Controlling spill on Lowel Riffa light (Egg crate?)

L

Lkorver

Well-known member
I shoot a ton of interviews, run and gun style usually, I use lowel because they are compact, light, and I can set the riffa light up in 30secs or so. However, the spill on the riffa is pretty bad, has anyone had success with the eggcrate they sell? They are around $200 which seems a little steep. Do you guys have any other methods from controlling a softbox such as the riffa?

I could go with kinos or cool lights, which have great barn door action, but again, I need it to be light, compact, and quick to set up.
 
I dont have allot of spill problems. Of course I fly flags when needed. I have used the egg crate before and it worked well but if you want a background completely un lit from the soft box no soft light will do it without flag control.
 
Lkorver said:
I shoot a ton of interviews, run and gun style usually, I use lowel because they are compact, light, and I can set the riffa light up in 30secs or so. However, the spill on the riffa is pretty bad, has anyone had success with the eggcrate they sell? They are around $200 which seems a little steep. Do you guys have any other methods from controlling a softbox such as the riffa?

I could go with kinos or cool lights, which have great barn door action, but again, I need it to be light, compact, and quick to set up.
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The barndoors on the kinos are really just to protect the bulbs in transportation, they do very little to actually control spill. With the rifa the best and quickest thing to control the light would be a narrow grid, at least 40 degrees.
 
Any place where I can get a cheap grid or egg crate, or is there a DIY option? 200 bucks for the lowel grid is just insane!
 
Lkorver said:
Any place where I can get a cheap grid or egg crate, or is there a DIY option? 200 bucks for the lowel grid is just insane!
Click to expand...

In the local big box hardware store a package of screws will sell for 89 cents. The same package of screws labelled at a production supply house as "Official Movie Production Screws" will find them costing you $75 per screw!

Welcome to Show Biz!
 
Cool Lights sells eggcrates for all our fluorescents: $19, $29 and $39 for 255, 455 and 655 models. Not overpriced and made of aluminum.

Our economy CL-SFT1 fluorescent softbox kit just comes with a fabric eggcrate as part of the package. $155 for the kit with everything you need except stand, so its less than the lowel eggcrate alone. $214 with stand.
 
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I don't think you can go wrong with the cool lights setup for the $$;

IMHO, metal grids are more effective for smaller light sources - to really work well with a broader source, fabric's the way to go - the grid is an inch or more deep, compared to the thin metal grids.

One thing you can do if you want to be DIY-cheap, is search ebay cameras & photo with terms like "egg crate" and "fabric grid" or just "grid" - you'll often see various fabric soft grids for reasonable prices. There are various ways to make a collapsible frame (PVC, conduit, luan plywood or light metal bar bar stock & wing nuts) if you want something you can use on a variety of sources. A 3/8" pipe floor flange & a 4" nipple will let you mount any DIY stuff to a C-stand. If you're handy with that sort of thing, there's no reason it would look DIY to anyone but another shooter. Ever seen a Mole softlight with the black plywood grid-box? They're usually all chipped to hell - there's a DIY look for you.

I had a 2' x 3' box I used for ages, had a sheet of diffusion and a soft grid, made the walls about 6" deep. Worked really well and folded flat, and worked with hot lights or strobes. Eventually got a photoflex dome with a grid, but that's more useful for flash.
 
Get some 4x8, or whatever size you need, pieces of duvytene and fly it on a c-arm or piece of lumber. Walk it into place to soak up the spill.
 
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