A while back I learned that whenever you're outdoors you typically want to back light the actors. If you look at just about any western movie produced over the last 50 years you'll see back lighting on the cowboys - sometimes on both ends of the street during a dual! Watch for it next time "Shanghai Noon" is on TV. When I attended the ASC talk with Dan Mindel ASC, he said that Tony Scott taught him the difference between art and pornography....back lighting!
Needless to say, anyone who has shot outdoors knows that it can be very difficult to control and shape sunshine throughout the day. It takes a very powerful and expensive lighting setup to keep up with the sun; which is usually not in the budget. This month I wanted to highlight two pieces of grip gear that are relatively inexpensive to rent and are commonly used outdoors. to control sun.
First up is the shiny board, which you can see mounted on a stand behind Video Gear's inventory control manager, Nikita. There are two types of shiny boards available. The one shown behind her is the stronger of the two, just so I could demonstrate the effect more clearly. The other shiny board has more diffuse reflection and may work better in many real world cases. The reflection is sort of similar to a fold out reflector, however this can be locked in place and you don't have to worry about your grip's consistency from shot to shot. It's also easier to mount the shiny board higher up than most grips can reach. Even through it's not clearly shown, the board has a parabolic shape across the surface, so it can concentrate the reflection and throw sun rays a large distance.
The effect here is a bit over the top, but the picture is really for demonstration purposes. I was able to have Nikita face the sun and add back lighting via the shiny board. You can see the effect on the top of her head and on the right side of her hair.
Here's the same exposure and white balance without the shiny board. You can clearly see a difference with and without sun highlights on her hair. The sun had an exposure of f/22.6. Without the shiny board her back lighting measured f/8.6. With the shiny board the back lighting measured f/16.6 - a difference of 2 stops at 8 feet board-to-head, not to mention the specular highlights on her golden hair now that the back lighting is less diffuse. If she was standing further away from the shiny board the effect would have been even more pronounced because the board concentrates the reflection more as you throw it a larger distance. So user beware...you might give someone a serious sunburn if you have them stand far away. Also, you never want to use the shiny board for front fill without diffusion because it would be like looking directly into the sun! We cinematographers torture our actors enough!
Now we're going to look at the opposite situation. What if the actor is already back lit by the sun and you need frontal fill? This is what Ultra Bounce rags are made for. The bounce we have in stock is a 6x6 foot rag and I have it mounted on our Matthews 6x6 frame with two stands.
Again, the effect is a bit over the top but I wanted to demonstrate the effect. You can see the highlights in her hair from the sun, but the front fill from the Ultra Bounce is making a gradient across her face from right to left.
Here is the same exposure and white balance, but without the Ultra Bounce fill. The passive fill here was still about f/8.6. With the Ultra Bounce that was boosted to f/16 - a difference of 1.4 stops and she was standing about 5-6 feet from the frame.
So you don't *always* need a generator truck and a series of 24k HMI lights. I'm not saying this replaces the need for the big guns (gear envy drool implied), but for a lot of situations these tools are perfectly adequate and provide similar control over outdoor lighting with much quicker setup times and lower cost. What I didn't show today for brevity sake is an overhead diffusion, but I have to leave something for a future entry.
If you have questions, please call the shop. We're here to help.
Saturday, March 29, 2014
Tools For Lighting Outdoor Locations
Sunday, March 2, 2014
**NEW** Fiilex LED lights At Video Gear
We have a new LED light kit from Fiilex that just arrived in the shop. Actually we now have both the 3-head and 4-head kits, but only the 3-head kit was available when I was in the shop taking pictures so that's the one I'm going to discuss here. This kit is small, lightweight, and portable; lending itself to small corporate shoots and field portable documentary setups.
The 3-head kit comes with three P360 90-watt LED fixtures with color temperature variable from 3000K to 5600K. The manufacturer claims that the light has light quality better than 92 CRI at all color temperatures in it's range thanks to its special multi-LED bulb. The light level can be lowered down to 10% minimum. The fixture uses an external brick power supply that can range from 12-28Vdc, which is both good and bad. Bad in the sense that you have to wrangle an external power brick/set tripping source without a mid-cord power switch...which we all know is inconvenient for tall stands. Good in the sense that you can, with the correct power adapter, plug in any broadcast battery and have long lasting portable power without any need for a power socket. Anyone who does documentary or corporate shoots knows that there isn't always time to scout for power sockets, so it's good to have your own power available when you need it.
The rental kit comes with a well stocked number of light modifier accessories including a set of three dome diffusers, three barn doors, and a set of Fresnel lenses. The diffuser and lens attach via a set of two magnets and simply snap into place - easy and quick. Note that the diffusers and lenses are normally sold separately, but we want you to be fully stocked when going into the field.
The kit also comes with a single speed ring and a snap on 15-inch soft box for the normal key light softening on corporate interviews.
Below are three pictures showing a typical light pattern of each of the bulb configurations. First, the bare bulb, followed by the dome diffuser, and finally the Fresnel lens. I forgot my light meter at home, so I grabbed an approximate 18% Lastolite chart from sales and a dark corner of the office to test the light's power output. With a standard distance of 10 feet I found that I was getting an approximate exposure of f/2.8, ISO 800, 1/50th. For those of you who read our previous blog about foot-candles you would be able to calculate in your head that this gives us approximately 12.5 foot-candles. On the Fiilex web site they claim 15 foot-candles at 3000K and 17 foot-candles at 5600K and 10 feet.
The second picture shows the dome diffuser. The diffuser essentially steals one so I ended up at an approximate exposure of f/2.0. This is approximately 6.3 foot-candles.
The final picture shows the Fresnel lens. This lens adds one stop because I was back up to approximately f/4.0, giving us about 25 foot-candles.
Last, but not least, here's a picture of the full kit laid out on our shop floor. Note that the kit comes with lightweight stands and a Pelican-type roller case. Everything fits into the size of a small carry-on suitcase.
If you're interested in renting or purchasing a kit, please call the shop. As I mentioned before, we also have the 411 4-head kit available in case you want an additional light. However, the 4-head kit only comes with two P360 fixtures and two smaller P180 fixtures.
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