Light for photography application.

[exceedspeedby10]

Gday all,
I'm in need of a light where you are able to change the diameter of the beam, and also (not vital tho) the brightness. Weight is not an issue. If rechargable, battery life must exceed 4 hours. It also has to be very, very bright. I was thinking about making a HID rig, but zoomability, output adjustment and excessive heat generation are all going to be problems. LEDs would most likely be (?) a better choice, but my budget is severly limited, a couple hundred at most.

Is there any way to zoom the beam of HID light sources? If I made my own, maybe adjust the reflector with screws, or use a material to gradually block off the light or something?

I havent much of a clue when it comes to portable light sources beyond ones that just flash, so I was hoping for a few thoughts from a community that seems to know a thing or two.
cheers guys, Tom

 

[Echo63]

If you give us an idea of what you are trying to do with the light it might help us suggest things.

I'm sure there is a zoomable hid out there, brightness can easily be controlled with ND Gels (sheets of specially tinted plastic, available from lighting/stage shops)
LED is really the only light source you can dim without it changin colour on you Unless you use ND gels

And welcome to CPF - hold onto your wallet

 

[AnAppleSnail]

I do all kinds of magic with longer exposures and normal flashlights. I work the dimming and spread of light with lightpainting techniques - move the light across a scene to simulate natural light as desired. I suggest neutral-white lights and 10+ second exposures. Do you REALLY need brighter light? Zoomable HID rigs with uniform spot brightness run in the multi-hundred dollar range, since they're just like the spotlights used for stage work.

You can poke through my photostream to see some of what I've done, but I suggest trying with even a simple flashlight (Try your phone's camera flash if nothing else) to see what you can do. If you're determined to go with high-output zoomable, look into some of the high-power LED aspheric lens lights. For dimming, I'm afraid you'd have to modify exposure time or amount of time the light is on. It's mucho money for high-power lights with more than high/med/low.

 

[exceedspeedby10]

Thank you for your reply Echo63, I'm planning to use this light to light up photos. Colour consistency is not important, but the tip about ND gels is.

AnAppleSnail, I'm going to be going through your photo stream for a while yet, you have some very nice ones in there! What was the light source in 'Fire Sword'?
Brightness is important as I am limited to shooting f/22 or slower, generally slower, with ISOs around 100 and subject to camera ranges of about 1/2 mile. This makes for a very very bright light to keep exposures under a few hours. How bright I'm not exactly sure, as I've effectively got nothing that compares. Perhaps a spotlight would be more effective at those sorts of ranges, I dont know. It would also allow me to be a lot more accurate, I'm guessing, but I don't know how aspheric lenses compare.

btw 'yellow' is a beautiful picture.

 

[Echo63]

getting closer would be much better, or even using multiple pops of flash from in close to illuminate your pictures (this will take a bit of teamwork though.

for lighting something at 1/2 mile the only real option is a Maxabeam, anything else is going to be too floody, and blow out the foreground.

this is mine (in normal, not high) at around 1000m (a little over half a mile)

its not really in the "cheap" category - mine was a little over $700 usd

if your standing near the camera you are going to illuminate all the dust in the air, which while cool for beamshots, is opposite to what you want to do, you really need to get away from the camera, closer to the subject, and try to not illuminate your self in the photo

 

[exceedspeedby10]

maxabeam looks good, but at that price I might be forced to go for a HID conversion. Flashes dont work due to the inverse square rule, it is much easier to use a concentrated constant lightsource, however the dust is going to be a major problem. I'm going to be nowhere near my camera but I can imagine a big arc of lit-up haze in my photos, not great. I'm gonna have to consider how to get around this without a motorbike or something to reduce light to subject distances.

 

[Echo63]

I honestly think you would be better off getting a pair of radios, and getting a friend to watch/trip your camera while you paint the light on from much closer (of course if you can't get closer then that won't work)

The inverse square law will apply not only to the flashes, but the flashlight too, the closer you get the brighter the light is going to appear to be.

Actually you could probably get away with using a hid/hid conversion, something like a Thor
You may need to put a big snoot on it or build a grid to reduce the amount of spill, so you don't light up the ground too much

Going through the old posts in the spotlights subforum would probably be the best thing to give you ideas, there is a lot of high powered lights in there

 

[exceedspeedby10]

oh yeah, this is all in combination with radios/friends/cars/maps etc. I've also gotta work out how reciprocity failure works with light painting, fun fun!
I've been trawling the archives a bit lately and have found quite a few informative threads, I'm slowly learning the difference between mercury HID/HID/short arc HID etc etc ad infinitum it seems, plus the issues associated with reflectors that aren't designed for HID bulbs and all that. There's a lot to learn but the good (and very rare) news is that it's not gonna cost an arm and a leg to put together a DIY HID light, it seems.

 

[AnAppleSnail]

Thank you for your reply Echo63, I'm planning to use this light to light up photos. Colour consistency is not important, but the tip about ND gels is.

AnAppleSnail, I'm going to be going through your photo stream for a while yet, you have some very nice ones in there! What was the light source in 'Fire Sword'?
Brightness is important as I am limited to shooting f/22 or slower, generally slower, with ISOs around 100 and subject to camera ranges of about 1/2 mile. This makes for a very very bright light to keep exposures under a few hours. How bright I'm not exactly sure, as I've effectively got nothing that compares. Perhaps a spotlight would be more effective at those sorts of ranges, I dont know. It would also allow me to be a lot more accurate, I'm guessing, but I don't know how aspheric lenses compare.

btw 'yellow' is a beautiful picture.

On that kind of an f/stop you're going to need some serious light. Using old manual-film tables could lead you to the math to calculate the light needed. Any light that will reach your subject is going to project a bright fuzzy bar of light as the dust/humidity/etc in the air scatters the focused beam. I highly suggest getting the light source closer, as the physics makes sending light 1/2 mile twice without interfering in the photo very challenging. You'd need a radio link just to offset your megaspot in this situation.

I strongly suggest getting your lights closer. What is the situation you're shooting in that you're shooting 1/2 mile in the dark? If you're looking at exposures of around a minute, then play with this - try popping a flash (even a wasted shot on a point-and-shoot) up close with this setup. See what one, two, ten flashes does at f/22 and ISO100. Then you might find it cheaper to get a decent radio (or phone) and a cheap light.

I take a lot of photos in the dark and wind up having to walk lights down dark spaces. The other options don't work as well.

Fire Sword is burning steel wool in a tunnel. The blue glow is the much-cooler-kelvin-temperature indirect daylight filtering in. If I used a fill light, it was a Quark NW Tactical 2xAA on the 90-lumen setting. I think all the light was from the burning steel though.

 

[chmsam]

The Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) school of photography has been doing this sort of stuff for quite a few years. Google "RIT" and "big shot" for examples and news reports and you might find some useful information or contacts.

 

[exceedspeedby10]

firesword just seemed odd to me as the light trail from the steel ball just stops. weird.
I'm fairly experienced in off camera flash and light painting, especially in drains, but I want to try with landscapes hence I need a proper light. I've heard of Big Shot but the final result of the shoots doesnt really interest me. Flat lighting everywhere, might as well take it during the day. I'm not a fan of using flash for light painting, the fall pattern doesnt really work well, torches are just easier and more consistent. I'm presuming this applies as well for large scale, but I havent really experimented with really high power single use bulbs at all.
A fair amount of navigation will be required to get good looking pictures without beams reducing contrast, unless I shoot after rain or something when there is less dust (apparently this is the case, yet to find out myself). I suspect it's going to take a lot more work to get it to look nice than I think it's going to take. I tend to be good at that. Light painting landscapes in large format is probably going to be really really hard. A good distraction from the fact that I've no idea why I do things, ha.
I've searched around fairly hard for photographers who light paint on large scales, I found one Australian (!) dude, and a couple random shots from U.S, but nothing consistent. I think this could be pretty cool.