make the eye light more obvious in this post:

 

Enlarged:

[David Mullen ASC]

Also keep in mind that the overall contrast affects the eye light. If you use a higher-contrast LUT with somewhat crushed shadows, like a skip-bleach / ENR print look, then the eye light being a highlight tends to pop more when the shadows go darker in comparison. Or you can think of it that you can use a brighter eye light even if it adds fill because the contrast of the LUT will cause some shadow detail to drop off.