keith.rogers
Well-known member
I've had to record some folks lately in pretty dimly lit situations, and while I have only basic camcorders, they generally have reasonable low-light capability, until they are zoomed and the lights go out, anyway. Then, it's a struggle.
So, I was looking for something that could be maybe put on the floor that would provide a bit of additional, but soft light that would fill in and keep the distant camera(s) from going all dark blue (where the cheap overhead LEDs in one place tend to send it.)
Small, portable, cheap, and mostly white is what I'm dreaming about.
One duo a week ago, when I told them about the lighting difficulty of the place said they'd bring lights, but they brought 3 small cans that rotated through random colors. Not a great improvement, though interesting effects. Still photos are really funny.
The other thing about floor lighting is that you can get weird shadows. (The fiddler's arm shadow was a little frustrating.) But, in these clubs where I record duos and the like, real stage lighting is non-existent, and I probably couldn't set up light trees or whatever, even if I could figure out how to pack them in the old Miata ...
Thoughts?
Here's a video I did this past Friday. The right-side camera was at least 15' (5m) and so stopped down a lot - everything was dark blue, so I boosted exposure and threw a sepia (software) filter on to get rid of some blue, and did a little de-saturation and sepia on the left camera (only 5' away) so they weren't horribly different. It's just the nature of finding places to stick cameras and hope, but I'd like to be able to mitigate this somewhat unobtrusively if I could figure out how.
So, I was looking for something that could be maybe put on the floor that would provide a bit of additional, but soft light that would fill in and keep the distant camera(s) from going all dark blue (where the cheap overhead LEDs in one place tend to send it.)
Small, portable, cheap, and mostly white is what I'm dreaming about.
One duo a week ago, when I told them about the lighting difficulty of the place said they'd bring lights, but they brought 3 small cans that rotated through random colors. Not a great improvement, though interesting effects. Still photos are really funny.
The other thing about floor lighting is that you can get weird shadows. (The fiddler's arm shadow was a little frustrating.) But, in these clubs where I record duos and the like, real stage lighting is non-existent, and I probably couldn't set up light trees or whatever, even if I could figure out how to pack them in the old Miata ...
Thoughts?
Here's a video I did this past Friday. The right-side camera was at least 15' (5m) and so stopped down a lot - everything was dark blue, so I boosted exposure and threw a sepia (software) filter on to get rid of some blue, and did a little de-saturation and sepia on the left camera (only 5' away) so they weren't horribly different. It's just the nature of finding places to stick cameras and hope, but I'd like to be able to mitigate this somewhat unobtrusively if I could figure out how.