need light suggestions (for photography)

I need a light for illuminating large, dark, underground spaces for long-exposure photography. My gf gave me a Surefire E2E, which is perfect... for small spaces. Here are the requirements:

- beam similar to an E2 (smooth beam, wide spot, bright spill... almost a flood beam)
- significantly brighter than an E2
- batteries and size aren't important (within reason)
- regulated LED would be preferred, but incan is OK

I have a few brighter lights (modded Mags, UK 4D), but they're all spot beams, so they just don't work as well.

Any suggestions?

How large are you talking about?

Bigger than a bread box but smaller than an elephant?

Living room sized 15'x20'x10'?

House sized 45'x30'x25'?

Cathedral sized?

Mammoth Cave sized?

It all depends on how big the area you are trying to light up and how much gear you want to haul.

As a photographer, you must be careful not to alter the color temperature unless you use the right filter. For this reason, I'd avoid LEDs.

A four-cell Wolf Eyes, Pila, or Microfire will provide a wall of light. With 4 123A cells, you get 200 lumens. Unfortunately, with 2 Pila 168A cells, you must use the 9V, 130-lumen lamp.

I suggest you order the huge lighting catalog from B&H Photo, or check out their lighting options online. Many diving lights are comarketed as photography lights.

Paul_in_Maryland said:

As a photographer, you must be careful not to alter the color temperature unless you use the right filter. For this reason, I'd avoid LEDs.

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Not sure where that is coming from, but I can tell you my U2 and L4 are producing the best results when it comes to closeup photography. They appear as daylight to the WB engine on my camera, and the results come out great with no tweaking required. Just point camera and shoot. Saved me the cost of a macro light - GREAT!

When I shoot under incandescent light on the other hand, the results turn out consistently horrible - yellow tint everywhere. Yuck.

vtunderground,

You have taken some amazing shots already
where are you planning to go ! oo:
Your underground hallway shots are awsome.

Aparently you are minding much larger places?

You are probably gonna need at least 130+ lumens for this then.
For a small light, try one of the Pila GL lights.
My GL3 is about 120 lumens, with a large spot that fades nicely to a flood.

But werent you using a UK light canon at one time?
Thats 450+ lumens.

If you want smaller, there the 10W miniHID mag mods.
those are around 500 lumens.

You may want to look into remote flashes, thats what I am looking into now.
I have a 35mm flash, that I sometimes manually use with long exposures.
I found attachments you can get for them, that make them flash, when it sees another cameras flash.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=7515321333&ssPageName=STRK:MEWA:IT

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=7540010853&ssPageName=STRK:MEWA:IT

You're right, KevinL. I forgot that while incandescent light may look more "natural" to our eyes, it can appear too warm to a camera--at least, to photographic film.

On most decent mid-range to high end digital cameras, you can set a custom white balance, so it doesn't matter what "white" light you use. Also, if your camera has RAW ability, shoot in that format and worry about color balance in post processing. Digital cameras can be very forgiving in the color balance department if you know how to use them.

You might want a cheap flash booster like the Quantaray MS-1 like you can purchase at Ritz Camera http://tinyurl.com/8pthn

See review here http://www.steves-digicams.com/ms-1.html

Like Steve says though, it's an "idiot" booster and any flash will trigger it so if you have a camera with pre-flash and you can't turn that pre-flash off you will get underexposed pictures due to the boosters triggering too soon.

I use a Canon 10D so for example I got around this by purchasing a cheap Quantaray QTB-7500A http://tinyurl.com/765vl
and a control module with manual settings on it http://tinyurl.com/a7fsa

I use the QTB-7500A and three of the MS-1 Boosters all the time in my "mini studio" and they work great!

If you have the time, you could use long exposures and paint the space with flash or a flood beam. If it's very dark and there are no contraints like people walking thru the picture, you could use time to your advantage, and get by with relatively little equipment. There certainlyl would be a trial and error process, but now with digital, it's much faster and easier. Just chimp your way to success!

daloosh

MoonRise: What I had in mind was railroad tunnels or brewery caves (roughly 20' high x 20' wide passageways)...



(that's a PT Yukon HL and a Surefire E2e at 15 sec, if I was any further from that wall the E2e wouldn't be bright enough)


jtice: Thanks! I don't have a UK light cannon (I wish I did), only a UK 4D Vectra.


daloosh: I do that sometimes, but haven't been overly happy with the results. I just can't run around fast enough to fire off a flash enough times from enough angles to get good results. Also, me running around pitch-black tunnels without a light (the light would leave tracks across the picture) isn't a good idea... i tend to run into things.

everyone: Thanks for the suggestions, i'll look into them.

Ok, I see the problem with running around in the dark!

See, my issue is carrying in all your equipment and carrying it back out. How about a monolight running off a battery pack. Or something like a Quantum X4d and a Qpaq battery. It's costly, but relatively light and you can get like 200 watt seconds from it, which is many times the power of a camera mounted hotshoe flash. Take multiple bursts from that setup, varying the power for how far away that part of the cavern wall is from the camera, and you could probably do some damage.

Speaking of damage, that would be about $1200 in damage to your wallet, so I'd recommend it only if you are independently wealthy, or you plan to sell these images and make a living from photography. There are less powerful and cheaper options, also.

daloosh

Ah, now that there is a scope to the room/target/subject size, we can figure out the lighting requirements a little better.

The Surefire L2 on HIGH puts out a goodly amount of lumens in the Lux-V typical wall-o-light. Granted that 100 lumens is not much for photography at a distance measured in feet, so the exposure times will be measured in multiple seconds. Take two or three of those and set them to wash the target and then do a long exposure and you should be pretty good.

If you want to go the flash route, get a bunch of auxiliary flash units and some slaves. Again set up the light sources to blanket the target/subject area and then let your camera flash trigger the slaves, which will be your main light sources. You can go with manual 'dumb' slaves all the way up to TTL remote slaves/flash units and a SLR. Check out www.keh.com for some new and used equipment.

If you are looking for "Annual Report" or commercial ad level lighting of subjects that large, I think you'd be looking at some BIIIIGGGGGG flash units or flash bulbs (check out www.meggaflash.com) and blanketing the subject with multiple light sources to balance light and shadow and get surface textures to show.

Thats odd,
your photo should be alot brighter at 15 seconds.
What F stop and ISO are you using?

Well from a photographic perspective, beam light is very inefficient. Because of the way that the camera records an image, your best best is flash. In this case I would mount the camera on a tripod and use a very cheap/simple flash unit fired manually to light up the surroundings. You can mask the strobe unit to control spill to avoid the flood effect of the flash if you don't desire that kind of effect. The best part is that as long as the shutter is open you can fire the flash multiple times and "paint" the area with light.

jtice said:

Thats odd,
your photo should be alot brighter at 15 seconds.
What F stop and ISO are you using?

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That was f2.8, ISO 50 (in retrospect I should have tried it set at ISO 100... it gets a little grainy above that so I usually just leave it set at 50))

vtunderground said:

That was f2.8, ISO 50 (in retrospect I should have tried it set at ISO 100... it gets a little grainy above that so I usually just leave it set at 50))

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Based on your comments it appears that you are using a digital compact camera to take the photographs. If this is the case, then your most limiting factor is probably your choice of photographic equipment.
A digital SLR or 35 mm SLR would give you better options and more flexibility in taking the photographs. If you do not have one or do not purchase one, many photo shops will rent equipment. Most digital SLRs will give acceptable noise up to ISO 800-3200, depending on the particular model, and reduce lighting requirements by a factor of 16 to 64. If you use film, ISO 400, 800 or 1600 film would reduce lighting requirements by a factor of 8 to 32. Instead of maximum apertures of f2.8, f1.4 lenses are readily available, which reduces lighting requirements by a factor of 4.
SLR's, both digital and film, additionally are better able to control the lighting, be it long exposures, single or multiple flash units, tungsten lighting, or other lighting sources.
Finally, there are a number of issues which were not stated in the question which would affect your options including:

How long an exposure are you contemplating, and is there a need for long exposures at all?

Availability of power for lighting sources?

Color and reflectivity of the walls, floors, and ceilings?

You gave the heighth and width of the areas to be illuminated, but not the distance from the camera and lighting source(s).