Sing Lo

For weak eye light, I would try to roll a few meters of rope light into a coil like a pancake and tape it on a white/ silver foam board reflector disc. You can make a poor man's Kamio Flo by making a donut shape reflector with a coil of rope light. OK the only downside is that it is tungsten, and weak in output. This is my idea. Cheap and cheerful :P

I tried that with Dedo DP Eye set with diffusion glasses on the front of Dedo zoom projection attachment. I cut an "eye mask" shape on cine foil and insert it on the Gobo holder, then adjust the level of diffusion to soften the edge of the glow area.

Anyone has used CD or CST fresnel for cinematography? Desisti and Arri both make CDM lights (150W and 250W respectively). It is designed for architecture applications but I wonder why it is not widely used in film/video? IN CD, they have built-in high frequency ballast, available in 3200K, 4200K, 10,000 hours life, cold restrike, CR>90. In CST, 250W = 1000W tungsten output, a Desisti tech rep told me that they can take MSR daylight lamp giving 5600 deg!!!! It costs substantially less than a HMI kit. It sounds very attractive for me.

You are right, probably Hamburg frost (the lightest frost) has the same level of diffusion as a frost fresnel glass; so it is not much point. You just get a hard edge circle of light if a fresnel is used without the lens. I am thinking of cutting a donut shape hamburg frost to be clipped in front of the fresnel with no lens so that only the edge of the beam is diffused; the rest of the beam is undiffused...I don't know if it might work. It is quite difficult to dismount the lens door of Arri studio 2K so I will try the Mole.

thanks for the advice. I will try to remove the lens of my Mole Michardson fresnel which seems quite easy to do. The Arri studio 2k lens seems a bit complicated to dismount and I don't trust myself that I can put it back correctly. Maybe I will try to put Hamburg frost on the fresnel without lens to soften the hard edge of the beam.

I am looking for a broad hard light source with soft edge beam that can give a very well-defined shadow of a character on a wall; like scenes in the old film Noir mysterious lighting or BW Dracula movies. I own several 650w, 1kw, 2kw Arri Studio fresnels and 150W Dedos. Only the Dedo can give sharpest shadow at full flood but it is not powerful enough. My bigger fresnels are too soft for such application at full flood and there is no enough room to move it far back to give sharpest shadow. I have tried the trick of light the subject with the edge of a fresnel beam to give better shadow definition but it is much dimmer. I have no experience with par or open face, so I don't know if they can create sharper shadows than focusing spots. Any suggestion of tungsten lights would be appreciated (small HMI fresnel can give very sharp shadow but it is out of my budget). thanks

40 degrees crates are better buy. The downside of very deep eggcrates (20 degrees) are their steep price, large light loss and the dramatic change in light quality: the light is very directional and it loses the wrap-around quality of softbox. So you get deep shadows on talent's face unless appropriate fill is applied.

Inverse square law doesn't apply to eggcrates...it follows some other "non-linear" law. From my experience with Chimera fabric grids, 40 degrees eggcrates has -2 stop loss, 20 degree eggcrates: -4 stops, depending on the dimensions and type of your softbox. There is a free eggcrate calculator to work out the light loss you need in Lighttool web site. The good thing about fabric eggcrates are that they can be folded up and light weight....ideal for location. It is very quick to set up.

With soft light, I often use very fine Lighttool eggcrates (20 degrees) on Chimera softboxes to shape and manipulate the light; sometimes I add Chimera softbox barndoors as well if i really go for ultra tight control. Eggcrates beats scrims and flags in term of space and set-up time for soft light. But I agree scrims are useful. I have experimented with Noir style as well using hard lights. I tried to use a "finger" (long and thin scrim) mounted on an articulated ball-jointed arm to create shadow on forehead. But I ended up spending all the time fiddling the position of articulate arm and small movement of the talent threw the shadow out of place.....people don't have the patience to wait around for your creative exercise. With hard light, I have more success with barndoors and gobos than scrims. That's my limited experience anyway.

thanks Michael for the suggestions, This technique of overlapping scrims to create a gradual gradient is interesting. I am also interested in localised manipulation of light on peoples faces; e.g. "light surgery" techniques of using scrims to reduce the brightness of prominent fore head/ bald head or to make a round face to look narrow; I have experimented and practised all these techniques with a dummy head. But it always time-consuming and difficult to set up the grips without the scrims getting in the way of the camera view. It is always the time constrain which stops me trying out these techniques in practical shoot. ...the light surgery techniques require very precise placement of the scrims and lots of grip heads and Hollywood arms..

Can anyone suggest real world examples of the creative applications of open-ended black double scrims for both hard and soft light? I am particularly interested in the creative use of scrims in producing certain lighting effect in a scene rather than the obvious applications like compensating the fall-off of brightness when the light is pointing at an angle to a background, or the the actor is walking towards the key. Sometime ago I bought some Matthews open-ended double black fabric scrims and a few single, double open-ended wire scrims for Arri and Mole fresnel spots. But I have never used them in actual shoots because I find barndoors are quicker and easier way to control hard light. Any thought on this would be appreciated.

I have Matthews, Arri and Avenger grips. I prefer Matthews flags, scrims and clamps. Avenger stuff are good too... I never have any problem with their heavy duty C-stand and grip heads. If I am not wrong, Arri grips are actually made by Avenger part of the Manfrotto company italy. I notice Avenger and Arri grips are the same..they just stick Arri labels on the grips.

If you set the HMI at full flood, you get very sharp shadows anyway. I think it is unwise and risky to open the HMI fresnel lens while it is burning ; besides I think most HMI fresnel has a safety micro switch on the lens door to disconnect the ballast/ignitor and stop people doing that. It easy to get sharp pattern but it is hard to schieve the realism and subtle effects. I have tried all type of tree projection gobos for Dedo, and projection of large Chimera window pattern and Mathrews metal cocularsis cello with a large fresnel. In all cases, I found the tree patterns unsatisfactory: too fake unless I de-focus the pattern completely. I have tried to paint tree pattern on a large sheet of thick accetate. In the end, I think a dead tree branch is most the realsitic but inconvenient method in practice.

A 575W HMI fresnel would take less power than a 650W tungsten and would be about 2-3 times as bright, but cost several times the price. If you stick a full CTB gel to a 1K Arri, you will get daylight. You can still get usable power from the Arri 1kW despite the loss of 2 stops from the CTB. That's poorman's alterenative to HMI.

HI DAVE, That makes sense, I forgot that the scrim close to the lens won't create shadows anyway. :lol: I have been experimentating stacking two large mesh cookie patterns (homemade) placed two meters in front of a fresnel, it creates some very funky Moire pattern.