Different Ways to Light Through a Window | Cinematography Basics
Ask your filmmaking/cinematography/lighting questions in the comments for us to answer next episode!
Lighting someone sitting next to a window might seem like the easiest thing in the world, but there are actually a lot of considerations. How hard or soft should the light be? How does time of day change how you think about light placement? Should you diffuse or reflect the light?
There's a million possibilities, especially when you have to think about the story, blocking, what you want to see in the frame, etc. Cinematographers like to get picky about these sort of details. The type of diffusion you use can reflect a lot about what your style might be. In this episode, we go into those little details and show you how each one affects the overall tone of your shot.
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0:00 - Intro
0:40 - Concept/Placing Light
3:09 - How to Read Light Meters
4:30 - Types of Diffusion
8:20 - Results
8:50 - Faking a Sunset
11:14 - Sunset Results
11:27 - Outro
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Aputure's KZhead channel provides free high quality cinematography, lighting, and filmmaking educational content to help you take your film projects to the next level.
Quick note about light meters! "Getting proper exposure" (the f-stop reading you get when you point it at a source) means the light meter is telling you what your camera needs to be set to in order to make that source middle grey. For example, if you point it at the sky, and it tells you "f/22", that means you need to set the camera to f/22 to make the sky land tonally centered between black and white. I feel like that's one of those bits of info that gets glossed over, but for newbies who don't know what "proper exposure" means, it's super confusing. Love the vids, keep em coming!
I didn't even think of balancing outside in such a way- Never used a light meter haha. I might have to invest in one and take my work more seriously. XD
And remember, your camera likely has a spot meter built right in!
@@ChonnyStone personally, I only use now the False Color mode on my monitor and it gives me a much better reading of a the scene in a second. I still think light meters are essential when working on a movie set, but for the rest of us that does tv shows, documentary and other type of work when you need to be quick, false color is the way to go for evaluating your exposure.
@@ChuckRiseUp False color is great, but many camera's don't have it built in, which is why understanding what's actually happening with a spot meter is in my opinion, more important. In both scenarios, my main point is just knowing what the monitors are actually telling you, and not just trying to make everything "correct exposure" otherwise you can end up with a very flat, contrastless image.
@@ChonnyStone but an editor uses waveforms, not false color. false color is great but nothing beats a waveform.
love your tutorials! They are a big course in filmmaking and best for the future to learn! Thanks for making these videos. Keep up the good work!
Thanks this was awesome! I think it would be cool if you could do a filming lighting setup in a small room where you are trying to not get to much spill on the back ground, but still generally soft light on your model. This seems really hard for me to get to consistently look good from place to place.
Thanks guys! A 2nd go at comparing various types of diffusion, this time with matched light levels might prove super useful. Maybe even include like output percentages you had to put the say 1200d at to compensate for the muslin vs.... From the stops lost you can calculate light levels of course but visually comparing them.. eh you know 😄
Now this is wat i call a real lesson I’ve been looking for
This was awesome guys! Thank you!
I LOVE these videos! You guys always do such a great job at capturing that family-feeling between crew on a set that I always love when I'm on a set myself. You can spend 15+ hours a day with the same team for a prolonged period of time so when everyone is getting along and joking and happy, it makes all the difference! :D
Couldn't agree more! Thanks for noticing :)
Really helpful content. Thank you guys
I missed Valentina! Always great episodes.
Impressive!!! Could you make a video about covering the scene and keeping the lighting consistent throughout the scene? Congrats from Panama 🇵🇦🎬
Very helpful videos indeed!
Thank you tor the awesome and inspiration content.
Thank YOU for watching :)
The "shine" on her face is due to the brightness of the light source, which was mentioned to be at 95%. Very bright. If you move the lamp closer, yet still out of frame, you can dial it down in brightness (inverse square law) to maybe 50%, while still being very bright bcuz it is closer, and therefor the sheen lowers, because the rag you're shooting through is now darker. The sheen problem is usually why we say something looks "sourcey". Cheers from LA!
*4:48* *that insane!!*
I like the soft frost for more detail
I'd love to see more videos about lighting artistic/trippy scenes and about making scenes feel dark without the shot being too dark, for example people walking through a cave by torchlight or an old abandoned house.
Yes! Great suggestion
thank you
Were stop loss reading taken on the day? 1/4 grid is usually around 0.5 stop loss not 2 stops. Modern Studio lists their 1/4 grid as 0.5 while Matthews lists theirs as 0.7. 1/2 grid is actually a two stop loss, and full grid is usually 2.5 or a little more. Unbleached I've always heard is about 2-2.5 stops. This is a very useful test, but it does seem like some of the readings are a bit off.
CLF, you've brought up an interesting subject. I believe that their readings were correct. The reason for the discrepancy is that their subject was a long distance away from the diffusion. When light travels through diffusion and gets scattered, it starts to fall off much quicker over distance than hard light would according to the inverse square law. The problem with diffusion manufacture's data, is there is no industry standard for what distance the before and after measurements are taken from. And that information is rarely given. I suspect that they take their measurements much closer to the diffused light - probably around 1 meter because the light loss would look much better on paper. Similar to the inverse square law, the further away from the diffusion, the greater the light loss of that diffusion compared to hard light at the same distance. To complicate things more, the size of the diffusion relative to the metering point also makes a difference. A fully lit larger sized diffusion frame at the same distance as a smaller diffusion frame (of the same material) will yield more light even though the density of the material is the same. So there is no easy way to calculate light loss because it depends on these two factors. You can use manufacturer published data only as a relative comparison between diffusion types. Best strategy with big soft sources, have more lights and larger lights than you think you need. See my comments above for more info.
@@randolphsellars462 these are really good points. You also have to factor in other things like the “grid” in the grid diffusions theoretically focuses the light a bit more than something like Muslin, which if true would affect the stop loss as well when doing a comparison. There’s also the factor of how close you put a diffusion to the light. I’ve found that if you put the diffusion close up to the light you lose far less stop than if you had brought the diffusion farther away (both circumstances the light is the same distance from camera/subject). In this test they had the light backed off a lot so they really needed a 4K or even an M90 to get away with using such high density diffusions. So you’re definitely correct. There are lots of variables here.
Great video Wouldn't have minded a mention of diffusion from various companies like Lee (216 ect). They are really important depending on where in the world you're working and with which company. But I guess an Aputure channel can't cover other companies.
We cover using gels from Lee all the time in previous episodes!
@@aputurelighting Ah sorry. This is my first, I'll defo check them out.
Great stuff! Question..at 8:44 when you show the 5 shot comparison. On the far right, it says"exposure boosted +5". Does that mean the light sources create that +5? Trying to understand it all. Can't touch iso because you're set at native. Shutter angle is 180 as rule of thumb. And aperture is probably 2.8ish...is that correct?
I'd like to add some ideas on how they could have achieved a better soft ambient look on the subject by making some different choices. I don't mean to be critical or disrespectful - just trying to educate viewers. In my opinion, the first mistake was that the 12 x 12 diffusion was too big for only 1 - 1200D light. A lot of the 12 x 12 was wasted because the beam could not fill the entire diffusion. Second, the diffusion was too far away from the window and the subject for just one light. After light goes through diffusion, it will fall off much quicker than a hard light. In the current set up, the diffused soft light had to travel too far, that's why they were fighting exposure when using the muslin. Also the muslin was just too thick for just one light at the right distance for optimum spread. When they moved the light closer, only a small part of the muslin was lit which actually lowers the light output because the effective soft source is now too small. They compounded the problem by adding CTO gel which took away another stop of light. They would have been better off manually increasing the K color temperature in camera to achieve the desired warmth. With only one 1200D light, they would have been better off using an 8 x 8 poly silk or full grid cloth as close to the window as possible and moving the 1200D closer but still filling most of the diffusion with the beam spread. That would create a larger source relative to the subject - yielding a more soft wrap and more illumination. Or the 12 x 12 could have been T boned off the top pipe to fit underneath the eve to get closer to the window. Same result. If more softness was still desired, a 4 x 4 frame of opal frost or 216 could be placed close to the subject inside the window. The reason the light looked too "sourcey" when the reflector was used was because the size of the reflector was too small relative to the subject and the surface a little too shinny which focused the light rather than scatter it. Remember, softness is affected by size relative to the subject. A better bounce strategy would be an 8 x 8 ultrabounce or 4 x8 foam core (2nd choice) close to the window but allowing enough room to fully light up from the side or below. This would require two lights or more to get maximum spread on the bounce from that close distance away from the lights.
🔥🔥🔥
You could do a detailed video about using the lightmeter.
Yes! There's so much to cover with one
Unbleached muslin also unbalanced the tint towards green, it seems
Was this shoot specifically for demonstration or are you showing bts of another show? I’m curious how long this video took to make.
Question: What about fire retardancy home depot sheers vs. rental ones? Do rental companies care about that (on set use)?
How to create contrast in different places and move away from 3 point lighting only
Could you do a tutorial on how to deal with very limited space?
Great idea! We often deal with those all the time
Why reupload ?
We had to fix some erroneous titles during the diffusion segment, which was critical to the education
Damn I gotta get a permit to film myself by myself in my driveway now.
Yeah you do 😂
Can you go into more depth about modifiers
Quick question. If the entire shoot takes place during the day on private property with permission from the owner do you really need a permit? As long as you dont exceed any limits regarding noise there can't be anything annoyed neighbors can do, right?
Good question. The neighbors still have the option to call law enforcement to inquire about your production for a whole host of other reasons besides noise, like parking in front of other houses, crew loitering in the street, and even staging equipment in the yard in a way that looks unsightly to the neighbors. If you feel like you need to protect your production against any of those elements, then you'll need a permit.
@@aputurelighting Thanks. Some of the rules might be different here in The Netherlands because neighbors don't have a legal foot to stand on as far as on the street parking or unsightly looks go. But its good to know what could happen if i ever where to shoot in America.
How to set contrast ratio detailed video
can all of the diffusion material used here can also be used as bounce material ? someone please answer ?
yes but also no...in simple terms, the less light it allows while shooting through, the better it'll be a reflecting light. The super thin material will reflect but very little as most of it is going through the material. Obviously darker materials won't reflect and if you use, say, a light brown material, it will reflect some but at a much warmer tone than say white.
This was already uploaded
@ 1:44--1:54 your fly is down.
how to draw Lighting diagram
That zipper hanging on for dear life
👍👍👍
1:45 your zip is down
Y’all hiring?
You look too bright greater than the light 💡😘
Take your mask off...
american detected opinion rejected
Why?
@@braigbrothers bc it does not help anything.