HDR Dragon Filming

[Stacey Spears]

Adam, Michael,

How did you decide on the strength of the ND? Just based on experience with exterior windows? With the .6, you can obviously double up if you need more light cut.

You both certainly go two different routes as far as interior vs. exterior. First floor can work outside, not much above that though. Do either of you run into any issues with the person being interviewed and tinting their window(s)?

Thank you again for sharing.

 

[Michael Tiemann]

Adam, one last question...would you try to light enough and use rolls with the Low light or Skin Tone? Low light will really help me use less lights inside but will the skin tone help make the highlights look better?

Remember the question of the OP: "Does anyone shoot architecture/design work in homes and use HDR for something like this?" When shooting architecture/design work in homes, it's more objects than people that make the subjects. STH is lovely for people, and best when you want the best details from the highlights, such as daylight exteriors. LLO is great for spaces, and best for when you want the best details from the shadows, such as interiors and night-time exteriors. I shoot mostly indoors, so I keep LLO on my dragons. But I have STH OLPFs nearby, in case anybody wants to shoot outside.

Adam, Michael,

How did you decide on the strength of the ND? Just based on experience with exterior windows? With the .6, you can obviously double up if you need more light cut.

You both certainly go two different routes as far as interior vs. exterior. First floor can work outside, not much above that though. Do either of you run into any issues with the person being interviewed and tinting their window(s)?

Thank you again for sharing.

Recall this example from the RED 101 HDRx page:

A-frame:

X-frame:

Merged:

What my eyes tell me is that the shadow area of the A frame has richer colors and stronger contrast than the shadow area of the HDRx image, and the highlight area of the X frame has much richer colors and a much better contrast than the highlight area of the HDRx image (which looks flat, washed-out, and somewhat desaturated to me). What this taught me (along with my own experiments) is that there is something really compelling about preserving the natural range of contrast that exists both in the interiors of the building as well as the exteriors that can be seen through the windows. Because of DRAGON's exceptional DR, it is possible to expose the image so that the camera can hold all the dynamic range with just 0.6 ND, but I didn't like it for two reasons: (1) the shadow area of the exteriors was still so much brighter than most of the interior that it didn't read as shadow. It looked over-lit. And (2) the light spill from the exteriors was so bright on the floors that it distracted from the interior details that I was actually trying to focus on. If you have a white interior and you are shooting high key, it's not a problem for sunlight on white marble floors to blow out to pure white. But if you have a normal or lower key interior with dark floors, having the floor be the brightest thing in the room (other than the window) just looks wrong.

So I took down my experimental ND 0.6, put up ND 1.2, and found that not only controlled my highlights, but also (1) brought exterior shadows into a range that visually read as shadow for the entire scene, and (2) calmed down the floors enough that I could focus attention on the action inside the rooms. If 1.2 had been too much or still too little, I would have continued to tweak the value (buying different rolls) until I was happy. Note that because I bonded the film to the window with diluted glycerine, I would not want to use a second layer that would add its own waves and bubbles to the those of the first layer (as small as they are).

 

[Michael Tiemann]

For those who would like to play with an HRD R3D trim, here's a pan across my unfiltered windows with 6-stop HDR:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ijehgpu21b7jf17/AADOvWgFEqEugZ6sw69usMYta?dl=0

 

[Stacey Spears]

So I took down my experimental ND 0.6, put up ND 1.2, and found that not only controlled my highlights, but also (1) brought exterior shadows into a range that visually read as shadow for the entire scene, and (2) calmed down the floors enough that I could focus attention on the action inside the rooms.

Good point about the room interaction. I was being narrow minded and only thought about the window itself.

 

[Adam Rook]

I felt .6 ND was a good starting place since it's in between .3 and .9. Personally I felt 1.2 would be too much for a starting since you can double up .6 and get the same result. For me, here in Dallas, builders love to make interiors with dark floors and beige colored walls. So I also feel the STH would work better to bring out some of the warmth of the spaces. Remember this is just what I typically deal with. I can't see a ton of difference in the shadows with the LLO so I recommend the STH especially in interview situations.
Also my other purpose for using the full CTO filters was to more closely match tungsten interior lights. If the space I'm shooting has large windows I just try to schedule my shoot as early in the morning as I can or just leave the windows alone and daylight balance everything.