Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Cameras, Lenses and Shooting gear => Topic started by: K.C. on February 03, 2012, 03:17:35 am
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Years ago I bought the large Chimera strip lights and was amazed at how much fall off there was from the center to the ends of the box.
Have they improved ?
Does anyone make a 1X4 or larger strip light that's actually even to the ends ?
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Bacht, Hensel, Broncolor & Profoto (not sure but it looks like all of these are actually the same lights but rebranded) and maybe some others that I am not aware of. These are real striplights instead of softboxes. You plug them in the generator and off you go. They come in sizes like 70cm (2ft+), 130cm (4ft+) & 190cm (6ft+). At least the Profoto ones. Pretty expensive, I lust for some of these for years but never did dare to pull the trigger.
Another option might be the indirect ones made by Elinchrom. I have not seen these made by another vendor.
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Years ago I bought the large Chimera strip lights and was amazed at how much fall off there was from the center to the ends of the box.
Have they improved ?
Does anyone make a 1X4 or larger strip light that's actually even to the ends ?
Which heads are you using them with?
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Also have you tried the Plume Water Strip 200? http://plumeltd.com/waferinfo2.html and http://plumeltd.com/baffles.html
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Back when I tested the Chimera strip lights I was using Bowens heads. I didn't have the extreme fall off in their other soft boxes, so it wasn't head. Now I have Bowens, Profoto Pro 7 and Balcar Iris heads.
I've shot with Plume wafers. The thing about their strip lights is their only half the width of the regular wafer, not the aspect ratio I'm looking for.
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I wonder how the Plume's strips compare to the Profotos for fall off.
Anyone shot with either and measured fall off ?
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some time ago i addressed the "fall off" issue on a strip light soft box
by using a deflector together with the soft box.
try both a semi transparent and intransparent one - took mine (example (http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/766090-REG/Elinchrom_EL_26310_Deflector_Set_for_Softlite.html))
from my EL beauty dish, plugged it in, mounted the box, made a huge difference (cant remember exact measures center / edges though).
alternatively any suitable disc could be DIYed with pieces of wire to the speed ring -
for a totally customized result.
cheers
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Good idea. A counter-reflector would take the hot spot out of the middle. How even the rest of the light would be would vary with different boxes I'm sure.
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as a second step one could go ahead and use strips of gaffer tape on the walls of the softbox to further fine tune light evenness
i ld imagine u could get close to perfect evenness with minimal effort in minutes that way
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While you might imagine that working, I doubt it.
Have you ever seen the baffles used in Plume Wafer soft box ? They're a graduated dot pattern that is printed onto the fabric. The actual pattern is mapped from the bank itself. Pretty sophisticated and it produces very even light output.