Red Dragon UV body paint lighting

[David Ellison]

Hey, I'm shooting on DSMC 1 Red Epic Dragon and I'm planning a UV body paint shoot.
I'd ideally like to do some shots at 50 fps but also keep the shoot low noise so no higher
than 640 ISO.

Is this doable with a sufficiently powerful UV light source or sources?
If so does anyone have any suggestions on what light source would be best?

 

[Michael Tiemann]

I don't have an immediate answer to your question, but UNCSA (which has a School of Filmmaking, and which lets students use RED cameras) has an awesome UV photo from last year's season as the marquee for their performance season this year:

I think that just like everything else, if you get the composition right and you are not wildly wrong with your exposure, the noise will take care of itself.

 

[Brandon Veen]

Dragon isn’t very sensitive to true UV light.

I’ve been doing some testing with mine, Kippertie’s Full Spectrum OLPF, a KolariVision UV Pass filter, and various vintage lenses.
So far the results are less than stellar.

However, most of the look from these photos seems to be in more of the Visible Spectrum aided by black lights.

 

[Michael Tiemann]

It is generally understood that, yes, when speaking of UV body paint, it is the fluorescence excited by UV light that is to be captured, not the reflectance of UV light.

Of course, for scientific applications, UV light spectra can be interesting. But the sample image showed that it was the fluorescence not the UV reflectance that the OP was trying to capture.

 

[Brandon Veen]

Right, I should have probably looked more into the UV paint, although I do agree that pure UV definitely has an interesting, although inherently different, look.

As for suggestions for the OP, this article seems to do an alright job as a starting point:
https://fstoppers.com/originals/tips-shooting-black-light-video-168977
The biggest takeaway is this quote in relation to the music video the article covers:

We used six Edison bulbs, three on each side and approximately 2-4 feet from our subject for the music video below. This generated enough strength in the key light source to sufficiently make our subjects glow.

Definitely feels like a lot less light than the two examples you both have posted though.

Now in this video, which is more geared toward photography, some of the examples at the end are right about in the range you’re looking at with shutter speeds like 1/125 at F3.2 and ISO640, and in the comments they mentioned generally using a pair of 400W Omnilux UV lamps.

And this No Film School article has a bit more of a DIY sort of style to it, but I can’t say didn’t have interesting results, although still not seemingly as bright as the examples either.

The takeaways seem to be that bulbs work better than LED’s, and the more the better. Maybe some UV spotlights in an array would give the closest result to the UV Glow example.

 

[Tom Gleeson]

Just be aware that subjecting human skin and eyes to UV is damaging. The fluorescent paint itself may absorb most of the UV and protect your subject although suntan lotion underneath the paint may be advisable. I would also have the subject wear quality sunglasses in between camera rolls. The risk is a function of how much UV, length of exposure and the type of UV you throw onto your subject.