Making movies
Just the COB The latest COB lights include small, palm-sized units such as the Zhiyun Molus range. This collection pumps out 60 or 100W, right up to huge and massively powerful 1200W beasts. The majority of filmmakers use something like a 150 or 300W as a powerful, all-round light. Look out for good-value manufacturers like Aputure, Amaran, Nanlite and Godox. Many COB lights usefully offer a full spectrum of colours, and are powerful for their size. Without any modifiers, they output a pool of hard- edged light that creates drama. These are made to work well with modifiers, and many come with the Bowens S mount for accessories. These COBs work brilliantly with umbrellas and large softboxes, as well as focused parabolic softboxes and even projectors and fresnels. Most popular are the parabola-shaped Aputure Light Dome II or Nanlite Parabolic 120. These are ideal for
or high-performance reflectors to generate even powerful light. They’re also often roughly the size of studio flash heads, though many are becoming smaller and more portable. At the top end, the largest ones are huge and massively powerful. The latest also have moved on from RGB to RGBLAC, which adds a twist of lime, amber and cyan in order to produce even more precise colours. Many of the most high-tech models boast built-in special effects, so we can recreate elements such as police lights, lightning flashes, the flicker of a fire, paparazzi flashguns or similar. Panel show Many light manufacturers offer small LED panels that can be mounted on top of your camera, or taken off and fixed to a light stand, much like a small flashgun for still photography. However, a miniature light on top of a camera gives a hard and very contrasty look. And though a flash will reach a long way, a small LED isn’t that bright. It’s fine for some fill or if you are shooting in a dark nightclub and can’t see anything. But for creative use, it’s a better to get the panel off the camera hotshoe and use it on a stand, where it creates more of a modelling effect. While a flashgun is a small point-light source, an LED panel is physically bigger. Larger light sources provide softer, more flattering
illumination and are perfect for portrait-style lighting. So it’s a good idea to go for the bigger options here, such as a Rotolight AEOS 2 or Neo 3, which can be used with modifiers to soften the light. These LED panels put out continuous light in all colours and also offer high speed sync RGBWW flash. So if you regularly shoot stills and video, this could be an ideal buy to avoid having to switch between flash and continuous fixtures. Just don’t expect them to be as powerful as a dedicated studio flash. Larger light panels offer a more diffuse output, and they also accept softboxes or grids to modify the light. But with size comes more weight and significantly more cost. Rotolight’s latest innovation is electronically adjustable diffusion, with users able to dial in the exact look they want – while Litepanels provides two versions of its most popular fixtures. Its Gemini Soft is designed for beautiful, controllable light output, while the Hard RGBWW offers punchy, bright light as it uses intensifying lenses in front of the LEDs to focus the output. For those literally seeking a more flexible option, manufacturers like Godox offer a piece of seriously stiff cloth material that houses LED bulbs. This can either be rolled up for transport, unrolled and bent into different shapes or clipped to rods to maintain its shape.
producing soft and flattering light, which is perfect for people as well as product shots. The deep parabolic shape does cause the light to be more focused than a flatter softbox – and this can lead to a slight hotspot in the middle of the light output. That’s where the small, inner diffuser many softboxes have comes in. If we deliberately want to focus the light, there are fresnel attachments and projection attachments to use with ‘gobos’ (objects placed in front of a light source), and independent shutters that change the projected image circle into a rectangle, slit or horizontal line. Take the tube For even more creative effects, LED tube lights are very popular. Many allow us to formulate any colour we like, plus funky patterns in different colours that can be set to pulse like a moving rainbow. So we can adopt tube lights to create a unique look, or even mount them via clamps to look like regular household or industrial lights. Alternatively, get them up close to your subjects and use them as a conventional light source. When it comes to lighting, there are even more choices for making movies than in still photography – and at all sorts of price points. So have a go, and see what you can come up with. PN
the modifiers that have been used on point-source ‘hard’ lights for years in both film and still photography. This led to COB technology, where instead of separate LED bulbs, these ‘chip on board’ lights had lots of tiny LED chips, bonded closely together to form a single, smaller module. COB fixtures pump out far more power and, as they are small, perform like a punchy, hard, single-point light source – similar to a studio flash. This makes them easy to use with light modifiers such as softboxes RIOT OF COLOUR The Aputure LS 600c Pro offers 600W RGBWW output and advanced controls
ROLL UP, ROLL UP The Godox FL60 is a 60W bicolour light panel built onto a flexible cloth base
28 Photography News | Issue 109
photographynews.co.uk
Powered by FlippingBook