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Took me 4 years to realize I was setting up my key light all wrong in Arizona sun
I used to always blast my key light as bright as I could, thinking it would fix the harsh desert shadows outside. Then I shot a realtor video in Scottsdale last month where the house had these massive windows and the sun was blasting through at noon. Instead of fighting it, I matched my light temp to 5500K and dialed it way down, just using it to fill the dark side of the face. The footage looked so natural I actually thought my camera was broken at first. Has anyone else found that less artificial light works better than more in the middle of the day?
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the_shane9d ago
I read this thing from a DP I follow where he said "the sun is the star and you're just the best boy" and it totally clicked for me. Matching the color temp like you did is the secret sauce. I tried blasting a 3200K light into fill a few years back in Phoenix and it looked like a cheap news report. That natural look you got sounds way more pro.
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the sun is the star and you're just the best boy" - man, that's going in my saved quotes. I had a similar wake-up call about two years ago when I was fighting the sun with a 3200K light at a wedding in Phoenix. The groom looked like he was being interviewed for a missing persons report. I seriously thought I was doing something smart by overpowering the sun with brightness, but all I did was make everyone look like they had a bad spray tan. Now I just take whatever the sun gives me and only use a tiny bit of fill light at the right temp. My camera still confuses me sometimes though, that part hasn't changed.
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