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What to do when your studio lights are too bright
First off, I'm really liking your web site & podcasts - keep up the good work! :)
Second, I had a suggestion for you regarding studio lights that are too powerful. In your latest podcast, you touched on the issue of having lights that are too powerful (B800s vs. B400s). Although going from a B800 to a B400 will give you 1 stop less light, it occus to me that if you want to open that aperture up a bit but your lights are too powerful (and your studio is too small to move the lights farther from the subject), you could use a neutral density filter to compensate. They're available in a variety of f-stops in light reduction, and you can stack them together as well. So if you buy, for instance, a 1 stop and a 2 stop filter, you could use them individually or use them together to get three stops, for those shots where you really need f/1.0!
Keep those podcasts comin'!
- Pat
January 10th, 2006 at 12:18 pm
Pat,
Thanks for the compliments and the tip! Your suggestion to use Neutral Density filters to reduce the amount of light hitting your film/sensor is a great one.
November 6th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
I just encountered this familiar problem with a new 300ws strobe. By accident I discovered that I could get great shots at about f3.5 and wider by using the modelling light through a softbox. I know it's not what it's designed for, and you have to watch the heat, but it does work a treat.