F3: Shooting with tungsten whenever I can

JPNola said:
I get what you are saying, Nirv. It is more practical to have a kit of LED / HMI / Kino's for balancing with daylight and 5600k existing lighting. I'm still working on putting such a kit together.

But there are times where I still go tungsten on corporate work. I shut off the overheads and allow any windows in the background to go blue. I always have my tungsten ARRI kit in my vehicle, even if I only bring LED and Flo's into the building for the shoot. I'm not ready to go sans tungsten fresnels just yet. I did that on a recent shoot and felt partially naked on the drive to the location.

I'm still trying to come up with an LED source that can be put inside a big chimera light bank. I'm leaning towards the Fiilex M1. It has female receptors for the soft bank built into the light. The little dinky soft boxes that strap onto a LitePanel don't cut it for me. And I need more output than the 1x1 LED's provide for when I want to use a bounced key light.
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JP totally in agreement re the old 1x1.. and the small soft box isnt increasing the size of the light sources much over the 1x1 size in the first place..BUT .. drum roll.. have to tried the new Astra line of 1x1.. these puppies can blast quite a bit of light.. up to 4X the old 1x1,s.. you can certainly bounce off a board.. I bang them through a pretty strong diff screen.. and the color temps on them are pretty good.. one other problem I have with tungsten is its alot harder to battery power them.. having moved over to LED /battery power .. when I have to go back to AC its a real pain.. I haven't used my Diva for about a year now!
 
For myself I went with the bi color.. . even better its everything in-between too.. so often I have to set it to Florrie levels around 4000.. my Gel kit is gathering dust somewhere.. they really are a fairly big step up from the older 1x1,s I have .. a bit ungainly in design TBH .. the yoke is alot bigger.. but they really put out alot more light.. and the color quality is not bad at all.. I was a total tungsten with soft box person.. Rifa etc.. let the windows go blue.. but I found with the F5 the window became the friend more than the enemy .. and I changed totally to daylight .Diva 400/LED lite panel and Arri Locaster..(lovely light but very small and not much power.. and crap really exp Arri batteries..! ) but now with the Astra,s I dont use the Diva.. and if at all possible always power by battery.. you never want to go back after that.. but you need to put the astra through a frame or bounce.. for a soft light anyway.. the source is still small the only way to make it soft is to make it alot bigger.. unless your shooting tiny objects of course..
 
Interesting.

The dream is to have something that can approach a 575w HMI in an LED fresnel, and then to have something like a Cineo Maverick or Astra to diffuse and soften up. Then the newest Dedo DLED with projector for fine focusing.

EDIT: For now, I'm thinking about either the Maverick or the Astra, and one of those Aputure 120s which is in the ballpark of a 1k tungsten in terms of output. And which you can stick a Bowens mount focusing lens on to alter the beam angle, or a Bowens mount softbox.

For the money I don't think they are too much of a gamble. The Daylight one supposed to be out before the end of the year but for £500 for either I might have one of each.

https://vimeo.com/182269654
 
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According to Lite panels... Comparative output:575W HMI 2kW Tungsten

For the highest out put 1 x1 panel.. fan can be noisy but you can set.. half power without fan.. obviously not a fresnel .. but the spot version ,and the fact they are pretty small in size ,does give quite a strong hard light.. if you dont have to worry abut space then I guess a fresnel would be better.. i.e. needing the space tp get far back enough to fill a diff frame..or bounce board.. another attraction for me was they sell travel kits with purpose built Pelican box.. I have two travel kits.. and they have seen alot of flights.. and touch wood..! never a problem so far.. but for guys working in studio,s there are probably better units to work with.. but doc/corp the astra,s are very good.. I dont have shares in lite panels by the way !

That Aputure looks good and very cheap.. my only thing would be I want anything battery run to be V mount.. or Bauer if I had those.. I want the monitor,s.. lights and camera all the same battery type.. can get you out of s*%t and only one charger .. anything with purpose built batts.. just an extra hassle.. had this with the Arri 2 x Lo caster..kit $600 ! batteries .. total crap.. dead within a year Arri refuse to re cell .. so I rarely use them now..and haven't bought anything Arri since..
 
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I like the fact I could get two of them for the price of one Cineo Maverick. But then the Maverick is really sexy looking and I am totally superficial.

If you've not tried them the Dedo LEDs are incredible for a hard light source. I'm selling my kit of them at the moment (2 x DLED4s + 1x DLED2) because I want the higher powered versions but the focusing and quality of light is great, especially from such a small and lightweight fixture. And all the add-ons make them very versatile. The new DLED7 Turbo is the same size as the DLED4 but twice the output.

I'm all over that. I think they're doing a DLED9 Turbo too which could be the magic answer to a lot of people's needs.
 
Yes they are all getting better by the day.. I can totally get the guys who love tungsten.. I was one of them.. I dont think I ever shot an interior interview in Daylight for 15 years.. and the arrival of Chimera,s was a time of great rejoicing and merriment ..
But then s35mm sensors and log came along and the window came something you actually might want in the background.. rather than carrying around all this black drape to try to make every room a black box.. I got LED lights.. and a Diva 400.. and a big switch went in my head.. now Im a daylight /LED convert.. granted they have to be good/expensive LED,s.. alot of people used knock off,s and the results were crap and LED,s got a bad name..
A mate of mine got a whole lot of Arri Tungsten lights .. yes they are nice and well built.. but the box is enormous ! and weights a ton.. the fixtures are big.. the bulbs blow (literally censors ).. all these AC cables.. and dealing with not blowing up boxes..and on top of that.. they get very very hot.. I would never go back to that now..
 
I keep meaning to pick up a used Arri 2k, just for when you need a 2k. They can be cheap as chips on ebay these days and so in terms of output and light quality per £ they're still unbeatable.

But yeah for everyday they tend to sit gathering dust.
 
Great comments all.
Lighting is a personal choice to how we shape our images.
I love tungsten for it's purest light quality. For me it's worth the pain!
The dairy barn had a couple 20A circuits so I knew power would be a non issue.
A few more details about the shoot: S-log, 4100k, 50mm Asahi @ 2.8, no filtration, no color correction.

cheers,
 
pchristoph said:
Great comments all.
Lighting is a personal choice to how we shape our images.
I love tungsten for it's purest light quality. For me it's worth the pain!
The dairy barn had a couple 20A circuits so I knew power would be a non issue.
A few more details about the shoot: S-log, 4100k, 50mm Asahi @ 2.8, no filtration, no color correction.

cheers,
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Yes totally agree..I wasn't passing any judgment.. just my own small needs running around like a mad man.. Im envious that you obviously have the time,space and the decision on lighting is yours :).. looks great.. that goes without saying..
 
I had a 1K mole, a red head, a bunch of lowells (still have a few), and a few off brand random ones.

I've sold nearly all of them and went with a few Kino Diva + Barflys (highly recommend the 60 degree louvre for the Diva) and LED panels (aputure 672s), and shoot daylight 95% of the time. Almost all the corporate interviews I do end up having some kind of daylight already in the room. Night and day experience-wise for me not having to deal with hot lights and the pain of moving them around frequently on longer days (multiple setups, etc), or the producers asking if we can move the lights back to not heat the talent up etc....and I NEVER have to worry about blowing breakers! (huge plus!)

The number of tight spaces I'm shooting in and not having to deal with hot lights is the biggest plus - as a full-time freelancer, being able to setup quickly and start shooting is a huge plus to producers hiring me - switching away from tungsten has been a great decision for me.

Diva LED looks fantastic as well (played with it at ProFusion in Toronto this week)
 
chappelldigital said:
I had a 1K mole, a red head, a bunch of lowells (still have a few), and a few off brand random ones.

I've sold nearly all of them and went with a few Kino Diva + Barflys (highly recommend the 60 degree louvre for the Diva) and LED panels (aputure 672s), and shoot daylight 95% of the time. Almost all the corporate interviews I do end up having some kind of daylight already in the room. Night and day experience-wise for me not having to deal with hot lights and the pain of moving them around frequently on longer days (multiple setups, etc), or the producers asking if we can move the lights back to not heat the talent up etc....and I NEVER have to worry about blowing breakers! (huge plus!)

The number of tight spaces I'm shooting in and not having to deal with hot lights is the biggest plus - as a full-time freelancer, being able to setup quickly and start shooting is a huge plus to producers hiring me - switching away from tungsten has been a great decision for me.

Diva LED looks fantastic as well (played with it at ProFusion in Toronto this week)
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What do you do when using a Diva as a key but you need to make it into a larger source AND control the spill? I find that the Diva's are not a large enough source for a nice wrap of the light on interviews. Dirty nose syndrome that I see all to often in work done by others. The "tv interview" look. Smallish source and no Rembrandt patch.

If I put the diva through a 4 x 4 diffusion frame or silk the light goes everywhere. I lose the falloff. I don't have the luxury of carrying around 4 x floppies to control all the spill and when it a small room it becomes problematic what with all the stands such flagging requires. The old school chimera was nice because there was no spill from the sides. All of the light was directed forward. Using the fabric grid I can create a controlled pool of soft light with the Chimera and have the walls go near black if I want, even with the subject seated only 6 feet away from the back wall. Fabric grid on the Diva doesn't limit the spill nearly as much and the Diva is too small of a source to get that yummy wrapping of light on the face.
 
Gorgeous patina Paul in those shots. I noted you shot at 4100K with tungsten lighting. Was that responsible for the yellow-brownish patina or is that coming from your tweaked colour matrix or a combination of the above?

Sure is reminiscent of the F35 thang. Would you be willing to share your matrix settings?
 
Everybody criticized the look of the F3 until it was superseded by the FS7. Now everyone hates the look of the FS7 in custom but praises the F3 using Matrix, but the FS7 in custom is virtually identical to the F3 using matrix except that the FS7 is cleaner and sharper. In fact you barely need to change the matrix settings in the FS7 for a perfect match . In my case I just needed to dial the phase and saturation a bit to match F3 and EX-1/3.

Not to knock the F3 at all, but....
 
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