2006.03.12: Leanna and Source Four Ellipsoidal Shoot

Prompted by Steven Matthys' e-mail wondering where I am I made four entries in the span of about an hour. Check out his blog where you can read about the adventures of another gear head and photographer.

The lamp has a dichroic reflector which is advertised to reflect 90% of infrared energy back out the rear of the lamp. It works . . . the beam of light is virtually cold even though the light unit itself heats up considerably after prolonged use. I recall having some of Jonathan's hot lights on for a short while and though they probably use similar lamps I know that the light from Jonathan's lamps were very, very hot to work under.

Here's where I confess that it really has been almost half a year since our last "full" shoot together. The last shoot was an equipment test with the Lighttools Soft Egg Crates and a 60" octagon on one of Stephen Pilby's new lights. That was December 12, 2005. The last full shoot was our S3 Pro test on the legislature grounds, September 25, 2005. In a way not really a full shoot either. I guess that makes the last "real" full shoot date July 9, 2005 when we shot in the grain field. It's great shooting with my "primary" model again . . . we always create some unique work together. She didn't have the benefit of a makeup artist or hairstylist this time but she did just get a body wave perm which looks hot. Thanks for shooting with me again.

I use Leanna to test new gear. I wanted to add more texture to the lighting of my photographs so I investigated my options with Balcar. Balcar has at least two optical spotlight attachments for strobes - one is called the Rocket Spot which is part of the Rocket system that also includes a fibre optic microlight assembly for doing macro photography. It allows for the use of slides and gobos for projecting stuff, it's focusable, zoomable, and has a bellows for keystone perspective distortion correction (or further distortion if you please) plus a removeable fresnel . . . a very complete package for about $500US plus the concentrator for another $200US and you'd just put those onto a Balcar head that you already have. Unfortunately no one has one or was selling one of these anywhere since Balcar's merger with Cokin . . . we're still waiting for a new distributor. A Balcar Le Spot which handles smaller gobos and doesn't have bellows movements was going for eBay for under $250US used until the last minute when someone outbid me several times over and the auction hit $360US. I ended up investigating other options . . . theatrical spot lighting being one of them. I visited the helpful guys at Production Lighting on 147 St. and 123 Ave. in Edmonton to to learn more about this lighting. I always got my Lee and Rosco gels through them ($7.50 for a sheet roughly 20 x 30" . . . almost any colour you could imagine and they are extremely heat resistant and also puncture resistant). According to Roy and Trevor, the ETC Source Fours are perhaps the best ellipsoidal lights money can buy . . . almost double the efficiency of other lamps, excellent optics, and for me, bargain pricing for a US-made product when compared to what I pay for photographic strobe equipment. I ended up purchasing the Source Four Jr. Zoom which allows zooming of the angle of illumination from 25-50degrees and feels about 10lbs lighter than the Source Four Sr. which has more optics options and has a maximum lamp rating of 750W plus a few other flexibilities. I foresee some location work with these lamps so I opted for the weight and compactness advantage of the Jr. Zoom . . . plus it's about $200 cheaper for the zoom . . . the Source Four Jr. in one of three fixed angles runs for $280 at Production Lighting and is CSA approved and also includes a bulb of your choice up to the maximum of the lamp plus wiring of the end plug. The Source Four Sr. fixed focal length lights are $420 down to 19degree angle and below that they get more expensive. The zooms are $350 and $500+ respectively. As with camera optics, fixed focal length optical assemblies often perform better than zooms but for what I was doing I wanted light defects like chromatic aberration and uneveness of the illumination field so going with the less perfect optical assembly wasn't a huge concern for me.