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Re: [OM] Painting With Light, Instant Sun???

Subject: Re: [OM] Painting With Light, Instant Sun???
From: Dirk Wright <wright@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 09:50:07
At 11:21 PM 10/20/99 -0400, you wrote:
>For portable, hand-held units look into Sunpak, Metz and Lumedyne.  All in
>the GN 200 vicinity.  More than that, I think you are into monolight or
>powerpack territory.  Big bucks.  Broncolor, Speedotron, Norman,
>Eichlichrome (please forgive any mispellings.....) measured in watt-seconds.
>
>I've never seen a direct correlation between a watt second rating and the
>usual guide number for smaller portable flashes.  Is there one?
>

No, I think because the refector and flashtube have a big influence on the
light output. "watt-seconds" is the power input to the flash tube. "guide
number" is the actual light output. 

Those big honkin' studio strobe units are only really useful in a studio
setting. I have read anyway about the difficulties of location shoots where
the studio strobes would trip circuit breakers every time they recharged.
This is where flashbulbs really shine <g>. They only use a little battery
and they put out a lot of light. These are what were traditionally used to
light up big things on location, like ships and buildings. They would
string several of the flash units in series for this. Also, flashbulbs are
still popular with banquet photographers, since they have to light up the
whole room on location. With the ones that are the size of a regular 60watt
light bulb, you can really do some damage....

Further, the quality of the light from a flashbulb is much softer than from
electronic flash unless the eflash has a bunch of add-ons like soft bounce
and soft boxes. 

I've been having a little difficulty with my old units, probably for just
that reason. I was fooling around with shooting my living room, and many
times the flash would not fire....wasting a lot of frames that way. It is
really something when you use one M2 bulb for a 20'x16' dimly lit living
room at f16 and it's overexposed! GN changes with both shutter speed and
aperture with flashbulbs, which is a pain.

Be seeing you.

Dirk Wright


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