In place of a HMI....

D

DVX100Shooter

Veteran
I do a lot of shoots at night or early morning when its still dark outside. I do have a small on board Anton Bauer HMI Ultralight that I use sometimes (with my Betacam SX camera).

I am trying to come up with some ideas on how to get a nice bright soft light source that is not too harsh on the talent in place of the HMI. Preferrably if I had the money to get the HMI's on a stand I would.

Here lately I have been using a 250 watt Lowell Pro light with a 1/2 blue CTB gel attached. White balance the camera and everything looks nice on the air. I have not worked with soft boxes before and might get them a try sometime soon.
 
Largely depends on the size of the area being lit, as well as how much you are willing to spend...If your talking about lighting an exterior with only 250W of light, It obviously isn't very large.
 
litepanels! those bricks are great for nighttime standups and they run at 56k. Nice soft light, no 'deer in the headlights' look. the only issue is the cost.
 
Also, you might consider getting a small flourescent light and mounting it on an isreali arm. I know that Kino makes some little 12 volt guys, not sure if they would throw enough light to be used outside. Another light that's pretty nice are the frezzi sun-guns. They even make a little soft box attatchment for them that throws some pretty soft HMI light.
 
Funny you mention the Israeli Arm! I have a VidLed coolLED light attached to the small 4 inch arm for my DVX camera. I need to get a bigger one for my Betacam. What I learned the other day was the coolLED light is a bright light but when I use it alone, it seems like its not throwing enough light on the reporter. So I usually have to set up some stand lights to light the background and another to be a fill and it looks decent from there. I have seen the Litepanels in action before by other crews but I have not worked with them yet. Someone told me that I should not use Kino Flos for outdoor shoots like Live shots or stand ups because they don't throw a lot of light...any truth to this?
 
DVX100Shooter said:
What I learned the other day was the coolLED light is a bright light but when I use it alone, it seems like its not throwing enough light on the reporter. So I usually have to set up some stand lights to light the background and another to be a fill and it looks decent from there.
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We used to have a SPOT version of the VIDLED light. In fact we still have some laying around I believe. If you would of had the cooLED and one of the SPOT VIDLEDs you would of been fine, I think.

Hmm, maybe we need to re-release the SPOT versions....
 
Yeah maybe you should... I don't think I have enough Vidleds yet.

Using two of the 8k mounted together and running on a DVXuser battery you will get a really surprising level of output... you can pop the zebras easily from a distance with an open aperture at night. I frequently use these for hair lights even on normal indoor shoots (in conjunction with daylight flos or normal 110v lighting).

I'm still using 'em every week! Thanks for the kick-ass product!
 
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