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What's the best diffusion material?


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Hello,

 

What would give the nicest result for diffusing a 1k LED panel through a 4x4 frame? What's the best matthews or rosco roll that is the best mix for retaining light power, a wide and even spread, whilst of course following the essentials of softening shadows?

 

Thanks

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That's a bit like asking for the best & cheapest option...

 

The heaviest diffusion will spread the light the most and cut the most amount of light, and the lightest will spread the light the least and let more light through. This is why one carries more than one strength of diffusion. I'd get a 4'x4' frame of Opal, 250, and 216 for example. Or just get 250 and plan on doubling it up when you can get away with that.

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This actually brings to mind a question I've had for a while - is there a rosco/lee product similar to the material chimera uses on their LED boxes? I've side-by-sided against opal, 250, hampshire and it's no rough match to any of them. The chimera material looks like a prismatic to me (like the materials ETC sells for their led units), certainly more diffuse with less loss than any of the usual suspects so I'm interested if anyone knows a similar roll material?

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I'm a huge fan of Half Soft Frost for multi-diode LEDs. It just seems to do an incredible job of blending the multiple sources into a seamless singular shadow. It's highly transmissive, so isn't as effective at spreading the size of the beam outward to create a larger source ala 216, Full Grid or Muslin. But for keeping most of the output of a little LED unit, whilst having smooth seamless shadows, it's great.

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This actually brings to mind a question I've had for a while - is there a rosco/lee product similar to the material chimera uses on their LED boxes? I've side-by-sided against opal, 250, hampshire and it's no rough match to any of them. The chimera material looks like a prismatic to me (like the materials ETC sells for their led units), certainly more diffuse with less loss than any of the usual suspects so I'm interested if anyone knows a similar roll material?

 

 

Chimera,s also have different levels .. to me the nearest thing would be sail cloth (well all nylon today ).. I wonder if you can buy that somewhere before it gets made into sails.. or buy a couple of dinghy spinnakers..

Edited by Robin R Probyn
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I bought a bunch of parachute silk (actually nylon or some other synthetic) from eBay. It's a very light ripstop nylon, so it has the grid pattern (and the strength) but not the papery feel. About the only downside is that it doesn't necessarily behave exactly like the widely known types of grid cloth, but I can't say I regularly do setups big enough that I really need to know the specifics.

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I thought Chimeras use something similar to grid cloth.

 

 

For the LED boxes they use some sort of heavy vellum type of material - not the normal diffusion seen on their other soft boxes.

 

they call them Light Screens

 

 

"Included standard is a 30 degree lens screen that offers a medium-level of light control and very light diffusion. Optional screens and fabric grids are available for increased control."

Edited by Edward Lawrence Conley III
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This actually brings to mind a question I've had for a while - is there a rosco/lee product similar to the material chimera uses on their LED boxes? I've side-by-sided against opal, 250, hampshire and it's no rough match to any of them. The chimera material looks like a prismatic to me (like the materials ETC sells for their led units), certainly more diffuse with less loss than any of the usual suspects so I'm interested if anyone knows a similar roll material?

LEE might have what you are looking for

 

http://www.leefilters.com/lighting/zircon.html#zircon-diffusion

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Yeah most chimeras use some variation of grid, but their Litepanels specifics have some crazy plastic sorta thing that I can't match to any material I know- like Edward mentioned it's like a heavy vellum. Good eye on the Zircon, will have to try it. Thanks!

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I have a pack of the Zircon stuff here. As far as I can tell it's simply designed to be more resistant to the powerful blues in LED light, which can degrade conventional filters. The diffusion is not particularly special from what I can see.

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