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Green screen lighting, ring light


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Hello everybody!

 

Some time ago I saw a picture of a big kind of ring light that you hang from the ceiling to get a nice, soft, green screen light and I've totally forgot what it was called...

 

Also I've been searching for it and I haven't seen any shoot with that kind of light in it, everybody shoots with different kinds of kinos and fluorescence light etc. What is the pros and the cons about this thing? I've heard it gives you a really smooth and even lighting, but if there are so few that's actually using it, it must be something bad about it...

 

Thank you.

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People generally like to light greenscreens with kinos and florries for a number of reasons. Firstly, low power consumption and very little heat emitted. If you are in a studio all day you don't want to kill your actors (or crew) with heat exhaustion from the massive tungsten units you are using.

 

Secondly, they are inherently softer than most fresnel lights and are usually lighter and easier to rig (generally this is true for any application of kinos).

 

And lastly (please someone correct me if I'm wrong), the spectrum of light that a kino flo emits peaks at around 420nm (wavelength) which is exactly the same as the colour of chroma green used for green screen. Supposedly this increases the intensity and saturation of the screen, giving a better key.

 

So as for the use of standard kino's it's a mixture of practicalities, safety and technical reasons. As for this ring light thing, I have no idea.

Edited by Rob Webster
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Hello everybody!

 

Some time ago I saw a picture of a big kind of ring light that you hang from the ceiling to get a nice, soft, green screen light and I've totally forgot what it was called...

 

Also I've been searching for it and I haven't seen any shoot with that kind of light in it, everybody shoots with different kinds of kinos and fluorescence light etc. What is the pros and the cons about this thing? I've heard it gives you a really smooth and even lighting, but if there are so few that's actually using it, it must be something bad about it...

 

Thank you.

 

This probably isn't what you're talking about, but we've been using a product called Reflecmedia which is an l.e.d. ring light that sits around the lens and lights a gray backdrop that has thousands of tiny glass beads on it. When the ring light is turned on the backdrop reflects a perfectly even green. You have to have the subject pretty close to the backdrop or you can get a tiny shadow around the subjects body, but we've used it hundreds of times and its the easiest greens creen work we do. definitely worth a look

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And lastly (please someone correct me if I'm wrong), the spectrum of light that a kino flo emits peaks at around 420nm (wavelength) which is exactly the same as the colour of chroma green used for green screen. Supposedly this increases the intensity and saturation of the screen, giving a better key.

 

 

Depending upon how the fixture is lamped. While the tungsten tubes are more suitable than quartz, they lack the 690-800nm red spike characteristic of quartz with a green spike 20nm or so above true chroma green which starts to get at a nice key. Kino manufactures special visual effects line tubes.Those do exactly as you say, the blue tube peaking at 420nm and the green tube peaking at 525nm. They give a nice even key, flatten out the screen nice, but come with a marked increase in that color output and you've got green spill to deal with, so out comes the magenta.

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