Examples of only one light source

[Tomas Koolhaas]

Hello everyone,

I recently got a cinematography book which showed various DP's lighting set-ups and stills from the resulting shoot. I found that although there were many VERY elabourate lighting set-ups, my favourite was one by Jordan Cronenweth in which he only used a single fresnel 10K and some bounce boards. So does anyone have any examples of shots were they used only ONE light source (bounce boards etc doesn't count of course) or only used existing lights (without changing bulbs etc.).

Here's one of mine: I actually only used the existing shop signs and some foamcore bounce for this shot (Regular 16mm, 7279-Kodak 500T, pushed one stop):

Edited September 3, 2005 by Tomas Haas

[Tomas Koolhaas]

Here's another shot from the same set-up:

Edited September 3, 2005 by Tomas Haas

[Ype Poortinga]

Here's a setup I shot 2 weeks ago

 

It's shot on super16 vision2 500t

 

 

A par-can with a spot bulb hits a bounce-board with silverbounce on te right side, the fill on her face is coming from a white bounce-board on te left site.

[Michael Morlan]

Here's some odds & ends from various projects:

 

1K Baby over roofline to create positive/negative space - XL-1s

 

750w Ellipsoidal framed to create a square of bounce on white ceiling simulating flouros - dvx-100a @ 24p - 200ASA

 

A view of that light setup

 

Shot on shadowed side of street with sun bouncing from office tower windows for key, street bounce and sky dome for fill. The sun's a light, right? :D - XL-1s - 400ASA

 

Baby 1K + 1/4 CTB on left plus practicals everywhere else, including floor-to-ceiling luminescent wall on right. - XL-2 - 400ASA

 

All practicals - luminescent wall practical as key on left. - XL-2 - 400ASA

 

Practical two-tube flouros on stair landings, one with .3ND - XL-2 - 400ASA

 

Practicals plus 250w pro-light bouncing around entry way. By sheer luck there was a blue bulb in the porch light for the location where the antagonist is first introduced, creating this very creepy feeling. I just went with it. - JVC GY-DV500 - 800ASA

 

300w tweenie through diamond-pattern flouro light cover + silver bounce at left - Sony HVR-Z1U 125ASA

 

One of my cheap tricks, shooting micro-budget shorts with sensitive cameras, is to scout for locations with well designed architectural lighting - a coffee shop with 12volt track lighting - an elevator lobby with a floor-to-ceiling luminescent panal. These existing practicals take care of 90% of my lighting task. I'll add a light or bounce to finish the job.

[letitlight]

Hello everyone,

I recently got a cinematography book which showed various DP's lighting set-ups and stills from the resulting shoot. I found that although there were many VERY elabourate lighting set-ups, my favourite was one by Jordan Cronenweth in which he only used a single fresnel 10K and some bounce boards. So does anyone have any examples of shots were they used only ONE light source (bounce boards etc doesn't count of course) or only used existing lights (without changing bulbs etc.).

Here's one of mine: I actually only used the existing shop signs and some foamcore bounce for this shot (Regular 16mm, 7279-Kodak 500T, pushed one stop):

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

[letitlight]

Hello everyone,

I recently got a cinematography book which showed various DP's lighting set-ups and stills from the resulting shoot. I found that although there were many VERY elabourate lighting set-ups, my favourite was one by Jordan Cronenweth in which he only used a single fresnel 10K and some bounce boards. So does anyone have any examples of shots were they used only ONE light source (bounce boards etc doesn't count of course) or only used existing lights (without changing bulbs etc.).

Here's one of mine: I actually only used the existing shop signs and some foamcore bounce for this shot (Regular 16mm, 7279-Kodak 500T, pushed one stop):

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

see what this guy does with one light ,... he has key, Fill, Background and Edge on the face www.lightextreme.com link "Light"

[Oli Soravia]

Unfortunately I don`t have an example right on this notebook, but I can tell you, the rule of most of my own lighting, is simplicity, which means, I do most shots with one key and some bounce cards (maybe some small unit for eyelight or fill for the faces - chimera ball, kinoflo 30, both on dimmer). In reality there is one sun, unless you`re inside a room with practicals etc...whatever scene you need to light, as far as I concern, it should never appear as a lit scene.

[Guest Cincilinci]

Hello Mr. Haas,

I wonder if you could you tell me what is the name of the book you are talking about. I'm a student from Eastern Europe and some books about lighting would really help me in my education. Here, in my country there's no any literature about cinematography at all.

 

Thank You in advance :)

[Tomas Koolhaas]

Hello Mr. Haas,

I wonder if you could you tell me what is the name of the book you are talking about. I'm a student from Eastern Europe and some books about lighting would really help me in my education.  Here, in my country there's no any literature about cinematography at all.

 

Thank You in advance  :)

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Hello,

Cincilinci, there are many good books about lighting, I am not sure were exactly you are located but it may be possible for you to order them online at amazon.com or a similar type of site that caters to your area. The Book I reffered to in my original post is called: "Reflections", it's a good book but to be honest I don't think it's the most informative for a film student, you would probably be better off getting a book about lighting that will give you the practical/technical info you need when you first start getting on set (reflections just shows a few ways that well known DP's have dealt with certain set-ups), I would reckomend for you: Blain Brown's "Motion picture and video lighting" and Harry C. Box's "Set Lighting technician's Handbook". These will give you the basic knowledge you need to run lights and use grip equipment in a safe manner, then you can start to experiment with many different lighting techniques and decide what best suites your tastes/needs.

Cheers.

Edited September 4, 2005 by Tomas Haas

[Dimitrios Koukas]

Sometimes I use one light, but I put anything on it!

Cinefoil, diffusion and sometimes pieces of different colour gels, to split the colour into two different sourses (of different colour)

Dimitrios

[Tomas Koolhaas]

Sometimes I use one light, but I put anything on it!

Cinefoil, diffusion and sometimes pieces of different colour gels, to split the colour into two different sourses (of different colour)

Dimitrios

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Hello,

Do you have any examples of were you used this technique to show us?

Here's one more of mine:

I shot this on the F900 with a 40mm Digiprime (if I remember correctly)

I used only existing flouresent lighting fixtures (from above the mirror), which I gelled and flagged off (from directly hitting her face from the front) to my taste,

I also used a small piece of foamcore covered with aluminium foil bounced into her face from below.

Cheers.

[Tomas Koolhaas]

Hello,

Here's another example:

I used a 2k tungsten mole beam projector to simulate sunlight on 35mm Reala 500D (I used Zeiss super-speeds):

Here's a shot from the same short using only existing sunlight:

Cheers.

[Dimitrios Koukas]

Hello,

Do you have any examples of were you used this technique to show us?

Here's one more of mine:

I shot this on the F900 with a 40mm Digiprime (if I remember correctly)

I used only existing flouresent lighting fixtures (from above the mirror), which I gelled and flagged off (from directly hitting her face from the front) to my taste,

I also used a small piece of foamcore covered with aluminium foil bounced into her face from below.

Cheers.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Sorry m8,

I don't, but I can remember one shot with a classical guitar player , I use one 1k fresnel with 250 diffusion for him and a 1/2 cto for his guitar, splited on the same light. Another thing I did ones for a feature film is that I bounced half of an 2,5 HMI fresnel on three broken mirror pieces, that were lighting different parts of the set , while the half of it was used with Full CTB on the ceiling, to give an ambient night light impression. this shot was with Kodak 7245 (ASA 50) daylight.

Regards

Dimitrios Koukas

[Derek Leverette]

Hello,

Do you have any examples of were you used this technique to show us?

Here's one more of mine:

I shot this on the F900 with a 40mm Digiprime (if I remember correctly)

I used only existing flouresent lighting fixtures (from above the mirror), which I gelled and flagged off (from directly hitting her face from the front) to my taste,

I also used a small piece of foamcore covered with aluminium foil bounced into her face from below.

Cheers.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I am very new to lighting techniques so forgive the dumb question: How do you make flourescent light look like that? It reminds me of the Matrix, Neo's interrogation scene. I love that look. Is it the gels?

[Tomas Koolhaas]

I am very new to lighting techniques so forgive the dumb question: How do you make flourescent light look like that? It reminds me of the Matrix, Neo's interrogation scene. I love that look.  Is it the gels?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Hello Derek,

That's not a dumb question at all, I can't speak on how the matrix achieved their look but I can tell you about how I achieved the look in this still ( I think the similarities are that the matrix used flourescents with a greenish tint from above, as did I for this shot, also I desaturated this image a bit in post and crushed the blacks a little in camera - I think they may have done a bleach-bypass type process on the matrix which has a similar affect). For this image I had a set of existing flourescents that were above the mirrors facing straight downwards, what I did was gel these flourescents with (if I remeber corectly) a 1/2 and 1/4 plus green gel (3/4 in total), and also with a 1/4 yellow gel. Then I used Duvatyn (Blacking out material) to cover any light that was spilling on places I didn't want it to. For example I skirted the flourescents so that they didn't hit the actress's face, and to keep them off the wall in the background of the shot, but let them be hot on the wall closest to camera (I did the latter to create depth-keeping the background darker than the highlights on the foreground walls and the actress, thus creating more contrast/depth). To light the actress's face I used a small foamcore board covered in aluminium foil to bounce the light from the flourescent lights back up into her face, this board was placed at a low angle below her face on a sink at the bottom of the mirror closest to her.

If you have any more questions, ask away.

Cheers.

[Matt Sandstrom]

i already posted these in another thread, but since you asked for more one light setups and i'm kind of proud of these, here goes:

 

a blonde through diffusion over the window.

a blonde bounced off foamcore then through diffusion. i just learned that this is called a book light. :-) the walls are white providing ambient fill.

 

/matt

[Dimitrios Koukas]

Hello,

Do you have any examples of were you used this technique to show us?

Here's one more of mine:

I shot this on the F900 with a 40mm Digiprime (if I remember correctly)

I used only existing flouresent lighting fixtures (from above the mirror), which I gelled and flagged off (from directly hitting her face from the front) to my taste,

I also used a small piece of foamcore covered with aluminium foil bounced into her face from below.

Cheers.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Actually you want a setup with a single fixture or a single light source.?

Cause bounching, means that you are using two light sources.

Here is one of mine that I ve found sry the grab isn't so good and blurs.

It is a 2,5 Kw cinepar thru 4x4 m diffusion from the left side, the right side is illuminated by a wall near.

Dimitrios Koukas

[Jonathan Spear]

Dimitrios,

 

Got any links to your commercials (uncompressed/motion)? I like the pilot shots and I'm curious to see your work.

 

Cheers,

Jonathan

[Dimitrios Koukas]

Dimitrios,

 

      Got any links to your commercials (uncompressed/motion)? I like the pilot shots and I'm curious to see your work.

 

Cheers,

Jonathan

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Well , I can try email you some, but believe me I am not so good at this, even my dvd show reel is a bit compressed. I don't know what is the best compression/codec ''quality wise''.

Dimitrios

[Gordon Highland]

even my dvd show reel is a bit compressed. I don't know what is the best compression/codec ''quality wise''.

Dimitrios

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Sorenson 3 is still kind of the standard, even though there's much better things out there. For decent quality I'd probably go with 400 kilobits video and 48 kilobits audio at 320 x 240 pixels. Sorenson Squeeze or Media Cleaner are great apps for this. The best I've seen so far is the brand new On2 compressor that's part of Flash 8; videos look really good even at less than 100 kbs!

[Stephen Williams]

Hi,

 

Here a 3 examples of using 1 Light.

 

The light was a 4K par through the window and some mirrors. Kodak 5217

The Light was the Sun! with a reflecter. I had a 6K par on standby! Kodak 5217

The light was a 1K frenel, with white card and paper. The Background is a composite.

The lens was a 3" Super Baltar from 1960's wide open at T2.3! Kodak 5248

[Dimitrios Koukas]

Sorenson 3 is still kind of the standard, even though there's much better things out there.  For decent quality I'd probably go with 400 kilobits video and 48 kilobits audio at 320 x 240 pixels.  Sorenson Squeeze or Media Cleaner are great apps for this.  The best I've seen so far is the brand new On2 compressor that's part of Flash 8; videos look really good even at less than 100 kbs!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Thanks Gordon,

really appreciated.

Dimitrios Koukas

[Robert Edge]

I like Stephen Williams's lighting a lot, especially the first and third. The Longines shot is beautifully done. What is the light to the right of the watch from?

[James Brown]

Hi,

Here a 3 examples of using 1 Light.

The light was a 4K par through the window and some mirrors. Kodak 5217

 

Hi Stephen,

 

This shot is great, broken up beautifully.

 

James.

[Stephen Williams]

I like Stephen Williams's lighting a lot, especially the first and third.  The Longines shot is beautifully done.  What is the light to the right of the watch from?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

Hi,

 

The watch shot is a motion control shot from a 1:1 close on the back of the watch strap, the camera rolling 180 degrees as the name and logo were upside down!

 

The camera was covered with paper covering about 245 degrees. There was no possibly to put any form of light or mirror in front or to the side of the watch. So the light from the right is bounced key light!

 

The lamp was placed behind and to the left of the watch, pointing at the white paper. The white paper was spray painted with black paint to break the light and stop the face going milky!

 

During the camera move the light got brighter by 2 stops in the close up, very handy as the bellows compensation was around 2 stops.

 

To work out how to mount the watch, programme the move and light took about 14 hours! There was no crew, just myself and the client! It turned into a series with another 5 watches. The quickest shoot was 10 hours! The lighting had to work throughout the move, a still shot would have taken an hour or so to light!

 

Stephen