Window lighting blow-out problem

Recently I?ve been doing some interior real estate videography work. The problem is with the sunny views through windows. As you can guess, when I set the exposure for the view (a big selling point, so it can?t be blown-out), the interior of the house becomes shadow.

When I expose for the interior, the window is blown out. When I first started doing this, I was shooting stills, so I could take one exposure at each stop setting and mask them together in a final image. That?s impractical with video.

Working in film, I?ve always used ND rolls to gel the windows for the proper look. On the real estate shoots, however, that?s prohibitive in time and money (if even possible given some locations). While I use daylight-tuned lights, so color temperature isn?t a problem, there just isn?t enough light to overcome the stop-gap.

I currently correct in post-production as best as I can with curves and filters. The result is less than ideal and fairly time consuming. Does anyone have a technique they use (preferably in-camera) to overcome/minimize this problem?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Dan Rahmel
Author: "Nuts and Bolts Filmmaking"
http://www.cvisual.com

Why can't you use ND rolls? If you are doing interior real estate videography work as a business venture, it's a pretty obvious investment!! Smaller degrees of ND (1/4, 1/2) on video will not compromise your exposure given the mediums equivalent speed/sensitivity. They don't have to be in frames right pasted onto the window either- they can be in frames far away from the window outside the house so you can get the avaialble light too.

There are other tricks such as shooting the room when the sun has moved around the house (and isn't blowing out the windows) or using tracing paper/grease paper as a sub for ND- however you really shouldn't have a stand in for the real thing, ESPECIALLY if this is to be a longterm commerical venture.

You could justify the blow outs or make them photogenic by using lens diffusion or colour filtration or even coloured gels on the window (which will take away a few stops themselves). This is of course if you REALLY require God's available light.

Problem with ND rolls is one of time and opportunity. When you've rented a location, there are rarely prize rose bushes that can be trampled when placing the ND (just one of many recent situations). Then there's the floor to ceiling sliding glass doors of a beach house that would have consumed lord knows how much ND material to cover.

And on and on. I've used ND rolls many times and used in the standard way they don't offer me an improvement over my current process.

The reason you don't want to blow out the windows is that a great view is a huge selling point for a house/location. That would sacrifice a large part of the location's appeal for little gain.

There has to be an inventive way to do this.

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Originally posted by Dan Rahmel:
Problem with ND rolls is one of time and opportunity. When you've rented a location, there are rarely prize rose bushes that can be trampled when placing the ND (just one of many recent situations). Then there's the floor to ceiling sliding glass doors of a beach house that would have consumed lord knows how much ND material to cover.

And on and on. I've used ND rolls many times and used in the standard way they don't offer me an improvement over my current process.

The reason you don't want to blow out the windows is that a great view is a huge selling point for a house/location. That would sacrifice a large part of the location's appeal for little gain.

There has to be an inventive way to do this.

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<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Well, if it's creativity you want, like I said, get into lens diffusion/colour filtration to stylise and make those clipped windows photogenic. We live in an era of reality TV and you see this done all the time- just turn on MTV and take a peek! Look at something like The Osbournes- in most situations involving the house obviously they have all the windows ND/CT balanced and usually they'll have a 500w source bounced into a Lastolite umbrella to spread for vaguely photogenic portraiture of the star who happens to be in that proxemity- however if Ozzy and Kelly goto a London hotel or a supermarket or whatever, the lighting cameramen improvise by sticking on a star filter, a Tiffen soft filter or a thick promist or even a net and they'll either use this in combination with a colour filter in front of the lens or they'll deliberately set a bad white balance to get a desired unnatural colour. Lighting is either avaiable or if they are under they just whack out the umbrella or a 2K boucned off the ceiling. It's all over TV and all over corporates.

I'd seriously invest in a 2K too if this is to be a longterm venture to stick bread on the table- the key to this kind of work, love it or loathe it, is that each client's house is going to be different and require it's own photographic rules given the time of day you shoot, the location of the property, the size of the rooms, the available light in the rooms, the windows and even the power supplies. It's not too disimilar to narrative location filming! You have to be prepared and do your homework from project to project, even if each set up in each house is going to be merely a variation on the basics.

Good luck!

Looks like you've very few options -- this is what I would do -- light up the interior with floods then gel the floods to match the outside color temperature!

Good luck!

I'd just go with an ND roll. Cut some out and paste it on the window and you're done and you won't even notice it through the camera.

How about shooting at dusk?

The ambient room light would balance with the outside. Colour temperature of the light will vary but I can't image that to be a problem, and may in fact look nice,

I also realise that this will realistically leave you with about half an hour shooting time, just an idea.

The idea about uping the interior light to balance with the outside sounds good. Maybe you should hire some 10k HMI's, Just don't burn any holes in any carpets.

good luck

Shooting at dusk is a good idea and has worked for me a few times. Problem is, the shooting time is set by the client/real estate agent/homeowner, so it actually turns out to be not so pratical.

I got an idea over the weekend for an in-camera trick that might solve the problem. If it works, I'll share it.

Thanks to everyone for their suggestions.

Dan Rahmel
Author: "Nuts and Bolts Filmmaking"
http://www.cvisual.com

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