Stumped with flat light indoor metering situation

My Father-in-Law passed away in November and I got it in my head to document his boat repair shop before things change too much or we sell the place. Here is my quandary. The shop is in Page, AZ so it was built to not get a lot of direct sunlight inside the shop. Too darn hot for that. The lighting is flat from translucent panels in the ceiling and fluorescent shop lights over the benches. There are NO shadows.

Most of the place will be easy to handle as there is suitable local contrast to play with. The problem is his tool wall, and prop wall. Both walls are a dark red, and most of the tools, as well as the propellers are black. A meter reading off the tools and off the wall are exactly the same. I don't want to turn the red wall white with a red filter but I do want to create enough contrast as to accent the form of the props.

Any ideas?

Colour film?

Matt

If shooting b&w I think you have no option but filters. Yellow may produce enough contrast to work with, or shoot red and then flash/fog the print to bring tone back into the wall if necessary (may not be needed, but it's an option).

mark said:

My Father-in-Law passed away in November and I got it in my head to document his boat repair shop before things change too much or we sell the place. Here is my quandary. The shop is in Page, AZ so it was built to not get a lot of direct sunlight inside the shop. Too darn hot for that. The lighting is flat from translucent panels in the ceiling and fluorescent shop lights over the benches. There are NO shadows.

Most of the place will be easy to handle as there is suitable local contrast to play with. The problem is his tool wall, and prop wall. Both walls are a dark red, and most of the tools, as well as the propellers are black. A meter reading off the tools and off the wall are exactly the same. I don't want to turn the red wall white with a red filter but I do want to create enough contrast as to accent the form of the props.

Any ideas?

Click to expand...

Depends on how big the place is. Carefully placed studio lights might work. Why not record it in colour as well as B&W? It would be worth bracketing your exposures rather than risk failure to adequately record the place if you`re not sure of how to expose the films properly.
Film is fairly cheap.

Sorry about that, I will be using color and BW. It is the BW That is the problem. I'm using an 8x10 Efke and Delta 100 for the BW and 6x6 Velvia and Provia for the color.

Sounds like the color will take care of itself, but I agree that filtration and/or lighting will be needed in B&W.

Any way you can capitalize on surface-textural or reflective differences between wall and tools/props with direct or tangential lighting to bring out differences, with or without filtration? Might make for a more abstract, less literal interpretation of the scene, if this does not conflict with your purposes. Sounds like ambient light levels are probably fairly high; what about foamcore reflectors to get more light where it's needed, with or without strobes.

Efke 25 is orthopanchromatic, is it not? Might tend to make the problem even worse, rendering the red even darker. It may not be the best film for the job, but perhaps it's what you have on hand--certainly understand that! If other films are a possibility, what about IR films as an interesting experiment? Just an idea.

Sounds like an interesting project. Hope you'll post the work and link us to it when you've finished. Best of luck with it.

If it is as bad as you say, I see three possibilities for your BW. But I wonder if there's not more contrast there than you might suspect on your tool wall. If the light is flat from above, you're getting shadows under the tools, right? Those shadows should do a lot to hold separation against the wall.

But if it's really bad, try what others have said - add an orange filter too since it's more assertive than the yellow and more moderate than the reds.

Mix and match the three strategies below till you get results you want. If you can do a test shoot to work out the separation issues on the tool wall, that would make for a more productive session for the real "shoot". Better to have a trusted routine than to shoot many dozens of extras of each shot just to be sure.

There's nothing wrong with flat light that a bit of fiddling can't help considerably.

1. Shoot three series using yellow or orange or light red #23. or #25 strong red filters. Bracket a lot on each. I suspect orange might be best.
2. Do the same with extra development to help separate out tools from background. Depending upon how little contrast you get, it might be useful to add a great deal of development to get some snap.
3. Bring in lighting to separate out the tools.

C

Oh man, consider the beauty of black on black forms.
Subtle shadow separations in a nearly black print...
If only I could remember the photographers name...
Oh well, regardless, play around with it, it can be very beautiful extra development will do you well here, but you dont really need to pile it on.