John Harrington-WHAT WE USE - Light Modifier kit
Thursday, January 24, 2008Here's a video segment on the Light Modifier Kit that we use. A transcription of the video is available after the jump.
Hands on instructional video on photography from Assignment Construct.
Transcript:
Hi, I’m John Harrington and we’re going to break out and break down the wide variety of equipment we use to deliver images to our clients. Next we are going to show you one of the equipment kits we use when we are traveling on assignment. Each kit is different and has a very specific purpose. So lets take a look.
This is what we call our light modifier kit. It’s in a Versa Flex case and it’s got everything we’d ever need in it.
We’ve got Road Rags . I’ll tell you a little bit about the Road Rags . Road Rags are items that we can set up to flag the light. We have translucent, we have full black, and we have two degrees of light reduction that would cut down the sun. They are labeled with my name and phone number.
The great things about the Road Rags kit is that they are completely compact and set up into a frame, which is really nice. Then what we can do is slip on a translucent, so we slip on a translucent here, snap this like that. What’s really nice is this will knock the sun down and turn the sun into a light soft box. What you’ll notice and what’s important is the road rags do not have a frame on this edge, so this edge here or this edge would cause a shadow. This edge does not cause a shadow, just a natural fall off from diffused light to hard light onto the subject.
The same holds true with the second one. Each of them is labeled Flag one and Flag two. So the nice thing about this and we use this on shoots a lot when we’re working with our Porty’s when we’re out using a big soft box on our subject we’ll use this to cut down the sun just so its not as harsh on our subjects. Again noticing there is no edge up here providing a natural fall off. Again, the sun will go through but it will cut the light down. The same holds true for a complete blackout and even an additional density.
So that’s actually the small Road Rags kit. And see 18x24, everything on here is labeled and has a tag laminated with the item number so we know what belongs in here, contact information as well. The last thing I want to do is lose a light flag kit.
This is our larger Road Rags Kit. It is identical to the other one, it is just much larger. As you can see here the frames come out and it goes together almost by itself, but it is much wider. The Road Rags that we showed you, the 18x24 really works well for one person. If you have to use a two person flag where you are cutting the light down or making it translucent, this is the frame to use.
It has the full blackout color as well as the two diffusions. What’s nice about this is they are color coded so if you’re using green on this it’s the same density on this as the other one, and you also have translucent. You also have two wire frames as a full Road Rags kit. They slip on very easily. Again, you’ll notice the red density is much darker and much less translucent then the green.
So it just depends on how much light you are trying to cut of when using one of these. And you’ll notice the difference in size, this one works really well for one person, this one works really well for two people.
Next up is our Plume Strip 100; a strip is a much narrower soft box. Its length is the same; in a Plume 100 the length is 38 inches, however instead of being 28 inches wide it’s just 14 or half the distance. As I said we keep packed in the kit the Chimera quick release speed ring so we know we have the speed rings that we need when we’re out on a shoot.
Also packed in here is the wafer that Plume talks about. This one has been gently used but still works just fine. In addition packed in here is the front diffusion panel. Again notice that it is much narrower but still the same length as a normal soft box. This is the back cowling; the cowling goes over the back of the soft box.
Packed in here as well is the egg crate. This egg crate goes over the front of the soft box making sure the light goes only where you want it and not where you don’t. Because we never know what soft boxes we are going to need, these are very compartmentalized, everything is stored all together so we can just grab a full kit and go to where we need to. So that’s our Plume Strip 100. Its 14 inches wide and 38 inches long.
Next we’ll go to the Plume 100, which is 30x39. Again packed in here is the Chimera quick release speed ring. Also packed in here is the wafer, the egg crates for this particular soft box is of course much larger and fabric so you can just get the light going where you want it to go. Also in here is the soft box, the cowling, and the front diffusion panel. Again it all packs nicely and neatly into the kit here.
We also have the Plume Strip 140. Again packed inside are the wafers, the diffusion panel. Also we have the ability to go even narrower on the Plume Strip 140 so that your light is actually a very, very narrow, narrow swath so that you can have a very long swath with a very narrow strip of light that you couldn’t normally get.
Also packed in here are our light tools. Again our light tools, very narrow yet very long. All of this packs very nicely and neatly back in here. So that’s the Plume Strip 140.
Next up is our straight Plume 140. It’s not the strip; it’s of course the wider one. speed ring, diffusion panel, wafers, and the egg crates, the soft box, wands, and the cowling, everything packs very neatly. So that’s the Plume 140.
This is the Plume Strip 200. It’s an extremely large soft box but it’s extremely narrow. The wands actually come in more then one piece because of the way the whole entire soft box goes together.
But in addition in here, the front diffusion panel, the wafer, the back cowling, we actually have to pack the grid separate because it is such a large grid, but it stays in here as well. This is the Plume Strip 200.
This is the Hexo 180. In the Hexo 180, in addition to the soft box we have the speed ring, front diffusion panel, and the wafer that goes in the center. All of that packs nicely and neatly. We do not have a light tools kit for this soft box because they just don’t make them, it such a big soft box.
Our last soft box is what I like to call the mother of all soft boxes. If Plume made one this big, I would own it. But since they don’t I had to go to the Chimera line. This is the Chimera line 5-7.
It can be in either the 5 foot or the 7 foot configuration and its just massive, packed in here is the soft box itself along with the extra extension that makes the 7 actually a 7, it adds 2 feet to the outside of the soft box.
So you get 2 front diffusion panels, one for the 7, one for the 5, and Chimera also has they’re own brand of an inner baffold, you can see Chimera has put in varying densities of diffusion material so that the light comes out less in the center and more on the outside. It’s a different configuration then the Plume wafer, I prefer the Plume wafer in terms of the diffusion material that they are using inside is just a better solution then this.
But since I can’t get this in a Plume series, I’ve gone with the Chimera, which is a great solution and I use it all the time. Chimera line 5-7 also has 2 completely separate packs that allow us to use the egg crates as well.
These are massive egg crates if you can imagine a 7 foot egg crate, its just one massive crate here, but its all really compact and its really great to travel with. It gives you such control over your light, even when you have such a large light source.
So we have a 5-foot and a 7-foot egg crate for 2 different sizes depending on how we set the soft box up. So that’s our soft box or our light modifier kit.
In addition to all this we do have some very, very small soft boxes and we have a very large reflector packed in here.
What’s nice about this reflector, its an Amvona reflector, is that its silver, very large, subtracted black on the other side, and what’s really cool is that you can zip off the silver and go to gold, white, or translucent. So it’s a multi functional light modifier that packs up into a really small space.
So the Amvona just tucks into the top of the lid and with a little bit of effort it all packs nice and neatly into this Versa Flex case. We also make sure this case fits in airline specs as far as weight is concerned.
This case just below 75 pounds falls well within the 100-pound weight limit that most airlines have. This case also has a set of wheels and wands. A wheel on either side and they screw together and will allow us to roll this case from point A to point B when we don’t have 2 people to carry it.
Below the video is a link to each of the segments, Let me know what you think!
Individual Segments:
Softbox & Light Modifier Kit ||| Lighting Stands Case ||| Primary Hensel Vela Lighting Kit ||| Rololights Continuous Source Lighting ||| Rololights Lighting Stands Kit ||| Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III Kit ||| Nikon D3 Kit ||| Jacobsen Sound Blimp Kit ||| California Sunbounce Lighting Reflector ||| Gels & Gelly Rolls ||| Lowel DP Hotlight Kit ||| Lowel Omni & Tota Hotlight Kit ||| Macbook Pro Laptop Kit ||| Hensel Porty Bi-Tube Kit ||| Hensel Porty Kit ||| Hensel Porty Ringlight Kit ||| Hensel Tria 1500 Kit ||| Hensel Tria 3000 Kit ||| Hensel Vela Add-On Kit ||| Cord Kit ||| Kenyon Gyro Kit ||| Reviewing Kit ||| Photo Equipment Carts ||| Photo Equipment Cases ||| Computers & Monitors - Travel Kit ||| Fog Machine ||| Hasselblad Kit ||| White Lightning Lighting Kit ||| Video Kit ||| Audio Entertainment Kit ||| Audio Sound Kit ||| Sandbags ||| Stands
What We Use •
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