240FPS and Lights

K

konastab01

Active member
Hi Guys,

I'm looking at doing some slo mo photo booths and was wanting to purchase some lights for this.What would you recommend without going and spend thousands.
I also want the lights to be used for studio stuff too so adjustable power would be great and fitting of soft boxes another massive plus since I have bowens ones already.

Thanks
 
the concept is great in theory but putting it into practice will be a drama

There's no way of telling how much light you'll need without knowing the dimensions of the booth and running some tests with the camera. if it's for event hire it will be at night in a reception hall - you'll need a shitload of LED lights so you don't draw too much power and produce too much heat. I'd take a guess a 4-6 1000 LED panels.
 
I have seen demonstrations at shows of small areas lit with just LED panels with this sort of thing.

For any decent sized "set" though, you need a serious lighting setup.
 
This is not that difficult. You can see how much light you will need just by setting up the camera in a test shot. If you don't have enough light handy then set up at 24p and 2000ISO. It is about 3.5 stops exposure loss from 24p to 240p. So look at how much light you have at 24p and what your lenses will allow you to open to on the aperture to determine if you have enough lighting.

Kinos are currently the most effective non-flickering lumens per dollar light source. A couple of 4x4 banks or their equivalents staged on either side of a subject should be enough light for a couple of people in a head to torso frame, provided you have a reasonably fast lens (figure T2). Need another stop of light? Double the amount of lighting. Want to get a wider shot? You'll need that much more illumination.

Little 1x1 light panels are not going to cut it. If you use tungsten lights they will likely flicker unless you get at least 1000w units and they will also generate a LOT of heat.
 
Mitch Gross said:
This is not that difficult. You can see how much light you will need just by setting up the camera in a test shot. If you don't have enough light handy then set up at 24p and 2000ISO. It is about 3.5 stops exposure loss from 24p to 240p. So look at how much light you have at 24p and what your lenses will allow you to open to on the aperture to determine if you have enough lighting.

Kinos are currently the most effective non-flickering lumens per dollar light source. A couple of 4x4 banks or their equivalents staged on either side of a subject should be enough light for a couple of people in a head to torso frame, provided you have a reasonably fast lens (figure T2). Need another stop of light? Double the amount of lighting. Want to get a wider shot? You'll need that much more illumination.

Little 1x1 light panels are not going to cut it. If you use tungsten lights they will likely flicker unless you get at least 1000w units and they will also generate a LOT of heat.
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Kinos aren't dimmable (apart from the Diva and that's rubbish). Tru Color HS is insanely bright and great light quality. You could buy a bunch of cheap chinese LEDs and that might get you what you need (bolted together) but they tend to have iffy colour (green spikes etc).
 
I've been using Genaray SpectroLED kits from B&H for high frame rate shooting, and they are great, as well as being not too expensive. The interview kit comes with two 14" and one 9" lights and generally runs around $725 or so. In a 10x14 foot area, I find I need 2 full kits (4x 14" + 2x 9") to shoot at 240fps and get proper exposure at 240fps, 1/250, f5.6 & ISO 1600 (roughly).

These light are listed as being "flicker free", which is sort of true. The lights are completely flicker free as long as the power level is over 90%. If you dim them more, then you will start to see light & dark bands in the recorded image. However, given the amount of light you need at 240fps (and 480fps), it would be unlikely that you would ever want to dim them while using a high frame rate.
 
Thanks for all the help guys, I think Im gonna go with 2 of they Flo lights that Stefan has posted. Will post up some results when I get em!
 
Where the standard bulbs pretty rubbish? What made you go straight to OSRAM's?

Also 2 for a small studio set up at a wedding/event should be enough?
 
I went with Osrams because the standards (with a lot of chinese signs on them, don't know the manufacturer) had a weird color shift towards green and were causing flicker when dimmed to about 50%. Ordered some Osram 954 (5400K) and 835 (3500K) which work just fine, even when fully dimmed and have more light output (tested them side by side, up to 480fps).
 
Your lights are nice Stefan. Your test video looks like sunlight. Amazing how they don't flicker. My lower power tungstens do.
 
chromeboy007 said:
Your lights are nice Stefan. Your test video looks like sunlight. Amazing how they don't flicker. My lower power tungstens do.
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I too have some 1k and 2k fresnels... I'll have to test if they flicker though, i suppose lower power ones flicker aus they will not provide enough light for slowmo anyway...?
 
So I can't find the exact lights in the UK but I have found these that look on paper to be very similar spec wise and just change the bulbs like you guys have?

Are they the same light under a different brand???
 
stefanhuberfilms said:
I too have some 1k and 2k fresnels... I'll have to test if they flicker though, i suppose lower power ones flicker aus they will not provide enough light for slowmo anyway...?
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I've got a bunch of tungsten too. 300w, 800w, 1KW - at 240fps the 800w were definitely flickering, but the 1Kw looked okay (and this was in the UK, so 50hz power, shooting 1/250sec shutter)
 
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