Hard Lighting

[Gregormannschaft]

Lighting, my achilles heel and something I really need to work on. SO, I've got a client who has requested a hard light look for a corporate interview shoot. The only thing is, their office has a ton of natural light and is surrounded on two sides by windows. It's lovely, but I'm not sure how to create that hard light look they're after in such a well-lit environment. Would anyone have any tips at this stage?

My gut says, light the subjects extremely brightly and then expose for that in camera, so that the usually light office environment looks like it's in the shade. I'm also very used to working with LED panels and I feel like at some point it might be time to take the step up to more complex lighting systems. 

Any help is hugely appreciated!

p.s We should really have a go-to 'Lighting' topic.

[andy lee]

The cheap easy option is un diffused red heads lamps and put black bin liners on the windows to block out the sunlight

[Tim Sewell]

Or a couple of un-diffused blondes sufficiently close to the talent that your exposure can let the daylight-lit office take care of itself.

[webrunner5]

Wow, "extremely brightly" sounds like a blowout from hell on their faces. You are going to have to diffuse it a little somehow, maybe move them way back, or your sensor is going to go into meltdown LoL.

Naked light sources on a face, ahh I don't think that is a plan. You are going to have to have a camera like a Arri to handle the DR.

Try this website for some good suggestions. About the eaisest page I have found to see differnet looks that work.

https://postimg.org/image/c3e3dnmht/

[j-oc]

You don't mention whether or not you want the windows in shot whilst you light the talent with hard light. If you don't, then simply close the curtains, hang a drape over it, or use bin bags and you are good to go. If you do need them in shot then buy a roll of neutral density gel from a theatre lighting place and tape or blu  tack over the windows it in order to bring the level down to the point where your hard lights are the dominant source.

ND gel is cheap and reusable. I once wanted to buy a sheet (I design lighting for dance and theatre) but ordered a roll by mistake. It was so useful I kept it.

 

[jonpais]

Shoot in the early morning or late evening?  

[TheRenaissanceMan]

Can you pin down exactly what they mean by "hard light look"? Do they mean gritty with lots of contrast? High key? 

If it's what I'm thinking of, you could cover all the windows except one, then use that as a hot edge and gel a softer source (1/2 CTB should be fine) from the opposite side as your key. Or vice versa, depending how the ratios work out. Then some negative fill on the down side of the face. Should give you something like this. 

I would avoid undiffused redheads/blondes. They tend to have hot spots and an uneven spread, and are therefore not controllable enough to use directly on talent IMO. Better off using a fresnel with Hollywood Frost or a couple sheets of Opal.

[Davey]

1 hour ago, webrunner5 said:

Wow, "extremely brightly" sounds like a blowout from hell on their faces. You are going to have to diffuse it a little somehow, maybe move them way back, or your sensor is going to go into meltdown LoL.

Naked light sources on a face, ahh I don't think that is a plan. You are going to have to have a camera like a Arri to handle the DR.

Try this website for some good suggestions. About the eaisest page I have found to see differnet looks that work.

https://postimg.org/image/c3e3dnmht/

Thanks for sharing this. That will save me a tonne of time when I finally get around to using lights for the first time (probably this summer when doing interviews). I've watched a few videos on the subject but it's far easier just to look at that one single page.

Still pictures cannot waffle.

[jonpais]

22 minutes ago, Davey said:

Thanks for sharing this. That will save me a tonne of time when I finally get around to using lights for the first time (probably this summer when doing interviews). I've watched a few videos on the subject but it's far easier just to look at that one single page.

Still pictures cannot waffle.

I put an order in for some LED lighting for video, my very first. I'll be getting Chinese versions of some popular Fotodiox models for vlogging, short films and possibly some pinups. A while back, Dave Dugdale did a review of these lights and said they were virtually identical to Fotodiox, except for the price. I'd wanted to get Aputure lighting, but they're not available here, and they cost a small fortune anyway.

[Davey]

Cheers, just bookmarked his review.

[TheRenaissanceMan]

1 hour ago, jonpais said:

I'd wanted to get Aputure lighting, but they're not available here, and they cost a small fortune anyway.

Lol! Clearly, you haven't shopped for many lights. Aputure are dirt cheap compared to Kinos, HMIs, plasma, and most comparable LEDs.

[jcs]

1 hour ago, TheRenaissanceMan said:

Lol! Clearly, you haven't shopped for many lights. Aputure are dirt cheap compared to Kinos, HMIs, plasma, and most comparable LEDs.

It's all relative, right? Aputure Lightstorms, for example are in the high end of consumer/prosumer lights.

While there are now lots of good options for LED panels at all price ranges, I don't see many options for high CRI LED Fresnels (I have one Fiilex P360EX with a drop in Fresnel. Would love to see some variable Fresnels with more light output in the same size or slightly larger and priced to compete with Aputure (perhaps best bang for buck re:CRI and cost)).

A powerful LED Fresnel is a lot more versatile than flat LED panels (beam width and modifiers, everything from tight hard light to large area soft diffusion).

[dbp]

I just got the apurture amaran 672s (Spotlight version) with an umbrella for diffusion and their ez-box kit for the egg crate, which helps control spill quite a bit. Fairly versatile for cheap, and light quality is pretty. Doesn't have a ton of punch, though. 

[andrew berekdar]

4 hours ago, TheRenaissanceMan said:

Can you pin down exactly what they mean by "hard light look"? Do they mean gritty with lots of contrast? High key? 

If it's what I'm thinking of, you could cover all the windows except one, then use that as a hot edge and gel a softer source (1/2 CTB should be fine) from the opposite side as your key. Or vice versa, depending how the ratios work out. Then some negative fill on the down side of the face. Should give you something like this. 

I would avoid undiffused redheads/blondes. They tend to have hot spots and an uneven spread, and are therefore not controllable enough to use directly on talent IMO. Better off using a fresnel with Hollywood Frost or a couple sheets of Opal.

When you say softer source is there a particular reason you suggest tungsten & CTB through diffusion over LED or fluorescent? 

 

8 hours ago, Gregormannschaft said:

Lighting, my achilles heel and something I really need to work on. SO, I've got a client who has requested a hard light look for a corporate interview shoot. The only thing is, their office has a ton of natural light and is surrounded on two sides by windows. It's lovely, but I'm not sure how to create that hard light look they're after in such a well-lit environment. Would anyone have any tips at this stage?

My gut says, light the subjects extremely brightly and then expose for that in camera, so that the usually light office environment looks like it's in the shade. I'm also very used to working with LED panels and I feel like at some point it might be time to take the step up to more complex lighting systems. 

Any help is hugely appreciated!

p.s We should really have a go-to 'Lighting' topic.

Just a note in addition to the issues raised by others above - If you are going to use an open face tungsten lamp, be aware that if the bulb blows and the lamp is pointed at your interviewee you could have a very serious situation on your hands...

[tupp]

1 hour ago, andrew berekdar said:

Just a note in addition to the issues raised by others above - If you are going to use an open face tungsten lamp, be aware that if the bulb blows and the lamp is pointed at your interviewee you could have a very serious situation on your hands

Manufacturers in the USA have been putting protective screens over the front of their open-face halogen fixtures since the early 1990s.  This practice was mandated by a few local fire depts. (mostly SoCal) in their push for testing lab approval (ETL, UL, etc.) for filmmaking fixtures.  These protective screens are basically scrims that block 25%-or-less of the light.  To avoid liability, some lighting manufacturers (the smart ones) provide these protective screens for free, even if one has a used, out-of-warranty fixture.

 

Always use a protective screen (or some other barrier) in front of an open face halogen source.

 

In regards to the lighting needed for OP's shoot, OP needs to first determine what the client means by "hard light" (as  @TheRenaissanceMan suggested in an earlier post.  A lot of folks confuse "spot lighting" with "hard" light, and those two lighting conditions are not necessarily the same.  (In fact, the "spot" setting on most focusable fixtures is actually softer than the "flood" setting.)  Also, many confuse "contrasty" lighting with "hard" lighting.

 

It would probably best to get the client to link an example of what he/she wants.

[jcs]

The difference between hard and soft lighting is simple: diffusion, or not, and how much (shadow edges hard or soft/diffuse). A point light source is a perfect hard light with little or no visible diffusion: very crisp shadow edges. Being inside a glowing perfect sphere is perfect diffusion (actually, if the sphere was filled with glowing plasma, that would eliminate all shadows :)). A formula: a single point source is hard, add more sources to get more diffusion (or bounce/shoot-through (fabric etc.) to make a larger source, also known as increasing light wrap. http://www.canvaspress.com/focal-point/article/2014/06/19/hard-light-vs-soft-light/

[scotchtape]

If you want to try cheap LED fresnels there's a few options:

- Godox SL series (unsure of actual CRI values), must buy fresnel attachment like Nanguang NG-10X or Aputure fresnel.

- The similar model is Jinbei EF series (I think they have lower CRI though)

- Nanguang CN series

- More expensive = Rayzr 7 

- Smaller, cheaper, and might work if you are very close are the Came Boltzens and Fotodiox J-500

- Other stuff in UK, I'm in NA so I didn't look into them like the intellitech or whatever.

 

I am taking a chance on the Godox series because they are the cheapest lux per $.  But you have to mod them by replacing fan because it's relatively loud.  Hopefully someone will measure the actual CRI and TLCI at some point.  I am waiting to find a good deal on a spectrometer.

 

The Boltzens stats also seem very competitive so look into those too, but I am not sure how they measured the lux values, it seems to be an open face measurement.  If so when spotted down should be really bright.  The Fotodiox seems to be very weak based on their stats.

 

All you need is a point light source.  Even a small LED panel casts some pretty harsh shadows if you put it more than a few feet away from subject, but they usually have low output and can't compete with ambient.  The monolight design with reflector also works if you don't want to get the fresnel attachment, but the fresnel really helps focus the light and boost output when spotted down.

[Gregormannschaft]

Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to reply here, it's a massive help. The office is a very open plan working environment, so completely blacking out the windows is unfortunately not a possibility. The good news is that the windows won't necessarily be in the shot, so I think what we will aim to do is use the closest window as the key light and boost that light with a couple of  LEDS fresnels behind a big softbox. I think that should work.

The client has also requested that the kind of light you get at the end of the day, just before sunset, is replicated which I'm thinking won't be possible. Especially given that we are a very small team of two, with the second guy handling the sound.

[jcs]

22 minutes ago, Gregormannschaft said:

The client has also requested that the kind of light you get at the end of the day, just before sunset, is replicated which I'm thinking won't be possible. Especially given that we are a very small team of two, with the second guy handling the sound.

'Light at end of the day' is Golden Hour. That's low color temp (orange/golden), super-diffuse light. Is this for a separate shot, because that's the opposite of a point light source (hard light). If they want hard orange light, that's easy- use a point source and set WB (or change in post).

[Gregormannschaft]

44 minutes ago, jcs said:

'Light at end of the day' is Golden Hour. That's low color temp (orange/golden), super-diffuse light. Is this for a separate shot, because that's the opposite of a point light source (hard light). If they want hard orange light, that's easy- use a point source and set WB (or change in post).

I think the low sun at this time of day created some harsh shadows in the office, and from the test footage we showed them they liked this look. So harsh shadows, for them, is good.