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Day for Night

S

Simon J Reilly

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Hi
I have a day for Night shoot coming up, and I am wondering the best procedure to achieve this.
Shoot will be later afternoon, 4.30 LA time. In a graveyard.
Should I just shoot normal. and do all the conversion in Post .
Or should I shoot under exposed to bring down my highlights.

thanks in advance
 
Tiffen Day for night filter works a treat. '

Just try and avoid hard shadows from the sun on the ground and scrim as much hard sunlight as you can.
 
Always get your exposure correct and block the scene in the most evenly lit area as possible. Controlling the light is key, so make sure any highlights are motivated by the scene: lamps, flashlights, or even a bright moon are all possibilities.

Depending on the look you want, you could tint blue in post or shoot it practically as close to what you want using blue ND-filters.
 
just get a fat negative without filters and do whatever you need in post... that's what i'd do...personally
 
also avoid the sky in your background if you can help it, or you may have to mask it out later. My bet is that unless it is overcast it is going to be extremely bright.
 
No sky, backlight... no front light. Negative fill. Shoot after sunset. Crash ND grads into your frame. Get deep exposer so you can really step on it in post
 
I'm curious why the shadows might be a problem ?
The moon is the same size as the sun, just not as bright and different color, no ?

Simon J Reilly said:
Thanks Adam , Doug


Totally forgot about shadows !
Night for day filter or Blues filter.
I am wondering if I crank down the color temp
would that give me more flexibility than using a filter
Click to expand...
 
take some test shots with your dslr/iphone/compact camera and bring it into photoshop (stills are fine) - videos in after fx might give you a better idea of how much post work might be involved in some types of shots. i would mostly shoot normally, and unless you fall in love with the filtered look i may avoid that. you may want an nd grad for the sky, however, and/or regular nd's to simulate the lower amount of light that the moon would be giving off. obviously, be careful about light sources like streetlamps and of course the sun - you may want to add some post effect lightsources. and don't get too crazy with your blues. use the mantra 'silver night'. full moonlight does not differ so much from full sunlight, except it's a less amount of light and there's not as much atmospheric fill light from the sky, making shadows darker - relatively. do not underexpose unless you can't/don't want to do ANY post-processing - which I don't recommend. might want to avoid seeing the sky if an ND grad isn't bringing it down, but you can always mask it off in post if you want the sky in a shot. hard shadows are not the end of the world by any means, just work with what you've got. for viewing purposes you may want to bring your ISO down (and your saturation) to go ahead and see what you're getting, but keep your RAW histogram well-exposed. if you have to choose, i'd expose for highlights, unless you really know what you're getting into on the post end and are willing to replace those sections of the shot - you don't want the highlight areas to look weird when you bring down the levels. good luck, have fun!
 
Sunlight can be faked as moonlight (people tend to forget how hard moonlight is) but sky should be avoided like the plague and a shadowy background would help a lot. Backlight is a good idea, I'd go tungsten in camera and/or blue filter and do jump all over that test day if you get the chance.
 
That little noise meter is going to be a life saver too- keep checking it. If the noise stays in the blacks you will probably be ok, but once it starts bleeding into the rest of the image you will have some work to do.
 
i shot a stephen king short last summer.. mostly dfn.. the trailer is on my web site.. we used tiffen dfn and about 7 stops of ND.. I also adjusted kelvin very blue which in hindsight was a big mistake. Al in all i was happy with the results
. Shot on AF 100.. Avoid direct sun unless its mottled through trees or similar, try to never shoot any sky, try to shoot in the shade as much as possible.. If i had my epic then, i would have just used heavy ND, avoided all the above situations and then did all the rest in post..
 
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