Snoot or Barndoors for Hair Light?

T

themagichoof

Active member
I'm leaning toward a snoot for a hair light. What do you think?

Also, I'm about to buy an Arri 150 to use as the hair light. Is the 10 enough, or should I go with the 300? I may need a bit more power since I'll also use the hair light in the back when I do green screen footage.
 
Barndoor would be just fine for hair light. You can always use blackwrap if you need that much control.
If 150 or 300 are the only choices. 300 will be better if you have the budget. you can always put scrim or walk the light back if you need less intensity.
 
Snoots often give you far too small of a spot - unless you have the wider "top hat" snoots. keep in mind these make your fixture much longer physically, and you may need more height. Barn doors, on the other hand, work well.

Look at the Cool Lights 300 fresnel - I own several and they are robust and about half the price, and can be lamped with 150's.

That said, my favorite tungsten hair light is a 6" fresnel, with light diffusion and a grid after the diffusion. Very very nice.

And my favorite, favorite hair light is a twin biax flo - the rectangular shape gives you light you can sort of wrap around the side, getting that dramatic sculpted-cheekbone-look. Much cooler than the "me-too" portrait-studio hair light look (which is "me-too" because it does work). With the flo's barn doors and a yard of black mesh, you can get all kinds of looks (wrap the mesh around the light with as many layers as you need to dim it).

Either way, it can be really cool to hit the shadow side of the face with the edge of your hair/rim light. Nice & dramatic.
 
If I get a 150 or 300, will a scrim even be necessary if I use a dimmer with it? Unless the scrim is still beneficial somehow.

When you say grid, do you mean those honeycomb grid things? I've never tried one. Would that maybe be best instead of both barndoors and snoots?

Now that you say it, it would probably be nice to have diffusion to cut down on the hardness. I'm not sure how I'd set that up though, I'm used to diffusion on a key with a softbox.

But in the end, I really only needed to light the hair, and somewhat shoulders of the subject. I only need to add just a tad of sparkle on the subject. I'm thinking barndoors might be able to cut more light than a snoot will. I saw a clip of an interview lighting DVD where the guy was using a snoot so I wanted to go with that. But if a set of barndoors are better, by all means I'll try those. But maybe this honeycomb grid thing is better than both?
 
Thanks for the pic. I think I might just go with the barndoors over the snoot. I'm unfamiliar with the grid or honeycomb thing so it's still an option. Guess I need to look into what its benefits are.
 
Can someone post a link to a grid spot? i'm not sure if that's the same thing as a honeycomb light modifier. If all else fails I'll use just barndoors, but this grid spot thing seems interesting.
 
Lowel omni, pro and DP have an accessory system that allows you to use barndoors attached to the snoot, which is great
 
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