It kinda depends on what you're trying to do with the lights, I think. Could it be too bright because there is a wall near your set reflecting the light?

Might be easier to work the other way around. What kind of texture would you like to create? Eg. It's a scene set in the future, so you want the scene to have a purple tint or the theme of the scene is hope, so you want it to look blue since blue denotes a feeling of being limitless. Do you want to work with shadows?

Then maybe you can use gels? Sometimes just covering a plastic bag or two over it might help but please make sure it doesn't burn because of the heat it is emitting. It may help to look at the set's color scheme because colors behave differently. They mix to produce other colors and white absorbs color while black bounces it off making the set look brighter.

If you only want to use warm lights then using gels and colors might not be a good idea. I am experimenting a lot in this. If you can elaborate what are you trying to achieve in the scene, I might have experimented with something similar that I can share.

ETA: grammar

Last edited by JF (March 9, 2014 (06:25pm))

It could easily be your exposure, gain, and brightness settings, so I'd recommend playing with those a lot.
I had that problem for a while, but after re-positioning lights and adjusting settings it got fixed to a large degree.
Trial and error are going to be your best friends at this point.

You don't want your gain to be very high, the exposure can be mid-range depending on the lights, and brightness about the same. Try getting the exposure to be right below the point where the faces get blown out, and then bump up the brightness setting as see what happens. Also, try backing your lights away and turning up the three settings at once.

Another trick is to "bounce" the light. Point your light at a large white surface, and use that to reflect the light onto the set. It may not work, but it's worth a try.