Lighting Question

[Kneichion]

Hi
I have two soft Boxes with 125w Bulbs, Giving me 1000w, with a color temp of 5500k
I have seen a Red Head Lamp on ebay, I am thinking about it, as it has a dimmer and barn doors, useful for product and portrait shots.

I am still learning the art of lighting at the moment.

The Read Head is a 800w Halogen lamp, but has a Temp of 3300K

Question is really, how this will effect the image, and will it work with 5500k or produce an unbalanced look, or maybe give a creative use ??
Its not that expensive, but I dont want to get one, to have to get a second one, I fully understand WB, I take all my photos In RAW and have good Post Processing Skills.
Thanks
Kneichion

[Reds]

You'll be effectively mixing tungsten with daylight if you put those two together - so yes it will affect the image, just like shooting daylight flash in a warmly lit room. Two completely different light temps to deal with. If you fully understand white balance - you'll know that this can be a good thing, or a bad thing !!

[Reds]

Also bear in mind.... I'm guessing your 125W lights are fluorescent, so they'll run cool. An 800W Tungsten/Halogen light will give you, or your portrait subject pretty good skin burns if you touch it gloveless when it's running hot, and you won't get it anywhere near product shots that are prone to melting or perishing under heat.

Sound like you'd be better sticking with the cold lights at this stage, if I'm right.

[William W]

. . . how this will effect the image, and will it work with 5500k or produce an unbalanced look, or maybe give a creative use ??
Its not that expensive, but I dont want to get one, to have to get a second one, I fully understand WB, I take all my photos In RAW and have good Post Processing Skills . . .

The Colour Temperature of that combined Lighting Source will be mixed and technically not consistent as it will vary with any change in Working Distance of any individual Light.

It occurs to me that you do not fully understand White Balance, firstly because White Balance occurs at Source and not in Post Processing and secondly to get the Colour Temperature of the Lighting configured for any acceptable White Balance you will need to either Gel the Tungsten Lamp (preferred) or Gel the Soft Boxes (probably more difficult).

In any event the Low Output Continuous Lighting Rig which you describe (including the Tungsten Lamp) is not the most suitable lighting for Portraiture though the continuous Lighting Soft Boxes are adequate for much Product and Still Life Photography.

If Portraiture is one of your aims then an investment in Flash Lighting would be a good idea.

WW

[revi]

Also, an 800W halogen lamp produces a lot of heat, enough to be dangerous if you don't pay attention.
In addition, the 3300K is only valid at full power, if you dim it, the colour temperature will drop as well.

And WB correction in PP for mixed light sources is an endless headache ... (if you gel one of the sources, it's not mixed lighting any more, but you lose intensity).

[rpcrowe]

If you are set on using continuous lights, which I don't recommend for portraiture of humans or animals but, which is O.K. for still life imagery, I would suggest that you either go with additonal CFL lights or with a daylight balanced LED source.

Halogen is quite hot, uncomfortable and can be pretty dangerous due to the heat it generates...

Years back, when I used halogen lights for location documentary cinema work (circa. 1960's through early 1970's); I always had a heavy pair of work gloves with which to handle the lights. Even so, I was always cognizent of the heat danger. A fellow Navy cinematographer started a small fire aboard a nuclear submarine when shooting with halogen lights which were too close to the painted bulkhead. Just a small fire, but any fire aboard a Navy ship is a serious thing.

Halogen lights also need quite a bit of electric power. I was shooting a documentary on historic Navy aviators and was shooting in a very old house in which a retired admiral was living. My halogen lights kept blowing the fuses in the house electric circuit (the house was so old that it used fuses rather than circuit breakers) and we finally had to remove to the garden in order to flim the old gentleman. We were able to use reflectors for fill in the garden. However, the admiral's study was filled with souveniers of his distinguished career and would have been a wonderful place to shoot.

Today's LED lights would have been fine beause they draw very little power. In fact I have one very decent video light which can be powered either with a video camera battery or with six AA batteries. I would have sold my soul to the Devil for lights like this when I was shooting cinema...



Of course, I would have also sold what soul I had left for a modern video camera. It was difficult to shoot with the slow films of that era. The standard 16mm film we used in those days was Kodak Ektachrome Commercial which has an ISO of 25 indoors at 3200 egrees Kelvin and ISO 16 using that same film with a Wrattan 85 filter to convert daylight to 3200 degrees K. We did have faster emulsions but, they were quite grainy and we only used them in an emergency...

[Colin Southern]

Hi Kneichion,

You're up against a couple of issues. The mixed colour temps alone are enough to kill the idea, but for portraiture you'll also struggle with continuous light sources due to lack of power and the fact that it constricts pupils and makes subjects feel uncomfortable.

On the subject of power, let me give you an example ... if I use a couple of my Elinchrom 1200WS lights - which discharge in around 1/1000th of a second - my peak power output is around 2.4 MILLION watts -v- your 1000 - and as a result I'm typically shooting in the studio at F11 @ 1/125th @ ISO 100. You won't be able to get within a bull's roar of that - which means you'll have slower shutter speeds (subject motion / camera shake) or wider apertures (lack of DoF) - or much higher ISOs (potentially noise, and competition from competing ambient light sources).

My suggestion is to simply start with a couple of inexpensive strobes - you can get them in the 500 ES range for a few hundred dollars.

[Manfred M]

Good advice so far. PP mixed lighting is unlikely to give you pleasing looking results. One of the main reasons for using artificial light is to get consistent lighting and going for mixed light sources is going to create a major colour balance headache. I'm not a great fan of fluorescent lighting either. Unless you buy the expensive bulbs that have been designed for photographic use, you are going to find that your lights have a very ugly green spike in their spectrum. The use of the term "daylight" when reading what the packaging says should be regarded as a marketing term rather than an accurate assessment of the quality / colour temperature of the light output.

The Red light you are looking at is primarily used as a "hot" light when shooting video. If you do go that way, make sure that you also get barn doors for it. You will need something to shape (flag) the light output. Gels are commonly attached to the barn doors with wooden clothes pins. You will also need a pair of really heavy duty leather-palmed work gloves to adjust the hot light. Make sure that you have a wide-based heavy duty stand as well, it a hot light falls over, it can easily cause a fire. Colour temperature does vary with bulb age. Using a dimmer will really have a major effect on colour temperature; it will be much warmer toned as you dial back the output.

Hot lights (and for that matter the fluorescent cold lights) are not particularly good for portraiture. They are quite uncomfortable for the subject; both the heat (halogen only) and the continuous bright light (both sources) which will close down the subject's pupils and could cause the subject to squint do not give you particularly nice looking images. You can't use standard modifiers like umbrellas or soft boxes as the heat will destroy them. They really don't give off all that much light (when compared to a studio flash or studio strobe), so relatively slow shutter speed, large apertures and ISO settings are required. For product photography, a tripod is a really good tool if you are using continuous lighting. From a still photography standpoint, the main advantage that I see is that you can see what the subject will look like under the lighting conditions.

[Reds]

You can shoot portraiture successfully with continuous light - maybe work what you have for a while, before you go off spending on strobes just yet. I suggest it's a very good learning tool as what you see is what you get, in terms of light on the subject. You will get a good feel for where to position the softboxes, angles, distance, height etc. to achieve the contrast and look that you're going for. This knowledge will carry on well when you eventually get some strobes.

A tripod is handy, as shutter speeds will be low as already mentioned. I have a couple of Arri fresnel hot lights I use sometimes for vintage style portraiture. There's a couple of examples below. (Although a fresnel light is a very different source to a softbox).

This was lit with just one light


And this with two and a background light casting a shadows through some bamboo pilfered from next door's garden.

[Andrew76]

Hi Nick, those are some pretty good shots - and I really like the mood you've set with the lighting! Would you mind divulging the EXIF info? I'd be interested to see it!

[rpcrowe]

Nick, very nice images... Of course, portraits can be shot with continuous lights! If they could not, we would not have had generations of portraits like this 1930's shot of my father. Photographers used continuous light sources for years before strobes were developed.



However, while continuous lights have the advantage of WYSIWYG lighting over hotshoe flashes used for portraiture, that advantage is negated when comparing continuous lights with studio strobes which are equipped with modeling lights. The modeling lights also provide WYSIWYG capability but, at a far less uncomfortable temperature and brightness than do continuous tungsten or halogen sources...

If you want to compare cost between studio strobes and continuous light sources, the studio strobes are not necessarily more expensive and can be less expensive that either continuous sources or hotshoe flashes.

As an example, I have had a pair of White Lightning WL5000 monolights which I have been using for twenty years and I bought them used for fifty U.S. Dollars each.



Pro rated, the cost of each strobe has been roughly 21 cents per week. White Lightning still supports my lights with parts like flash tubes. I have more sophisticated lights but, I love the light quality of the White Lightning "Coffee Can" units when shooting white Maltese dogs...

[William W]

I have two soft Boxes with 125w Bulbs, Giving me 1000w, with a color temp of 5500k
I have seen a Red Head Lamp on ebay, I am thinking about it, as it has a dimmer and barn doors, useful for product and portrait shots.
I am still learning the art of lighting at the moment.
The Read Head is a 800w Halogen lamp, but has a Temp of 3300K
Question is really, how this will effect the image, and will it work with 5500k or produce an unbalanced look, or maybe give a creative use ??
Its not that expensive, but I dont want to get one, to have to get a second one, I fully understand WB, I take all my photos In RAW and have good Post Processing Skills.

Considering the salient points of this question:

I suggest that you do NOT buy the extra Hot Light (or two of them, either).
The purchase is indeed expensive, no matter how low or high the cost, if putting the money to something else would be more useful to you.
It is my opinion that, especially if Portraiture is your aim, putting the money towards Flash Lighting would be far more sensible – for all the reasons previously outlined.

I don't note anyone suggested that Hot Lights could not be used for Portraiture and certainly I agree that Portraiture can be made with Continuous Hot Lights and also Continuous Cool Lights – using Hot Lights ONLY was how I was taught and also the conditions under which I was examined: and certainly they are good teaching AIDS.

And as you already have two Soft Boxes certainly use them to learn - but that doesn't mean that adding to your set of Cool Continuous Lighting, or buying ANY Hot Lights is the best idea - even if you're considering purchasing more expensive and more suitable Hot Lights - for example Studio Quality ARRI Lights.

WW

[Reds]

Hi Nick, those are some pretty good shots - and I really like the mood you've set with the lighting! Would you mind divulging the EXIF info? I'd be interested to see it!

Both were shot on a D3s,
First one was 85mm lens 1/100s @f/2.8, ISO 320
Second one was 50mm lens 1/125s @f/2.8, ISO 200

Lights were Arri Juniors - I have 2 x 150W and 2 x 650W, but with 300W bulbs in them, when they're not exploding on my models ;-)

[Reds]

Hi Richard - lovely image of your father - that's original vintage ;-) and a great pose. Your Maltese dog image is great too - perfectly exposed for the detail in the fur.

Back to modelling lights on strobes - I only really find them useful as a focusing aid, i.e. to have some light on the subject to AF with. Unless the room is really dark, the're not so much use as a wysiwyg, say if shooting when there's lots of ambient light about. I can get an idea of the lighting - but you never fully know until you fire the flash. Maybe I should turn up the modelling lights a bit and try again !

[William W]

Back to modelling lights on strobes - I only really find them useful as a focusing aid, i.e. to have some light on the subject to AF with. Unless the room is really dark, the're not so much use as a wysiwyg -

Yes, correct.

Modelling Lights on Studio Strobes, assumes and are designed for, the Photographer having "Studio Lighting" - i.e. - Very Low Ambient light: typically I would run the Studio Ambient at about EV = 3~4, when using Studio Stobes - to use the "modelling" function.


WW

[Colin Southern]

Back to modelling lights on strobes - I only really find them useful as a focusing aid, i.e. to have some light on the subject to AF with. Unless the room is really dark, the're not so much use as a wysiwyg, say if shooting when there's lots of ambient light about. I can get an idea of the lighting - but you never fully know until you fire the flash.

+2 to that.

I do find them useful for ensuring the key light is positioned to avoid dead eye, but useless in terms of evaluating contrast ratios etc.

For the most part I just leave them off and use the room lighting to achieve AF ... the one exception is when shooting hard light shots.

eg

[William W]

My (personal – and not technically referenced) view, is that modelling lights were a development from Studio Hot Lights – way back when Studio Strobes were at their infancy.

Like all progressions, a small step at a time tends to not put the majority of users off-side.

Nowadays, with any Flash Units we have the facility (with Digital capture) to ‘model’ the lighting with virtually an infinite amount test shots; shoot tethered and etc.

As the progressions come, the past is perhaps less significant in its usefulness, but useful to explain the ’why is it so?’*

WW

*”Why is it so?” – the catch cry of Julius Sumner Miller (1909 – 1987), certainly one awesome Mind to encounter and a simply marvellous teacher.

[William W]

Where is Kneichion?

[Eightohms]

You can always photograph in black & white using a mix of light it.... It is always nice to study lighting.

[Colin Southern]

You can always photograph in black & white using a mix of light it.... It is always nice to study lighting.

Bit hard to photograph in B&W these days (digital cameras capture colour info regardless), but I'm guess you probably mean "process the shot so that it ends up B&W" (or grayscale if I'm going to be picky) - in which case I agree. Often in processing I'll temporarily de-saturate an image to work purely on the lighting - then reintroduce colour later and work on that as a separate issue.