i appreciate your suggestions but the background foliage in the picture is as important to the client as the waldkappelle. it's for a gated community website.
amplexis wrote:
i appreciate your suggestions but the background foliage in the picture is as important to the client as the waldkappelle. it's for a gated community website.
Cool. I thought that was just a test shot. My bad......
I get a fine sense of the light quality esp with the ambient light.If this is for a client however, I'd get the light higher (the shadows from the railing are distracting) and from the right instead of the left. Also is the blur in the back and foreground from wind or were you hand holding? if hand holding I think your client will like it better if you use a tripod for these long exposures; but these are just my opinions and for all I know this is just a test and not the final.
thank you posting these BTW. it is much appreciated. My PLMs should be here tomorrow.
Ellis, i very much appreciate your suggestions. i'm not going to post the real selects and this is some handheld that i shot just to give folks an idea of what this thing is doing. i agree that i could have positioned the light better and paid more attention to the shadows which are distractions. i'll probably go back tommorrow morning and try and do it a little better.
thanks,
vincent
rico wrote:
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.
I thought it was supposed to look more like a giant beauty dish? i.e., contrasty but diffused light w/ a relatively sharp falloff. The falloff looks like it's there, but it looks more contrasty than beauty dish light...
(note that I've never used a real parabolic umbrella :-)
kenyee wrote:
I thought it was supposed to look more like a giant beauty dish? i.e., contrasty but diffused light w/ a relatively sharp falloff. The falloff looks like it's there, but it looks more contrasty than beauty dish light...
(note that I've never used a real parabolic umbrella :-)
Are you referring to the house shot or the one with the woman in the grass?
Underlighting has a tendency to render subjects macabre.
If you don't want your quaint little house to look eerie or haunted, you might want to bring your light in from a more elevated position.
Acute key lighting angles can also be problematic without frontal fill even with large modifiers. With only one light you could reduce key light angle to minimize distracting shadows.
You might also try warm gelling the flash tube to compensate for the green filtered fill light. This should also help make your low angle of light appear more natural and elicit a cozier response from the viewer.
I thought it was supposed to look more like a giant beauty dish? i.e., contrasty but diffused light w/ a relatively sharp falloff. The falloff looks like it's there, but it looks more contrasty than beauty dish light...
(note that I've never used a real parabolic umbrella :-)
Not having been there my best guess is that this is the result of three things
1) the light to subject distance ( once you get a subject farther way from the source than the length of the diameter of the source , you start picking up contrast as the size of the light source gets smaller relative to the subject. )
2) the silver interior makes for a more specular light.
3) the angle of the light to the subject.
I would hope the next round of shooting produces photos where the lighting is more subtly used but these are very good tests to show what a 75" diameter silver parabolic reflector can do and once again I appreciate them being shared with us by Amplexis.
thanks Carmen,
i am certainly getting my money's worth posting these pictures. i will have fun tomorrow trying out all these suggestions.
thanks,
vincent
E-Vener wrote:
1) the light to subject distance ( once you get a subject farther way from the source than the length of the diameter of the source , you start picking up contrast as the size of the light source gets smaller relative to the subject. )
Exactly - even a beauty dish starts to look like a bare head if you get it far enough back, relatively-speaking.
I'd love to see samples from one of the silver PLMs in a studio environment and 4-10' away from the subject (preferably a person). To my mind, that would really demonstrate the value of these kind of modifiers and the area in which they usually shine...no pun intended!
If anyone's got one in the NYC area they're welcome to come by the studio with it and I'll handle the rest. Do it on Monday and I'll already have the models there.
Erie Patsellis wrote:
A good formula to remember for calculating focus of a parabola is D^2/16d, where D is diameter and d is the depth of the parabolic reflector.
Translate that into real-world numbers for those of us that are math-challenged? Assume the 84" PLM is the item in question.
From what I have gathered the focus point equation works with a signal coming i n and focusing on a receiving point , whereas with the PLM , the briese and the broncolor parabolic reflectors for optimum efficiency the flash head is located at the focus point and the energy is being dispersed in a beam the diameter of the reflector. In other words the equation works for concentrating incoming energy on a point whereas these are dispersing energy outwards.
shatterkiss wrote:
Exactly - even a beauty dish starts to look like a bare head if you get it far enough back, relatively-speaking.
I'd love to see samples from one of the silver PLMs in a studio environment and 4-10' away from the subject (preferably a person).
Hence my mentioning the 2xdiameter range for the beauty dish "effect", after which is looks like an umbrella for a while (not sure of cutoff point before it becomes a bare head).
Sounds like a similar limitation applies to parabolics, and also your experience shows their max useful distance is 4-10' away? A broncolor 220 is 5'7". Profotos range from 10' in diameter to a little under 5'. I'm guessing the max limit is still closer to the diameter of the parabolic?
Honestly, I just pulled that number outta my ass based on how I've seen them used by other photographers or on jobs where I've assisted. I also know of photographers who use the big Briese and Bron units to wash whole areas or even fire them through big silks to create a bed of light that they build on with hard sources.
But, like I said, I'm happy to have someone come over with one and do more exhaustive testing. Otherwise I'm waiting until I see more examples before I pick one up to experiment with myself.
kenyee wrote:
Hence my mentioning the 2xdiameter range for the beauty dish "effect", after which is looks like an umbrella for a while (not sure of cutoff point before it becomes a bare head).
Sounds like a similar limitation applies to parabolics, and also your experience shows their max useful distance is 4-10' away? A broncolor 220 is 5'7". Profotos range from 10' in diameter to a little under 5'. I'm guessing the max limit is still closer to the diameter of the parabolic?
no, a para 220 is nearly 7.3 feet in diameter.
regards
1.Anything can be a point source if you move it far enough away. Even if you had a thirty foot diameter parabolic it would become a point source at 100 yards or so.
2.Parabolic umbrellas ARE NOT BEAUTY DISHES!!! No sweet spot. They are more like a Profoto Magnum, An Elinchrom Maxi or a 20" Speedotron.
3. To use the PLMs with a Profoto you have to taper the end of the shaft to be able to get them to slide past the ball lock in the head. One of my clients pulled the shaft ends from the shaft and chucked them up in a lathe to round off the ends. Should be able to do this with a file and a little patience.
4. Got my three silver (S, M and Lg) today and will shoot some people on Friday. Shot a few shots of a blower on a racing engine with the small PLM and got about what I expected, a large (three foot diameter) collimated light source. These things ain't magic, just another tool. Many people will have to learn to use them.
BTW they seem to be well made, if you take care of them.
