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Re: [OM] Day One Redux

Subject: Re: [OM] Day One Redux
From: Chuck Norcutt <chucknorcutt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 20:20:05 -0400
Possible, but your attempt to defeat the inverse square law with wide 
and narrow angle flash beams seems rather tricky to setup... especially 
when you say you're going to throw a stocking over the flash to act as a 
diffuser... umm... precisely what coverage angle do you get from a white 
cotton sweatsock?  :-)  Then, apparently doubting your two flash plan a 
little, you continue to a four flash plan.  That's exactly what I had, 
four flashes, and had them distributed down the line and pointed down on 
either side such that the flashes were hidden and I wasn't fighting the 
inverse square law.  Your plan seems like more work than necessary.  But 
four Viv 285s set at half to full power and a 28mm coverage angle could 
probably have done the same as the Alien Bee B800s which were operating 
at fairly low power.

Finally, you couldn't light the room by firing additional lights 
side-to-side across the room except on the loft level.  On the ground 
level the people are in the way and the ceiling is dark wood and very low.

But keep on thinkin'.  I like the wide/narrow coverage angle bit.  Hard 
to setup and more difficult than needed in this case I think.  But maybe 
usable in a different situation.

Dr. Flash

Ken Norton wrote:
>> With your proposal you couldn't have lit the people at the rear who were
>> about 45 feet away.
>>
> 
> 
> Very true.  However, this has me thinking about something.  Let's pretend
> that instead of light, we're dealing with sound.  Since I design sound
> systems, I think this should be doable...
> 
> Let's take your photograph of the group of people as an example. Just for
> argument sake, let's say that a flash near the camera location would be
> sufficient for lighting the people. Let's ignore fancy fill-lighting for
> this discussion, just assume that the camera-location flash is sufficient.
> 
> The problem is that we have light fall-off with flash-subject distance. If
> you want the people in front lit correctly, your back people will be, say 2
> stops under exposed.
> 
> What I'm thinking of is a trick we use with sound systems in this very
> situation.  We use two speakers in the cluster. The one speaker covering the
> closer audience is a "short-throw" (usually wide-angle coverage) speaker,
> and the second speaker is aimed farther back in the room and is of a
> "long-throw" design. The long-throw speaker is typically of a narrower
> coverage and may be higher-powered than the short-throw speaker.
> 
> So, assuming a dog-meat flash, such as the Vivitar 285HV, we have two of
> these flashes aimed at the people.  The first one would have the zoom-head
> set at wide-angle and the second flash would be set at telephoto. The second
> flash would be aimed slightly higher and targeted towards the back people.
> As the 285HV's coverage pattern is a little, uh, sloppy, a light diffusion
> (stocking?) over the flash would help smooth the edges (and nasty fresnel
> pattern) out a bit. The slight diffusion would give a smoother gradient in
> the fall-off of the pattern which would allow for a gentler transition in
> the overlapping coverage patterns.
> 
> So, essentually, from one lighting location, we can play "zone coverage"
> with our flashes. One close and the other far.  The people up close are lit
> by the wide-angle flash and the ones far away are lit by the telephoto
> flash.  The two flashes could be velcro strapped together to eliminate
> dualing shadows and eye highlights.
> 
> Assuming that this would work, and I can't think of any reason it wouldn't,
> I would light the group with one or two clusters of flashes. (one each side
> of the camera for even lighting--requiring four zoom-head flash units). I
> would then take additional flashes and light the room with them. Flashes
> fired across the room from one side to the other would possibly do the
> trick.
> 
> AG
-- 
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