How do you handle BAD backlighting??
 

Hi Guys

My wedding on Thursday was an outdoor one on lawn going down to a large expanse of water...not only was the water creating severe backlighting but as the sun dropped it created more and more reflection on the water making the backlighting almost impossible to shoot into. The couple were adamant that they wanted to stand between two trees and backs to the water ...no compromises... I even tried a cam at a quite narrow angle but the glare from the water was more than fierce...I actually had a GoPro on a stand way back from the wedding and watching the footage you could see the exposure blow out as the afternoon progressed.

Now what would you do in this situation....I would have loved to turn everyone around and the shoot would have been awesome but Mr Stubborn Groom wouldn't budge an inch!! All I could do is expose for faces and of course this effectively blows out 75% of the picture. In my experience the only way to minimise this would have been fill the face with just their faces on one camera and shoot with the other camera away from the intense glare. Big closeups don't really look that good and you miss the dress, bouquet etc etc. Luckily I only get these once or twice every couple of years BUT they do happen!!!

Are there any other bright solutions?????

Chris

Re: How do you handle BAD backlighting??
 

I know this might sound a cheeky answer but would a Canon with Magic Lantern and the HDR work for this situation.

Re: How do you handle BAD backlighting??
 

Thanks Donald

Actually something like a Canon 5DII has a way better dynamic range than any video camera so it would probably do a better job!! Cheeky ??? Ummm yes cos I don't have a 5D but still useful to know!!!

It was just the wrong time of the day..most of the times couples realise the issues and make compromises so that get really good video..the groom sadly was a "know it all" He insisted on the speeches being shot virtually in the dark as my lighting would spoil the mood. He;s gonna get very noisy video as the venue was really dark!!!

Chris

Re: How do you handle BAD backlighting??
 

Chris,
Based on what you described, there is nothing more you could have done. Edit, burn, deliver and be done with it.
Since Mr. Know it all didn't want to do anything to help improve the quality of his video (and I'll bet the still photog had a bit of a problem as well) it's his problem. Give 'em what you got and move along little doggy!

O|O
\--/

Re: How do you handle BAD backlighting??
 

Thanks Don

Exactly what I have done..prep for the next one already!! I worded my post poorly!! I didn't really want technical solutions actually but more how to tell the couple " You want me to shoot straight into the sun on the water..are you out of your mind???" BUT I need to do it tactfully!!! It's tough when they have this obsession about where they want to stand.... in fact even the co-ordinator said to them "You should go much further back"
It was the first time I haven't been able to rely on my GoPro Hero2 footage either!! That's always way back behind the guests and about 15' up in the air and even that footage got wacked!!!

Is the great era of Don Bloom Weddings almost over now??? You said you were quitting this year..as at 2012 I don't do all nighters any more (getting too old to stay up till 1am) so my packages usually now end after the bridal waltz and a short amount of dancing..then I'm off to bed.

Chris

Re: How do you handle BAD backlighting??
 

I would have tried to shoot far left or right of center, figuring the angle of incidence=angle of reflection. Shooting from a low angle might also help. Basically, walk around with the camera to see where you have the least amount of glare while still getting a decent shot. HDR on the DSLR's is not good in this situation (at least with the Magic Lantern Hack). You're shooting two exposures per second, flicker on the screen is terrible, buffer can easily overflow and you're at higher risk of overheating. I wouldn't risk it on a wedding.

Sounds like a bit of a nightmare scenario for you and the photographer. Bummer.

Re: How do you handle BAD backlighting??
 

Opps. Kind of misread your post. Yep gotta shot from far to 1side. Not ideal but the only way I know to cover extreme backlight.
Looks like this will be my last year doing weddings. The thrill is gone.
I've got a few things I've been working on for next year, in the corp feils so we'll see how that goes.

Re: How do you handle BAD backlighting??
 

Hi Oren

This actually was ground sloping towards the water so the only camera position that would have worked would have been from a sky hook!! Not really much any angle could have done as the reflection was either side too!!!

Chris

Re: How do you handle BAD backlighting??
 

Hi Chris, in situations such as this, I would normally be very nice, but straighforward by telling the customer something to the effect: "Just so you know, shooting from this angle into the bright light behind you will create issues for your video. Your video will look probably look pretty bad from this angle; there's just nothing to be done. Now if you want to move things around, that would solve the problem. But it is up to you. What do you want to do?" and then I'd be done with it. I give it to the customer straight, and I let them make the decision, knowing I've explained it clearly to them.

Re: How do you handle BAD backlighting??
 

Hey Jeff

Exactly what I did..he was a know it all and insisted on being between two large trees with the water in the background and the sun blasting an unbearable glare off the water. I normal situations I would have simply turned the wedding around so they were still between their beloved two trees BUT with the light behind the camera. Sometimes you cannot get thru to stubborn people who refuse to deviate from their so-called ideal layout!!

After the reception I knew that he was a "do it my way" guy when he insisted on no lighting at all for the speeches..after warning him his video was going to look really crappy, he actually looked into the LCD at the noisy low light image and said "that's fine"

Luckily most of our clients are reasonable and flexible ..thank goodness!!

BTW: Happy Easter to everyone here!!!

Chris

Re: How do you handle BAD backlighting??
 

This is one of the reasons I shoot with a DSLR for weddings now - it lets you deal with tricky lighting situations so much better. One indoor venue I shoot regularly has an entire wall made of glass behind the couple, and a lake outside, so backlighting and glare is terrible. A DSLR makes is much more bearable.

Apart from the better dynamic range, the lenses and sensor seem to handle blown out areas much better. With my old Sony HDV cameras (FX7 & Z1p) there was a severe 'bleeding effect' where with heavy backlighting, rather than giving you a clearly defined silhouette, the overblown areas would 'leak' onto the subject. You couldn't just 'expose for the faces' because when adjusting exposure it would jump from being too dark, to being washed out, with no middle ground where the subject was exposed and the background blown out. I'm not sure if it was the coatings on the lens or the smaller scale of the sensor making light spill more visible or something, but it was hideous. With DSLR's however, it lets you save the situation, keeping your subject well exposed and clearly defined even in severe backlighting.

I know this doesn't really help you Chris, and I know that you are quite happy with your Panasonics and don't want to go the DSLR route, but just thought I'd share my expereinces for anyone else who stumbles across this thread.

Re: How do you handle BAD backlighting??
 

Thanks John

It is well known that a decent Full sensor DSLR has a huge dynamic range...however these situations are quite rare and often the couple understand the issue and will simply change position. We have the Swan Bell Tower in perth which has walls on three sides and a glass panel facing the river..at the right time of the day it's also a nightmare to expose to!! I wonder if a DSLR would have helped my situation?? The LCD with area target brightness on (similar to the moveable target on a still camera's spot exposure) gave me a mere 4% on the grooms outfit ..that's how bad the glare was, as and you say your edge definition just disappears totally!!! I do quite a few beach weddings and I can expose on the bride's face and still get a nice image of the water behind but this background needed sunglasses just to look at it!!

As Don says, edit burn and move on!! The wedding the week before was absolutely perfect so the benchmark for this one was high anyway!! It was more a stubborn groom attitude that spoilt it than working it less than ideal conditions that could have been avoided!!

Hope you are enjoying Easter!!!

Chris

Re: How do you handle BAD backlighting??
 

A polarizer will give you a little bit of control over water glare as well. I never shoot outside in the daytime without one on my camera, the skies will be richer in color as will the leaves on the trees and the grass.

These things are tiny little miracles of photonic physics.

The other alternative would be to be REALLY stubborn and change the angle even though the subject thought they knew what they wanted. You can still include the 2 trees and the water, but by changing the angle, you can shift the sun out of the background.

Adding light to the foreground with a reflector would help as well.

Re: How do you handle BAD backlighting??
 

Hey Chris. I agree with Don. (Actually I find myself agreeing with Don quite a bit)

I don't go to many rehearsals, but when it's a location I'm not familair with, or a tight or potentially nasty lighting situation - then I do.

I had a similar situation recently where the indoor option was either a lovely medieval fireplace, or in front of big glass windows with a view of mountains. Mr Tosspot wanted the windows of course.

With the bride present, I asked both of them to stand in each position, filmed them and showed them the basic exposure on the camera lcd.

Then left it up to them to decide. All the pressure was off me because I'd covered myself and given a fairly clear demonstration of what they could expect me to deliver under the conditions.

They decided on the fireplace.

When I turned up the next day... Tosspot had changed it to the window view.

As I was mic'ing him up he said "I'm sure you'll be able to work your magic for us."

I just smiled at him and thought of the big fat cheque in my pocket.

Re: How do you handle BAD backlighting??
 

Think this, together with a polarizer, would be the only option to get good exposure, it's the same technique that's used alot in photography when shooting subjects in direct (back)sunlight.

If you return that harsh backlight back to the subject you are filming you can close down you iris more and by that getting a more balanced exposure.

Re: How do you handle BAD backlighting??
 

I had a wedding Saturday in a barn. The bridge and groom were positioned at the end of the barn, right by the open doors to the 80 degrees and sunny weather outside. The bridal party were very close on either side, on a platform about 4 feet up, which meant side-shooting was not possible. I had no previous experience with ML HDR (although I will be looking into it soon), and so the attached screenshot is the best I could balance. From what I'm reading in this thread, communicating with the couple about the location is about the best I could've done I guess (in other words, no other technical recommendations)?

The image hasn't been color corrected, although obviously there's nothing I can do with the blown out areas.

Re: How do you handle BAD backlighting??
 

Michael, you are absolutely right about informing the bride and groom about the hazards of backlighting. Your situation was pretty tough, for sure.

Re: How do you handle BAD backlighting??
 

that's about as bad as it can get as you also have a whitebalancing problem combined with the strong backlight, . Not much you can do about that I guess. About ML HDR I just wonder if that will not cause any flickering in your image?

Re: How do you handle BAD backlighting??
 

Michael: You can use your NLE/ grading package to either;

A) put a gradient across the screen that has a lighter orange side on the left and transparency on the right to bring the blues into the realm of white (white balancing is pulling your whites from blue--sunlight to orange--incandescent light). The interior looks like it's well colored (although, you could throw a hint of blue over it to allow you to do a smaller correction on the left side). Make the angle of the gradient match the angle of the front row of people since that seems to be where the images moves from orange to blue.

B) Pull a chroma matte to isolate the blue areas from the orange in the image (you can push the saturation on this matte image to really emphasize the correct portions of the matte). Then, you can white balance just the blue side and just the orange side differentially with alot of control and without having to animate if that frame moves around at all.

Re: How do you handle BAD backlighting??
 

Hey Michael

So it's not only me that has stubborn couples????

Something that I did find which is awesome is that IF your NLE has an invert function (Sony Vegas has this as a plug-in) simply invert the image so the blown out areas switch to dark and then gamma correct it so the background is normal (it will only adjust the blown area) and then invert it again and you end up with just either the dark or light sections of the clip corrected..very cunning...the Vegas forum has a post from me there with how you can save footage here!!.

Chris

Re: How do you handle BAD backlighting??
 

Interesting, I work with edius and there are some good tutorials online which show edius great potential as a colorcorrector. I realy must give it a try sometimes to collorcorrect just certain parts of the image as I don't have much experience with it. I always try to shoot with the right whitebalance to limit/prevent corrections in post but Michael's example is something you can't get right the first time.

Re: How do you handle BAD backlighting??
 

Something I notice at that venue is similar to a venue here that I work at!! You seem to have more bright light coming from the right hand side and there is a bush/shrub on the left...my venue always has bright sky right behind the bridal couple but by swivelling them just a tiny bit and moving my cam position to the extreme right I manage very well.

Now the point is, if the couple have a rehearsal it's always worth going to it and trying out different camera angles and even moving the couple a little bit so you get a balanced background and foreground...that image would have been so much better if the cam was positioned way to the right so it exposed on the couple and the foilage and the left....getting to a venue just before the bride doesn't allow you to discuss options (she's in the limo!!)

I really would have liked to see how much difference it would make if a camera was squeezed in between the guests and wall!!

Chris

Re: How do you handle BAD backlighting??
 

I personally try to use effects like sepia or black and white to mask the blow outs. Also tend to do closeups to concentrate on the faces of the bride and groom.

Re: How do you handle BAD backlighting??
 

I've dealt with this type of situation using a handheld SONY DCR-VX2100. With the LCD pointing down, I held the camcorder high over my head to achieve the best angle of incidence. Having more ground and less sky in the frame minimized the harsh back lighting.

Re: How do you handle BAD backlighting??
 

LOL... you got all that Michael? Handheld, above your head, pointing into the light, fully zoomed in on couple, and turned sepia. Awesome stuff!

Re: How do you handle BAD backlighting??
 

Hi John

Actually part of it is still right... If you lift the cam on the tripod a bit higher than usual and do a small down tilt you will get in more of the floor and less of the sky ... I did an even worse one yesterday...due to the weather the venue decided to use their art gallery and it has an entrance way with two small side walls and the main wall is completely made of glass and looks out over vinyards but most of the view is pure sky and in the afternoon the sun comes straight in!!! Even exposing for faces the very bright outside light also makes a "backfill light" on the sides of the couples faces (Yep they refused to move position away from the glass window) What I did is exactly what our last poster says BUT no sepia!!!)

I put a GoPro on my big light stand and tilted it 45 degrees and then hoisted it up a good 20' ..... worked like a dream as it was almost an aerial shot!!! A very small portion of the window was in the frame only so the cam exposed for the people and the floor space and it worked out very well.

Even my B-Cam clips were blown out anywhere near the window so those were mainly cutaways to the side...it IS frustrating when the bride/venue absolutely refuses to compromise!!!! I've started using my GoPro as you say now and boy, what a useful little machine it is!!! Thanks for prompting me!!!

My mate Philip actually shoots on EX1's and has a GoPro clamped to each of the 3 EX1 tripods shooting a wider angle while the Sony's go in close!! Cos they are running all the time if you DID forget to hit record or the camera had a problem, you have backup footage too!!!

I take mine to every wedding now!!!

Chris

Re: How do you handle BAD backlighting??
 

does a gopro match up easily with cams like a EX1? I would expect that there is a noticeably difference in resolution?

Think it's a great idea having such a tiny camera clamped onto a tripod, you even could add it onto the hotshoe of the camera so you could have to simultaniously views from the same point, one wide and one closeup. Does the gopro work well under lower light conditions, like a dim church?

Re: How do you handle BAD backlighting??
 

Hi Noa

I don't have EX1's but Philip is certainly happy with the footage!! The low light performance despite the price and tiny size is better than I expected. I did a wedding last weekend in one of our traditional old Churches with the Gopro on the rear balcony and the IQ certainly was good. You have to bear in mind that my end product to the bride is DVD but then again I don't think bride's are so critical as we are about perfect resolution... as long as it portrays the day they are happy. In fact there is an update on the way soon to allow the cameras to shoot at 35 mbps!!!

Admittedly mine is used as a 3rd cam and certainly not primary footage but when you get situations when the photog stands in front of you or the MOB steps out in front of your camera..a cut away to the wide high angle footage saves the day..no-one can get in the way with a camera 30' in the air!!! I also find it's really useful to cut away to the high footage when the readers walk back to their seats so you can get a perfect shots from start to end. For me anyway, it's comforting insurance if something goes wrong and a very small investment too!!! Around here a complete kit is under $400!! As long as you appreciate it's wide angles only (choice of three) and fixed exposure I feel it's worth running during a ceremony!!

Chris

Re: How do you handle BAD backlighting??
 

Simply tell them clearly,'It'll look horrible!' To the bride and let her decide. If they'll play along, usually she's the one bitching to the groom to change.

Otherwise, polarize + nd filter + ev comp or expose or their faces.

Re: How do you handle BAD backlighting??
 

Unless you get in the way of something, why does where you film from matter?

Moving is the best way to avoid back lighting.

Of course, sometimes there's just no way of stopping it, so the best is to find an exposure that isn't over blown, but retain enough detail on the subject so that you can use a mask to correct dark exposure on those parts in post. If you go for this option, make sure you don't move or else, you'll be keying your mask as well... and we don't have the time for that!

Re: How do you handle BAD backlighting??
 

Hi Bernard

My wedding 3 weeks ago I had to do just what you said and deliberately under-expose the faces!!!

Sometimes exposing on the background and leaving the couple intentionally a little under exposed works better than totally blowing out the background as you still tend to get one side of their faces over-exposed!!

In Sony Vegas all I do is invert the image which creates a "negative picture" and correct the masked area and then just invert again to bring it back..that way you get the faces almost right and the background is still viewable...however you do lose resolution on an under-exposed image so it's STILL better to change camera angles if you can!!

Chris