The Pros and Cons of Bouncing Light off the Ceiling

[Mike Buckles]

I just bought gel holders for my photoflood lighting kit..i'm planning on putting diffusers in the holders...this should spread the light out more and avoid harsh shadows...might want to try using diffusers and bounce or a combo of both.

[tfunch24]

My problem is not so much harshly-lit subjects, but whenever I shoot nighttime interiors with K40 and use the lighting setup pictured in one of my above posts, the subjects are well and evenly-lit, but the background is shrouded in darkness. I'm tired of that. I wondered if a ceiling/wall-bounced light would fix that problem. Apparently it will.

Tom

[Greg Crawford]

Tom,

Try it you might like it. But I think you will like it better if you add a background light to the mix. And maybe a back light on your main subject, to help separate the person from any dark background areas.

[Matt Pacini]

OK, maybe I should be more clear...

If you put your light that you're bouncing onto the ceiling BACK behind your camera, further away from the actors, you're NOT gonna get dark eye shadows.
I think everyone here is picturing in their mind, light coming directly down from the ceiling on top of your actors heads, which is not what happens, unless you stick your lights out in your scene and point them straight up.
Sure, you can do the "Godfather thing", where you're actually hanging lights from a grid in a studio, pointing straight down, but that's what I'm talking about, and it's not even possible to do in a living room or whatever.

You can also bounce light into the corners of the back of the room, by that I mean the ceiling corners that are not in the scene, back behind your camera.
Just try it, you will instantly see what I'm talking about.
No endless speculation needed, just grab a light, go into your living room, stand at one end, plug it in, and point it at the ceiling, at about a 45 degree angle forward.
Also, the further away from the ceiling, the more diffused it will be.

Matt Pacini

[Actor]

Techniques such as bouncing light off the ceiling are designed to soften the light, to turn light from a hard point source into light from a more diffuse source. If that's the case wouldn't it be better to use a lot of small lights positioned over an area than to use one big light?

For instance, take a 4'x8' sheet of plywood; cut it into two 2'x8' sheets and splice them together. You could then fasten 288 standard ceramic (or plastic) light fixtures to this board and come up with 2880 watts over a 2'x16' long area, using standard 100 watt bulbs. Color temp about 2800K. To convert this to 3400K you stack an 82C and an 82A costing about 1 stop.

[Matt Pacini]

Nope.
Not the same thing.
Unless your lights are absolutely RIGHT next to each other, you're going to see multiple shadows, and again, the WHOLE ceiling is lighting up when you bounce, so it's effectively like having a great big 20ft x 30ft or whatever softlight.
Hard light is always going to look hard, even if it's big, but even if it didn't who would want to make a 2 x 16 foot light fixture?
Way too big!
It would be in the way, big time, clumsy to use, and impossible to transport anywhere!
I'm not sure why you think this would be preferable than having one small light pointed at the ceiling, other than the light loss you get bouncing light, which is no big deal...

Matt Pacini

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ April 08, 2003 04:51 PM: Message edited by: Matt Pacini ]</font>