HDRx and lighting with stronger practicals.

[Pietro Impagliazzo]

I'd like to pose this question to DPs and Epic shooters out there.

Has HDRx affected your approach to lighting some indoor situations? In a scene where you wanted it to be lit only by lampshades or other IN FRAME practicals, was HDRx of any help to this as in avoiding ugly blown-out white splotches in the frame?

Disconsidering HDRx potential problems with motion why would you NOT use it in that way?

Thank you.

 

[paulherrin]

do it...

it's designed to protect highlights.

only other reason not to, from a creative perspective is if you want more control over your lighting. it's not always that difficult to boost up your room level and still keep it looking natural, and that could be nicer than having to worry about hdrx and an extra stream and step of processing. course it's also not that difficult to get a pretty distracting lampshade in your shot, so yeah.

if you're wanting/needing for whatever reason to only use practicals i'd definitely say go for it. either way, and especially if you're trying to control your lighting a little bit more, i like to have some different bulbs on hand and lamps on simple dimmers. when i'm on the cheap/quick/etc, i've really enjoyed doing some lighting with compact fluorescents and reflectors (anything from a wall to foam core to the real deal)... daylight balanced (pretty much), run extremely cool (easy on diffusion/more material choices), and you can actually get a good bit of light out of some of them, enough to shoot with these days.