Rick Gates

Thank Ed, I started your suggestion and found it under something called "trick line" for theater applications. Thanks mucho! Rick

Most of the fabrics from Matthews I purchase come with string ties. Occasionally, these get lost and I'm looking to replace them. However, I can't find a source for them. Are they a standard rope size?

I"m being asked to hang a 12 x 20 silk from some trees for mediums and maybe medium wides. Some questions come to mind... Tie off to the trunks or branches? Standard trucker's hitch? Go with just the silk and rope, or stretch the silk on a pipe kit speedrail frame and tie that off? I'll be using a 12 x 12 on regular combo stands for closer shots and as the sun moves. Anything I'm missing?

Thanks Stephen. I was a little worried about losing level, so it looks like I won't use the silk. I'll be doing some tests on Tue and Wed this week and I'll send along some shots. Thank you both so much!

Wow! Thanks Guy!

I think I'll take your advice and bounce something bright off the ceiling. I have a 600D and 2 300Ds. I'll try putting them next to camera and bounce them off the ceiling to light the wides. I'm a little concerned about the far wall when I do this; it's painted white and might pickup some shine from the bounce. If I run into that problem, I might attach a 12x12, silk only, to the drop ceiling and bounce it off that. Anyway, if this doesn't work it might be time to rent a genny and bring in something bigger. It'll be my first time renting lights. Thanks for giving me a direction to follow!

I'm charged with lighting a small classroom (30' x 20') for a film shoot next month. We are content with it being brightly lit from above since we're trying to make it look institutional. We've already determined that the cheap LED tubes in the ceiling will flicker and cause a slow vertical strobe across the image, so they will be turned off. But because the white, drop ceiling is so high (18'), the first thing that occurred to me is to mount 12 or so paper lanterns in the ceiling to get a bright, even light. We tested 300W incandescent bulbs, but the we're still not getting the intensity we want. Is anybody aware of any brighter, screw-in (e26) LED bulbs that would work? I tried larger, consumer, corn-cob bulbs but flicker and CRI are issues.

Good point Doyle, since it's turned out I'm still having the same problem. I"ll try that.

First terror, then success. I took Gregg's advice and the two halves of the casting fell onto my workbench! But that exposed the top third of the sleeve, so I used a pipe wrench to rotate it into place, screwed the casting back in place and viola! Good as new. Thanks Gregg!

On a recent shoot, I had some rookies putting away the C-stands. These are Avenger stands with the separable turtle base. I did see some of the stands carried off without separating the base first. For some reason, the inner sleeve in the base got turned so that the hole in the sleeve rotated, and now I can no longer screw through it to secure the riser (see photo). My questions are: 1. Has this happened to anybody before? 2. How do you fix it? I've tried using a deep socket to loosen the screw at the bottom of the junior receiver, but I think I'm just loosening a spring that is likely to pop out. Thanks all.

Wow, that's way thinner than my Avenger C-stands, which in SAE are 1 3/8", 1 3/16", and 1". The gobo arm on the C-stand is 5/8", same as a baby pin. Good to know. Thanks!

I recently made a decision to try out some of Kupo's 3-way and 4-way clamps as a way to lower my gear footprint. The clamps wrap around the riser portion of c-stands and combos, and hold baby spigots and receivers and J-hooks and such. So I measured my stand's riser diameters to see where the clamps could fit. Turns out that the three risers on my c-stands measure (from bottom up), 35mm, 30mm and 25mm. And the risers of the combo stands are 45mm, 40mm, 35mm and 30mm . There's 5mm difference in diameter between each riser. But all my c-stands and combos are Avenger products. Is the 5mm difference standard to all c-stands and combos, or just Avenger?

Gabriel, I'm not looking to rent, but instead to buy my gear. I decided to go with two menace arm kits as I already have the combo stands and speed rail. I'll hang a 300D with space light attachment from each. Thanks for the suggestions.

Exterior at night, and under a tall mercury vapor lamp post in a parking lot. I will use 2 10' sections of 1 1/4" speedrail joined with the heavy Matthews connector, and secured to the combo stands with Big Ben clamps. Wish I could find an affordable truss system, but after looking around I determined I'm looking at several thousand $, even for one based on speedrail. We will sandbag the hell out of combo stands, and tie rope to each and secure to other vehicles behind the combos. I'll send pix of the final setup.

JB Earl, it would be nice to do it all on the combo stands, and I know I wouldn't have to worry so much about safety that way. And getting them further out from the car is also good. But to also hang the 8x8 frame from the same goalpost? It sounds like you're saying that I could attach 4 ropes of equal length to the goalpost and tie them off to the corners of the 8x8 frame and have the frame hang down enough (like 4 ft) that the 300Ds get enough spread before they hit the diffusion. Is that about right? I also have an 8x8 "silk" that came with the frame, and I think that would provide smoother light than 1/4 grid. Thanks for the suggestion. I'll go this direction unless I hear of something better. Cheers!