Shooting into the light

[Ryan D.G. Stone]

I did warn people when first signing up, I'll be asking alot of newbie questions and I'm afraid this is one of them!

Yesterday I had to shoot some people standing against a full length window. Luckily the sun wasn't shining directly through but I couldn't get the professional look I wanted to. The people obviously weren't light enough whilst the background was over exposed.

I was just wondering whether there's anything on the XL2 that can help in situations like this. I know there should have been proper lighting to get it right, but this was a very small shoot and so I'd like to know if anything can be done in-camera.

Thank You,

Ryan

[Richard Hunter]

Hi Ryan. Most you can do is set normal gamma rather than cine, and adjust exposure to bring up the subject until the background is as blown out as you can take.

If you don't have lights with you, maybe you can use a board with a white or metal foil surface as a reflector, i.e. use the backlighting as a fill to reduce the contrast in the image.

Richaard

[Ryan D.G. Stone]

Thank You Richard,
Apart from the gamma, that's the kind fo answer I expected. It was just annoying as we were caught short.

Thank you for your input though,

Ryan

[Matt Newcomb]

Yeah, that's not a problem you can fix with the camera. You just had to sacrifice the exposure of the background or the subjects. Or light the scene properly.