Rob Davis

Haha. The window rarely clips but that doesn’t mean they’re gonna spend days isolating the subject from the BG in post. We’re shooting 22 episodes.

I know the squeegee method works but we would just have to switch them out so frequently, it wouldn’t be practical. If we build the frames I’ll report back as to how well it works.

I know the squeegee method works but we would just have to switch them out so frequently, it wouldn’t be practical. If we build the frames I’ll report back as to how well it works.

The section of the window that appears in the background is only around 4’x6’ and the gel frames would be placed outside, behind the glass. We already have rolls of ND, which is why I was hoping to just stretch it tight across wood frames and staple-gun it.

I work on an unscripted show where we primarily shoot exterior interviews but occasionally will move inside and use a window as our background when the weather is bad. I’d like to be able to ND the window to reduce the amount of light needed on talent and am thinking of having a couple of wood frames built out of 1x3 strips of lumber so we could quickly drop in different levels of ND. Being that the window is only a couple feet behind talent (out of focus but barely), is this a good approach or would we see lots of reflections, etc.? We don’t have time to apply the gel directly to the window as the light changes frequently, and don’t have the budget to get hard NDs. I think a large net would be too close and in-focus to disappear completely. We also can’t drop a polarizer for the camera to mitigate reflections because talent always wears sunglasses. The window is always shaded, however, so we’ve had no reflection issues with the glass itself.

If anyone else is interested in this, I found this post at DVXuser that seems to suggest that at least the 7D lacks sufficient ability to deal with infrared in-camera when using lots of ND: http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?188656-Is-this-IR-pollution . Would love a conclusive answer about this though and still can't speak to the 5D and GH2. Still not sure whether to go with standard ND's with hot mirror or IRND's. Any suggestions?

I want to purchase a set of high-quality 4x4 ND Filters for use with the Canon 5D Mark II and 7D cameras as well as the GH2 when shooting bright exteriors. I will probably start with two filters that I can use independently or stack together for three total possibilities in f-stop reduction and build from there. I understand that when you add a lot of ND glass in front of the lens you can get a color cast from the infrared light, which the ND's don't block like they do visible light. Some people seem to advocate compensating for this with either IRND's such as Tiffen's white water filters or by stacking an IR/Hot Mirror filter in front of the ND's while others claim that the Canon DSLR's have sufficient ability to compensate for IR pollution in-camera and standard ND's are fine even when going down 8 or 9 stops. Can anyone comment on the need for IR filtration when using a lot of ND on these cameras? On a side note, if you were shooting bright exteriors and could only bring two ND's, which would be the first two you would grab? I'm thinking about getting a ND.9 and a ND.1.8, which would give me 3, 6 or 9 stops of light reduction.