Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1997/05/22

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Subject: Re: Incandesant light (technique)
From: Donal Philby <donalphilby@earthlink.net>
Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 14:24:22 -0800

Ben Holmes wrote:
> 
> I'm becoming very sensitive to images lately, and have noticed an increase
> in the use of incandescent light in color photos, both in print ads and on
> television. It gives a very pleasent mood to skin when it's exposed
> correctly. Has anyone worked with this type of light in combination with
> chrome emulsions?
> I'd be interested in anyone's opinion on how to diffuse it, expose for it,
> choose a film for it, etc.

Ben,

I have a couple of cheap used theatre lights, tungsten, 1000W. 
Sometimes I use them in combination with strobes to warm things and use
slow shutter speeds to get that blurr.  Sometimes I'll put daylight
filters on them to balance.  Depands on the effect desired.  I wish I
could afford two or three HMIs, but at $5000 for a 1200W units, I'm
going to wait a while.  I've seen rental units used here in the studio
during rentals when photographers from NY hae shot for Calvin Klein,
Nordstroms, JC Penny, etc and used BIG mother HMIs.  Sure is clean
light.

More interesting is the look of many television commercials, especially
romantic or "human" touch stuff.  The closeups of people are with
daylight balanced color but the backgrounds are rich summer late
afternoon warm.  I've been wondering (but haven't taken the time to work
it out) how to filter for it.  We could use say an 81C or even 81EF on
camera and then use a bluish filter on strobe to bring the key light on
people back close to 5200K while retaining the warmth of the
background.  I've found that whenever I heavily light with color gels,
that it is important to keep something lit with white light as a
reference, otherwise it is too heavy handed.

If you can get a hold of a recent FPG International catalogue, look at
the pix by Ron Chapple--I understand he does a lot of combination
lighting and much of his stuff has a warm, dreamy kind of feel.

If you do some experimenting, I'd love to know the results.

Donal Philby
San Diego