Flourescent Continuous Light - Any Opinions

[wideopeniris]

<p>Hello,<br>

I have been shooting my 5x4" speed graphic for portraits using fast lenses for a while. Up until now I have used available light from a window and the modelling bulb of my flash heads to provide a little fill. This still requires me to uprate the HP5 to 800ASA to get enough light.<br>

I'd like to use a slower film and that means more light. I cant use flash, because the lenses I use have no shutter and I am using the focal plane shutter. Short of using FP flash bulbs and large cost and poor availability, what are my options?<br>

I'd like to avoid hot lights like tungsten, but have seen that you can get flourescent based lights with about 6000 lumens per lamp (100W lamps equivalent to about 500-600W tungstens). Has anyone got experience of using these for portraiture?<br>

Mostly I am shooting head and torso due to the wide field of the lenses, at a distance of maybe 3 - 5 ft.<br>

Always black and white so colour balance not too important, although I do plan to try Ortho films so colour may be an issue....<br>

any experience of using these sort of lights appreciated.<br>

Kevin.</p>

[jtk]

<p>Arnold Newman used natural light and tungsten...slow shutter speeds, 4X5. Are you familiar with his work? Might relate to your question.<br>

I've experimented with the cheap helicoil "daylight" fluorescents from hardware stores...comfortable, easily softened light but of course the spectrum is chopped so daylight is only a crude approximation..I'd expect it to work well with ortho.</p>

[mark_schafer1]

<p>I suggest looking at Paolo Roversi's work. He shoots Polaroid and cross processes it that gives you around 64ASA if i remember correctly. He has a nice website and you'll see some shots of his studio. Classic tungsten photo lights, sometimes he uses HMI (you need a lot to get hand hold able speeds).<br>

I used Kino Flo 4x4 banks a lot (usually 3 heads so a total of 12 bulbs 3-5 ft away) and with med. Format film we used 800 ASA film at around 1/30-1/125sec at 5.6.<br>

Otherwise i'm playing around with the Photoflex Coolstar in Chimera boxes and while i like the results, it's still not a lot of light, which limits the light modification, placement and control, but it helps that i shoot digital 35mm at 400ASA and 2.8-4 at around 1/80.<br>

And a quick word on color temps, it will make a difference in rendering the scene if you shoot with warm light (3200ºK) vs. daylight (5000ºK). Just think how different orange looks versus a light blue on BW film.</p>

[craig_shearman1]

<p>I haven't used a Speed Graphic but doesn't its focal plane shutter have a point where the shutter is fully open, especially if you are using slow speeds, that would sync with electronic flash? I suppose the 500-watt equivalent fluorescents might work, but Kino Flos are very expensive and for what they cost you could buy a lense with a leaf shutter that syncs.</p>

[wideopeniris]

<p>Craig: The shutter on my speed is a travelling slit type of shutter that is not fully open at any point of its travel, even at its slowest speeds. There are flash contacts, but these are designed to work with FP flash bulbs that light for a long time (something like 0.5secs) - such flash bulbs are now almost unobtainable.<br>

Also the lenses I use have 4 - 5 inch diameters and there is no practical leaf shutter for them at any price. There are very large shutters by fairchild from 1950's aerial recon but they weigh lots and are much too big to fit (not to mention being as rare as rocking horse droppings)<br>

So continuous light seems the only answer for my rig - I just would like to avoid frying my subject.<br>

Having now shot a couple of test sheets of Ort25 from ADOX, I have also established that its true speed is even slower, with 16ASA being right for a good contrasty neg., so even more light needed, even at f2.8 - f4 which is what I use for the narrow depth of field.<br>

Mark: Kino Flo are way beyond my budget. The Photoflex lamps look similar to others I've looked at, and their three bulb head looks good, but again it looks rather expensive - its obviously designed to cope with 3kW of tungsten. How did you find the colour rendering?Were you using multiple lamps in the box?<br>

That much light would be fine for the shooting HP5, but I guess the ADOX would be a big problem. Maybe I best stick to using that outside!<br>

Many thanks for all your help,<br>

Kevin.</p>

[mark_schafer1]

<p>My setup is Chimera triolet lamp bases ($245), Photoflex CFL 125W bulb ($120) and Chimera soft boxes ($200-800).<br>

I personally like the med. strip with the white interior and their 3" Octa. <br>

Like this i have one bulb per head, the color rending is daylight balanced, slightly cool but feels modern with some slight magenta mixed in, overall it's easy to set up, but the light output does not help much when outside in daylight. But it can definitely be mixed with daylight for interior shots.<br>

The reason why i don't like Photoflex' 3 head design is cost, size and limit to their soft boxes (that i don't like at all).<br>

While this is still not a budget solution (and can't be rented anywhere) it's transportable and if you already have the soft boxes, a nice addition which allows to shoot video as well (We use 2x Chimera triolet +2 CFL bulbs, packed in a Pelican 1610 case, total $730, plus the Chimera's and case).</p>

[jeff_truitt]

<p>If you want to use continous I would suggest something like the photoflex system. It is made to hold larger high wayy bulbs and softboxes. Of course fluorcesent light is soft any so you may get away without any modifier. If you search High Watt Fliorcesent at a place like <a href="http://www.1000bulbs.com">www.1000bulbs.com</a> you will see some 5000K and 5500K listed from 85-200 watts. Convered a 200Watt is the same output of about 800-1000 standard bulb. Using 3 of the 85 watt per fixture ( 1-2 units )you can easily get 125 sec, F5.6 at 200 ISO assuming they are close to the subject. You are never going to have F8 or F16 at 100ISO with 3-4 continous lights.<br>

I use both natural window light, strobes and continous. I pick continous for 95% of my headshots and sometimes mix continous and strobes or window light. All depends on what look I am after. One nice advantage to continous is you can shoot without the client knowing you took a photo. A lot faster to get relaxed shots if you have a client who gets stiff as soon as the flash recycles knowing the shot is about to happen.<br>

The base gets hot but outside near the softbox is just a little over room temperature.</p>

[jesse_starks]

<p>Kino flo light 4 bulb light banks produce soft light and can be placed close to the subject. Photoflex and Interfit also have interesting fluorescent options.<br>

Jesse</p>