i'll learn. all this is new to me. $75 gives me a chance to try something casually and maybe learn to love it. i am grateful for what Paul is doing. now i'll probably buy a few ABs and upgrade em to MAXs when they ship. i'll be good and spare others the pain of looking at my early attempts.
enjoy,
vincent
turbodude wrote:
are you using the PLM with a hotshot flash? That what it looks like. They are designed for a barebulb strobe
joewoo wrote:
i dont think youre using it right
digitaled wrote:
Are you kidding that looks like direct flash..ouch..
Why do you all think this looks so incredibly wrong? A focused para is basically a very large crisp light source. It doesn't act much like an umbrella other than looking like one.
Granted the light in that photos is not executed in a flattering manor, I'd say if you're going to use it as a key maybe get up it up another couple of feet and consider the overall lighting scenario.
Of course he could have just had the flash head aiming the wrong way or had the flash 20ft away from the model
If this product takes off, we will enter a new golden age of Hard Light. To the extent this surface is parabolic (and silver), the light is hard regardless of spread angle, meaning sharp shadow edges. Other than illuminating a much larger area, the giant para light quality is identical to that from collimated sources like a fresnel, narrow grid, para reflector of standard size (e.g. Profoto Narrow Beam), as well as point sources like bare bulb or camera flash. The giant para doesn't override studio lighting principles like key/fill or placement.
i don't have a setup shot. she is 8 feet from the lamp, the sun has just gone behind the mountains and the lamp is on a stand with the bottom edge 1 foot from the ground
Jammy Straub wrote:
Why do you all think this looks so incredibly wrong? A focused para is basically a very large crisp light source. It doesn't act much like an umbrella other than looking like one.
Granted the light in that photos is not executed in a flattering manor, I'd say if you're going to use it as a key maybe get up it up another couple of feet and consider the overall lighting scenario.
+1
Yes, that's what it should look like- notice how little spill there is on the grass, from a 70+" light source..!
Amplexis: The effect looks just like the light I'd expect a large parabolic relflector to produce. At 160 w/s seconds what was your ISO and aperture and the approximate distance from the edge of the PLM to the cabin?
Can I assume the slight purplish tint to the lit area is due to you using auto white balance ( and yes my display is very carefully and recently calibrated and profiled ).
F/4.5 1/6th sec 200 iso. PLM is about 15 feet from the corner of the porch. the white balance is something i neglected to tune in the raw conversion. again i'm just trying to show what the PLM does..
amplexis wrote:
F/4.5 1/6th sec 200 iso. PLM is about 15 feet from the corner of the porch. the white balance is something i neglected to tune in the raw conversion. again i'm just trying to show what the PLM does..
It's hard to judge the quality of light from your shot with the subject and at 1/6 because you are introducing a lot of ambient light in there.
I would say take a shot of something with a higher shutter speed (1/200) and maybe a white wall? Or a plain wall........
