Needless to say, anyone who has shot outdoors knows that it can be very difficult to control and shape sunshine throughout the day. It takes a very powerful and expensive lighting setup to keep up with the sun; which is usually not in the budget. This month I wanted to highlight two pieces of grip gear that are relatively inexpensive to rent and are commonly used outdoors. to control sun.
First up is the shiny board, which you can see mounted on a stand behind Video Gear's inventory control manager, Nikita. There are two types of shiny boards available. The one shown behind her is the stronger of the two, just so I could demonstrate the effect more clearly. The other shiny board has more diffuse reflection and may work better in many real world cases. The reflection is sort of similar to a fold out reflector, however this can be locked in place and you don't have to worry about your grip's consistency from shot to shot. It's also easier to mount the shiny board higher up than most grips can reach. Even through it's not clearly shown, the board has a parabolic shape across the surface, so it can concentrate the reflection and throw sun rays a large distance.
The effect here is a bit over the top, but the picture is really for demonstration purposes. I was able to have Nikita face the sun and add back lighting via the shiny board. You can see the effect on the top of her head and on the right side of her hair.
Here's the same exposure and white balance without the shiny board. You can clearly see a difference with and without sun highlights on her hair. The sun had an exposure of f/22.6. Without the shiny board her back lighting measured f/8.6. With the shiny board the back lighting measured f/16.6 - a difference of 2 stops at 8 feet board-to-head, not to mention the specular highlights on her golden hair now that the back lighting is less diffuse. If she was standing further away from the shiny board the effect would have been even more pronounced because the board concentrates the reflection more as you throw it a larger distance. So user beware...you might give someone a serious sunburn if you have them stand far away. Also, you never want to use the shiny board for front fill without diffusion because it would be like looking directly into the sun! We cinematographers torture our actors enough!
Now we're going to look at the opposite situation. What if the actor is already back lit by the sun and you need frontal fill? This is what Ultra Bounce rags are made for. The bounce we have in stock is a 6x6 foot rag and I have it mounted on our Matthews 6x6 frame with two stands.
Again, the effect is a bit over the top but I wanted to demonstrate the effect. You can see the highlights in her hair from the sun, but the front fill from the Ultra Bounce is making a gradient across her face from right to left.
Here is the same exposure and white balance, but without the Ultra Bounce fill. The passive fill here was still about f/8.6. With the Ultra Bounce that was boosted to f/16 - a difference of 1.4 stops and she was standing about 5-6 feet from the frame.
So you don't *always* need a generator truck and a series of 24k HMI lights. I'm not saying this replaces the need for the big guns (gear envy drool implied), but for a lot of situations these tools are perfectly adequate and provide similar control over outdoor lighting with much quicker setup times and lower cost. What I didn't show today for brevity sake is an overhead diffusion, but I have to leave something for a future entry.
If you have questions, please call the shop. We're here to help.
