How? Cool fluorescent in a Fresnel

[klynam]

I want to experiment with vintage Hollywood glamour lighting used in promotional photography for movie stars of that era.

My research indicates most of the 20s-40s lighting was with large movie lights: Kriegs (early on) then Mole-Richardsons and Fresnels. These lights provided a focus-able beam, constant (wysiwyg) intensity, and relatively hard (light) characteristics. (as opposed to modern diffused light.)

So my challenge is to replicate the focusing characteristics of movie set "hot" lights, without the heat and power consumption.

I'm leaning toward compact fluorescents, I just don't know how to achieve the focusing element.

My first solution is just compact fluorescents in the biggest possible relector i can copple together.

Any other ideas?

[Jannie]

The Mole Richardson fresnel lights, Big Eye Tener, 20K -huge and one of the most wonderful lights ever and then outdoors or for light coming through the windows, the best light ever made in my estimation-the brute arc.

The concept behind a fresnel light is the smallest point source of light focused by the fresnel lens as close as possible to parallel beams. That is why the old French made lighthouse lenses could project a whale oil wick many miles or in later years a 1000W quartz bulb behind those fresnel lenses have been know to have been seen 30 miles away on a very dark and clear night.

A flourescent bulb is very diffused, you may find yourself frustrated trying but you never know, you may come up with something else.

Much of that beauty light in the old days was also done with diffusion filters and silk stretched over the lens, it's an awsome look, I've done a lot of both. On video cameras we would also stretch (as in really stretch flat and tight and super glue to the edges of a made up filter ring) very sheer black nylon hose and then place it over the back element of the lens, neat affect.

The concept as I tried and use it was to use direct light from a source like a fresnel light which cuts off to shadow very abruptly on the key side and then fill to the level you like with a very soft light over the top of the camera and then exposing so the key side is right up to it's max (on black and white) and then putting the diffusion filter over the lens to blow out some of the detail. You have to experiment and funny thing about filtering the lens, you're softening the heck out of the image but you need to use a very sharp lens, a soft lens will just look muddy when you do it.

Also often they used Paramount lighting, which I'm sure is still referred to, where the light comes toward the actresses face from a higher angle to fill in all detail ( with just little drop shaddows below the nose) but is basically straight on high into her face, in the good old days before it became outlawed we'd do it with a snoot (I'm not really thaaaat old but this is how we copied it in the 70's 80's and 90's) over a fresnel to cut out the side light and then use spun glass in the scrim/filter bracket right in front of the lens to control some of the softness (which would destroy the parallel beams of the fresnel but the look was wonderful. I think by 1975 spun glass was not sold for that anymore, I kept a roll of it for almost 15 years just for those special situations. One layer reduced the light as well-one stop. Another method was to use a tiny 200 watt Mole Midget and then they made a focusing lens like a spot light, in front of the fresnel. Then sometimes we'd put a thin layer of spun glass between the two lenses and aim it down onto the actors face, this would allow a oval light down the front of the face while letting the sides of the face go dark. Then put on your lens filter to taste to make the edges and features soften and your in business, the actor could not move around at all though. It could still be pretty harsh like under the nose so instead of using a fill light, you'd work a small fill card from below to fill in under the nose and that would also blend out the edges of the light and shadow.

Some of this light was also done I think with a skypan, a 5,000 watt light that looked like a huge beauty disc ( I believe it was really made to use like cyc lights to light studio walls evenly) with a bare tungston bulb in the middle, not sure about this but I am pretty sure there was a unit similar that had the end of the bulb covered with a silver coating so the bare element was not shining on the actress. I also remember seeing one when I went to photography school which was just like the modern beauty light but very large. I'm sure every Director of Photography developed their own secret technique, it goes with the trade and is very fun. But that's all I can think of at the moment.

Somewhere in all of this Mole Richardson came out with the SuperSoftlight which is the same concept as softlights today, non-direct light bouncing back into a soft white housing and then onto the talent. Huge metal things that weighed a lot, not something we put up in the air very far very often.

You might want to use a beauty light strobe moved so there is some fairly dark shadow to contrast and try the nylon hose thing, it might work and play with it in PP.

This is where your flourescent might work, using a snoot and then putting diffusion behind the snoot and in front of the light. You may be able to pull off the same thing with a strobe/snoot combination and experiment with Rosco/etc. diffusion products instead of spun glass. Stuff was horrible, handling it as a gaffer in my early days, the particles would get in your skin and itch like crazy.

Also try stretching very sheer ultra black nylons over the front of your lens and using a rubber band wrapped around your lens and the piece of the stocking to hold it stretched tight.

Then shoot at telephoto, or use a little longer lens and it helps if you play with the f stop a bit. If you shoot wide angle and stop down you might actually see the filter texture in the image.

Then it helps if it's not flat light, the hose will diffuse out the highlights more than the dark areas an create that look.

Diffusion filters were very common when I was shooting up through the early 80's, buy by then we used ones that you could barely see. I used to have a kit with at least 30 various diffusion, fog, Double Fog, Supafrost, etc. filters for both the prime lenses and the larger ones for the 6.6"X6.6" matte box.

I imagine some of the DP's shooting movies had really great collections of filters.

The reason for black nylon is that the black will bloom some of the light but not blow it out and look so much like lens flare and the nylon because we found it can be made in finer strands than silkworms make their silk.

Let us know if you try any of this and if you try the flourescent then show us some results of that too, you may come up with something incredible.

If you can find an old fresnel light in some studio or left over from a TV station, the old 2000w units that used a tungston (round) bulb then try to get it really cheap, they will be really heavy and have fabulous lenses but I doubt you can even buy the bulbs anymore, it would be perfect because the bigger the lens proportionally to the size of the source of light, the better it projects.

This is fun.

[klynam]

Wow - terrific ideas and thank you VERY much for the insight...

A flourescent bulb is very diffused, you may find yourself frustrated trying but you never know, you may come up with something else.

In my head, I have a FL bulb in the middle of a mirrored reflector (like a flashligh - only much bigger) in a mirrorwalled cylinder (foil? paint?), pointed through a fresnel lens.

Obvioulsy, no idea how to cobble this together...lol.

I think the key is getting the Fresnel bodies (lens, can, mounts) and replacing the guts (bulb/holder, etc.) with some tbd assembly to hold the FL lights.

But will the character of the light be the same, just not as bright? Or was is somehow necessary to have huge wattage? Were the lenses dense glass that was hard to penetrate through or something?

[Jannie]

I heard the term "HOT LIGHTS" for the first time this weekend at a series of lighting workshops as though they were the devil, or a bad thing. They are not, you can do all kinds of things with them working with wall sockets for your electrical source and we did that as much as use a generator.

For small portable raw sources for bounce light or to put through a silk the Lowell Tota Light still rocks with a thousand watt light in them. I took a kit of these all over Alaska many times, going to various towns in bush planes, small kit could create a big light when several were stacked together and put behind a large sailcloth I'd bring along.

Yeah, if you used a bunch of big lights it'd get warm and sometimes the studio would get pretty warm but we never called them "Hot Lights". I guess because they were hot when you would strike the set. But the gaffer or if you were on your own would hear it's a wrap and hit the switches immediately and start wrapping up other stuff and the lights would always cool down enough to be put away in a timely manner.

I always, envied the still photographers who would bring their kit on the set if they had to shoot some still advertising of what we were shooting. I'd look in envy at those little heads which had the power of the sun in them and then the huge umbrellas some of them would use. Because of this I carried a set of 6 or so umbrellas in my incidentals kit up to 6' and would mount 1000w lights, tota or others on them sometimes, I loved the light from them.

[Jannie]

You've got it right to be in front of a mirrored reflector, the tungston units at first were sometimes modified to put a quartz bulb in them when the came out and the whole idea was to fit it so it was in the center.

Yes a flouro bulb is going to be different because it's a larger point source and the fresnell does take away a lot, compared to lighthouse lenses the Mole Richardson fresnells were very crude but still worked.

Generally speaking there was a open faced 2,000w focusable light called a Mighty Mole, just raw horsepower and it would put out as much raw light as a 5,000 watt Senior or Baby Senior with a fresnel.

But your idea fascinates me, what would happen if you didn't worry about getting a single bulb in the middle but just filled up the back of the inside of the light with several bulbs and it wouldn't be the same but it would have to be different than what we have now! You might be inventing something completely new, I'd imagine you'd have to use the mirror in the back for whatever you could help project forward.

I guess the first trick is to come up with the fresnel light, if the old ones haven't been sent off to the junk yard. I think there were various other makers, Kleigel were often found in TV studios along with their wonderful scoops (fabulous forgotten lights).

The Brute Arc was the most beautiful light of all, but it put off carbon gasses so you weren't supposed to use them in a studio, we did once and attached a long tube to the chimney with a fan to suck the smoke out of the studio. We could only do this with one light so we had to move it three times around the set as we shot in new positions, took all day but it was worth it. Strong shafts of sunlight coming through the windows into a smoked set. All illegal now but sure looked good.

[klynam]

how about gutting the bulb/holder entirely and inserting a solid circuit board (flat) trimmed to size and loaded with hi-intensity LEDs like they have in those little flashlights...? ? ?

[FlyingPhotog]

ProFoto and Elinchrom both make fresnels...

I don't recall right off hand which one but one of them has a nifty 300W model...

[klynam]

I found some fresnel "type" stage lights. basically they're just small, black, no-name cans w' mounts, barndoor clips on the front, and moveable (in/out) fresnel type lenses from a local school...

[Jannie]

The black ones, small, I think sound like the ones made to copy Mole Richardson that were made overseas a while back, seemed to work pretty good too.

Yeah I saw the one by Profoto, big dollars but I'd like to have one, they're great for table top/food shooting as well.

[robfas]

Ok Guys I win my shyness and please look my attached poor experiment to recreate the Hollywood old style lighting ! I used a 60° Grid Reflector with koneycomb and a few of PP.Please tell me your C&C i would like achieve the perfect simulation. I'm thinking to fit the Bowens head inside to a Mole body. P.S. It is not a real person ...is a mannequin

[klynam]

looking good - you've got the trademark butterfly shadow and contrast working.

The light still seem too soft overall. A lot of the vintage references I'm seeing have quite well defined shadows - as though the lights are some distance back and the lenses really throwing a focused, parallel beam of light.

[robfas]

Ok Klynam ,please post an example about perfect style of the shadows. I do not sure for the zone of the crossing from light to dark shadow.

[klynam]

Sure thing,

Speaking personally, I began where you are: asking about the character of a (single) light, becuase the light is so complelling. I soon found there are usually many lights in use and the light is virtually inseprable from the rest of the photo, making it a multi-facted challenge. Vintage Hollywood portraits are a blend of lighting (types and techniques), staging (the context of the photo), and posing (maybe the most challenging.) Of course vintage hair, makeup and personal expression also play a huge part.

I've attached an especially good photo (from the 20's I think) that bring it all together. This is one of the absolutely BEST examples of vintage Hollywood publicity photography I have found to date.

Note the crisp shadows under the nose (loop lighting) and fingers and the masterful fill lighting, not to mention the background and supporting chair - all vintage 20's-30's-40's Hollywood portraiture. There are probably 5 lights in use - maybe even more...

1. Key - high to camera right (face highlight and hand shadow - flagged to keep light off her lower abdoman)
2. Kicker - high to camera left and slightly behind model (light on her right chest area)
3. Hair light - almost directly over her head (but slightly behind and to camera left)
4. Fill light - camera left (creates shadows in the clothing folds and against the chair back)
5. Bright light on background right - flagged or scrimmed to create a darker background to the left
6. (possibly another hair light for the bright curls beside her left ear - but that could be spill from the key light)

Also note the porcelain complexion - that comes from excellent skin and makeup application, not from soft lighting but in spite of the direct specular lighting.

The only issue I have with the shot (like I could even come close to this level of lighting and posing mastery!!!) is the eyelash shadow on her right cheek. Had I shot the same image today, I would remove that shadow and lighten the shadow on both lower eyelids. Otherwise, this is an exquisite example of vintage Hollywood portraiture. Beautiful dynamic range and detail throughout the highlghts, and very little detail in the dark shadows.

[klynam]

And here is another photo - probably a vintage shot, but I can't say for sure as I just found it online somewhere...

This has a couple of vintage elements, but simply cannot compete with the image in my previous post.

1. One keylight, high to camera left
2. Well supported pose (a trademark of vintage shots)
3. Separate bkgd light
4. Possibly one fill light on the manequinn breast

But that's where the similarity ends. There is...

1. No hair light(s)
2. No other fill lights(s)
3. Rembrandt lighting (triangle on shadow-side cheek) is dramatic, but not as popular as "butterfly" and "loop" lighting for Hollywood portraits
4. Much too contrasty
5. Somehow disjointed composition
6. Too much light spill behind the model (on the sofa)
6. Manequinn fights for emphasis w/ model - would have been better as a counterpoint to frame right

Overall, I would call this much more of a Film Noir attempt at lighting than a classic Hollywood Portrait.

[klynam]

And here's what the first one would look like as I would have retouched it...

[Jannie]

Are you someplace where you can rent a 2000W Mole light, The Baby series not the
Baby Baby series as they have smaller fresnels but something you can still plug into the wall, check to make sure you have a 20amp breaker on that circuit.

Then try the light by setting it where you like the angle, spot it in all the way to make sure the center of the beam is centered on her face. That done, lock the head in place and flood it out all the way so you get the best out of the fresnel, it's when a fresnel really shines and is the most controlable with cutters (i.e.gobos) rather than feathering the edge of the light. And then try putting diffusion of different densities in the gel slot bracket right in front of the fresnel. You can then use the wire scrims to reduce the light, it will change the light a little as well but in a nice way, each light usually comes with a 1/2 stop scrim, a 1 stop scrim and then two of the same but with the wire scrim material only covering half of the frame so you can cut down only part of the light.

There is a place that you can get to by doing that, I always felt spun glass was the best but Rosco and Lee have made so many good products which will take the heat it's worth a try. My guess is you want something that will cut the light about 1/4 stop to 1/2 stop before it starts getting too mushy.

Some times you can do something similar by putting the diffusion stretched tight on a four foot frame and play with it between the light and the model. Sometimes it works right in front of the barn doors and sometimes inches away from her face, much like moving a softbox close and far away from a face or far away or close to the light, only quite different being that you have a focused light which you are only breaking up slightly. In other words. Leave the model where she is, leave the light set up where it is and move the diffusion back and forth between the light and model until you find the look you want. The diffusion becomes the source as with the front of a softlight but it's different with a fresnel being focused wide like that, when spotted in it's more of just a light source but not nearly as nice or cuttable.

When doing it on a frame between the light and the model it's also fun to take your knife and cut thin slits in something like the 1/2 stop diffusion and open up narrow slots to let raw light through for highlights, also did this with table top, by placing your hand up against the diffusion you can see the shadow on the subject then take your matte knife and cut a narrow slit, try about 1/2 inch wide and maybe a foot long but leave it connected on one end and let the loose material dangle down that way if you don't like or want it different, you just scotch tape it back in place by only taping it back up at the other end. Very fun, I've had cuts all over a 4'x4' by the end of a day.

The larger the fresnel per unit, i.e. the 2000w light, the better the look and the better it is to control.

The Mole-Richardson Baby Baby series were a real compromise to allow us to use smaller lights yet still have fresnels on location. The Baby Junior is actually a pretty decent light but nothing like doing the shots you showed above with a Big Eye Tener (large fresnel) Or the Baby Tener which had a wide lens (they came with the rings on the fresnel more for wider coverage and for tighter throw, I carried one of each in the truck.) The wide lens was my favorite. But the very best quartz light in the whole world is the 20,000W Mole-Richardson fresnel, even through unbleached muslin it's the prettiest light I've ever seen on a face beyond using an arc light which is just different, not necessarily better.

Completely different than normal soft sources we use today.

Another way one Director/DP used to light faces and actually I think up to full body was to bounce an arc off of 2-4'x8' sheets of foam core, attached vertically and folded slightly in like a book and then that light went through silk or muslin on a 12'x12' frame. I think that was what I was told, his name is Joe Pitka and when I was working he was doing some incredible work in commercials.

I tried what he did with both a couple of 12,000w HMI's and also with 2 10,000w Quarts and it looked good but didn't quite come up with his style, might have just been his incredible talent or the arc, not sure.

[Jannie]

I got to talk to Haskell Wexler who shot Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf and later American Graffiti and he made the comment that the lens manufacturers kept making sharper an sharper lenses with better color coating and cinematographers had to keep finding newer types of diffusion to cut down the sharpness. The world has changed but some of those lenses just had a special look. Many of them were not designed to work with color film and the film stocks were different back then. All of this made a difference re the final image. I know there (this is a 1966 black and white film not one of the much older classics) is a scene outside a bar or diner in Virgina Wolf where Haskell actually took screen door material and put it over the lens to diffuse and make the flourescent lights trimming the building flare out. Fun stuff.

[klynam]

Jannie - thank you SO MUCH for all the insight you've given in your posts!!! I really like the ideas of diffusing (nylon hose, screen, etc.) - I wonder if there is any company marketing PS plugins or actions that specifically emulate the diffusion effects of vintage, large format lenses???

[vidad]

Hi Klynam,

I send you an e-mail on this topic talking about the Balcar + grid I just sold, but that was before I had read all of your requirements.

Part of the problem is that you want a point source going into the lens, and fluorescent doesn't do that. You can do the cone reflector as with the Scandles, but then you create a broad source, which you need to collimate. I think a grid is the most practical solution for a fluorescent.

There are optical solutions to the fluorescent point source problem, but I can't think of one that isn't some dodo-like combination of inefficiency, bulk, expense, and hassle.

One simple & cool solution would be to replace the bulb in a hot fixture with some of those new super efficient LEDs. EBay has flashlights that use the new Seoul Semi Z-Power P7 LED. I don't know about the flashlight, but the LED is supposed to deliver 900 lumens of light at only a few watts. All these power LEDs have terrible CRI, but if you are shooting B&W that isn't necessarily a problem.

Even if it doesn't make sense now, it should in just a few more years. That would be a nice product, wouldn't it? Maybe someone will pursue it. (Just don't do it in color or Color K------s might sue, hee hee.)

Vidad

[klynam]

cool - thanks vidad - I like the idea of using high-intensity LEDs...