My only need for lighting these days is when I occasionally work in a private home which is decorated in such a way as to have no decent lighting in the room, just a few trendy uplighters, and I've got away with it by asking for a spot lamp to be brought in.
I'm currently converting an old frame into my first hands-in-front-of face booth, and so working out my blackout behind my Aida screen, and 'someone' mentioned that in the theatre a see-through' screen would become opaque if a light was shone across its front surface. I experimented, it works, but thought it too complicated, as probably needing one light from each side.
However it set me back experimenting with 'additional lighting' as one might need for a dull interior, or an outside, evening show.
LED torches have had a tremendous leap forward in the last 5 years, not the handy little cheap ones that are all about, but as sold by specialist suppliers, and using a Cree led units. As with other techy stuff their capability leaps forward each year,they produce more and more light, and longer runtimes despite their small size.
In the past they would have had less appeal as 'additional lighting' as they were designed as lights that did have a certain amount of 'spread', but primarily had a much brighter, central 'hotspot', also those with decent power were powered by relatively expensive batteries.
One company Zebralight has an amazing range of torches and headlights, and it is these headlights that have the most potential as 'additional lighting' As well as being small, about the size of a lipstick they put out a lot of light, also their beams are designed to be a wide angled 'flood' beam with even lighting, no hotspots.
The biggest breakthrough that makes them more usable is that in the last year a version using AA batteries
has been released, so one can use cheapo AAs, but get better and longer outputs using Lithium AAs, or even better Eneloop AAs, which the circuitry has apparently been designed around. (If you use rechargeable AAs you need to look at Eneloops)
I've tried lighting my booth with my Zebralight h502, (it's the most suitable, the bigger H600 is as they say 'awesome' ) ...and it does a great job, and being very light in weight it is easy to support in just the right position. The only downside is the price at just short of £60, but they are so well engineered, and they do have 6 different levels, accessed by a great (in my opinion the best,) user interface! My name is Les I am a Flashaholic.
http://www.zebralight.com/H502-AA-Flood ... _p_91.html




