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Getting rid of shadows (image attached)


j buison

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There are many solutions, but the one I would use, would be to rig the light higher, making the shadows appear below the framing.

 

The only problem might be the talents cap, that will block the light coming into his face. You could fix that by bouncing the light from the bottom.

 

Another thing you could do is to put the talent farther away from the walls and put the light more behind him, making the shadows appear out of the frame aswell.

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I'd give the same advice when you asked this in your other thread. I'm not sure why you are repeating the same mistake from the first post unless this was shot on the same day before you read our responses. We all told you that if you put the fill to one side of the camera and didn't pull the talent away from the wall, the light would throw a shadow on the wall to one side like it did before -- it's a basic line from the source to the subject to the wall so this isn't hard to predict.

 

Lights create shadows, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. If a person is next to a wall, they will naturally cast a shadow on it unless the light is extremely flat, frontal, and soft. The problem here is that it is a hard shadow because it is a small light so unless you can start working with bigger softer sources creating softer shadows, at best you can just get that shadow to fall elsewhere, like lower by raising the light higher, more behind the subject by getting the light behind and above the camera lens, or more to one side by bringing the light even farther from the camera to side-light the subject.

 

But the biggest problem here is the white wall. There is nothing harder than lighting people against a white wall, which is why cinematographers try to avoid it. At least you can try to get the subject farther from the wall so their shadows are less likely to be seen. Or use softer light to get softer shadows on the wall.

 

I think this 2 LED lighting package is also the problem, they seem like very small LED's. Are they 1'x1' LitePanels or even smaller?

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As you can tell from the photo, those lights are basically just for onboard fill, they aren't really designed for anything more elaborate... though could be used in unusual ways in unusual circumstances -- I own one like that, the LitePanels Micro, and just use it on the camera for an eyelight, especially on a long Steadicam shot, but I've also taped it up and hidden it in sets for various reasons, or used it in a car as a dashboard light.

 

But for basic key lighting, they are a bit small, to fill a 4'x4' diffusion frame or to bounce them into a 4'x4' beadboard as a key, not fill, I'd probably have to bunch some together.

 

I'd consider at least getting a large paper lantern as a soft light.

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