A little lighting test. Umbrella vs. bounce vs. scrim

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pulpwoody

Well-known member
I got bored today.
In my studio I had a 500 watt Lowel and this other stuff:
Foam core
Westcott diffusion and bounce
A large Lowel umbrella
A camera
Mannequin head
time.


I was really surprised by the warm shift from the Westcott diffusion and the foam core, although the Westcott had more a shift. This is good to know if you want to warm up your subject, but not warm up the entire shot.
I really liked the softness of the umbrella, and how cheap and easy it is to set up. Winner.

Anyway, I through this together in no time, let me know what you think, I'm always tinkering.
 
Interesting - I've found foamcore goes yellow after a year or so... and all of my older photoflex softboxes are very yellow as well, but they're pushing 20.

Was the westscott the scrim jim fabrics? I have some SJ stuff that's probably 15 years old but still nice & white.
 
I didn't know that about foam core. Oh well, it's cheap.

Yes, the Westcott fabrics were all part of the Scrim Jim package.
 
That is cool. Thanks for posting it.

The differences in color is pretty interesting. I didn't know about foam core yellowing either. Thanks for the tip Michael.

I am a big fan of using umbrellas. I prefer white translucent umbrellas and shooting through them. I do want to pick up some silvered ones, with black backing to have around. Light from an umbrella is harder to control than light from a light box soft light but they more than make up for this with their light weight, convenience and low cost. I have a duffel bag kit that I put together in which I carry three very small but very powerful incandescent open faced lights, with light weight stands and umbrellas along with 4 inexpensive LED lights and a small collection of grip/electric gear. I can do quite a bit with that kit. I have done some fashion stuff lately and the umbrella lights make very beautiful light and are a breeze to work with.
 
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I'm a BIG fan of brollies too, they seem to attract a lot of strange looks on set sometimes (no one down here seems to use them for motion-picture work), but I just love them for speed of setup and quality of light - much prefer them to softboxes.
 
Been thinking about getting an umbrella for the F&V HD-R300 LED which packs a nice punch and are great for quick setup interviews but always seem a bit too harsh.
 
eiker_ir said:
Been thinking about getting an umbrella for the F&V HD-R300 LED which packs a nice punch and are great for quick setup interviews but always seem a bit too harsh.
Click to expand...

I tried them a few times with an umbrella, but since I got them for enhancing daylight interviews, you need to get pretty close with the umbrella to counter a well window-litten room.
So this limits framing, which sometimes can be worse than a harsher shadow.
This probably changes under "closed-windows" situations, but during the day I mostly use the 300s with the separately sold "milk" ring diffusor and with careful placement, it ain`t that harsh.
But of course an umbrella will still be way softer at the same distance to your subject.
 
Yeah i currently use the Milk filter and it works to soften it a bit and doesn't knock the output too much. But i do a lot of "closed windows" type interviews in offices and similar places and a larger quick soft source would be handy to have available.
 
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