DIY SPACELIGHT

Ever since I got into still photography and video, I’ve focused on journalism and documentary, never daring to test my hand at fiction. I decided  a couple of months ago to do my first short film and I’ve spent the past few weeks gearing up to shoot it. It’s going to be a very small, low-budget affair, but as someone who’s worked with cameras for a while, I’d like to do the narrative justice visually and do what I can to make a polished end product. One of the most important aspects of capturing an image is lighting.

Good lighting will not only help tell your story, but allow your camera system to capture a cleaner image without pushing it to the limits in terms of aperture, ISO, or shutter speed. Outdoors it is a matter of toning down harsh sunlight which can be relatively straightforward but gets more tricky indoors. When you’re creating your own light, not just modifying ambient, there are a lot of options at a lot of price points. For me I wanted to figure out an affordable fill light for small rooms that will allow me to have a daylight balanced “ambient” to add accents to.

For low-budget videos (and high-end productions too), I know a lot of people who use paper lanterns for this. They have a ton of benefits, namely their soft quality of light and the fact they’re extremely cheap. You can find them on the internet in a variety of sizes. Since I’m working in small spaces with a small crew, I was worried about the amount of room that a 30″ ball would take up so I decided to look for a more compact solution. I remembered seeing these funky cylindrical lights used as fill on indoor movie sets and I liked that they put out a really soft light in a relatively small footprint.

I searched the internet to learn more and found that these are called spacelights and are used for indoor fill lighting and lighting green screens or cycs. I also learned that they’re very expensive and have more light output than I need for a small space. I stumbled upon a cheaper alternative, a wide drum light by Alzo for about $200 without bulbs. It’s a bit wider than I wanted and out of my price range for this project. However I did like that it was powered by cool CFLs as opposed to hot HMIs or tungsten bulbs. I decided that I’d make a hybrid between the Alzo and the more common spacelights and build a skinny cylindrical light powered by CFLs.

Spacelight, too expensive. China ball, too big. Alzo, almost perfect.

My design is a poor man’s ripoff of Chimera’s birdcage, a cylinder of white diffusion fabric with lights at both ends. For my needs, I decided that a diameter of about a foot and a length of maybe three would be perfect. I started at the fabric store where I got a doublewide yard of clearance synthetic cloth. It’s soft and durable. I wanted to use heat resistent fabric, but because of availability and cost was unable to. I don’t think it will be an issue with cool CFL’s and good ventilation, but if you were doing this with incandescents or  other hot lights I would definitely spring for the heat resistent stuff. I also picked up some ten inch diameter quilting hoops. These are for creating the tubular shape of the fabric. Next I went to the hardware store and bought two 10.5 inch worklights. These are rated for 150 watts each (far more than I need) and have durable ceramic sockets and thick cords. These particular models also had four holes punched around the lights. These came in handy to secure the fabric to the lights.

Materials for the light: 10.5″ work light, white fabric, quilting hoop, daylight CFL, misc. hardware

After forming the fabric tube with the hoops, I cut matching holes on each end and used some basic eye bolts to attach the tube to the lights. To light the whole thing, I used two daylight balanced CFL’s rated at 40 watts (200 watt incandescent equivalent, ~3000 lumens). This is plenty of lighting for me, but it can certainly be upgraded as my needs change. Overall it’s not a very polished product, but it works for me and was extremely cost-effective. It also puts out great light,  is very lightweight, and has a small footprint (less than a square foot). I’ll post an update on how it does throughout shooting, but I’m confident it’s going to create a solid base for the rest of my indoor lights. 

PHOTOS OF THE DIY SPACELIGHT

(Click on image for slideshow)

Taste of Iowa City – Multimedia

Wilson’s Orchard – Multimedia

Paul Ryan

2012 Dog Paddle Day – Multimedia

Local Band – Blizzard at Sea – Multimedia

U of I mammoth excavation

Iowa v ISU Football – Multimedia

Laughter Meditation – Multimedia

I recently purchased a small upgrade for my personal camera, the Nikon D7000. I have a modest collection of F mount glass and wanted an entry level pro body with some of the features the lower-end models lack like screw-drive AF support, increased AF points, bracketing, and intervalometer functions built in. One of the more unexpected, or at least underestimated features of the D7000 is it’s great video recording.

Now, I’ve shot a ton of still and video on the tried and true 5D, and the Nikon is no 5D, but it works great and I’ve been using it to produce multimedia shorts for the newspaper I work for. The camera is a solid piece of kit with a full magnesium alloy body and really feels like a “pro” tool while still being fairly petite in the hand. Despite it’s diminutive size, the body feels just as comfortable with a 300mm handing off the end or a minute 50mm pancake. The ergonomics are really great, and the button placement is pretty good, though because of it’s size, not as perfect as the amazing D4 or Canon’s 1D series. As far as video quality goes, it’s not best-in-class, but you’d be hard pressed as a normal viewer to find flaws. Also, the fact that the bitrate is slightly lower than Canon’s video output means that the footage is even easier to work with and doesn’t need compressing before importing into Final Cut.

Since I started working with the camera, I’ve been nerding out on glass, audio, and camera movement and making the accompanying late-night amazon binges. I’ll be doing a post on what gear I use for my multimedia pieces once I get more comfortable producing them and start developing habits. In the mean time, here is some test footage I shot this weekend so you can get a feel for what images you can get out of the body with decent glass and some nice condenser mics on a field recorder. Check in periodically on the multimedia tab for some of the work I’m doing for the Daily Iowan, once I get in the swing of things I should be doing one to two pieces a week.

Day one:

Day Two:

Day Three:

Multimedia

Here’s a selection of photos from President Obama’s visit to the University of Iowa. I was assigned to cover his arrival and departure on Air Force One, which came into the Eastern Iowa Airport, ICAO KCID. Overall, it was a lot of hurry up and wait for probably less than fifteen minutes of photo opportunity, but the weather was nice and the plane was absolutely beautiful. Make sure to check out the slideshow with photos from Adam Wesley and Ya Chen Chen.

Slideshow

This past weekend Iowa City was absolutely insane. The Olympic Trials were in town for wrestling and over 11,000 advance tickets were sold, with many more bought at the gate. During all the hubbub, Iowa played host to the 2012 Musco Twilight Invitational at the outdoor Cretzmeyer track. The Hawkeyes ran, jumped, and threw strong, leading to a total of fourteen victories over the nearly seven hour event. I was covering the event from start to finish and ended up taking a ridiculous number of photos, filling up two fairly large SD cards. This was an interesting shoot for several reasons. Firstly, the weather was awful, the day started out lovely with a few clouds and sunshine. This gradually deteriorated into intermittent rain showers and very cold temperatures, especially as the clouds set in and the sun fell. I was also short on gear due to our excellent coverage of the Trials, which you can find on the Daily Iowan site. As such, many of these photos are shot with the fairly old 1D Mk. II camera with a 300 f/4 with intermittent AF, a 70-200, and a 16-35. This was my first time shooting track, and I’m fairly happy with my results. I’m used to being spoiled on sports shoots with our 300 f/2.8′s and Mk. IV’s but this was a good experience to help me not become dependent on my gear, but let technique make the photos.

I’ve culled some of the photos that made it into the slideshow here, and as usual you can find a link to the story and photo gallery below.

Story

Slideshow