Lighting and flat space

[JWilko5588]

Hey all, i'm working on a class assignment, really my first time controlling all aspects of production. I've got a couple (pretty simple) questions, hopefully someone has some answers.

1. How exactly does one go about lighting outside during the day. How do the different lights mix, will the tungsten lights show up odd when natural light is filling the rest of the picture. Do I white balance when all lights are on?

2. Is there a different way of getting a lower depth of field other than opening the iris? I'm trying to create flat space for my characters in a park and I am having trouble keeping the subject in focus while distorting the background.

Thanks for any and all help


J

 

[knightly]

the drawback to trying to use selective focus is that you have to be concerned with focus. There's n other way to do it except to push the iris closed and shoot with super long DoF, which isn't what you're looking for.

The only way to achieve is to pull the camera away from the subjects, put the background far away from them and zoom in to your frame (the more you zoom, the blurrier the background will be, but the harder it'll be to frame them).

After a certain point (hyper focal distance), every thing beyond that distance to the lens will be in crisp focus, so you'll need to place your actors closer to the camera than that. The closer they are, the blurrier the background, but the tighter the frame will be on them.

For controlling the light outdoors, on sunny days, reflecting lights works the best, on over cast days, cutting (flagging) light works the best (In my experience).

To bounce sunlight producing a soft light, use a big white piece of foamcore or poster board. To bounce sunlight to make a hard light, spray paint the board metallic silver on one side and use that (you can warm it up by painting it metallic gold or bronze)... stretching reflective material over the bounce card works too, you can hold that on with clips or clothespins.

To flag the light, block the light, place a black piece of foamcore on the opposite side of the face you want lit.

 

[JWilko5588]

nice, thanks for the quick response.

What kind of DoF does a telephoto lens have? Could that be another alternative?

Edit: also, won't the zoom technique kill pic quality (assuming that it's going past optical into digital)?

 

[2001 Productions]

As Knightly said, the longer your focal length, the shallower your depth of field -- using a telephoto prime lens is essentially the same as using a zoom lens on its longest setting.

As for your second question, yes, digital zoom will kill your picture quality. When I buy a video camera one of the first orders of business is to disable the digital zoom and never touch it again. There should be a menu setting that allows you to do this. Digital zoom is an abomination and should be outlawed, IMHO.

 

[knightly]

hear, hear, digital zoom is evil. My little camera says it has 200x zoom, I only see 10 cause I told it never to go past its optical zoom

Work within the confines of whatever optical zoom you have. If you have no optical zoom, move really close to your subject and focus on them, that will blow the background out of focus.

 

[Cleo]

1. How exactly does one go about lighting outside during the day. How do the different lights mix, will the tungsten lights show up odd when natural light is filling the rest of the picture. Do I white balance when all lights are on?

* When lighting outside during the day try to use as little lights as possible. Don't worry so much about the light changing because that is natural and light changes during the day. When you are white balancing - leave it to be the last thing you do before you shoot. Wait until you have any lighting added and then white balance the camera , otherwise it is going to change. I would white balance only once outside. Change as I said , is Natural and will look more realistic in my opinion.

2. Is there a different way of getting a lower depth of field other than opening the iris? I'm trying to create flat space for my characters in a park and I am having trouble keeping the subject in focus while distorting the background.

Measure the distance between your subject and your camera. Adjust the focus on the lense to be the distance between the camera and the subject and then once you have pulled your background from the focus it should start to go fuzzy.

Hope this helps.

 

[Will Vincent]

I find that it's easiest to shoot outdoors on an overcast day, as the cloud cover works like a giant diffuser casting much more even light over the entire shot.

If you're shooting on a bright sunny day, you would likely benefit from hanging a butterfly over your cast. It's essentially a large framed white cloth that will diffuse the harsh sunlight. Then you can use a couple bounce cards to add back in your key and fill.

As for blurring the background. Everyone pretty much already hit on that one, but I'll reiterate it again... Set up your blocking and whatnot, then pull your camera back as far as you need to to achieve the framing you're after when zoomed in as far (optically only) as the camera will zoom -- or you could use a long lens to achieve the same result.

Another thing that will help is ND filters. If you use some nuetral density filters on your camera, it will allow you to open the iris up more without blowing the image out.

This episode of "Production Notes" covers much of the detail of achieving shallow focus pretty well. I recommend watching through all of the production notes episodes.. they are very informative.

 

[Cleo]

That is good advice about putting the butterfly over the cast. I had never thought of doing that before but will defenitely keep it in mind if anything comes up where ill run into that type of trouble.