Yet another lighting equipment question

Thread view:

Enable EMail Alerts

Start New Thread

Thread rating:

John Banister - 02 Sep 2003 08:49 GMT

Hello,

I have yet another lighting equipment question.
I'm thinking of purchasing some lights, probably several months down the
road.
Most all of the pictures I've taken so far have been with available light, and
it seems challenging to me to be able to get just the image I want using a flash
unit without taking lots of digital or polaroid photos and making adjustments &
etc until the lighting is just right. I've tried the modeling light on my
flash,
but I guess I'm not good enough to notice and think about all the shadows in
the amount of time it wants to run.
A while back, B&H sent me their big lighting book, and, looking through it, I
saw that there's a pretty nice selection of continuous lighting. What looked
like it might cover most situations to my inexperienced eye was to get the
Elinchrom Daylight 575 HMI light and the Kino Flo Diva-Light 200 2-Kit of
dimmable daylight flourescents.
The thing is, I've never heard talk of still photographers using this sort
of equipment. So I'm wondering, what is it that ought to be thinking about
but am not that would make this sort of equipment a poor choice for still
photography lighting situations that are better with more than just my battery
powered flash attached to my camera? Or is it just that technology has
outpaced practice, and I'd likely do ok with this sort of stuff?
If it matters, I'm not trying to earn a living by taking pictures.
I'm an amateur, and my job provides me with money, but consumes large
amounts of my time.
Thanks for taking the time to read this.

John

Reply to this Message

This Guy Here - 02 Sep 2003 19:48 GMT

Everybody is different, and what's best for me ain't necessarily best
for you or anyone else. That being said...

I like strobes over your "continuous" light, for a couple of reasons:

o Your lights will get hot.
o My preferred light modifiers are soft boxes. You can get
soft boxes for your hot lights, but they are much more
expensive.
o You may wish to check the availability of other light
modifiers, like reflectors, grids, snoots, etc. for your
proposed solution.
o (As a B&W photographer, I don't much care about light
color, but your lights can be funky.

Some notes about using strobes & modeling lights:

o It's a good idea to turn off all other lights in your
studio, so that the only light is that from the modeling
lights. In other words, if the modeling lights are off,
the studio should be dark. Even a night light can
compete with your modeling lights & can throw off
your look.
o I use a spot flash meter. I never was able to get my
polaroid back for my camera (Bronica GS1) to work
reliably. So, I rely on my experience & the modeling
lights when setting the scene.

I, too, am an amateur, and I use my strobes for fine art nude
photography, which can be seen at...

http://www.looknseephoto.com

Hope that helps.

>Hello,
>
[quoted text clipped - 25 lines]
>
>John

Reply to this Message

Randall Ainsworth - 02 Sep 2003 20:28 GMT

For the most part I'd agree with you except for the flash meter part.
If you're in a studio context, you're best off to nail down the fill
light and, using film/densitometer tests, determine your base density.

Reply to this Message

John Banister - 04 Sep 2003 03:10 GMT

Thanks for taking the time to give me your input.

This Guy Here <looknsee@ixnetcom.com (put a "." between the "x" & the "n")>
wrote:

>Everybody is different, and what's best for me ain't necessarily best
>for you or anyone else. That being said...
>
>I like strobes over your "continuous" light, for a couple of reasons:
>
> o Your lights will get hot.

Do you think the flourescents will? I thought they'd be about like
household flourescents.

I expected some heat from the 575 watt HMI lamp, but I've used a lot of
500 watt quartz lamps to illuminate work areas, and the heat seems
very managable.

> o My preferred light modifiers are soft boxes. You can get
> soft boxes for your hot lights, but they are much more
> expensive.
> o You may wish to check the availability of other light
> modifiers, like reflectors, grids, snoots, etc. for your
> proposed solution.

The Elinchrom entry in the B&H book seemed too suggest that
all the types of light modifiers for their flash equipment were
available for the HMI lamp. I even got the impression that it was
mostly the same stuff.

Perhaps the other side of this coin is that 575 watts isn't bright
enough too be very useful?

The flourescents have grids available, though there's not so
varied a selection as Elinchrom has.

> o (As a B&W photographer, I don't much care about light
> color, but your lights can be funky.

Are you talking about the color balance of tungsten?

I thought that the HMI and flourescent lamps used for
photography did a decently good job of matching
daylight. Also, I think I remember reading that
the flickering effect of older flourescent lamps has
been solved in the modern ones used for photography.

I'm not trying to be too argumentative, but I'm wondering
a little if some aspects of your comments relate more to
the big hot 2000 - 5000 watt tungsten lights which seem
to be the majority of what is sold (certainly they occupied the
largest portion of the continuous lighting section of
the B&H book) than to the specific equipment I had
mentioned.

>Some notes about using strobes & modeling lights:
>
[quoted text clipped - 8 lines]
> reliably. So, I rely on my experience & the modeling
> lights when setting the scene.

Thanks for this information. When I get the opportunity, I'll
try and put it to good use.

>I, too, am an amateur, and I use my strobes for fine art nude
>photography, which can be seen at...
>
> http://www.looknseephoto.com
>
>Hope that helps.

I'll definitely have a look at your site this weekend. Weekdays
my internet access is via cell phone only.

John

Reply to this Message