Adds new meaning to the term "warming filter"... ;-)Originally Posted by Drew Wiley
Steve K
Adds new meaning to the term "warming filter"... ;-)
Steve K
Spot/Flood Fresnels like the 10" DeSisti and Quartz Color Castor are available for about 1-2% of original cost that you might consider converting some to electronic flash. They throw a unique and beautiful light and are far more efficient than soft boxes. They can be raised close to the ceiling and still be above the subject in a room with 8' ceilings. I have engineered conversions for Dynalite and Norman, and I think some of the Godox stuff will go right in. I will be posting conversion details soon, or you can PM me in the meantime. The Castor shown here, which has been converted to Norman can be bought for less than $40 on eBay.
Last edited by Neal Chaves; 21-Aug-2020 at 05:27.
Back when I did commercial work, we'd often mount huge sheets of diffusion materials over windows to create a huge bank of soft light. (Each of the photographers for the studio had two 8x16 foot diffusion "silks".) If needed, we would add flash on the outside.
“You often feel tired, not because you've done too much, but because you've done too little of what sparks a light in you.”
― Alexander Den Heijer, Nothing You Don't Already Know
I used Arri focusing frenels, a bit of Lowell lighting, and portable diffusers in a limited space. The nice thing about direct lighting is that what you see, you get. The bad thing about hot lights is that they are hot. So I'd use a stand-in model (often my wife) to arrange the lighting, so that the clients themselves wouldn't have to endure that.
That's a nice-looking room. With your light-colored walls and low ceiling there's going to be a lot of reflected light bouncing around... which can provide some natural fill light. Your lighting answers may be simpler than you think!
Spot/Flood Fresnels like the 10" DeSisti and Quartz Color Castor are available for about 1-2% of original cost that you might consider converting some to electronic flash. They throw a unique and beautiful light and are far more efficient than soft boxes. They can be raised close to the ceiling and still be above the subject in a room with 8' ceilings. I have engineered conversions for Dynalite and Norman, and I think some of the Godox stuff will go right in. I will be posting conversion details soon, or you can PM me in the meantime. The Castor shown here, which has been converted to Norman can be bought for less than $40 on eBay.
Would this generate a lot of heat in a small room?
If they use hot light they will generate lots of heat, also use lots of amperage.
Most importantly they will generate a much harsher shadow then a soft box. Unless you can mount them a long way from the subject.
The Falcon Eyes RX series are nice and small with plenty of output.
While the RX18T will be my next lighting purchase, it'll be for video, not stills. The output doesn't seem to be there for shooting large format.
My main LED light has been the Lightstorm LS1S panel ($700), with an output of 10,500 Lux at 1m. In a medium softbox with only the front diffusion, I can light a head & shoulders portrait at about F4 at 400 ISO; adding a grid drops it lower. The Falcon Eyes panels are bi-color, so their rated output is with all LEDs on 100%, so not sure what temp they're at with their fullest output. The new RX24TDX (150w, about $600) is 3790 Lux at 1m; the 18T is 2470 Lux at 1m; I assume those specs are without diffusion.
They do seem to be fantastic lights and the kits with softboxes and grids and space lights seem to give fantastic utility - my main interest is that it's a hassle to stuff the LightStorm into a softbox for interviews, the RX stuff seems like it would speed things up for me. Though if you own an RX light, I'd love to hear some real-world numbers, what kind of f-stop/ISO combo's it's capable of at varying distances with diffusion vs. trusting manufacturer's Lux claims - IE, I'd love to find out I'm very wrong!
Once lockdown eases off I expect a lot of catch-up video shooting, at that point I'll get a Falcon Eyes panel myself.
With the original 2Kw quartz bulbs they got very hot, so hot that the paint burned right off the top and insides of many of them. With electronic flash and a 250w bulb they don't even get warm. I have converted them to a standard Edison screw socket, and with a 500W photo flood bulb, you can still touch the top.
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