Portable soft lighting?

M

Mark-P

Well-known member
Can anyone recommend some small portable battery operated soft lighting that could be used in situations where you need to shoot video without access to lights?

Thanks.
 
How soft is soft and for what purpose? Recently ordered a CAME TV High CRI 900LED as a keylight for single person interviews with the idea of clipping on some opal and using it as a softbox. It comes with a V-battery mount to run it off the grid.

Russ
 
Id suggest a DEDO DLE 4.1 with supplied softbox - 4x the source size of that light (or even softer, but somewhat lacking in punch) shoot through a brolly or reflector

Im not sure the build on those luna litepanels matches the rep of the brand.

S
 
IpI don't disagree with any of the above suggestions... But realistic question, for what budget range work and what mobility requirement? No sense buying a Dedolight for cheap local business profile shoots or rocking a pair of F&V Z96's on shoots with big budgets and quality talent.
 
Hummm. Soft light require to be close to your subject and has big as possible...dimension of the light source and distance from the subject determines if it's hard or soft. The bigger and closer to the subject, the softer it will be.
 
Doug_EX said:
Hummm. Soft light require to be close to your subject and has big as possible...dimension of the light source and distance from the subject determines if it's hard or soft. The bigger and closer to the subject, the softer it will be.
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I don't think that's true... if anything, the opposite. Soft light does not require to be close to the subject - if anything, being further away can make it softer. The problem with soft lights is that sources of soft light fall off very quickly with distance, so for practical reasons need to be brought closer, but that has nothing to do with softness/hardness, it has to do with the brightness of the source. And bigger lights are not softer by nature - softness has to do with how the light rays are dispersing and propagating, not with size - you can have very large brutes that throw a large hard light. Again, for practical reasons, we use large surfaces to disperse the light to make it softer, but that's again down to the source.
 
OldCorpse said:
I don't think that's true... if anything, the opposite. Soft light does not require to be close to the subject - if anything, being further away can make it softer. The problem with soft lights is that sources of soft light fall off very quickly with distance, so for practical reasons need to be brought closer, but that has nothing to do with softness/hardness, it has to do with the brightness of the source. And bigger lights are not softer by nature - softness has to do with how the light rays are dispersing and propagating, not with size - you can have very large brutes that throw a large hard light. Again, for practical reasons, we use large surfaces to disperse the light to make it softer, but that's again down to the source.
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No no no...the bigger the source relative to the subject is, the softer it will be.
 
Doug_EX said:
You're confusing softness and intensity.
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Well, I didn't mean it literally - that's why I said "if anything"... but in practical terms, it's hard to keep light rays perfectly parallel as in a laser, so you'll get it "mostly" parallel, and therefore "hard", but if you move it over a distance, then the small discrepancies will become exaggerated, so the trajectories will start to diverge and that's how you'll get softer (in addition to less intense of course) light. It's a small effect, but it's there.
 
OldCorpse said:
Well, I didn't mean it literally - that's why I said "if anything"... but in practical terms, it's hard to keep light rays perfectly parallel as in a laser, so you'll get it "mostly" parallel, and therefore "hard", but if you move it over a distance, then the small discrepancies will become exaggerated, so the trajectories will start to diverge and that's how you'll get softer (in addition to less intense of course) light. It's a small effect, but it's there.
Click to expand...
Yet, I stand by my point...the bigger the light source is relative to a subject, the softer it will be.
Example:The sun is big, but it's so far away that it's a small light soure(relative to us)..just like a 6'' fresnel at 5-6 feet way. It will create hard shadows...s it's a hard light. Now, put some clouds between the sun and the subject (the same as putting a diffusing panel next to a subject in front of a Fresnel...the sun)...you're source of light is the clouds now..will you see hard shadows? The answer is, no.
Do this test... take a piece of white cardboard or paper. Facing your light source at about 5-6 feet from it, keep your hand in front of the piece of paper and then come closer and closer to your light source...come close as you can be (while keeping the same gap between the paper and your hand)...what happens? The closer you get to your light source, the softer the shadow will be...it (the shadow) will even disappear if you get close enough.
 
Of course Doug is 100% right. Use the softness meter to test. Hold 2 fingers in a "V" for victory across from your opposite palm and look at the shadow from the light. Where the shadows blend and disappear is the softness meter "spot." An excellent way to test.
The closer the "spot" is to your palm the softer the source.

Re : Soft portable sources. People on this forum are constantly recommending expensive LED lights but my experience ( and I'm very critical) is a cheap chinese light with some 1/8 or 1/4 Magenta on it is fine. In fact there is an absurdly cheap Yongnuo 600 light that needs no filtering at all for $100. I use it all the time. But for a softer source I use one of the Chinese CN-900's 1x1's with barn doors. the barn doors will allow you to get a bigger softer source and it ain't half bad. Need some magenta on it - test with your camera. I got mine form photo, but lots of people sell them.

The yongnuo is a little harder which I also find quite useful and it has barn doors so I can soften it. Its an amazing light for $100. I have only used the dayight versions of either light, because I prefer to gel and want to get the most daylight I can when I need it.
For an on camera light I've used similar chinese 300 LED's with one of those inflatable air boxes to soften. Very nice.- cost negligible.
 
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