I'm shooting an apartment indoors with 16mm film, B&W. I have a lot of experience in photography so I'm good with exposure, but not too much experience setting up lights. I'm contemplating 2 different styles of light.
1) Ambient: There's one window in the room. I could expose the normal light level in the room for middle gray and blow out the window (as a highlight, not literally!). This would be a cool look, and theoretically my subject should have correct exposure. The only problem is that the sun never shines directly on the window at any point in the day, so I'm not sure how well that will light the room, and I don't want to compromise depth of field.
I was thinking, in that case, that I could use a tota light to boost the overall light level in the room, only the point of this lighting style was to get a dominant highlight from the direction of the window, and I don't want to end up with something flat.
2) Incandescent: The window shutters could be closed and the room could just be lit from incandescent lamps, etc. regardless of time of day. This could work with the character and setting too. I'm thinking about trying to put as many light sources in the shot as possible. I would like to light the set with the lights from the lamps, using minimal hot light. 500W bulbs are still 120V so I was thinking about just plugging them into the regular light sockets. Does anyone see a problem with this? Too much heat? A way around this?
Advice welcome!
1) Ambient: There's one window in the room. I could expose the normal light level in the room for middle gray and blow out the window (as a highlight, not literally!). This would be a cool look, and theoretically my subject should have correct exposure. The only problem is that the sun never shines directly on the window at any point in the day, so I'm not sure how well that will light the room, and I don't want to compromise depth of field.
I was thinking, in that case, that I could use a tota light to boost the overall light level in the room, only the point of this lighting style was to get a dominant highlight from the direction of the window, and I don't want to end up with something flat.
2) Incandescent: The window shutters could be closed and the room could just be lit from incandescent lamps, etc. regardless of time of day. This could work with the character and setting too. I'm thinking about trying to put as many light sources in the shot as possible. I would like to light the set with the lights from the lamps, using minimal hot light. 500W bulbs are still 120V so I was thinking about just plugging them into the regular light sockets. Does anyone see a problem with this? Too much heat? A way around this?
Advice welcome!