Lighting a Kitchen
 

Hey, I'm using my kitchen as a set in an upcoming project and I was wondering what the best set up would be as far as lighting goes.

Here's the room Note: the ceiling isnt blue my camera phone is horrible
http://img64.imageshack.us/img64/638...1002131602.jpg
http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/205...1002131603.jpg

The only light sources are the Fluorescent light fixture hanging from the ceiling and the stove lights.

I also own 4 work lights from Home Depot i use for 3 point lighting at times

What would be the best way to balance out the lighting? Any tips?

Lee,

You've miss-diagnosed your light sources - your primary illumination is coming from two GIANT exterior windows. Until you control them, you're at the mercy of whatever the sun and clouds do. You can block them, or you can screen them, or you can shoot at night, but until you deal with that, nothing else is going to work because that light will overpower anything under a $10,000 HMI rig that you can bring inside to balance things.

Good luck.

Yeah my main problem is the light coming from the sliding glass door and the windows over the sink. I'm a bit worried about using the sliding glass door as the key light because of over exposure. I guess I could use diffusors on the sliding door?

Other than that do I really have no other option?

If you're going to see out the windows and doors, then you'll have to put ND filtration over them. You could find some relatively inexpensive neutral-toned tinting and temporarily apply that. You might be able to find what you need at Lowe's, Home Depot or similar.

Figure out what lighting instruments you can work with in the space, then darken the windows and door as needed.

How about this question first. What do you want the scene to look like? If you want it to look like a kitchen with natural light coming in from a sliding glass door, you're in pretty good shape. Use your base lighting (what you see) as your plan and increase the light output to supplement your camera's needs. If, however, you want to change the lighting to make it look like something else, then decide what you want the scene to look like and apply lighting to get what you are looking for.
Basically, don't open a light case or go buy anything until you plan out what you want the scene to look like. Patience makes good creative.

I want the light to be visible from the windows but nothing visible from outside the windows. The tone is going to be a 1 hour drama feel like Smallville or Dexter.

This is not only funny, but good advice.

The window above the sink and the sliding glass door will be your keylights. You'll need some fill (even your Home Depot worklights) to even things out a little bit. To give the impression that the light is coming from the ceiling, you can bounce those lights off the ceiling.

You may need some CTB gel to match the light to the daylight.

It was suggested above that you invest in $10k worth of HMI lights to battle the daylight, but even then... it would look like the light was coming from somewhere else. Anyone who walks into that room would expect the light to be coming from the ceiling and the windows. Don't make people think about lighting, just make it work.

With daylight the fill tends to come more from the floor and walls rather from ceiling. Although that's often the most handy.

Depending on how bright your daylight is, bounced CTB work lights mightn't do much for you.

As has been mentioned already, I'd try to knock the windows down with something - be it ND or scrim on the expensive end, or windowscreen on the "Home Depot" end.

According to the picture, the window receives direct sunlight (don't know whether this is morning or afternoon light). This will be your toughest balancing job as the splashes are probably 5 stops over the ambient, so the simplest thing to do is eliminate them. I would recommend diffusing the window over the sink (many forms of inexpensive diffusion substitutes available for an application like this which doesn't involve proximity to a hot source; do a search). Having diffusion available for the sliding doors will also be good. Depending on which direction you face, it may be advantageous to remove the diffusion for certain shots.

Consider how long it will take to shoot the scene (and be realistic!) Knowing that the sun will move throughout the day, drastically changing the level of ambient light, it might make more sense to schedule when the sun is on the other side of the house which will give you a chance to possibly use your worklights as fill if required.

The best angle will be similar to the one in your first picture, with the actors in half-light. The more you shoot with the window to their backs, the moodier the results; the more you come around with the window behind camera, the flatter the results.

Have a selection of bounce materials available; if you don't have access to a commercial product like the snap-open discs, a large piece of foamcore or beadboard from an art supply or hardware store will do well. For closeups, you can bring these in to fill the shadow side. A passive fill like this will look a lot more natural than direct light.

Knocking the window down with ND or substitute will effectively increase the ambient fill from the sliding doors, which may be a good thing. You can wrap the light from the sliding doors around by using a large white bounce set up perpendicular to the sliding doors, i.e. facing the kitchen. This will pick up the ambient and/or direct sun and bounce into the kitchen as fill. Again, a large piece of foamcore etc. is ideal but in a pinch you could use a white bedsheet draped over an elevated boom stand.

The above will give you a naturalistic look with a good amount of contrast, which is typical of a prime-time drama. Since the window will blow out white, you probably don't want to feature it too much in the frame, directly behind heads etc. If you do need to supplement with more fill light, ganging several of them together through diffusion to create an "invisible" source will be the key--at least a 1/2 CTB correction will help.

This is as close to a "ghetto" workflow I can think of. If I was to shoot this with a decent sized package, I would fly solids outside the window to block the direct sunlight and recreate the desired effect with HMI (6K par or 18K). This would maintain a consistent look throughout the scene. The window would get ND'd as desired to deliver whatever degree of detail I was looking to retain, probably N9. I'd fly a couple of 4x4 Kinos up at the ceiling on the window side to continue the side-lit key, and add a ceiling-bounced 4K or 2500 par in front of the sliding doors to add a little tone to the room (scrimmed down to taste); I'd also explore this as a floor bounce. For closeups I'd work a little bounce as described above, possibly with the addition of a small dimmable fixture like a 1x1 Litepanel with diffusion as an eyelight for fill.

As a random twist of fate would have it, I need to shoot a cooking promo for a friend soon in a kitchen that's very similar, and actually had a lot of the same questions... good advice guys, thanks!

So I did a test lighting today,

I used:
-three 500w work lights from Home Depot/w 3 amber(orange) gels
-the over head fluorescent kitchen light
-the windows over the sink as the key light
-the overhead stove lights
-and one test with a lamp

Here's the final result, tell me what you think
YouTube - Sequence 1.mov

I noticed the gain was a bit high so I'll adjust it later, I also may make some tweaks to the layout before I shoot. I liked the results without the lamp myself

When you shoot a test like this, it's worth putting a person in there--you'd likely see some noticeably warm/orange skin tones that I'm not sure you'd like. You are mixing ambient daylight with incandescent sources (plus the fluorescent, probably somewhere in the middle) which will give a pretty convoluted effect on skin tones. Not sure why you gelled your work lights orange--those are usually halogens, pretty close to 3200K and thus already substantially warmer than the daylight. If you do have access to CTO (orange) gel, your better bet is to gel the window and then all of your sources will be roughly in the same range.

Thanks for the help,

Would it be better off to not gel the work lights and only gel the kitchen sink window?

I currently have one roll of Blue, Orange, and Red gels.

Would it be better to gel the work lights blue and the sink window orange?

But the PRIMARY question is this:

Will the camera need to see out of that window? If the answer is yes, then you need some ND Film over the window. Not too expensive and can be reused.

If the answer is no, then just put some black fabric over the window and you should be golden. Even a cheap black bedsheet from Wal-Mart will suffice.

I recently had to light a kitchen for a cooking segment with a huge window in the background overlooking a vineyard. While the view was beautiful I was concerned because I only had two 4 bank KinoFlos to light with. A quick trip to the local Home Depot was all I needed. I purchased the stick on window tinting (smoke color) and some screen door material and was able to knock down the windows so that they actually were slightly underexposed in the final shot which looked great because the vineyard colors became more saturated. Don't forget a squeegee for applying the window tinting because you don't want air bubbles. Good luck!

Sorry the link mustve expired, but the blue tint is from my camera phone, not the kitchen
http://img685.imageshack.us/img685/6...1002131602.jpg

Thats the basic shot i want for the sequence, maybe a little wider.

I do have a black sheet I plan to use, my problem is how much of it will be visible in the shot and how distracting it'll be. The window will be entirely visible for most of the sequence minus the close ups

If the window is going to be visible, then you need to gel. Something like this:

Rosco | E-Colour #211 .9 Neutral Density | 102302114825 | B&H

Have you thought about erecting an overhead/tent outside the window so that the light that comes in will be from a shadow source rather than direct sunlight? This will decrease the light dramatically and also diffuse the shadows produced from the light that comes into the kitchen at the same time. you can rent a tent called an "Easy-up" pretty cheaply from a party supply store or even buy one if you look around. As stated, ND gel will work too. But you still may have some pretty contrasty shadows coming through. Either way you'll absolutely have to control that light source to have a nice looking shot. Good luck!

Edit:
Maybe something like this...
http://www.elitedeals.com/10x10spshcab.html

Thanks for the help guys, I may try either the ND filter on the window or the black blanket sheet over the window.

Also i own a Canon GL2 that has a ND Filter on it. If i apply the ND Filter to the window, do I have to use the filter setting on the camera?

"If i apply the ND Filter to the window, do I have to use the filter setting on the camera? "

Yes. You are trying to bring the lighting ratio into an acceptable range rather than the overall exposure. As it is, the window is many times hotter than the rest of the scene. The ND gel on the window will help to bring that ratio down into a more managable range. If you simply use the ND on the camera, you bring down the entire scene but the lighting ratio (window:rest of the scene) remains unchanged.
Also, I would avoid the black sheet on the window unless you are trying to acheive a night-time look. The viewer will see the exterior window there and expect that to be a light source, otherwise it will look strange (unless it's intended as a night scene in which case you are probably fine.). You absolutely want to use the exterior light as a key but you have to be able to control it, otherwise it will dominate the entire set causing ugly shadows. and uneven exposure depending on the distance to the source.
As a general lighting 101 kind of rule, you really only want a backlight to be that overpowering if at all...definitely not your key light.

Consider the tent idea also, it will in affect move the light source a little farther away from the window, making it easier to maintain exposure when your subjects move closer to the window...
If you use the ND gel (which will work fine too) make sure to stretch it as tight as you can, otherwise you can get strange reflections from the uneven surface that will draw your attention to the window area/gel.

:-)

My mom donated me some white curtains that are thick enough that they block almost all the light coming from the windows. She uses them to block out the street lights from her bedroom. They should do the trick

I'll take a video of how it works out later on.

Ok, here's a test I did blocking the windows completely.
YouTube - test2.mov

Two things that are bothering me.

1) how do I control the amount of shadows bouncing off my subject

2) My subject's shirt is supposed to be orange, when I captured it to Final Cut Pro it looks crimson red. But on youtube it looks the orange color its supposed to. Anyone know why?

shadows dont exist in real life, so you must get rid of them , shadows are totally unnatural :-)
i always get a kick out of vast needs to kill shadows , then when working in photoshop, text displays, and 3D rendering, we spend an extra 2x the time to put shadows IN to make CG look real :-)

backlight will get rid of shadows, but in that situation using backlight would be hard if not worse, the other way is to have more diffuse light, you cant get harsh shadows if you dont have harsh lighting. also if the shadows looked more normal, instead of from 2 stark lights pounding the subject from the front and side, then they would fit in as normal shadows would.

by the way those drapes worked, but IMO you went way to far the other way, and the way they are hanging looks worse than the state of the kitchen. meaning the kitchen is well kept and right now the drapes look like S---.
with 2 layers of window film from the home store you could have some normal looking bluish (without being to blue) light flowing in there , and it would look like real life would.

so a full solution to your problem without destroying its reality, is to "change the light for the CAMERA to look like it does in Real Life to the eyes", not destroy its normal apperances.

If you have a second person available , stay with the Camera, let the the other person make adjustements, and you keep viewing the EYE that everyone will use to View with. your viewers wont be seeing your set, but only through the camera, so your view should be through that same camera, as often and as much as possible, stick your eye up CLOSE and ignore everything that you cant see through the camera, because it doesnt exist in your new world :-)

i figure the way you got the "drapes" hanging is just a test, but it looks just as bad as hanging up 2 pieces of white cardboard instead.

You need Sheets of "light control" stuff, it adjust light stuff without killing stuff. adjust to the cameras problems and issues , without taking away what we would normally see with our eyes and looks totally natural.
sheets of diffusion hung in front of the lights, far enough away from the lights to not burn anything, close enough to difusse most of the light. you can do that Cheaply with practically anything if your really carefull, bend a coathanger :-) or you can buy some real "pro" diffusion (spun glass for example), and will still will want a frame that kicks it out from the light a bit.
Sheets of simple window film , the dark stuff or the one side reflective stuff, even "privacy" which is listed as reflecting 97% of the light back, put outside in 1 or 2 thicknesses would give you normal Looking light comming in TO THE CAMERA. the reflection doesnt usually mess with anything.
If you creative and cheap you can get all that stuff for less than $100 and if you dont ruin it or permenentally attach it anywhere when your done you roll it up and have it for the next "set"


Trying to be constructive in critisism that i probably have no business making, but i hope it helps.

I would try aiming your lights against the wall to bounce them to soften the shadows. Dress the blanket so it doesn't look so bad like stated above and you may be good to go.
Really no mood or style represented here but it will be well exposed. Looks like you may have doubled up on the blanket. Try single strength on the blanket and bouncing both lights from the same location or just use one so you have a nice fill on the opposite side of the window. Shadows are definitely your friend, but multiple, hard shadows will give you a "lit" look that you want to avoid for sure...

Backlight won't get rid of the shadows, soft light will. It also has to do with how close your subject is from the wall behind. If you're going to be that close you will need a much larger light source. It also looks like your lights are pretty far away.

My recommendation is to use white foam core (tri-board material) and bounce your lights off of that. it will create a much physically larger source, thus a softer light, and reduce those shadows.

Your window blocking works, but you could also put up a cheap white bedsheet on the outside of the window. it will still allow a soft white light to enter removing those hard glares on everything (although it will be blue because you're balanced to tungsten).

With the ND discussion earlier, ND (neutral density) lowers the overall amount of light passing through it. So ND gel over the window would lower the amount of light going through it from outside, but the ND filter on your camera will lower the overall amount of light entering the lens, so it will darken your entire image.

And lastly, your lighting is a bit flat. I'm not sure what you are going for, but you have an equal amount of light coming from both sides of the camera at the same angle. Try removing one of your two lights and see what happens. You're in a small enough space where you'll probably get enough fill from light bouncing around the kitchen. Or if it isn't enough, use another large piece of foam core just off-screen to add some fill to the face.

Hopefully this helps a bit
-Jeff

Thanks guys for all the help,

@Marty: yes the white drapes will be arranged to fit in better when i film the sequence. I just hung them in that position to get an idea.

@Jeff : I have 3 lights, one on the fridge that is visible, one next to the pantry, and one at the exact opposite side of that light. Would I be better using 2 instead of 3?

What I'm worried about the most is now that i blocked the window over the sink, what am I going to use for a back light?

@Jeff I also saw it looked a little flat, and I have no idea how to fix it, I was thinking of maybe switching the positions of the lights

Lee,
I'm not necesarily saying completely block the window. Putting a cheap white bedsheet over the window will still allow light to seep through, and it being white will create a nice white (still blown-out) source. Unless you need to see out the window it isn't uncommon to blow out windows.

I think what is happening is that you have light coming from everywhere. Start with only one light. Position it how you want, then add a second, probably from a bit further away to fill in the shadows that the first one is creating. Your lights are also not motivated, but for now that's not too big of a deal. If I were to light your scene, I would use the window as the main source of light, and then accent and fill where necessary.
3-point lighting (key, fill back) is good to know, but it's not always all necessary. Play with your lights one by one (leaving the others off) and see what happens. You may find you like something with less lights.

I'd also still recommend using a piece of foam core or a posterboard to bounce your light off of. Soft light feels more natural for an interior key/fill. So you would turn your lights away from the subject and shoot them straight into a piece of white material (but not too close as to burn).

"3-point lighting (key, fill back) is good to know, but it's not always all necessary. Play with your lights one by one (leaving the others off) and see what happens. You may find you like something with less lights."

@Jeff

What I originally had planed was using as the windows as the back light, but I couldn't properly expose it because there was so much light coming in. I couldn't use any other lights without over exposing everything.

Would it be better to cover the window only partially with the white drapes, and use one additional light?

It's also difficult to get 3 point lighting because its such a small space.

I'd ditch those curtains. They don't look right.

The cheapest way is go to a fabric store and get some black netting, like what a widow wears on a veil. I keep a couple of sections of it in my bag of junk. Get some of that blue painters tape to stick it on there. It'll know down the light and no one will ever know it's there unless you're shooting with a RED EPIC with a million K sensor.

My problem now is getting 3 point lighting in such a small space. I honestly am stumped in what to do next.

Anyone have any suggestions with my small space?

FWIW: I haven't tried it myself, but I saw some black mosquito netting online a week ago that might make a cheap scrim for the windows. You might have to double or triple it to knock down the sunlight, but it looked like you got enough for several windows/layers for $50.

I did a drama shoot with a similar kitchen last November, I had a 800 watt redhead outside with a dichroic daylight filter on as it was cloudy and another 800 watt redhead with daylight filter bounced off the ceiling inside to fill.

You can see the look of it here:YouTube - HDProdSolutions's Channel

You could always just use the interior bounce light on its own to even out the outside light.

So rather than trying to reduce the outside light source, increase the interior lighting to even out the exposure.

If you try to add light inside to match outside you could really heat things up in that kitchen!...and not in a good way. Could be very uncomfortable to work in with with all those lights blasting in one room...I would bring the exterior source down.
The netting sounds like a good idea to me, as well as ND gel.
Don't be too concerned about adhering to a 3-point scheme either.
Just flip the lights around and bounce them off the wall to get a nice soft fill light and you should be fine.

Just bite the bullet and spend twenty bucks on a few of these:

Rosco | #3407 Filter - RoscoSun CTO - 20x24" | RS340711

Hang them on the outside of the window. Corrects the color and knocks you down 1 f-stop as well. No muss, no fuss.

EDIT: Sorry, missed your other post (from the other thread?) that you already have gels for the window. Seems to me that's the logical first step.

Threads Merged
 

Lee:

Not sure why you started another thread two days later, maybe you couldn't find the first one? I've taken the liberty of merging these together so all of the information is in one place.

This is a good example of why the internet can be a confusing place to get answers to questions that are not black-and-white. When anyone on this or any other board asks "how do I light (X)?" there will always be a wide range of responses; after all, everyone lights differently. You've received a lot of good advice (and some not-so-good) and at this point I imagine you are more confused than not on how to proceed.

Specifics are always easier to respond to. Color temperature, for instance, is mathematical. If you don't want your daylight and work lights to read radically differently, you'll need to color correct one or the other. Shadows are based on physics: the smaller the source, the harder the shadow. Move your lights off to the side and the shadow moves away from behind them. Soften your source via diffusion or bounce, and the shadow spreads out and becomes less noticeable. We talked about diffusion and bounces in the first thread and your demo video made it clear that you used undiluted hard light. You may want to start from the beginning and read everything again.

My recommendation, if you still interested in pursuing advice on this, is to find some stills from the shows you referenced at the beginning (or anywhere else) and post those. It's much easier to dissect existing lighting than to take 20 different pieces of advice starting from scratch.

By the way--if you want naturalistic, forget about the backlight. You don't need or want it for this set. Create separation by alternating tones.

We were shooting in November in deepest Yorkshire so it was a bonus to heat up the kitchen!

One other idea is to park a high sided car or people carrier outside the window so that it reduces the direct light.

Plus it might inspire the talent to wear a little less clothing!
Double bonus!!

;-)

The vehicle idea is not a bad one either...

Yeah sorry for the two threads @ Charles.

But I think I've come up with with a final solution to my problem.

I have 3 point lighting, one on the table one on the chair a few feet from the table and one on the counter closest to the refridgeraitor. What I did to reduce the shadows was I took 3 diffusion umbrellas my dad had from doing photography and put them over the 3 work lights I had up. It seemed to completely kill all the unwanted shadows. I still have the white drapes up for killing the exposure from the windows above the sink. I plan to add more later on.

Here's an example of one of the light set ups I decided to work with.
http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/104...2318209700.jpg

The first shoot is this weekend so I'll try to post some raw footage to show my result

I filmed in a kitchen once.
At night ;-)