Large, distant soft sources vs. soft sources which

[DavidSloan]

I'm curious as to what the difference is between lighting soft from far away vs. having a soft unit which is closer to the subjects. Is there a difference in the quality of the "wrapping?"

 

Thanks

[David Mullen ASC]

The main difference is fall-off in exposure. When you have a really large soft light very close to the face in a portrait shot, the area of the face closest to the light can be very hot, falling off to darkness more rapidly, whereas an even larger soft light from farther away creates a similar soft shadow termination on the face but without the rapid change in exposure.

[James Tanouye]

This seems to be noticeable to me. I just saw Finding Neverland the other day and there was this shot of Mr. Barry's wife. It looked like the light was just a few feet away from her. At least it was motivated by a lamp near by.

 

One thing I noticed about this movie was the eye lights. It was similar in almost every shot with every actor. Just a small dot in the eye. Does anyone know what they used for it?

[Adam Frisch FSF]

Absolutely. Softness is a function of size of object in relation to size of source mainly. It has far less to do with the construction or the filtering of the source than it has to do with size. A soft source far away isn't a soft source anymore unless you enlarge it tremendously.

 

I'm just guessing, but I think the size follows the formula for fall-off, i.e. it changes with the inverse square, but this is just speculation on my part.

Edited February 5, 2005 by AdamFrisch

[Adam Frisch FSF]

Actually, this happens to be one of my favorite subjects, so I hope you will allow me once again to preach a little. You guys already know all this, but maybe for someone reading in it might be interesting. I won't be long. :D

 

There are many misconceptions about soft lights. What is soft light, anyway? Well, I'd argue that softness is nothing else but "wraparoundness". That's all it is - a wrapping light is percieved as soft no matter if the source is "hard" or "soft". Therefore - and I think I've said this before - if you stick an apple in front of a 5K - right up to the lens (wear your sunglasses) and pretend that's a face, you'll see that it won't be hard at all. But a fresnel is percieved and referred to as a hard light. I won't argue that, because for the most a 5K is a hard light the way it's most often used - i.e. from afar.

 

Here's a repost of an answer I gave here some time ago on the same subject:

 

One of the best guys at soft light is Emmanuel Lubezki, ASC. He shoots using huge sources, often bounced two, three times before it gets out. All that bouncing BEFORE it hits the silk, isn't really doing anything except making the light more even so that when it hits the silk it has no hot spots. But if you could fill the same silk without hot spots in any other way (bouncing just happens to be an easy way to do that), the exact same softness would be achieved. My point? It's not the fact that Emmanuel BOUNCES his lights so many times that makes it soft - it's that his sources are so big and lack hot spots.

 

Now, this is unclear even to most light designers. The company who makes the Aurasoft lights bragged in their ad's that they'd made some revolutonary bubbly reflector that scattered the light and made it extra soft. This is all humbug. All that does is lose intensity, it doesn't make it softer. You always come back to the same old facts, and those are: relative size matters in softlights.

 

It's really much simpler than we think.

[David Mullen ASC]

Yes, size of source relative to subject determines softness. In the close versus far comparison, I am assuming that the size is relatively the same by making the farther soft light much larger in size. If you do that, the difference is not so much in softness but in fall-off of intensity over distance.

 

People have all sorts of crazy ways of softening lights (some rather inefficient), which is fine since there isn't one level of softness but an infinite number of degrees of softness. But the truth is still that size of source relative to the subject determines softness. Once you've filled a large diffusion frame EVENLY with light from corner to corner, it cannot get any softer unless it is moved closer or made larger.

[J. Lamar King IMPOSTOR]

I learned that concept really well when I first started using china balls. They provide great soft light that doesn't cast a shadow when close to a person but move it farther back and "Hey where'd that shadow come from?" I only use a china ball for fill when I can sneak it in close otherwise I jump to a 4x frame.

[Adam Frisch FSF]

I learned it by trying to flag a huge butterfly like 1" from the silk... Didn't work. :D

[Manu Anand]

I'm just guessing, but I think the size follows the formula for fall-off, i.e. it changes with the inverse square, but this is just speculation on my part.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

An excerpt form one of my postings on an indian cinematographer forum:

 

"Yes but the inverse square is approximated for point

sources of light but that does not mean we cant use it

in everyday situations

 

First of all the inverse square law is used in

situations where the distance is 5 times greater than

the greatest dimension of the light

For example for a kino flo the greatest dimension is

the length for a frosted bulb the diameter of the bulb

for a clear bulb the length of the filament.

The minimum distance from which you can begin to apply

the inverse square law is 5 times the greates

measurable dimension of the light.

 

Now lights with reflectors on the other side that

focus the light do not follow the inverse square law

from the light or say a light with a gateway sheet.

 

They follow it from the point of convergence/origin of

the rays

Now what does this mean?

Say take the gateway sheet, it is diffusing the light,

the point of origination is a point way behind the

light, (and there are formulas to calculate point of

origin, if u need it i'll send it) and it is way

behind the gateway sheet.

The point of origin is the point from which the

inverse square law applies hence

Broader sources have less light fall of with distance."

 

Manu Anand

[Adam Frisch FSF]

Interesting. I did know big sources had less fall-off, but I didn't know the same went for a silk or a soft light. That's good to know.

[Guest fstop]

This is all very interesting (enlightening theories from Adam) and highly subjective in terms of technique and quality-

 

Personally, and I've said it before, I don't think it's possible to do complete shadowless wrap around soft light using direct light through silks (unless it's like mutliple maxibrutes), there's always tell tale signs. There's always some form of slight, double or mutliple shadows and even if it's hardly noticable it just drives me insane, like a mosquito. If I see it in my own work it drives me insane! Plus the idea of having that silk so far away from the lamp and right in the actors face just seems glaringly faffy to me. I don't think anything can beat the effect of bouncing a large lamp onto ANY kind of large reflective surface and watching it ping pong around the room filling in every shadow.

 

It all depends on your definition of softlight too, I mean what I'd call supersoft with direct most of you would call hard simply because I'm not convinced direct can ever be seamlessly soft but hardlight still has it's own remarkable range. I think bounced is BEYOND soft, it's just so subtle it's totally invisible (IMO)! It's like what David said with the varying degrees of softness and the whacky ways people approach it, I guess as I can appreciate myself it's hideously personal and everyone has their own self-fascist opinion.

 

Being someone who loathes the look of kino for natural looking key/fill work (and putting that aside for this thread) I've always just assumed that you guys who use it for that had it easy getting a seamless softlight very quickly far way or close up. How do those vary close up to far away seeing as they are rows of open tubes?

[David Mullen ASC]

Bouncing light is not inherently softer than shining a light through diffusion. The same rules apply either way: if you even fill the bounce surface with light, then the size of that surface determines the softness. If not, then the bounce light becomes less soft.

 

The reason I generally prefer shining through diffusion is because the soft light (bounce surface or diffusion frame) becomes the source, not the light shining on or through it. And I like looking over from where the actor is and seeing clearly the shape and size of the light source. With big bounce rigs, you sometimes see this large white shape with the silhouette of a lighting unit in front of it. Plus if you gel the lighting unit used for the bounce, now you have to flag or blackwrap the back of the unit to kill the bounce-back from the inside of the gel. So instead of seeing, let's say, a simple, bright 12'x12' soft source of light that is orange-ish, I see this mess of flags & lights & gels with a big source BEHIND that trying to fight its way back to the actor's face.

 

So I only bounce when it is the more practical and efficient way of creating the soft light. Otherwise, I prefer frames of diffusion or naturally soft lights (like Kinos.) I don't like silks though because they don't really spread the light evenly; you get a star-shape, and I'm always wondering about the shadow that a fuzzy star-shape makes!

 

A Kino is just another thing that makes light. The tubes are in a reflective housing, so backed-off, there is not perception of multiple tubes. Up close, it would be hard to see the effect either but often I use diffusion over the Kino anyway. The only odd thing about Kino light are the 4' 4-bankers which are rectangular, creating a shadow with a slight "smear" in one direction. This is only a problem if you see the shadow that the long Kino casts.

 

I've never understood the prejudice some people have against Kinos, as if being a fluorescent tube makes it inherently unacceptable compared to, let's say, a traditional Fresnel. Probably the worst gaffer I ever worked with had that attitude and I found it really insufferable, as if some lights were more "legitimate" than others! In real life, we have all sorts of shapes and sizes and colors for light and this is just another way of creating light. If I can create the look I want with an ordinary bare household bulb, I will. Besides, you shine a tungsten Kino through a 4'x4' frame of heavy diffusion and the light is no different (other than color possibly) than, let's say, a 2K Zip shining through it.

[Adam Frisch FSF]

Howard Atherton, BSC, has a light that he calls the wedge-light, apparently. It's a shame I can't explain it with a drawing here, but it's really an ingenious way of creating a soft key light and a slightly harder edge/rim from the same source!!! Yes, you read that correctly - one lamp does both.

 

It's basically a diffusion frame but with a polyboard (white solid bounce) wedged at an angle to it. Much like a book you've opened just 10 degrees or something (just to get your thumb in as not to forget where you were kinda thing). At the "open" end he puts a Blondie (apparently, he likes Blondies). This will now hit both the diffusion frame and the polyboard. If you put a person facing the same direction as the wedge, then that person will get a harder rim from the hotspot of the Blonde at the back, and the further down the wedge the light travels then the softer it becomes since it's bounced back from the poly thru the diffusion and wraps around the talent. It's hard to explain, but it's basically a rimlight and side softlight all in one.

[DavidSloan]

@Adam: I know exactly what you mean. I've seen someone do something where the light is aimed frontally but at a slight angle to the subject and the diffusion frame is also at a slight angle leaving some room for a hard edge to escape, creating a predominantly soft look with a hard edge look. I'm not sure how it looks if the person moves their head, a lot.

[David Mullen ASC]

You sort of see this with Roger Deakins' work too -- he'll have a person lit with a series of 4'x4' diffusion frames end-to-end so as they step forward, the farther diffusion frame behind the person creates a soft kicker.

[Michael Nash]

I agree with all the points brought up here but I want to elaborate on the issue of using multiple layers of bounce and diffusion to soften light. I too have seen a lot of craziness using too may silks and whatnot to end up with the same light you could get with ONE layer of the right diffusion, but there is some legitimacy to the multiple layer approach.

 

Sometimes when you use two layers of diffusion you can get a more "complex" softlight or shadow pattern than you would get with a single layer of softening. For example, say you fill up a 4x4' frame of 216 and put it about 10' away from a face. That's a nice, single-source soft light, with a particular amount of softness and falloff. Now take a 4x4' frame of a very light diffusion like Hampshire Frost or 1/4 China Silk and put it about 3' from the face. What you get here is two different qualities of light hitting the face at the same time. You still get most of the same softness and falloff from the 216, but additionally you get some extra "fill" with a larger, softer source that wraps more and falls off quicker. This approach can give the light a more natural-looking complexity and create the illusion of "depth" to the light sources, taking the edge off the "sourciness" of a soft source.

 

Of course this type of softening is subject to the same matter of degree as with any diffusion; there comes a point where additional layers of diffusion, especially without enough "air" between them, doesn't gain you anything and just loses stop. Whenever I can apply this principle I make sure to lighten the diff. as I get closer to the subject and never the other way around. Starting with a layer of Opal and ending up with 216 next to the face is akin to just dropping a scrim in the light.

 

Regarding bounce vs. diffusion, I understand and agree with David's points but I find an aesthetic advantage to bouncing instead of direct-through diffusion. There's a certain "naturalness" to bouncing light on practical interiors that makes light behave, well, the way it should if it's to appear natural. The complexity of broken-up shape and color of bounced fill can lend a realism to fill light in certain situations. Chris Doyle got experimental with this concept in lighting In The Mood For Love, even bouncing light off of the colored sandbags on set to introduce some extra "randomness" to the fill light. The flip side of this is that you're trading off controllability for a natural quality.

[J. Lamar King IMPOSTOR]

I remember seeing a picture in AC of that shot in "The Horse Whisperer" where Redford is talking to Johanson on that cliff top. In the picture it looked like Richardson had two huge silks one in front of the other about four feet apart and on the key side. When you watch the film you see a soft late day sun effect. I've always been curious about that.

[Guest fstop]

I totally agree with Michael on the aesthetic qualitiess of bounced light.

 

Bouncing light is not inherently softer than shining a light through diffusion. The same rules apply either way: if you even fill the bounce surface with light, then the size of that surface determines the softness.  If not, then the bounce light becomes less soft.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

If you go direct through silks though you have a source, then the diffusion and then the subject: a straight line- with bounced you have the source, then the material to bounce and then the subject on the same side as where the source is, so it's more of a right angle- so it's conserving more space. That's all I meant in relation to direct vs. bounced faff.

 

A Kino is just another thing that makes light.  The tubes are in a reflective housing, so backed-off, there is not perception of multiple tubes.  Up close, it would be hard to see the effect either but often I use diffusion over the Kino anyway.  The only odd thing about Kino light are the 4' 4-bankers which are rectangular, creating a shadow with a slight "smear" in one direction.  This is only a problem if you see the shadow that the long Kino casts.

 

I've never understood the prejudice some people have against Kinos, as if being a fluorescent tube makes it inherently unacceptable compared to, let's say, a traditional Fresnel.  Probably the worst gaffer I ever worked with had that attitude and I found it really insufferable, as if some lights were more "legitimate" than others! In real life, we have all sorts of shapes and sizes and colors for light and this is just another way of creating light.  If I can create the look I want with an ordinary bare household bulb, I will. Besides, you shine a tungsten Kino through a 4'x4' frame of heavy diffusion and the light is no different (other than color possibly) than, let's say, a 2K Zip shining through it.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I disagree, to me kino, no matter how diffused, always has that look you get when someone lays down underneath strip lighting you see in offices and hospitals- like this weird translucent thing going on with the skin- I hate it when it's used to key a portrait that's suppose to look natural and you can see a smudged up nose shadow that doesn't have any direction, no natural triangular tidyness that works WITH the facial structure- it just looks like it's been motivated by a glowing tube (or tubes). IMO Flos have such a unique, characterisitic shape and look that they stick out like a sore thumb to myself (and many others it seems, like David's wonderful gaffer ;) ) when they are used to imitate the qualities of natural light, or even theatrical light.

 

Karl Walter Lindenlaub really hit the nail for me in the AC covering ID4 (1996), saying that flos and tubes are a look an audience subconciously associates with hospitals and offices or anywhere else that has those flo ceiling striplights. They are as much a lighting convention as flashing blue and red codes emergency service vehicles. Like him I'd only use them for lighting sets that have flo practicals built into the art direction, so a hospital, office, etc. It's just personal taste- don't get me wrong, there's great Kino work done all the time by many cinematographers who've kept on the ball with it intelligently with their own unique developments (big names include Khondji, Muller and Bill Pope) which I respect, it's just not my cup of tea at all though. I also think in too many instances it's made soft light easy and even lazy, used as a drug - Panic Room is the epitome of that boring, flat, fuzzy kino work for EVERY shot that's proliferated in recent years- yet there's David Fincher who think he's making Roizman and Willis proud. :( But anyway, each to their own.

 

Adam- that Atherton soft effect you mentioned for some reason the name Dick Bush sprang to mind- don't know why...

[David Mullen ASC]

I think you're over-thinking the whole Kino thing. It's a soft light that comes in a tube. You bunch enough tubes together and it becomes effectively a square-shaped source of light, no different than any other square-shaped source of light of the same size.

 

Plenty of beautiful Silent Era films were shot with Cooper Hewitt tubes, the precursor to the fluorescent, and they don't remind you of hospital lighting!

 

I already posted shots from "Northfork" and "Twin Falls Idaho" before and I'm sorry if you think those movies look like they were shot in a hospital, but 80% of the close-ups were lit with Kinos!

 

Here's one:

 

 

As for shining light through a silk, I've already said why that doesn't produce a good soft light -- silk is a bad material for that. But in this case, when there's a diffusion frame between a light and a subject, the frame is the source. When you bounce a light off of a surface, the surface is the source. How soft that light is, again for the millionth time, determined by the size of the source relative to the subject. You spot a light into the center of a white card and get a hot spot, it is not as soft as when you flood the light. The same thing when you get a hot spot in the center of a diffusion frame.

 

What I like about diffusion frames SINCE THEY ARE THE SOURCE is that I can more easily cut that source with flags -- I'm not dealing with the lighting equipment sitting in front of the source and trying to work around it. But it all depends on the space and what's a more practical way of working. But there is no inherent superiority to a bounced soft light over a diffused light. You can make either harder or softer depending on how you do it.

 

Truth is that it is hard to make a movie and light it well if you deliberately limit your choices based on some sort of dogmatic notions of the right or wrong way to create soft light. In the course of a movie, I will bounce light, diffuse light, use flourescents, use soft light, use hard light, use Chinese Lanterns, use whatever gets me the look I need quickly and efficiently. If the easiest way to get the look I want is to tape a tube to the ceiling, I'll do that. All I care about is how that light looks, not what type of light I used to get it and whether it is kosher or not.

[David Mullen ASC]

Here are some behind-the-scenes photos from a period movie ("Master and Commander") that won an Oscar for its cinematography, and I don't think you can call this "lazy" work, nor that it looks like it was shot in a hospital:

 

 

 

 

Clearly Russell Boyd has the same attitude towards Kinos that I do -- use whatever gets the job done!

[Jon Rosenbloom]

I have to second David Mullen's support of Kino's. My little shooting kit inludes a bunch of pieces of bleached muslin pre-cut to fit into various kino's. A single kino w/ a "diaper" can look the same as a small booklight, or a baby w/ a chimera, or a double-diffused whatever. The unmentioned problem w/ kino's is they can be a little tough to control, owing to their length.

 

Anyway, something I've long wondered: Suppose you've got an ultra-dino up in a 120' lift. If you rig an 8'x8' diffusion in front of it, does the light really get softer - the diffusion really isn't increasing the size of the source, or are you just knocking out some of the stop?

[DavidSloan]

A single kino w/ a "diaper"

 

Is "diaper" jargon for muslin?

 

BTW, I'm a huge Kino fan, as well. One of my favorite things to do is to make a wall of Kinos wrapped in muslin.

[Jon Rosenbloom]

Is "diaper" jargon for muslin?

 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

All I've got in my set box is precut muslin, but if I had precut grids or other diffusions, then they could be "diapers" as well. I don't think it's "official" jargon, though, like "butt-plug," or "Gary-Coleman." (Hmm, "Bring me a Diva with a diaper on top of a Gary Coleman:" Has a nice ring to it.)

[greg harris]

i'll just chime in real quick with a stills guy perspective, some of our lighting rigs sole purpose is to hide the hot spot of the actual lamp in order to avoid sharpness of shadows, for instance the octabank (literally an octagonal light about 6ft in diameter) in which the head is rigged facing away from the subject bouncing into a silver umbrella type affair and then running out through a full diffusion silk creating a very even spread across the diameter of the light. another example is the beauty dish, a much smaller light source about 20in in diameter has the head hidden behind a small disc in the centre which bounces light back into the dish which can be silver or white depending on the sharpness of shadow required. these both achieve a very even shadow termination i.e highlight to shadow is a smooth transition, then the distance to source determines the rest as already mentioned. g

[Michael Nash]

In the course of a movie, I will bounce light, diffuse light, use flourescents, use soft light, use hard light, use Chinese Lanterns, use whatever gets me the look I need quickly and efficiently.  If the easiest way to get the look I want is to tape a tube to the ceiling, I'll do that. All I care about is how that light looks, not what type of light  I used to get it and whether it is kosher or not.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I agree with David 100% here. Whatever gets the job done. Sometimes you need the controllability of light through a diffusion frame, sometimes you need the compactness of a bounce. You can get just as picky about bounce material as you can with diffusion material if you really want, but in the end it comes down to what you have to work with and the end result you can get with it.

 

Regarding silks; yes they are a pretty crappy diffusion really as they let a hot spot show through, but they are pretty commonly found in any grip package and are easy to reach for. There are better materials like grid cloth for more uniform diffusion of light, but you're less likely to have ready-made 2x3 and 4x4 frames of that compared to silk.

 

I also don't think that Kinos inherently have an artificial "hospital" look to them, it's all in how you use them. A fixture that's long and skinny like a 4' 4-bank does produce an odd shadow pattern when used on its own, as it has a soft shadow in one direction but a sharper shadow in the other. But this has nothing to do with the fact that it's a fluorescent source; it's due to the shape. If you shined a fresnel through a piece of diffusion that's 4' x 1' you'd get the same quality. So as David says, if you bunch up enough tubes together it becomes just a big, soft source.

 

Sometimes I'll take the "sharpness" off a 4' 4-bank Kino by putting it through a 4'x'4 frame of opal, and turning the light on an angle across the frame. This kind of softens and breaks up the recognizable shadow pattern of a long skinny source.

 

Regarding Panic Room, you have to remember that much of that movie was set in a house where there were no lights on, so Fincher and the two DP's were trying to create the feel of an almost non-existant quality of light; that kind of fuzzy flatness you see in a house at night. So yes it is a distinct look; something you don't see in movies too often (at least not for the whole movie).

 

"Diaper bags" are specially made gridcloth pieces with elastic straps on the end, made to fit over the kino unit (Kino calls them "Floziers"). I've been using them on Divas on the show I'm DPing right now.

 

http://kinoflo.com/sales_catalog_2004/diva...iva_system.html