One of the great things about shooting video with a DSLR camera is that you can capture great images in much lower light than regular video camcorders. That doesn’t mean you shoot in the dark just for fun, it means you can use more subtle light and create images that are more intriguing.
Here are some tips to help you learn to do this.
A recent article on dv.com documents a low budget shoot where the lighting shifted radically during the production in an apartment. The sun was up and flowing through the windows when they started but it was pretty dark outside by the time they were finished.
Unfortunately, the scene they were shooting was supposed to take place in a fairly short period of time. The lighting needed to be consistent through the entire scene.
It always takes longer to shoot a scene that the scene takes to watch in real life. If you’re shooting where the sun is a factor you have to find ways to deal with this situation. If you’re indoors, like in this example, it’s much easier to handle the changing light than if you’re on a full outdoor set.
The scene was being shot on a Canon 7D so shooting in low light was no problem. Simulating the sunlight was another issue.
As the article details, the most important thing is to have a clear idea of where the sun should be in all the shots. Sunlight is almost always the strongest light in the frame and everyone will notice if the sun suddenly shifts from one side to the other or if the color or angle of the sun light shifts between cuts.
You can always grab a quick still of the first setup and use that as a base line for the lighting. You can also make a lighting diagram or even play back a clip for comparison. The closer you get all the shots to match the same lighting, the easier time you’ll have in post production.
Another great thing about simulating sunlight indoors is that the light is rarely direct in the scene. The sun bounces off walls, floors and ceilings. It comes through drapes or curtains and gets filtered by plants and trees outside of windows.
Rather than a standard three-point lighting with the lights directly hitting the subject, you can simulate the effects of sunlight with bounce boards or by bouncing light off of existing walls.
Finally, there is always a color difference between sunlight and electric lights inside a room. You can use gels and filters on the lights to reproduce the difference in the color temperatures. But the interesting thing is to go against reality and make the sunlight warmer than the indoor light.
Subjectively we all think of sunlight as a warm golden glow when it’s actually much more blue than the typical light bulb. Notice the shot above, though, and you’ll see it look more like sunlight because it’s so warm. Remember, this is art, not a physics demonstration!
Take a moment and read the whole article, it’s worth absorbing how they solved the problem of fading daylight and turned it to their advantage.
http://www.dv.com/article/92462
