Deep stop with artificial sunlight

[garmstro]

Hello Roger and the forum,

I was reading your “looking at lighting” description of the No Country hospital scene, and I noticed that you mentioned that you don’t like the look of artificial sunlight when you are shooting at a shallow stop.  I was wondering why you have this particular preference, and if you could elaborate on it, because I’ve never heard this before.

Also if any of the forum have any insights or thoughts in regards to this particular question, I’m interested in hearing them!

Thanks!

Gabriel

Topic

[dmullenasc]

When faking sunlight, the goal is generally to be convincing… the trouble is that typically in a real day exterior with sunshine, you wouldn’t be shooting at f/2.0, let’s say, you’re more likely to be stopped down to f/4.0 or deeper. So super shallow-focus is sort of a giveaway that the daylight scene is artificially lit.

When Sven Nykvist filmed “Cannery Row” (1982), which had indoor sets that were supposed to be outdoors in daylight, he knew this would be a problem so he tried to shoot his real day exteriors at a wide aperture and his interior day “exteriors” at a stop deeper than wide-open so they had a similar feeling.

[Author]

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