Smallish Light comparison
angevin1
Registered Users Posts: 3,403 Major grins
After reading a thread or two here and there I found the time to pull some of my lights out and do a little comparison. Here are the results.
All Shots made with Light source 6ft. From Foamcore white board. The CFL's used a Softbox and I set the edge of the diffuser at 6ft. otherwise flashguns, fresnels, etc were all 6ft. from glass to whiteboard.
The SB600 and Yongnuo flash both used their built in diffuser panel.
NIKON D-90
f/8
ISO 320
Shutter 1/100
White Balance 5000K
First is a collage SOOC
Next I took the jpg crops and simply used the WB tool in LR3 to get these crops. Nothing fancy obviously.
All Shots made with Light source 6ft. From Foamcore white board. The CFL's used a Softbox and I set the edge of the diffuser at 6ft. otherwise flashguns, fresnels, etc were all 6ft. from glass to whiteboard.
The SB600 and Yongnuo flash both used their built in diffuser panel.
NIKON D-90
f/8
ISO 320
Shutter 1/100
White Balance 5000K
First is a collage SOOC
Next I took the jpg crops and simply used the WB tool in LR3 to get these crops. Nothing fancy obviously.
tom wise
0
Comments
Moderator of the Cameras and Accessories forums
Ha. Well, to be more specific I took an old Smith-Victor light from B&H and added a 6-inch fresnel lens to it. Obviously, no focus ability but it did seem to aim the light a bit better than the plain glass it came with. So...is that home made or just home improved...? it works!
Cool.
Moderator of the Cameras and Accessories forums
Thanks, Tom - what a great idea!!
Yes! Apologies that I don't have my LED here right now. I left it over at this weeks Gig...wish I could have included it!! I saved the compositions I did this in, so I can add it later. Did you get your LED yet?
The CFL's are all at actual watts printed on the bulb, not the marketing wattage.
Marketing wattage for my 85w CFL is: 300w; printed right on the package.
And though I know it is blown to pieces, the last lower right photo in the collage is the three bulbs sitting in 'tp' rolls for size comparison...figured TP is a kind of universal known entity.:D
In the meantime, much though I really choked on the price of the Trilite, DANG but that thing does the job. I still think it's overpriced BUT given it's really the only thing of its kind out there and we're a captive market... it's worth owning (which means ponying up, which I did
Oops. Total tangent - sorry! I'll let you know what I think when the LED doohickey arrives
Yeah, totally get that! Happens when you have more than one lighting component arrived/arriving!
Speaking of tangents...check out LR4 beta yet? Check it!
Moderator of the Cameras and Accessories forums
Thank you. I seem to never be quite certain what may really help folks. Questions often help guide me further, but I'll see if I can do your suggestions justice as time allows.
It is common when we go searching for florescent continuous lights to happen upon pages whether at B&H/Adorama or Cowboy Studio that list a Florescent CFL kit that has say, four 85w bulbs each. The listings say each 85w CFL bulb puts out the equivalent light to a 300w tungsten bulb. So for our four bulb assembly we can expect that it will perform as 1200w tungsten would. So the average buyer who is attracted to the price may ultimately find themselves with this new kit and not near enough light for their job as they thought. It is said that florescent's are 4 to 6 times more efficient than tungsten bulbs of same wattage hence you can buy a smaller CFL-wattage bulb. And that may very well be the case, such as replacing a table lamp 60w tungsten with a 15w Florescent. But I've not used a light meter to check this.
But this exercise of mine also includes a Light modifier, a Softbox. Softboxes are used to soften Shadows for the most part, and direct light as well. So the efficiency of the CFL will be reduced in this scenario. I think the question is, how much? 4 to 6 times? or more? If the CFL is truly 4 to 6 times more efficient then the only explanation is the light modifier, the softbox. I think this by itself is worth investigating further.
More importantly for me, and in this exercise was to show that The CFL is not more efficient in this application. If a person were to buy a CFL Softbox kit and that kit claims 1200w and includes four 85w CFL bulbs in reality it is going to look like the first gray-ish bar in my Crop comparison or 340w-350w, closer to what the math dictates.
In each of the examples above I put the light emitting edge of the modifier at 6ft. from the White Foamcore target, just to show the amount of light hitting the target across the different types of sources. And the Amount of the light emitted is a big deal. We can Shape light, Gel it to change it's kelvin-temp/White-balance and usually in each case we will reduce the overall amount of light emitted. But we have to know how much is the maximum light we can expect from the light in it's normal presentation: Softbox, fresnel, Umbrella; shoot-thru or bounce.
f/8; Aperture
With the Advent of DSLR video and the flood of folks seeking to enjoy it, lots of Indie filmmakers have been excited into frenzy to create. I chose to Shoot my examples at f/8 even though most of the Buzz-about is shooting Shallow at 2.8 or even less. And While f/2,8 lets in plenty of light using a DSLR and it's inherent manual focus means someone is not moving towards/away from the Camera, or they're going out of focus or someone is pulling focus. If Shooting a Wide or Medium wide shot f/8 can be a real help. But it requires lots of light or ISO. So I chose f/8 to Show how much light you might encounter in the worst of circumstances. Plus since I have read some still photographers talking about these lights here at Digrin, I thought it prudent to Shoot this in terms more familiar to a Stills person.
Uses.
I love florescent's for one very good reason: they're not hot like tungsten. I don't have to worry about my talent getting a true damaging burn-wound. And here in Georgia it's nice not to have the added heat that Tungsten produces. In Most of my Shoots last Summer we had 13 to 18 people in small-ish inside areas...lots of BTU's being produced. Florescents tend to produce more green light to the Camera Sensor. I have seen this but it hasn't been a problem, yet I continue to find new ways to deal with it. Presently I adjust my Custom Color profile in Canon's Desktop software. But I like them overall for nice full even light in my Softboxes.
The Tungsten's I tend to use as Background lights so far for GREENSCREEN ONLY use. I have enough Tungsten to light otherwise, but they're just scary by comparison. I'd like to do a scene lighting with tungsten outdoors and allowing it to filter in looking like morning light with daylight balanced lighting inside the space. Thats 3000K white balance outside and 5000k inside. But I am presently about 2000 watts shy of being able to do that scene. it takes a ton of light to do a full scene and do it well. I saw it done poorly recently in The Help.
Whenever lighting Video I like to light BG first, then light the talent as two distinct separate acts.
If I am in a space using ambient; usually meaning nice windows letting in nice light. Then I let ambient light the BG and I add light to talent for Pop or taste or effect. Stills Shooters do this all the time. Daylight balanced florescent's work well for this, but you got to have lots of it unless you don't mind blowing-out the outside to salvage the inside.
I like the idea of using mixed lighting, but it can take a ton of light to effect it. Thats why you often see just a head-shot or a 3/4 length still with mixed light. Mixed light as in using two light sources and neither of them is the Sun. I think most of us like using the Sun when it's appropriate and adding adjunct light, like flash for stills shooting. Flash of course is pretty near the Suns k-temp for White balance.
Just from going over this I can see I could easily spend a week just trying and measuring light to clarify and improve my knowledge-base.
Hope this helps.
Moderator of the Cameras and Accessories forums
Very interesting project Tom!
My (hardly authoritative) opinion is that light is like the proverbial team of wild horses, or the not-yet-proverbial team of couch potatoes, in that whether you reach your destination or doom, or even a half-decent place in between, depends on your power to get it to do your will! There's a fair bit of anxiety, and therefore superstition, surrounding lighting. Your project is a coup against that, in dragging forms of lighting out of the dark of our ignorance!
I have just been watching Syl Arena do his performance on using full midday sunlight as fill, rim and background light. Now that's heresy enough to tempt the gods, isn't it! Well, in its own small way that little 300W-equivalent fluorescent light in the shot below is capable of creating strong split lighting in that image, lighting a headshot to good effect, and contributing magic to some old bottles!
Neil
http://www.behance.net/brosepix
I haven't had a chance to shoot with it, but I will say this: it is BRIGHT! I turned it on and nearly blinded myself. I was astonished at the strength this little panel produced - it may make an excellent background light (which would save me the cost of a 3rd flash!). I'll post again once I've had a chance to actually use it, but just a quickie update....
Aint that the way it often is?
I finally got a chance to use mine this past Friday. They are bright, but I suspect if I were to place mine where I placed the others in the above test, it'd rank pretty dark.
Keep us informed on yours!
Regardless, I love it - to the point I'm considering ordering a second one