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Shooting LED billboard
I recently shot footage of an advertisement on a very large LED billboard. I showed up to the gig to find that the video image was mostly a completely white background, with some images and text in black and color. I recorded the images as best I could, but the detail in the text and images (since the detailing was quite fine) was totally blown out by the surrounding bright white light of the background. I’ve been asked to go back and reshoot the billboards, and was hoping someone could advise me about how best to capture the bright white background without losing the detail in the text to glare etc. I thought possibly some kind of lens filter to bring down the whites?
Thanks,
tk -
10 Replies
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What camera are you using. Can you set zebras on it? Can you get your hands on a waveform monitor?
John
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Yes, although I’ve never used one.
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Am using HVX200
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HVX won’t help you much in that case- you’d want a monitor with a built-in waveform/vectorscope. Also having some control over the contrast and brightness of the LED billboard would be ideal. Otherwise, don’t expect miracles.
Noah
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I’d also put some additional filters in feint of lens.
Richard M. Harrington, PMP
Author: Photoshop for Video, Understanding Adobe Photoshop, Final Cut Studio On the Spot and ATS:iWork
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I agree. A soft contrast filter should help you.
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Can you link to a video still of what you see?
Also, if you can do a locked off camera position, shoot the screen with several exposures (bracketing) and see if the editor can help with combining the best of the various combination’s.
Marion Laney
Director-DP-sometimes Editor
ideaWercs, inc.
Atlanta, Ga. USA
Producing in HD&35mm&SD
Food Network series “Good Eats” and others. -
I second the LowCon filter. It should help but under exposing will probably be the way to go in any case.
Marion Laney
Director-DP-sometimes Editor
ideaWercs, inc.
Atlanta, Ga. USA
Producing in HD&35mm&SD
Food Network series “Good Eats” and others. -
Thanks everyone for your suggestions. I shot a test using an roscoe ND gel over the lens (.9 around 2pm and .6 towards the end of day) and it worked really well. I should probably find a more optically sound permanent solution, but it was okay for now.
Thanks again!
tk -
ND doesn’t seem like it would do much to me other than give you more latitude on the iris. My first thought and someone mentioned it already is shoot your shots twice at different iris settings and mask it in post.
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