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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · CRLS, Dedo Lightstream, and other reflector systems | |
Back in the 90s photographer Dean Collins had an instructional video series and I remember one was about single-light set-ups with reflectors and diffusers along a similar line of thinking.
California Sunbounce is a similar concept to CRLS, aimed at photographers, though not quite as refined.
This is the first I've seen of CRLS and Lightstream. It's quite interesting and would be fun to play with in the studio. I think the challenge for me as a stills photographer is that the work to set up the secondary reflectors isn't really any less than setting up additional strobes for hair, rim, background lights, etc. The benefit of the separate lights is I can move, modify and adjust intensity independently without considering their position relative to the main light source. Some of this can be done with the panels by changing the diffusion quality, using ND gels to cut intensity and playing with distance to adjust how specular or diffuse the light is relative to the subject. One of the limitations I see is modifying light quality if you need/want a larger light source. The largest CRLS panel is 100cm. The typical light modifier I use for head & shoulder portraits is a 100cm Elinchrom Deep Octa. And I consider it a relatively small modifier. If I'm doing larger groups, I usually want a larger, more diffuse light source. Here this concept with the panels means bringing in a larger diffusion silk to shoot the light through. And will require a lot more light output. Actually, if it had to be continuous light, I'd probably opt for the new Parabolix Omni in their largest reflector, assuming it would be a lot more efficient than reflecting light off a panel and through a large silk. But I get the feeling the strength of these systems is more for lighting a single person, or two, if lighting directly off a panel. My impression is cine/video lighting tends to often be more specular than stills. Subject movement/motion distracts a bit from observing light quality very closely. In Dedo's demo video he had the four different panel types set up in the 25cm size. IMO the shadow edge quality of the panels barely changed because they were all the same size, and for my tastes, the light quality from all was too hard because they were too small. There were differences between zero and 90˚ in respect to shadow transition and intensity because of more scatter from the 90˚ panel, but the light still felt hard from the 90˚ panel. Knowing me, I'd probably want the 50 and 100cm CRLS panels, but the latter looks quite bulky to move around and requires a mounting yoke, etc. A 100cm octa will fold up more compactly and is lighter. With the octa I can use inner and outer diffusion panels, just outer, just inner, no diffusion with visible light source for a specular hotspot, or use opaque or translucent deflectors over the light source to remove or modify the hotspot intensity. I could use a similarly sized reflector from Parabolix with their focusing rod and an indirect mounted light source. By moving the light on the focusing rod, the light quality can be changed from flood to spot, or in between, very quickly without changing the modifier itself. I guess with the panels it's just a different approach and can produce similar results with experimentation. As I mentioned earlier, it looks like it would be fun to experiment with these systems.
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