Lighting – basic question

[Ben DeJong]

Total noob lighting question: I am shooting a podcast in a small space where the a wall opposite the subject and one on the side are floor to ceiling windows to natural sunlight. If I measure the natural light coming in the room as 5000K and set the spots and fill lighting to 5000K, then can I set the white balance on my camera to 5000K and be confident this scene will look correct, or am I not taking something into consideration to improve the scene? Note: the environment (background etc..) are warmer tones but I just want true colors overall.

[Mark Suszko]

Getting everything at the same color temp will make life easier. Sometimes we want a particular aesthetic, like the rainy day or day for night scenes, where we want it bluer on purpose… or to make certain items in a scene “pop” and so sometimes a lighting director or DOP deliberately doesn’t correct one or more sources, or tricks the balance with a shader card… but that’s more advanced kind of lighting design; you might want to work up to that later.

The other important thing for you right now besides color temp is to balance contrast ratios – the relative brightness of things in the scene – to direct the eye where you want it. Everything at the same average brightness level is boring. You use cutters, barn doors, negative fill boards or curtains, bounce cards/reflectors, and layers of diffusion to shape the light you have on the scene. You might make the light a little stronger and harder on one side of a face, the key light side to help give its shape more definition. Then you add some softer light on the opposite “fill” side, to moderate it. Your back light or rim light acts to help cut the talent apart from the background and give a more 3-d feel to a scene. Lowell lighting used to have an interactive demo studio online to show you how the scene changes with placement and intensity of lights. Here’s a link to a non-interactive grab from it, if you can find the actual interactive site, post the link here as well, please.

https://tiffen.reamaze.com/kb/lowel-guides/components-of-interview-lighting

[Ben DeJong]

Thanks Mark! That is good info.