TMR Design
6th of May 2007 (Sun), 18:18
In my never ending search for new, different and better materials to diffuse and soften light I came across a great one that works wonders on close proximity lighting.
Do I have your attention yet? he he he
Here is a common problem. You have an Alien Bees B800 as your background light. You want that circle of light behind your subject but not the type that is well defined. Instead you want it nice and soft, with a very smooth, yet controlled gradient, but you don't want to back the light up to soften it because that will enlarge the area of coverage. If you don't have any modifiers or ND filters of any kind then more than likely even when you turn the power all the way down and place the light 10 to 12 inches in front of the background you're still going to end up with a fairly well defined edge on the circle.
My $5 solution is once again found at Home Depot. I bought a piece of 24" x 48" standard plastic lighting panel, just like the kind used in overhead fluorescent lighting, and the variation I got is called 'cracked ice', which is exactly what it looks like. I cut a piece that was 12" x 12" to fit into my Impact Universal Filter Holder (http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=283439&highlight=Impact+Universal) and set it up about 1inch in front of the B800. It works exactly as I was hoping it would and gives me a beautiful gradient, allowing me to still control the size of the circle of light.
The first set of images has the background light 12 inches from the background and the second set is 6 inches from the background.
Do I have your attention yet? he he he
Here is a common problem. You have an Alien Bees B800 as your background light. You want that circle of light behind your subject but not the type that is well defined. Instead you want it nice and soft, with a very smooth, yet controlled gradient, but you don't want to back the light up to soften it because that will enlarge the area of coverage. If you don't have any modifiers or ND filters of any kind then more than likely even when you turn the power all the way down and place the light 10 to 12 inches in front of the background you're still going to end up with a fairly well defined edge on the circle.
My $5 solution is once again found at Home Depot. I bought a piece of 24" x 48" standard plastic lighting panel, just like the kind used in overhead fluorescent lighting, and the variation I got is called 'cracked ice', which is exactly what it looks like. I cut a piece that was 12" x 12" to fit into my Impact Universal Filter Holder (http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=283439&highlight=Impact+Universal) and set it up about 1inch in front of the B800. It works exactly as I was hoping it would and gives me a beautiful gradient, allowing me to still control the size of the circle of light.
The first set of images has the background light 12 inches from the background and the second set is 6 inches from the background.