Your Favorite Diffusion Is
- Thread starter ggrantly
- Start date
morgan_moore
Major Contributor
A 1.1 source is small in terms of umbra and pen umbra however diffused the front surface.
216 (I might be wrong in that title) is a diffusion roll that is of medium thickness 1/2 ?
rob norton
Veteran
http://www.leefilters.com/lighting/colour-details.html#216
At least here 216, 250 and 251 are known as “full”, “half” and “quarter”, which match LEE’s naming scheme, yet mismatch their stop values (1.5, 3/4, 1/3).
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morgan_moore
Major Contributor
I guess 250 is more practical - usually I’m trading power for diffusion
CharlesPapert
Director of Photography
This is why it's helpful to carry a few flavors so you can tailor for the given situation. Also why I mentioned 250 that you can double up if you can afford the transmission loss. Also worth experimenting in distances between light and diffusion--250 up close to a bare-LED fixture may not be enough to make the dots disappear and/or won't fill the diffusion, but moved away (towards subject) a few feet may do the trick.
It's a crying shame that Zylight's Active Diffusion was a dead-end project. Chimera licensed it but hasn't proved to be practical. Continuously variable electronic diffusion would have been magnificent.
It's a crying shame that Zylight's Active Diffusion was a dead-end project. Chimera licensed it but hasn't proved to be practical. Continuously variable electronic diffusion would have been magnificent.
morgan_moore
Major Contributor
My practical experience as a solo/small crew says not much time for on set experiments - it’s subtle to want a mix of soft and hard coming from one source - I’m usually looking for big and soft but making a trade with the power of the fixture.
I’m saying a 3.3 frame skinned with 250 about 24in in front of the fixture is my best bet for a 1.1 panel
It presents to my experience a good balance of softness speed of setup lack of wind resistance and price.
Clearly when working with an m18 things change
I’m saying a 3.3 frame skinned with 250 about 24in in front of the fixture is my best bet for a 1.1 panel
It presents to my experience a good balance of softness speed of setup lack of wind resistance and price.
Clearly when working with an m18 things change
morgan_moore
Major Contributor
I can’t see an interest in electronics diffusion - seems a hell of a faff vs $50 rolls. (Or baking paper or shower curtain or other $10 solutions!)
Maybe built into the front of a skypanel type fixture to control beam angle
Maybe built into the front of a skypanel type fixture to control beam angle
Grug
Veteran
I feel like it needed to be viable within 4x4 frames (and maybe 6x6 or 8x8 if you could make it collapsible) to really be useful. That really would be a game-changer. As a 1x1 or 2x1 front to a panel light (that already spreads light everywhere) it never seemed all that useful to me.
CharlesPapert
Director of Photography
They had it in 4x4 form, it rolled up into a fairly tight diameter for storage and transport, about 4" or so.
I think it would still be plenty useful for the smaller panel lights as well. To be able to dial in from completely opaque (maximum output with all individual LED's visible) to as opaque as needed to fill evenly with no point sources and anywhere inbetween I think would be a great resource, especially remotely. In the discussion we are having here, let's say you are pushing that panel into the frame of 250 as Sam loves to do. You can start with the active diffusion off for maximum output, and if you have room to come down in intensity, instead of doing so on the output dial you can slowly roll in the opacity until the 250 is completely filled with no center hot spot (if desired). I think we all appreciate the convenience of dialing modern units in on a knob versus adding a scrim, or adjusting the nuance of a color remotely vs having to bring down the light and change out a gel; this is the same idea for the degree of softness.
Grug
Veteran
Damn, I never saw the 4x4 versions. It'd be so nice to have a few of those on a lighting cart. Or paired with a bi-colour 4x4 LED light blanket on a single frame.
CharlesPapert
Director of Photography
Here it was demoed 10 years ago on a 2x2 frame. I saw it over at Zylight in 4x4 and they always promised to get me a piece but it never happened.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkmv63EJuX8
I was told that what has kept it from market is that the material can be scratched and damaged so it is essentially an expendable, but a very expensive expendable, so it fits into a very narrow niche.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkmv63EJuX8
I was told that what has kept it from market is that the material can be scratched and damaged so it is essentially an expendable, but a very expensive expendable, so it fits into a very narrow niche.
rob norton
Veteran
Can you think of any lighting gags that would benefit from active diffusion?
ahalpert
Major Contributor
Do you mean changing during the shot? Like a cloud passing in front of the sun?
rob norton
Veteran
Yeah, things like TV flicker on faces, police sirens etc.
Cloud passing in front of the sun would be funny because of the lengths we go to prevent that from happening! But I could see it for an in camera real time time lapse effect.
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ahalpert
Major Contributor
I'm pretty sure in breaking bad - crawl space - that they flew a huge frame of diffusion overhead to do a cloud effect. It's easy to imagine if you just had a 4x4 and someone standing at a window looking out that maybe you do a cloud effect on them like when they're having a dark thought for example
rob norton
Veteran
Your example should more accurately (in theory) match a moving cloud vs. dialing in a stationary frame. Except just like a cloud it could be a combination of moving the frame with less intense diffusion to begin with (edge of the cloud) to heavy diffusion (middle of a thick cloud). I'm just brainstorming and could be completely wrong. Sometimes it's best not to overthink the lighting effects and the behind the scenes often look really basic (and sometimes ridiculous!) with excellent results on camera.
Obviously the most frequent uses of active diffusion would be dialling in the strength on frames in hard to reach places or for pure speed.
Or perhaps on a stage where there are different times of day where diffused lighting becomes hard lighting, rather than lowering a handful of frames you can continue to shoot through the previously diffused, now translucent frames.
I was just wondering about cases that would go above and beyond manually diffusion in front of a light.
At the smaller level, there could be strips placed in a matte box. Even if 1/8 and 1/4 are the most commonly used filter strengths, @$300-$600 per filter, pricing could be comparable. I'm sure the lighting diffusion panel is more basic than the specific matte box filters but who knows?
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rob norton
Veteran
It's too expensive if you can't take advantage of the technology. If people see enough value in the tech, some will argue that they can't afford to use anything else.