Lights for outside shooting

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If you're planning a daylight exterior, a 650w fresnel is going to be nowhere near enough. You have two factors to overcome: the brightness of the sun and (assuming you're shooting in colour) colour temperature. Even without the second factor, a 650w fresnel isn't going to make a smidge of difference in bright summery weather. Stick a Full CTB gel on it so it's the same colour as sunlight, and you'll lose almost two stops - around 70% of the light. You'll have a perfectly matched light, but one giving out less than 200w equivalent. That's not to say tungsten lights with Full CTB are completely useless outside - I've often used a 2000w open face lamp with CTB as a backlight or kicker, and on particularly dull days as a key light, but for the most part it's not going to be enough.

Given the question you're asking it's probably fair to assume you haven't got the budget for HMIs - but please correct me if I'm wrong. I think your best option would be bounce, and lots of it. Get your hands on anything white or shiny; I've used polystyrene, mirrors, tinfoil, bed sheets, painted wood… every one of them has a different texture and gives off a slightly different light. The only way you'll be able to overpower the sun on a low budget is by using the sun itself, and with a little know how and experimentation you can get some pretty good results.
 
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chilipie said:
I've often used a 2000w open face lamp with CTB as a backlight or kicker, and on particularly dull days as a key light
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Heh, I did that for one shot with my Mole Junior 2K fresnel on full spot. Actor was in the shade of a building against a full sky background, no way to bounce. Nearly melted the poor guy's face off. :lol:
 
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Really appreciate your replies guys. I have both night and day shoots.
chilipie my plan was to bounce the light in case I had enough day light to make the shoot work, if it's cloudy I would probably have to use artificial light, but from what you are saying 650W fresnels would be useless on this scenario, so from what you are saying I either have the budget (that I don't) to simulate the sun light, and that would take a lot of power, or I would just wait for a sunny day and bounce the light.

I'm also interested to know how you guys are using artificial lighting in a daylight outdoors situation, are you using it to compensate for lack of sunlight, or for something else?

For the night shoot, I need to light the talent but at the same time give not expose them too much to keep the scene dark, in this situation those 650W would work perfectly I assume?
 
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