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Broad Soft Studio Style Light – that Travles?!
Hi,
Most of my projects are 3 camera exercise video shoots mostly done in an exercise studio – about 20 x 15 performance space – with 2 Alzo Overhead Drum Lights and 2 Alzo Pan L Quad lights with diffusion – all fluorescent daylight.This gives me a great broad soft light with hardly any shadows at all – which is exactly what I need.
Throwing this kit in a car is fine – the problem is – I often have to go shoot this same scenario in other studios – and this stuff doesn’t travel well at all by air because the fluorescent tubes are so fragile.
Any suggestions for a traveling kit that would work for this? Many thanks.
Current Setup and example of results:
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3 Replies
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The only thing lighter, more robust, and less power hungry than Fluors are LEDs.
The problem is that arrays that are large enough to put out that kind of raw light volume will be pretty expensive. And diffusion becomes MORE difficult since unlike photons coming off tubes in every direction, LEDs are basically mini-spotlights. So you typically have to use MORE diffusion to soften the light up.
Look around at the larger LED panels – and see what’s available at your budget. Look at their light output curves, and buy the strongest you can afford.
The decent vendors typically won’t be using the really bad color skewed cheap LEDs of yesterday and more stuff where the color accuracy is pretty decent.
Then look to see if their housings make it easy to toss on the kind of diffusion media you’ll probably want.
The AC power packs that drive these are typically pretty small – so that shouldn’t be a big issue.
Good luck.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
Thanks so much for the response. Yes- with the cheap LED panels I have – I’ve always gotten pretty awful shadows and they’re too weak to do much with diffusion.
These look really interesting – Supposedly 13,000 lux at 1m:
Flolight Bladelight https://www.flolight.com/bladelight-1/For panels, I’ve been looking at these which are rated at 10,000 lux at 1 meter.
Aputure Light Storm LS 1s LED https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1172653-REG/aputure_ls1sv_light_storm_ls_1s.htmland I guess I could pair those with a fairly easy to setup softbox setup like these:
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=&sku=1258826&gclid=CPTHnt_nmdICFVQ8gQod9AMFnA&is=REG&ap=y&m=Y&c3api=1876%2C92051677682%2C&Q=&A=detailsAnd then there’s the COB style lights that are out- this has a whopping 22,000 at 1 meter. But I’d be dealing with the hassle of some big soft boxes. and probably fan noise.
Alzo 3300 https://www.alzodigital.com/collections/led-video-lights/products/alzo-3300-ultra-high-power-led-video-light-with-8-inch-par-reflector -
My concern would be the long slim form factor of the instruments – mounted in a collapsable soft box that has little front to back depth – might yield a very bright strip of light on the front panel – and therefore would be putting out a very different projected light pattern than a square soft box that’s filled evenly.
Basically, it becomes a strip-light.
That doesn’t mean you can’t work with it. Just that it’s NOT going to be as efficient or as apparently broad a source on the subject on both axis, evenly.
Might be workable. Might be one of those things where on the medium wide 2 shot – it works fine horizontally mounted, but you need to stop and swing it vertically if you go closer for the single shot so you don’t get a major fall-off in light between the face and body of a seated single subject.
If there was only one light that did everything well, our craft would be so much easier!
Good luck.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.
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