lighting Nude Scene Lighting

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This is a wonderful photo I took of my bare living room. As you can see it has two stain glass windows on either side of the fireplace.

What I'd love to do is have light streaming in on the left with the actress standing in front of the fireplace. So, she'll be shot through the sun flooding in through the window. The problem is, the sun doesn't really hit that side of the house all that well.

I have one of those large dual outdoor flood lights from Home Depot. Will that create enough light to make it seem like the sun is shining through? Also, will artificial light give that sun ray effect through a window?
 
I'm trying to visualize what you're intending. I'm guessing you don't mean she's lit by the light from the stained glass window, but from one that is offscreen left.

You have a couple of issues that I can see: one is the brightness of the light source and the other is the color temperature of the sunlight versus that of the incandescent. I had a similar situation with my film, so I'll tailor my solution to your situation.

First, shoot at night. This sounds counter-intuitive, but stick with me.

Ideally, you'll need at least 4 artificial light sources. Place your brightest source so it's shining through the window onto your actor. This will be your key light. Place it high up so it approximates the angle of the sun. If shadows will not be visible in the shot you can use both heads on your work light. If shadows are visible, use only one.

Place a second and third source behind each of the stained glass windows, shining toward camera. You'll need to hang diffusion over the outside of the stained glass in order to spread the light evenly across them. If you don't have diffusion, tear an old, white bed sheet in half and cover the windows with that.

Set your exposure for the key light, and back off the stained glass lights until the exposure of all the sources match.

Finally, get a cheap china ball lamp or two and hang them off camera to cut down on the contrast in the room.

This way you don't have to worry about matching color temperatures. As long as you white balance the camera for tungsten, it won't be obvious that it isn't sunlight.
 
If you can beg/borrow/steal them, a couple of 1K longnose PAR64 would be ideal for those very narrow windows - I think the dual head worklights will waste a lot of power by spreading light around the surrounding wall. You can pick the PAR cans up on eBay for £20/30 a piece, and just need to add a bulb. Use these and a tiny bit of haze and you'll have light that streams through the windows rather than just lighting them up.
 
I have one of those large dual outdoor flood lights from Home Depot. Will that create enough light to make it seem like the sun is shining through? Also, will artificial light give that sun ray effect through a window?
Of course nothing will beat setting the light outside, turning it
on and looking at the results. But I think there won't be enough
light to get the effect you're looking for. Shooting at night is
excellent advice - you can control the ambient light better.

To get the rays you need smoke in the room. What our eyes see
is the very fine dust that is always present - what the camera
needs is larger particles. A "hazer" is what you really need. I'm
sure there is a good DYI method but renting one of these units
is usually so inexpensive and works so well that's what I do.

Of course if you can afford the rental, a 5k with an amber gel will
do the trick quickly.
 
To get the rays you need smoke in the room. What our eyes see
is the very fine dust that is always present - what the camera
needs is larger particles.

Yes, this is a nice effect. I use it a lot, as you can see in this shot:

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The whole room is smoked, but it's only really visible in the light beams.


Of course if you can afford the rental, a 5k with an amber gel will
do the trick quickly.

Do you mean a CTB gel? An HMI would do nicely as well. :cool:
 
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