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Author Topic: New lighting opinions  (Read 1354 times)

b2photos

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New lighting opinions
« on: December 04, 2007, 10:27:31 pm »

Hello, I am in the need and market for some new studio/portable lighting.  We do some event, portrait, still and wedding.  My questions centers more on the power and f-stop range of lighting.  I have looked mostly at PROFOTO lighting and was wanting an opinion on the need for more than 3 or 5 stops of lighting range.  I dont do a lot of heavy studio work, mostly location and I need it to fill flash very large rooms for corporate events and some weddings.  I have looked at the Acute packs and heads as well as the top of the line 4 light packs.  I have also looked at the mono lights that they have that start at 3 stops of latitude to 5 stops with the 1000 w/s lights.  Seeing as most of my shooting is leaf dig back or canon 1ds MK11, I dont see the need for more than 5 stops of lighting since the chips only have about that much range.  I do some film, large format mostly.  I know I should pony up and get the most lighting I can, but this is my 3rd set in 4 years, i tend to burn them up for some reason.  Let the opinions fly and I appreciate any info.
Paul
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Hank

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New lighting opinions
« Reply #1 on: December 05, 2007, 02:16:59 am »

If you're filling very large rooms and weddings, you'll either need pretty high ISO or a lot more power to fill than 1000 w/s lights in our experience.  We use up to six 2400 w/s in big venues, and that's not enough in some of them.  

As for the latitude on the lights, that's why we like power packs rather than monos for most uses.  If I remember correctly our old White Lightning monos have 7 stop ranges, but the biggest ones are only 1500 w/s.  They're handy in some venues, a hassle in others.  We use them most frequently in concert with our pack lights, in order to fill stray corners here and there that can't be reached conveniently with the pack lights.

In combination with the +/- latitude adjustments on power pack lights, you can play mix and match on your power switches to direct more or less power to different combos of lights or an individual light.  Then you can also play with subject distance for more effective latitude.  In practice we only use the +/- adjustment on power packs for fine tuning, accomplishing the rest of our adjustments with light position and power switch combos.  Another plus of power pack lighting setups is that the lights we use can individually put out up to 4800 w/s as I recall, depending on how much power we stomp into them.  We generally don't go over 2400 w/s per light, but it's nice to know that the extra latitude is available if we need it.  Yet the same lights work on our handy little 800 w/s and 1500 w/s packs in smaller venue.

It's late and I'm tired, so I'm not sure if I've helped much.  Short summary- There are more ways to control light intensity than through latitude adjustments, and for bigger venues you're likely to need lots more light than 1000 w/s.  Take a look at pack lights rather than monos.  In our experience, they're a lot more useful, especially in large venues where you are likely to be using very tall light stands.  Controlling all your lights from one location sure beats the heck out of raising and lowering all those light stands every time you need to make an adjustment.
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