One of the hardest things for a shoot in general, is depending on weather and this includes the whole package, rain, sun, wind, clouds, snow, etc. A lot of times you want something like sun, because you need good light on a specific scene, but sometimes too much sun can actually ruin your film so lets stay with Hippocrates quote "everything in excess is opposed to nature." In our case, we had to deal with a couple outside shoots, but there were 2 days from which at least half of the day we were shooting on a football pitch and as a low budget film, really depending on the weather. It was probably the hardest thing I have ever done in my life when it comes down to filming, because as a cinematographer, the slightest change of weather can ruin my shots and even worse give me a lot of work as an editor during the color correcting stage. In order to make sure I knew how to deal with whatever the weather was, I decided to do some research, mainly on sunny days, because we were fine with a cloudy weather, which was going to give the scene a 'shitty' mood, matching was sunday league is all about, but a very sunny day was going to start to ruin everything, because once the sun was out, if a cloud was passing by, it would change my light completely for a couple minutes. In order to confront this properly and make sure I was prepared, I started with the research on sunny days.
The first tip I found was keeping a look at overexposure:
You put sunscreen on because you know exposed skin burns under the midday sun. It's a similar situation for your camera. During the summer months, the sun can be extremely bright, especially at noon. This means you will have to protect your shots from being overexposed by increasing the shutter speed or decreasing the aperture. Both changes reduce the amount of light coming throughout the lens.
Don't be surprised if you have to increase your shutter speed up to 1/1000s or even 1/1500s to get the shot you want. This can be perfectly normal in the middle of a very bright day.
In my case overexposure became sometimes a big issue like seen on the picture above, because sometimes the sun wasn't as strong, allowing me and forcing me into changing the aperture to allow more light to come in, otherwise it would look quite dark. The problem with this was that when the sunlight decided to become strong and hard, since my aperture was open, the shots started to become overexposed, making me quickly change back to a lower aperture and different shutter. This was probably one of the hardest task, since we spend over 4-5 hours everyday on the pitch, making me have no break and constantly paying attention to the light and the settings, otherwise there were going to be clips that I wasn't going to be able to use.
The second tip was to avoid noon:
Many subjects look their best when light is shining on them from the sides. That's why sunrise and sunset are the best times to take any photo. In the middle of the day, the sun shines directly overhead and can sometimes cast strong shadows on your subject (usually the face). That's why it's sometimes best to wait an hour or two for the sun to move just slightly across the horizon so you can get a more sideways kind of lighting.
This was actually a very useful tip in a way, because of continuity. I actually couldn't film in what is called the golden hour, which is during sunset and sunrise, because the light naturally changes constantly during those hours of the day. I needed to wait until the sun was finally out and start filming and stop close to sunset, otherwise it would look like another day. This limited us to film between 9-10 and 3 everyday, allowing us a 5 hour slot for filming everything we needed, including giving the actors breaks and such. Sticking to those hours was actually quite helpful because at any point I felt that the sun was starting to become the enemy because of not being where we needed it to be.
The third tip was shoot landscapes:
Sunny days are perfect for landscape and wildlife photography because the closed aperture and very fast shutter speeds you use will prevent the photo from being overexposed. Go out and find an open field, setup an angle that gives the scene a sense of scale, and take the picture at an aperture of F22 or higher. Make sure you use your camera's onboard light meter to help you select the appropriate shutter speed, and don't forget the tripod.
Although we didn't need many landscapes or wildlife for our film, things like establishing shots and drone shots, were very useful at this stage because the sun allowed us to get great views without ruining it in any way. This was actually more helpful to the drone operator, Paul Saunders, rather than me, but in the end it was a very useful tip for the future.
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| Drone shot |
Another thing I gave a bit of research to, was N/D filters. Although I have used it in another occasions and understand the concept, I realized that it was going to become my best ally in during sunny days or just bright scenes in general. In order to use it correctly, it is important to understand what it is and how it works:
A neutral density (ND) filter is a filter that reduces the amount of light that passes through to the sensor. This means the camera has to perform a longer exposure than usual to create an evenly exposed image, which can be beneficial when you want to be more creative with your photography. You can, for example, use them to reduce light due to an overexposed scene or for more control over the shutter speed for a desired effect such as blurring water.
I also found this table which was quite useful regarding the relation between the N/D filter, the F-stop and the shutter. Knowing that the Sony EX I worked on has an N/D filter that goes from 0 to 2, it was a bit easier to keep an eye on how it worked, specially since I had to be constantly changing my F-stops, N/D filter and shutter due to the changes of natural light:
Overall I think the majority of the shots came out quite good and at least are useful for the edit, but it was a very good experience to work on this type of situation as a cinematographer and understanding how hard it can be to work during sunny days, but most important, how to embrace it and make sure you get the best out of it, because once again, people are counting on you to know this stuff and make the best you can do with what you have.
I will leave this video here, that although it is meant for photography, it actually helped on dealing with sunlight on peoples faces:
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