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How to mimic low light?
You know when your watching a movie and you see a part where a person is in their house at night or when they are walking around in moon light? How does one mimic that lighting and make it look real? And how would you expose for it? What I mean is if I where to try to expose for it I would with my digital camera expose for the highlights. But if you do that wouldn't you ruin the low light look? So how would you expose it and not have an over exposed look or an underexpose look? And what type of ratio would you suggest? 16:1? Dec 31 07 11:45 am Link Based on your description, I believe you've got to spot meter the scene and light the model and background separately. I don't think a simple ratio will work. Alternatly you can light the model and observe the falloff from the foreground lighting. If you arrange it, then the decreasing light intensity in the background will be satisfactory, but you'll have to deal with the shadows cast by the subject. So you've got to look at each scene separately and deal with the issues at the time. Dec 31 07 12:04 pm Link You mean like this? I am not sure what you mean exactly. http://bypassthesystem.net/images/A_1/3 … 006-1A.jpg Dec 31 07 12:55 pm Link Curious my self, when i adjust aperature it overexposes and looses all the "night time" look. I shot a photo at 11:45pm and it turned out looking like I shot it at noon lol Dec 31 07 01:00 pm Link Patrickth wrote: Wonderful photo Dec 31 07 01:03 pm Link you have something like a dynamic range of 5 stops, maybe a slight bit more. not sure what you are asking though. pick something in the photo you want at a certain tonality and meter to make it that way. if you pick medium tome you have just about 2 stops available on either side of that. Dec 31 07 01:07 pm Link IrishOne wrote: Thank you. Hand held, 400 asa with a rangefinder. But I am not sure it answers the OPs question. Dec 31 07 01:09 pm Link Jeremy Brotherton wrote: do digital cameras come with LCDs on the back, Dec 31 07 01:12 pm Link i have been doing this, metering of the light (hot spot) and the darkest area I want detail and then snapping +/- 2 f stops between the mean of the two. I have been getting okay results and been able to hand hold dark shots and still get sharp detail. You would not beleive how often i will turn all the lights out and just show a candle or a night light  Dec 31 07 01:15 pm Link Patrickth wrote: Hum no more like this. Dec 31 07 01:21 pm Link Jeremy Brotherton wrote: I only saw one of the above that looked like you could actually light it for a camera and that is the one on the balcony. You have either to feather light into the dark area or light it all dark and feather more light on the sweetspot/subject. Dec 31 07 01:28 pm Link Gell your lights with a blue tint, seriously Dec 31 07 01:31 pm Link In most of the pics it looks like they are using blue gels on the background and fill lights. also main light on subject is very soft but without the blue gel to keep the highlights clean. exposure is a little on the dark side only enough to capture a few highlights hope this helps Dec 31 07 01:34 pm Link Hmm....the examples you give do not remind me of night shots..... I do a lot of night photography. The way I accomplish most of it is by time exposing the background so that it's about where I want it and then illuminate my foreground subject(s) with strobes that have snoots, honeycombs and/or some kind of directional lighting apparatus on them so as to only illuminate them directly (and not the background). The trick to this is sometimes referred to as a "rear curtain flash" - triggering the strobes right at the very end of the time exposure. You can sometimes use gels, too, to give you different feels to the foreground subjects. -R Dec 31 07 01:38 pm Link M Sebastian wrote: or set you camera WB to tungsten and shoot with daylight or flash Dec 31 07 01:44 pm Link Rowen wrote: I am going to be using that technique on a model in two weeks. Later in the evening than when this was taken, but will wait til end then hand fire a flash. Dec 31 07 01:45 pm Link RMichaels wrote: He could also shoot in shade with a uv filter and no flash. It would give him a succinctly bluish/dark effect. Dec 31 07 01:46 pm Link What I see mostly when watching 'night' or 'evening' scenes in movies is that the exposure on the actors' faces is a couple of stops below what it would be for a 'daylight' shot and the backgrounds are a bit darker than that, but there are also often elements in the background that are bright - eg. street lamps, reflections on water or from glass etc. - to make it clear to the viewer that the scene is supposed to look dark rather than just being underexposed. Your first example is a good one for this. They have also used blue gels too, which I personally find cheesy and too obvious, but clearly not everybody who goes to the movies is looking at the lighting 'tricks' quite this critically...  Dec 31 07 01:47 pm Link In film this is call shooting âDay for Nightâ and is done all the time. Do a search for a more detailed explanation. Simply put, the scene is over lit to balance out and over power the daylight somewhat and slightly underexposed. Color balance on the cooler side. Correct skin tones by applying warming gels to compensate the lighting of the subjects if need be. Dec 31 07 01:53 pm Link  Strong rim/hair light, wider ratio on the face and front of the model, underexpose most of face, darken background. For outside make the background blue. For day for night shooting, set camera for incandescent lighting, light front of the subject with incandescent light or put warming gel over strobe, background will turn blue. Dec 31 07 02:04 pm Link Is this sort of what you're talking about? I did this image with a bare bulb strobe to better simulate the point source nature of the moon; the strobe was shot through a cookie made to look like a window (there are better examples of this on my profile page). I could have made the shot a bit cooler in color temperature, but preferred it as is. I metered at the model's face closest to the light. The light fall off did the rest.  Dec 31 07 04:30 pm Link criderphotography wrote: Yes a lot like this. Thank you. Dec 31 07 04:52 pm Link criderphotography wrote: Jeremy Brotherton wrote: Wow. I was imagining you were asking something different. More noir. Dec 31 07 04:58 pm Link No gels, here, just judicious balance of power in the lighting.  Dec 31 07 04:59 pm Link Google cinematography day for night You'll find tons of stuff. The movie "Jennifer 8" broke new ground in low-light cinematography, so try to find something on that. Cinematographers live for this shit. Dec 31 07 05:01 pm Link c_d_s wrote: For the win! Dec 31 07 06:53 pm Link I think that what makes most night images look like night is that the lights are on and are sthe brightest part of the sceen. Along with the lights come their colors as they are depicted on film or a chip. Long exposures often show mothion and have a blue tint where there are no artificial lights. When the lights come on some normal relationships are reversed. For ex the sky is often darker than things on the ground and the insides of buildings are brighter than the outside, head and tail lights become the brightest areas of a car, etc. Most night pictures are pretty dark except for the lights and pretty contrasty, lots of darks and lights but few mid tones. To mimic that look you need to literaly re-create it with lights and not so much with photoshop. For exposures just start with n-1 and adjust your lighting until it looks close on your dig cam, and then bracket so you can cut and paste varius parts together later if necessary but don't plan on that from the beginning. The criderphotography image above is beautiful. I have low light examples here: http://phcdesigns.com/imgMonthly/imgMonthly.html http://phcdesigns.com/photographyPage/photography.html http://phcdesigns.com/galleryIndexPage/ … exPhc.html http://phcdesigns.com/whatsNewPage/whatsNewPhc.html Dec 31 07 07:04 pm Link shoot a normal image, works best if there is high contrast, then run a midnight blue action. Dec 31 07 10:28 pm Link Jeremy Brotherton wrote: You may want to check out the link that follows from Strobist. Might be what you're looking for. Dec 31 07 10:33 pm Link I did these:  By setting my lights up to a f/11 setting & shooting @ f/18 Paul Dec 31 07 10:44 pm Link Beautiful shot!! criderphotography wrote: Dec 31 07 10:53 pm Link Paul Brecht wrote: I can't believe that no one gets that what the light meter says, might not be the right exposure for the situation. Dec 31 07 10:56 pm Link criderphotography wrote: Great job, I like this a lot for the effect that was asked about. Dec 31 07 11:01 pm Link As others have said, look into cinematography, it's certainly what I live for. That said, day for night rarely looks good, at least outdoors. The shot above is very nice, but it is a studio shot. Outdoors the solution is to shoot at night, and bring a lot of light with you. You'll still have to light your set and models/actors however you will have a believable background. Jan 01 08 05:14 am Link criderphotography wrote: Very nice. I wouldn't have gone cooler. I feel that is a mistake a lot of young cinematographers make. Yes the night light is cooler, but our eyes adjust for white balance, we still, for the most part, see white as white - not completely, but pretty well. So, what you're going for is a blend of fantasy and reality to communicate mood to the viewer. I think you achieved a nice balance of the two in this shot. It's moody and stylized, yet her skin tones are still within reason and your highlights on the fabric and shirt are still rendering almost white (not by the numbers, but by the overall "look"). Jan 01 08 05:18 am Link Thank you everyone for taking the time to help me and for your suggestions.  Jan 01 08 07:19 am Link I was told the old movies used to USE TUNGSTEN BALANCED FILM and UNDEREXPOSE 1 STOP. and I agree with the the meter may not give you what you want to expose for. I have a bunch of people in my classes who cannot get that through their heads. "The meter says f/11!"...... "that's not what I'm metering for, I want the other side of the face to go black".... "but the meter says 11!".........."Then let me ruin my own shot and leave me alone" that's how it goes many times. Jan 01 08 01:24 pm Link Chip Willis wrote:
Jan 01 08 01:47 pm Link Jeremy Brotherton wrote: kino flow Jan 02 08 03:15 am Link KARLOS MATTHEWS wrote: Could you go into more details please? Like what is Kink Flow and Arri HMI? Jan 02 08 11:01 am Link |
