Diffused Light Panels

[John Adolfi]

On the instructions of a book I'm reading I took my Super8 camera and headed to the back deck where the sun was beating down over my shoulder. We rigged up a bed sheet above my wife and had her stand underneath just after we shot some test footage without any panels or reflectors. We then shot with the bedsheet above with and without a gold and white reflector aiming light to her face and upper torso. Please fill me in with the finer points of using this. The results are supposed to be the difference between amature and professional. Long shots you can't do this. So only medium to CU's? Parachut material is best or something else? PVC for framing? Give me your tricks please. Thanks.

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

People use all kinds of stuff, the tradeoff being between the amount of diffusion and amount of light you lose through it bouncing back the way it came, which tends to be directly proportional. There's a similar consideration with bounced light, where some of it inevitably gets absorbed rather than reflected.

 

I think the material in use is a bit academic - different things do have different properties, so you might want to keep a couple available for different situations much as you might have silver and white bounce cards. Your bedsheet probably reflected and absorbed rather a lot, but then it would have been an extremely soft fill light. Ripstop nylon (known as gridcloth in the US) works, as do the various grades of diffusion and frost gel.

 

Phil