Mixing Daylight With Artificial Light

Mixing bright daylight with artificial light can be a challenge, sometimes a big challenge.

One way to accomplish this, and this technique is most often used when shooting motion picture film or video, is to apply neutral density gels to the windows and knock the daylight down. That's assuming, of course, that windows are the problem.

Unfortunately, the neutral density method is both costly and time-consuming. If the windows are very brightly back-lit and you're shooting in front of them, there are times when using ND filter is all you're left with. It takes a fair amount of artificial light to equal or overcome bright daylight! As you might guess, when shooting video or motion picture film, mixing daylight with artificial light is always a challenge.

Many film and video productions utilize tungsten light sources. It takes some hefty tungsten lights to overcome bright daylight if it can be done (in a practical way with tungsten) at all. Plus, when mixing tungsten with daylight, you're now confronted with color temperature issues. Sure, HMIs can be employed and they do a great job. They also operate in the same color temperature range as daylight. But not every production has or can afford to have HMIs on the set.

When you're on location, power also becomes an issue. The mightier (higher wattage) the light sources, the more power it takes. Since most homes are operating with 15 amp circuits, it's easy to plug a light into a receptacle that drains all those amps and kicks the circuit breakers. Yeah, many productions "tie-in" to the power, circumventing the circuit breakers, but that takes someone who knows what they're doing and, if your shooting legally, i.e., with a permit, you'll need a special and additional "tie-in" permit. Be advised, when you're operating with a "tie-in" permit, there's a good chance someone from the local fire station will stop by to see you've done things right.

With still photography, it's simpler to equalize daylight and artificial light with strobes. Strobes throw out a lot of light without much power consumption. Color temperature is not much of a problem since, like HMIs, strobes operate in the the same color temperature range as daylight.

When mixing daylight and artificial light, getting some help through the use of a light meter is, in my opinion, almost a neccessity. I suppose you can make an educated guess and then bracket and use your histogram as a guide. But that sounds like a lot of work (and guesswork) when a meter will tell you what you need to know quite quickly and simply. Situations like this, that is, where the model is backlit by bright daylight, will fool most of the automatic exposure functions on your camera and the model will end up under-exposed.

The images I posted along with this are of Victoria. I captured these images a couple of weeks ago. As you can see, I'm mixing daylight with artificial light-- the artificial light being in the form of two monolights with umbrellas. One strobe is inside the home, modified with a large, 48" umbrella. Outside, I used a small umbrella to provide some hairlight and backlight. The sun was overhead when these images were captured. I could have had an assistant with a reflector bounce some light in from behind, but I didn't have an assistant handy. (It was one of those kinds of shoots.)

Model is Victoria. (She did her own makeup: Like I said, it was one of those kinds of shoots.) Images were captured with Canon 5D w/85mm prime. ISO 100, f/8 @ 125th. For color temp, I used the Canon's default white balance for "flash."