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Hi, I have a small fiction shoot coming up with almost all the scenes to be filmed outdoors.I would like to avoid the the direct sun hitting my proatagonist in a few scenes and would like to bounce the sunlight for a soft fill.Can you please suggest what should i use to shield my sunlight and also get the some light to pass through and what will be good material to use as a bounce.

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Hi, I have a small fiction shoot coming up with almost all the scenes to be filmed outdoors.I would like to avoid the the direct sun hitting my proatagonist in a few scenes and would like to bounce the sunlight for a soft fill.Can you please suggest what should i use to shield my sunlight and also get the some light to pass through and what will be good material to use as a bounce.

 

Generally I carry both a regular Silk and a Half Soft Frost to put on frames for day work, to diffuse the sun. The nice thing about Half Soft Frost is that you only lose 1/3 of a stop under it, so when people move from full sun to being diffused under it, they don't not get darker -- it's like an Opal material in terms of heaviness, just smooths out the sunlight while keeping its directionality.

 

Silk is heavier and makes it look more like people are under the shade of something unless the background is not obviously sunlit (like dark trees and bushes, which help hide the fact that the people are under a silk.) But it is a nicer softlight, more of an overcast look.

 

So I alternate between the two. There are many other types and levels of diffusions, Quarter Silk, Light Grid, Quarter Grid, etc. I try to keep it simple, down to two levels.

 

As for bounces, most people use Ultra Bounce these days, before that it was a Griflon. Griflons are a bit shiny though, Ultra Bounce is softer. Even softer is Muslin, bleached or unbleached (unbleached has some warmth it it.) At the other end, if you want a lot of bounce, there are silver materials like Lame'.

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Generally I carry both a regular Silk and a Half Soft Frost to put on frames for day work, to diffuse the sun. The nice thing about Half Soft Frost is that you only lose 1/3 of a stop under it, so when people move from full sun to being diffused under it, they don't not get darker -- it's like an Opal material in terms of heaviness, just smooths out the sunlight while keeping its directionality.

 

Silk is heavier and makes it look more like people are under the shade of something unless the background is not obviously sunlit (like dark trees and bushes, which help hide the fact that the people are under a silk.) But it is a nicer softlight, more of an overcast look.

 

So I alternate between the two. There are many other types and levels of diffusions, Quarter Silk, Light Grid, Quarter Grid, etc. I try to keep it simple, down to two levels.

 

As for bounces, most people use Ultra Bounce these days, before that it was a Griflon. Griflons are a bit shiny though, Ultra Bounce is softer. Even softer is Muslin, bleached or unbleached (unbleached has some warmth it it.) At the other end, if you want a lot of bounce, there are silver materials like Lame'.

 

What about those silver and gold bounces(someone told me they're nicknamed Elvis and Liberace)? I was told the gold is for soft bounce and the silver is for stronger bounce.....I've also seen "checkerboard" bounces on frames. Do those two bounces fit into what you're talking about?

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What about those silver and gold bounces(someone told me they're nicknamed Elvis and Liberace)? I was told the gold is for soft bounce and the silver is for stronger bounce.....I've also seen "checkerboard" bounces on frames. Do those two bounces fit into what you're talking about?

 

I find white even to be too much fill (I've sometimes draped a Single Net or bobbinet, over the Ultra Bounce to reduce the intensity while keeping the softness), so I haven't had much use for silver.

 

I don't like gold shadows, they look unnatural to me -- at sunset when the sunlight is warmer, the shadows are usually bluer, not warmer. So the only justification for warm fill is when sun is bouncing off of warm surfaces like dirt ground or brown walls, etc. Otherwise, if I don't use white, like from an UltraBounce, I sometimes use Day Blue bounces for a cooler fill.

 

You pick Gold or Silver Lame for the color, not the softness. A checkerboard of Gold and Silver just gets you a half-gold color effect. Softness comes from the size of the bounce and how evenly the light fills it, so a shinier bounce will produce a hot spot, thus more intensity but less soft. Hence why a Ultra Bounce is softer than a White Griflon, and an unbleached Muslin is softer than an UltraBounce -- in terms of shininess, or matte-quality of white, it goes from Silver, to White Griflon, to UltraBounce, to Muslin in terms of being progressively less shiny.

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Generally I carry both a regular Silk and a Half Soft Frost to put on frames for day work, to diffuse the sun. The nice thing about Half Soft Frost is that you only lose 1/3 of a stop under it, so when people move from full sun to being diffused under it, they don't not get darker -- it's like an Opal material in terms of heaviness, just smooths out the sunlight while keeping its directionality.

 

Silk is heavier and makes it look more like people are under the shade of something unless the background is not obviously sunlit (like dark trees and bushes, which help hide the fact that the people are under a silk.) But it is a nicer softlight, more of an overcast look.

 

So I alternate between the two. There are many other types and levels of diffusions, Quarter Silk, Light Grid, Quarter Grid, etc. I try to keep it simple, down to two levels.

 

As for bounces, most people use Ultra Bounce these days, before that it was a Griflon. Griflons are a bit shiny though, Ultra Bounce is softer. Even softer is Muslin, bleached or unbleached (unbleached has some warmth it it.) At the other end, if you want a lot of bounce, there are silver materials like Lame'.

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Generally I carry both a regular Silk and a Half Soft Frost to put on frames for day work, to diffuse the sun. The nice thing about Half Soft Frost is that you only lose 1/3 of a stop under it, so when people move from full sun to being diffused under it, they don't not get darker -- it's like an Opal material in terms of heaviness, just smooths out the sunlight while keeping its directionality.

 

Silk is heavier and makes it look more like people are under the shade of something unless the background is not obviously sunlit (like dark trees and bushes, which help hide the fact that the people are under a silk.) But it is a nicer softlight, more of an overcast look.

 

So I alternate between the two. There are many other types and levels of diffusions, Quarter Silk, Light Grid, Quarter Grid, etc. I try to keep it simple, down to two levels.

 

As for bounces, most people use Ultra Bounce these days, before that it was a Griflon. Griflons are a bit shiny though, Ultra Bounce is softer. Even softer is Muslin, bleached or unbleached (unbleached has some warmth it it.) At the other end, if you want a lot of bounce, there are silver materials like Lame'.

 

 

Thanks David will try and keep it simple and as natural as possible.

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