3 pont lighting setup

G

gbadgley

Active member
Howdy, I'm trying to do some indoor interviews with virtually no budget. I am committed to purchasing a made in China softbox with an E27 socket to use a 5500K 135W spiral CFL bulb. I have been told that these inexpensive softboxes are great and the bulb gives a nice soft light with virtually no green spike. So, I would like to give the softbox a try. The fill would be just a reflector. My problem is with the backlight. I have just looked at the Lowell Pro light, but that is tungsten, I believe, and I'm not sure how this would work with the flo. Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance.
 
It's a stylistic choice. Nothing wrong with mixing color temps. It's common to go a little warmer on the back. You can always get some CTB to make the pro light match the daylight bulb.
 
Confused - the softbox IS the fill, you need a key. The backlight can be a hard or soft wource depending on what you want to use it for. If the idea is to give nice separation between the background and the subject, then a hard backlight works nicely by creating a kind of 'halo' that gives a bit of separation. In real life, light gets dimmer as it goes further away, so we're used to seeing the back of someones head almost blending with the background - and the hard light gives an artificial, but nice look. A soft source as backlight just lights the shoulders and n=back of the head in a kind of slightly brighter way, without the depth of a hard source. In your case, the other problem is just the dimness of the 135W flu lamp - it's not going to set the world on fire. The real issue is simply colour. half CT on some tungsten might match to a degree the CFL, but I've never found these to be good matches to anything other than more CFLs - so one used as a key, will be soft, but easier to colour balance. Or maybe something like a cheap chinese 300 or even 650W Fresnel, which can be blued up, and even losing light this way, still ok as a key. I personally don't like all softlight sources, but I'm old fashioned. I do know that it's always best to colour correct the brightest source if you have to mix.
 
I find my little Cool Lights 300 Fresnel ends up on backlight duty quite often - though I tend to do it more at a 45* angle and really hit the side of face/cheekbones.

Fresnels are handy for this sort of look (or just for hair & shoulders). Poke around on eBay and see what's there - if you're on-the-cheap, a 6" theatrical fresnel that takes a range of lamps from 300 - 1K can be a great start.
 
I find when using soft key, especially in areas with some good natural ambient light, I don't always need a fill, just a kicker on the back. Lately my go to for this has been a small LED unit similar to the z96. I also like to try and use windows or other natural light to my advantage. For an example this is a spot I shot for a small business near me:


This was shot using two LED units and lots clever use of the natural light. As for some errors I made on this video, the shot of the customers is over-exposed by a stop-ish and the white balance was a tad warmer than some people like, though I like the what the warmth did to the wood elements in the shop.

Another light I frequently use for a backlight is a little 300 watt fresnel, make sure to get scrims. It is a versatile unit that will do a lot for you once you start using it.
 
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