Lastolite’s HiLite Background

I just bought one of these for doing school portraits...what a time saver! And perfect BG's every time.

This thing was made for headshots.

I should add that is a freakin' nightmare to fold up....have yet to it and I watched all the videos. My last attempt at it and the darn thing got a twist in it and that took me an hour to get out. This is not an easy task!

Anyone try gelling a light in one of these? I tried red today but it barely made a difference, I tripled it up and still just got a pastel pink shade. What will it take to change the colour of the hilite?

What type of strobe or flash are you using and what are you metering with the gel? Sounds like this is a 'quantity of light' issue.

TMR Design wrote in post #6412899
What type of strobe or flash are you using and what are you metering with the gel? Sounds like this is a 'quantity of light' issue.

Using Alien Bee 800 on 1/4 power . Standard 12" square gels.

I metered the hilite 2 stops over the subject. I was just doing some reading online about this at the Lastolite site and the guy there that does the tutorials says that you get nice pastel colours when you gel the Hilite...so maybe that's all you can do. I was hoping to change the look of it drastically but now that I think about it that probably is nor going to be possible.

BCRose wrote in post #6412966
Using Alien Bee 800 on 1/4 power . Standard 12" square gels.

I metered the hilite 2 stops over the subject. I was just doing some reading online about this at the Lastolite site and the guy there that does the tutorials says that you get nice pastel colours when you gel the Hilite...so maybe that's all you can do. I was hoping to change the look of it drastically but now that I think about it that probably is nor going to be possible.

What gels are you using? Did you meter 2 stops incident or reflective above the subject area? You should be able to get deeper richer colors and not just light pastels.

I have some standard 12 inch gels I bought at B&H for strobes.

Maybe I need to have a real low powered lite to do this. I will experiment...the pastels look nice...but I was thinking I could get glowing coloured BG's with the hilite that would look very cool...

Here is the video I was looking at with info about gels

http://www.youtube.com​/watch?v=jVjwLCi-9rU

Hi,

It is a quantity of light issue as I said. If you think about it... if this were not the HiLite and you were just hitting white seamless with a strobe that was gelled you would get the same type of results. The way to get deeper colors is to NOT have the background 2 stops incident over the subject area. If you took gray seamless you would get more saturation and if you had black seamless you would get even deeper, more saturated backgrounds.

You can't have both a hi key background and a dark color. It's not possible. Try some experiments, first metering the background the same as the subject area, then meter 2 stops under and then meter 4 stops under. The lower you go the deeper the color and greater saturation.

thanks...that makes sense.

Hi BCRose,

I just did some tests and will post some sample images tomorrow for you to see. I don't have a HiLite but I have a large diffusion panel with white translucent material in the front and 2 black gobo's on the sides.

I fired a strobe with a colored gel behind the panel and used directional, controlled light to light the subject. I had no trouble getting the white diffusion panel to go as dark as I wanted and was not limited to only pastels.

This is a great example of knowing how to control light and understanding how your subject area exposure and background exposure can work for you or against you if you're not in control. It's also a great example of how the use of a light meter will give you the desired effect and make it repeatable without all the trial and error each time.

You could have swatches to show your clients with a 0, -1, -2, -3, -4 , etc background, let the client pick what they want, create the lighting and shoot, knowing exactly what you're going to get. No settling, no chimping, no guessing.

I took some shots to demonstrate how you can get any color, light or dark, that you want by controlling the background lighting in relation to the subject exposure.

I tried to simulate the HiLite (poorly, I might add) but you can see the effect.

These shots were done by having a strobe behind a large white diffusion panel with the subject roughly 6 feet in front of the panel. Since the background is translucent I took incident readings at the front of the panel, just as you would with the HiLite. Obviously, the light is not even across the panel and my readings were taken at the center, directly behind the subject. When the HiLite is lit correctly your lighting would be even.

The subject lighting was done with a small softbox with a grid and a reflector as a fill source. Before shooting with the gel I took 2 preliminary shots. The first one was done with no background light at all to show how good subject isolation will render your background as black, even though it was a white panel behind the subject. The second shot was with the background light on, no gel, and metered at 2 stops incident over the subject exposure. That background is rendered pure white, just as the HiLite would be.

The next eights shots demonstrate the effect of using a gel and adjusting the level in relation to the taking exposure, starting at 2 stops over subject exposure and decreasing the level in 1 stop increments, all the way down to 5 stops below subject exposure, rendering the background almost black with no detail.

The first few images also demonstrate how that quantity of light at 6 feet from the subject pours color back into the subject area and is most apparent in the subject's hair. The HiLite is well made and my understanding is that the leakage and wrap is minimized, allowing you to place your subject very close to the background without seeing this effect but it''s something to be aware of if you were just using standard backgrounds or gelling seamless paper.

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These in my opinion are far from poorly done.

Thank you for taking the time to do this!

I was going to be doing this to my HiLite soon to do some school graduation pic's that a mom wanted done with the run of the mill stock school type background.

I have two of these for Speedlite's:
http://www.bhphotovide​o.com …_FX_Color_Gel_S​ystem.html

And I will use them to light the background whatever color or maybe I can double color the HiLite, but probably not.

The only bad thing about the Lumiquest FX, is they loose you one stop.

Thanks again!

-Mario

Hi Mario,

My pleasure.

Why use the Lumiquest FX inside the HiLite? I would just attach a gel to the flash head and not bother with the FX.

Well, the FX is a gel holder in itself.
It comes with the 5 oversized gel's.

It's just that the front of it is slightly frosted so that it can be used as a small shoe softbox.

I got a bunch of the Rosco samples, but I don't like them being that small.

I have seen much larger Rosco samples at BH for a low price that I may concider as well.

I originall bought the FX's to multi-color grey muslin, but haven't got to do it yet.

Okay, enough of my babbling...

-Mario

I understand what the FX is but I don't see the need to use them inside the HiLite. It's a waste of light and power, and you could just as easily rig up or tape/velcro the gel in front of the flash head without the FX. If you were using the flash on its own then I could understand using it. In this application I see it as unnecessary. Just my opinion.