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Lightning on a white background


Paul Lindqvist

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Hi Guy's!

 

Im a still photographer by profession and recently i'm doing some video work.

 

As still photographer i'm quite familiar with studio lighting and strobes. But when it comes to continues lighting I'm very inexperienced.

 

I have a upcoming project where we gonna film a dialog between two persons against a white infinity wall (full body).

 

It's actually one person who is gonna play two characters and we will shoot each character separately and then combine them in post.

 

We want a similar look like the old Mac vs PC AD.

 

For stills this setup would be quite easy and basic. I would use two light sources on the background and one large indirect octabank to light the subject(s)

 

We gonna shoot this with a FF DSLR with a 50mm lens @ 1/50s Iso:100 (if possible) and F/8.

 

The thing is I'm only familiar with W/s in strobe lighting and can correlate that to how much light i get.

 

So my plan thus far for the above scenario is as follow:

 

  • Two Arri Arrilite 2000 ( Blondie ) 2 kW on the background (one on each side)

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  • One Briese H5 Tungsten Lamphead 5000W with a Briese Focus Reflector 180 for the subject(s)

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The Briese will pretty much be straight on the subject behind the camera so i get a even lighting on both subjects.

 

The area to light is roughy 3m wide (at full body) and 4m deep

This is the space we gonna shoot in.

post-66190-0-91401000-1410458135_thumb.jpg

 

So does this sound like a good plan ?

 

Is the power enough to shoot at 1/50s Iso:100 F/8 ?

 

Is there any downside to using tungsten compared to HMI or LED for this kind of studio setup ?

 

Any input is much appreciated.

Regards

Paul

Edited by Paul Lindqvist
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Make sure you have some diffusion for those 2ks. 250 (half white) will probably do you fine but I'd keep some 216 (full white) on hand as well. Otherwise you might see some hot spots on the cyc. That Briese light will be your best friend. If you have some 1/3 diff for the umbrella that would help to smooth out any rough spots left from those 2ks as well as kill some shadow off of your talent. I don't know if ISO 100 is realistic but you should get a pretty decent exposure from the 5k.

 

I think situations like this are ideal for tungsten lighting. LEDs generally don't have enough output and there's really no need to daylight balance. Hope this helped a little bit.

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Hi Guy's!

 

Im a still photographer by profession and recently i'm doing some video work.

 

As still photographer i'm quite familiar with studio lighting and strobes. But when it comes to continues lighting I'm very inexperienced.

....

Is the power enough to shoot at 1/50s Iso:100 F/8 ?

 

Is there any downside to using tungsten compared to HMI or LED for this kind of studio setup ?

 

Any input is much appreciated.

Regards

Paul

 

This is why I bought the Sekonic L-308DC, because it has a readout in footcandles/lux.

 

Most 'moving pictures' lighting, at least the ARRIs and equivalent, have their lights spec'd for footcandles/lux at distances. There is no convenient easy way to convert that sort of output in to the Watt-seconds that strobes are spec'd at. As a note here many 'non' pro light suppliers only spec Watts or some times Lumens, in either case are pretty useless for getting good approximations of the amount of light delivered on the subject...

 

For the ARRIlite, ARRI has an iPhone app that will allow you to select the lamp, and it will give you the photometric data to allow you to know better what the exposure will be at various distances.

 

App info: https://itunes.apple.com/de/app/photometrics/id733009338?mt=8

 

There is a rule of thumb: for ISO 100, one needs 100 fc @ f/2.8 @ 1/48 (180 deg) shutter.

 

So, from the calculator for an ARRIlite Plus 2000, 100 fc is given if the lamp is approx. 16 feet from the subject.

 

Which for your desired F/8 setting, means that is 'under'.

 

The difficulty here is if you want no shadows, full length, you need to have the background lit such that the there is no falloff and so, one can not arbitrarily move the main light on the talent to get a 'better' exposure.

 

The Briese light is a strobe is it not?

Edited by John E Clark
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Hi guy's Thanx for the input much appreciated!!

 

Jimmy Demarco

 

Thanx for the tip, will makes sure to get that as well. Two Diff's are included in the kit, so ill will make sure to try them to cut some edge off the briese.

Will also get dimmers for the blondies.

 

John

 

Thanx! Im very fond of my 758DR so i will either get the C version or maybe the handy L-308 you got!

 

Will try the app, that's a great tool very helpful!

 

The Briese H5 is a tungsten head. They have the H6 which is flash though.

 

UPDATE

 

So i'm picking up lighting today for our pre-shoot on Sunday... and just got word that the gear we are renting won't be available for the live shoot on wednesday..

 

So when we are shooting live i will be using:

Briese 220 instead

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And the Briese T4 which is HMI

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I assume i should exchange the Arri Blondies tungsten for HMI equivalent to avoid color temp mixing ?

 

Is the T4 HMI 1kw less in power compared to the H5 tungsten in practice ?

 

Thanx again!

 

/Paul

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I would definitely stay either daylight or tungsten balanced. Mixing is a bad idea with white backgrounds.

A good HMI equivalent to the Blondes would be a JokerBug 400 or 800, which put out a similar amount of light.

 

With regards to the T4 HMI 1kw, the usual rule is that HMI's put out 4 to 5 times more light than their Tungsten equivalent, so without any calculations, I would speculate that yes they would put out a similar amount of light.

 

Unless fall off isn't an issue for you, you can always place the light closer to your model for more light, and alternatively away for less drop off.

Based upon your previous posts, it looks like you've got a pretty good grasp on what you're doing, so go ahead and try it, and let us know when we can see results.

 

Best,

James

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You're definitely going to need more light. An f/8 @ 100ISO and 1/50 will require 800fc (f/2.8 @ 100ISO and 1/50 = 100fc). Realistically you'll probably be getting enough light to expose at 2.8-4. If you're shooting with a 5D mk2 or mk3, you can expose at 400-640 ISO and still have a clean image. Open up 1/2-1 stop to a 5.6 or 5.6/8 and you're in the ballpark.

 

Since the studio has a big window that probably won't be 100% spill proof, definitely go daylight. That way, any spill onto the white from camera left won't affect the white. The hard part is that you need to light the white evenly head to toe, including the floor. If you had higher ceilings and a grid above, normally you'd have a row of 6k tungsten space lights. But here you may want to make a speedrail rig with 4x 4x4 Kino Flos with 55k tubes. You'll have to shoot on the camera right side of the cyc to avoid the combo stand legs of the goalpost rig since there's no room for it to the left.

 

I would add to that order a few extra 4x4 Kinos for the left and right side of the cyc.

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You should also be aware that there is a significant price difference between HMIs and tungsten - a Joker 800 will get you similar output to an Arri 2k, maybe more but it will cost at least 4x as much. Kind of a bummer, but HMIs are pricey and that's just how it goes.

 

I think you have a difficult scenario in that the camera left end of your set up juts right up against a huge open window, so you need a couple of grips and some solid rags or duvy to black it out completely and even if you did you can't put your own light on that side of it anyway. I think Satsuki is probably right in that you may need to just use the window light and use some grip stuff to control it as best you can, then maybe use other lights on the tops/right side to even it out as needed. Best of luck with it, that's a challenge.

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Wow! Thanx everyone for the advice and tips, much appreciated!

 

I guess i can open up to Iso:400 without loosing to much quality and since the subject isn't gonna be moving front/back dof will probably not be a issue if i need to go below F/8.

 

The Briese 180 tungsten setup with Arri tungsten will be tested this Sunday.

 

For the live shoot i will go with Briese 220 and T4 HMI and for background i choose the Arri M8's

 

The fina l setup cost a bit more but in the end i think it will be easier, especially if i can't control the spill completely from the windows, right ?

 

Space on the left is indeed limited, but since i don't need the full width of the bg i think i can work around that.

 

Thanx again!

 

Will report back on Sunday!

 

Regards

Paul L.

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Hi Guy's!

 

So we had the pre-shoot today to test out the gear in the place we are using on the live shoot.

 

It was very educational, i got a much better idea how much power i need/get from continues light!

 

It was quite obvious that i'v been a bit optimistic with the power output in regards to my preferred camera settings. As many of you already had pointed out.. :-)

 

I noticed i got a visible hotspot with the 2k Blondies, so i will need more power and spread, the Arri M8's will certainly give me more power not sure if the beam of light is wider ? (i know it's focusable)

 

The other thing i noticed is that the Briese H5 was not very sufficient at the distance i had to use it, i probably understated the distance and the area i needed to illuminate.

 

So to have it affect the exposure at it's position (fixed just behind and slightly above camera 1) i had to focus the light, thus contributing even more to the hotspot created on the bg by the 2k Blondies.

 

The Briese T4 will most likely change that as it's 4k HMI which is pretty much the double output if I'm not calculating it all wrong..? :-)

 

The ideal situation would be to have a light overhead and maybe even two more to compliment the Arri M8's on the bg.

 

But i have to weigh that against the need of the client(the AD agency which do the post work), which is actually not pure clean white bg as they gonna mask it and clean it up in post anyway.

 

Then again as a photographer i want to do as much as i can "in camera" as i'm used to with strobe lighting. :-)

 

Will report back how the HMI setup worked on the live shoot!

 

Thanx

 

setup_1.jpg

setup_2.jpg

 

 

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Is the ceiling the same 'white' or close, to the 'white' of your background...

 

I would suggest pointing your 'background' illuminating lights up at the ceiling, and have the ceiling bounce even out the light across the area in back of the talent.

 

The problem is your area has a wall of windows, and so one can not 'easily' place lights on both side of the backround, pointed up, so you may have to place lights forward of the talent, outside the view of the camera, but using the ceiling for bounce.

 

You'd have to experiment with placement along with flags to cut any light that may 'leak' to the camera POV, or on the talent that would add shadows, to see if you can get the even shadowless light you need to have the 'infinite white'.

Edited by John E Clark
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Thanx John for the advice!

 

Will definitely try that out, the ceiling should be the same color, as they paint it from time to time. (the bg will be newly pained on the live shoot)

 

The ceiling is 4.85m high. Not sure if the Arri M8 will be powerful enough to bounce the light that distance and still provide a decent illumination ?

 

Will have 2 hour set up time so ill will try for sure!

 

Again thanx for the input!

 

/Paul

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Hi Guy's!

 

Just wanted to report back that the shoot went very well!

 

And even though i would have preferred to use overhead lighting in a truss setup or similar, the lighting did what it was supposed to. (We ended up using Arri X 1200 flood lights instead of the Arri M8's.

)
The shoot was for a tv-commercial and is due to air in 1-2 months, will be interesting to see how it will look once postproduction is done with it!
Again thanx for the advice and input!
mittkok_paolo_roberto_bts.jpg
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