Category Archives: Lighting

Shooting Against Windows

January 31, 2025 alisterchapman Leave a comment

This came up as a question on one of the user groups I follow; How do you shoot something happening inside a room when you also want to retain the view outside the room and how do you track the changing exterior light level and colour temperature?

I’m going to assume that this isn’t a scenario where you can add silks or flags to reduce the light on the exterior elements that are needed to be seen. This type of shoot is always challenging. Generally the amount of light outside, during the day will be very high, especially in summer or when the sky is clear. If the windows are relatively small then they won’t let much light into the interior so we are going to have to do something to address the imbalance between the interior and exterior light.
If the space has large picture windows, then more natural light will come into the room, but with so much glass it may be difficult to avoid the interior elements such as the cast or performers from being silhouetted against the bright windows and exterior. So, what can we do?
A high dynamic range camera does help, especially if the window is small and can be isolated in post production for separate treatment compared to the rest of the shot. But often even a camera with a huge range doesn’t really help because the contrast in the shot is just too extreme to look nice. For a small window adding a little bit of diffusion via a filter such as a 1/4 or 1/8th black promist or supermist can help soften the edges of the otherwise bright window making the image look less forced or less digital.

One approach is to add ND film to the windows to reduce the amount of light coming through the windows. This is very effective and reduces the amount of light that needs to be added to the interior. But it can be expensive or impractical with very large windows. You can be super fancy and add a polariser film to the window and then another polariser on the camera, by turning the polariser on the camera you can quickly adjust how much of the exterior is visible! Instead of ND film you can also add black scrim (a mesh like material with lots of holes in it), this has some advantages as it tends to be a bit cheaper than ND gel and it isn’t shiny like ND.

Even with large wrap around windows without ND or mesh over the windows the exterior light levels are likely to be significantly higher than the interior levels and it typically takes a significant amount of additional light to balance this. If you don’t achieve a good balance then the exterior will be over exposed or the interior in silhouette no matter how much DR the camera has and simply stopping down or ND’ing down won’t help.

The exterior colour temperature probably won’t vary that much during the day, other than early morning or late afternoon unless the weather changes significantly. The angles of the exterior shadows will shift as the sun moves across the sky, as will the amount of light from the sun that enters the space, but there is nothing you can do about that if you need to see the exterior. Dimmable lights will allow you to control the interior/exterior brightness balance and bi-colour lights should be sufficient to track the exterior colour temperature differences throughout the day. If using multiple lights that can be remotely controlled if there is an app for the lights you are using you can probably create a group for all the lights allowing quick global changes of the colour temp and intensity. Or perhaps you can get them all connected up via CMX.

You can use a colour meter to measure the colour temperature of the light coming through the windows and then compare this to the colour temperature of the lights and adjust the lights to match the exterior, then you should re-white balance the camera off a grey card or white card whenever you make a colour temperature change to the lights.

You can also a use a vectorscope to help get the correct colour temperature balance by white balancing the camera off a white card illuminated by only the light coming through the window so the camera is matched to the exterior light. Then using the same white card now facing the interior lights adjust the lights until the white point (the blob in the middle of the vector scope) is in the center, matching where it was when you did the white balance for the exterior. Use the waveform scope to keep any eye on your exposure throughout the day to keep it consistent but bear in mind that the angle of the sun will change so the exterior contrast as well as possibly the interior contrast will likely change.

This type of shot will always be challenging to pull of well. I normally use large soft lights to lift the overall interior light level, something like the Nanlux Dyno’s or perhaps some Nanlux Evokes with softboxes. On a budget you might be able to get away with some Forza 720’s or FC-500B with soft boxes. The number of light you will need will depend on the size of the space, the size of the window and the time of year you are shooting.

Everything Else, Lighting

Nanlite and Nanlux Black Friday Deals.

November 18, 2024 alisterchapman 3 Comments

Nanlite and Nanlux have a couple of amazing, global, Black Friday deals.

Featured Black Friday Deals:

NANLITE FS-300B LED Spotlight

MSRP: $399 (excluding local taxes)

Now: $239 (excluding taxes) – 40% off

NANLUX Evoke 1200B LED Spotlight

MSRP: $3949 (excluding local taxes)

Now: $2764 (excluding taxes) – 30% off

The FS300B is a light I really like. It produces a huge amount of very high quality light, its Bi-Colour so very flexible. It has a standard Bowens mount and can be fitted with a wide range of modifiers including a Fresnel lens (FL20G), soft boxes, domes, etc, etc. At this price it is an absolute steal for such a great highly versatile light.

If you are just starting to build a lighting kit this would be a great place to start. A couple of these, one with a soft box as your key and another with the FL20G zoomable fresnel lens (with barn doors) as your fill and you will be able to light a large range of scenarios. It’s probably a bit overkill using the FS300B as the fill but they do dim all the way down to virtually nothing and having a second punchy light gives a lot of flexibility to deal with different lighting challenges. I wish I had these sorts of options at these prices when I started.

A bit more expensive, there is also the FS-300C full colour version which takes all of the same modifiers but gives you the ability to use it for coloured effects and washes, I believe there should be some discounted offers for these too.

The Evoke 1200B is another great light that packs a lot of punch. Great for lighting larger spaces or simulating daylight. It’s also rain resistant to IP54, so it can be used outside in the rain if needed.

Along with the FS-300B and Evoke 1200B, a range of other top-selling products are discounted by up to 30%, including the NANLITE FC and FS series LED lights, PavoTube II C series LED tube lights, and FM Projection Attachments.

Discounts vary by region but are generally in the 30-40% range. You’ll need to contact your local dealer to see what deals they have, but these really are great lights at incredible prices.

Also – while you are there put a Nanlite WS-RC-C2 remote control in your shopping basket. It only costs around $15 and it allows you to remotely control up to 12 fixtures, it’s a huge time saver when you want to tweak or tune lights from the monitor or for when a light fixture is in a hard to reach spot. While there is also app control the WS-RC-C2 is a great add-on.

If you are a dealer and able to offer these discounts please comment with your location and contact details below.

cinematography, Lighting

Origins of the term “High Key” in video lighting.

November 24, 2022 alisterchapman 2 Comments

You’ve probably heard the term High Key as well as Low Key a million times in the world of photography, video and film. But where exactly does the term come from and what exactly does it mean?

I had to ask myself this today when during a discussion about a future shoot it was stated that we would shoot some low key scenes. But I wasn’t really 100% certain in my own mind what the director meant. Does it mean dark? Does it mean a low key light level (relative to the background), or is it the positioning of the key light?

This isn’t a term that’s new to me, I’ve come across it many times, but I’ve never particularly liked the term because it always seems to mean slightly different things to different people, so you can never be sure what they really mean.

KEY LIGHT

First of all what is a “key light”? Generally the key light is the main source or most important source of light in a scene. I don’t know the origins of the term or how long it’s been in common use, but it seems to be a relatively new term specific to photography and video.

WHAT DOES GOOGLE SAY?

When I googled “High Key Lighting” I got a range of equally confusing descriptions of what it is. On Wikipedia for example, high key is described as

“High-key lighting is usually quite homogeneous and free from dark shadows”.

OK, so that implies that low Key, being the opposite should have dark shadows and not be homogeneous – ie. high contrast. And this doesn’t really seem to match what a lot of people consider low key to be as many state that low key means overall dark. Elsewhere I came across all sorts of frankly bizarre definitions of high key such as….

“High-key lighting creates a clean focus on the center of attention”

and then in another article it stated that

“it means that when you use a high-key setup, the key light is stronger than the fill lights…… …….So usually, the shot has very little to no shadows present.

Hmmm… OK, let’s think about that – if you have a key light that is stronger than the fill your likely to have lots of shadows, cast by the strong key light. The main role of a fill light is to fill in shadow areas, but if the key is stronger than the fill – shadows will be present and the image contrasty and generally high contrast is described as low key. Are you confused yet?

Well, at least I know I am not the only one not entirely sure what these terms that get thrown around all over the place truly mean. Let’s face it if I said I was going to make my shots “contrasty” or with “deep shadows” or perhaps “flat” I am sure everyone would be on the same page. But “Low Key” what does it mean? Is it just dark? Is it contrasty? Is it flat? And what is unique or special about Low Key that it needs a special name instead of just being called high contrast.

The above image is of the painting Salome with the Head of John the Baptist by Caravaggio(1610). This image is generally considered Low Key. The mains source of light, the key light, appears to be quite strong, like sunlight through a window, appearing to come from above and to the left of frame.

Let’s imagine for a moment that the ratio between the Key light and rest of the scene is 8:1. This ratio is often quoted as the minimum for low key and indicates a key that is bright relative to the background. The high contrast ratio between the bright key light and the rest of the scene ensures the background appears as very dark relative to the foreground. But one thing remains, the key light is bright, not dim. The level of the key light is high, not low compared to the rest of the scene. So where does the term low key come from, how does a bright key get called low key?

The term Low key has been used in music for a very long time to mean a quiet or deep tone, but I don’t think the image above could be called “quiet” and low key lighting doesn’t always mean very dark, it normally means high contrast and often includes very bright highlights.

Here’s what I think…

I’d like to offer up an idea of where the term high key actually comes from when applied to photography and video:
TV soap and episodic multi-camera lighting.

Perhaps when we use the term high key today it is a discombobulation of different concepts and terms and that is why there is often confusion.

Traditionally daytime episodic TV has always been shot quickly using multiple cameras. To make this possible the lights are normally up above the set suspended from the ceiling on some form of grid or truss system. This ensures that the lights are not seen by any camera whichever angle they are shooting from. In addition the lighting will generally not cast deep shadows so that you can shoot from multiple angles without issue. The key lights would be up high, there would be low contrast and deep shadows were not desirable (because older TV cameras couldn’t handle high contrast).

At the same time in the world of cinema where a single camera is often used and high dynamic range was less of an issue, cinematographers were not afraid of casting shadows and using lights lower down on floor stands.

Typically TV lighting is described as high key and typically TV lighting uses key lights high up on a truss. Does the term high key stem from that typical approach to TV lighting with high up key lights, minimising shadows?

The the opposite of high key will be low key where perhaps the key light is creating a lot more contrast, where the key is brighter than the fill. If you create high contrast using lights high up the shadows will be under the actors chins and eye sockets will be dark, not a good look. But move the lights lower, light more from the side and you get the look seen in the Caravaggio painting above, the key light is lower. Is this where the origins of these terms as – the hight of the key light?

high up, TV style key lights giving bright but flat look that works well for TV production while a lower, perhaps side on key light creates contrast across the scene in a more film like manner, creating a sense of depth due to the darker background?

So, in summary:
High Key = Uniform lighting of both foreground and background with minimal shadows. But could be either overall bright or overall dark, often with the key light(s), of which there may be many, placed high above the scene/set so you can shoot the scene from any angle.

Low Key: A relatively bright key light so that there is contrast between the key lighting and the rest of the scene/shot. Overall the scene may be bright or dark, but it will have high contrast and shadow areas. Possibly the key light will be at a lower level so the low level key light will cast shadows across faces and objects to provide depth and modelling.

So many descriptions of High Key and Low Key simply refer to the overall brightness of the scene, this is not correct. A low key scene MUST contain areas of great brightness in order to have the contrast associated with low key. All too often stating that the term High Key comes from the use of a bright key light over simplifies the situation to the point where it is no longer clear what is meant because to create nice looking Low Key you will will often need a bright key light.

Please discuss in the comments.

Everything Else, Lighting, Review

Nanlite Forza 300 LED Spotlight

August 17, 2021 alisterchapman Leave a comment

The Nanlite Forza 300 is a LED COB spotlight normally used with a reflector to provide a 55 degree light cone.

Nanlite Forza 300 spotlight with included reflector.

The lamp is 300 watts and can be powered from the mains with the included power adapter or vai a pair of V-lock batteries. It is daylight balanced at 5500K and has a CRI of 95 (measured by myself). It has always resulted in very pleasing skin tone whenever I have used it.

Skin tones look good when using the Forza 300 from Nanlite.

The 300 watt LED COB emitter produces a similar amount of light to a 3000 watt tungsten lamp. This makes the Forza 300 suitable for illuminating very large areas or as a source light for a large soft box or for use with large silk diffusers. Nanlite make a very nice parabolic reflectors/soft boxes for the Forza lamps that are very quick to erect due to the use of clever quick locking support arms.

Parabolic reflector/soft box for the Nanlite Forza 300

The lamphead has a standard Bowens mount so there are many light modifiers that can be used, but one that I particularly like is the Nanlite zoomable Fresnel adapter. This large fresnel lens can be adjusted to provide a very tightly controlled light beam from just 5 degrees wide to 45 degrees wide. It comes with barn doors and turns the Forza 300 into something comparable to the old Arri 2K fresnel, just without the heat and power draw.

Nanlite zoomable fresnel lens with barn doors for the Forza 300 and Forza 500.

I’m a big fan of fresnels as they give you good control of where your light is going. Make it dimmable as well and you have a very versatile lamp.

The light can be controlled via DMX as well as a couple of very cheap wireless remote control units (around £20/$30) and an app is due to be released soon.

Like many modern lights it also has a number of effects modes including strobe, storm, TV and bad bulb and these can be quickly and easily selected from the lamps control unit and power supply. The build quality is very good. The lamp head is mostly metal while the control unit is a mix of good quality plastics and metal. The whole thing weighs 4.8kg so you don’t need a particularly large light stand to support it.

with a street price of around £650/$850 this is a very affordable yet also very capable lamp. I would suggest that anyone trying to build their own versatile light kit should include at least one spot light and not just rely on LED panel lights. Having a good, bright spot light allows you to a lot more creative lighting as a spot light, especially if you add the Fresnel lens can be used with gobo’s or objects in the foreground to create interesting shadow effects.

For a recent short film shoot I used the Forza 300 to throw light through a forest of trees. The trees creating interesting shadows adding a lot of extra contrast to the shots. For another scene I used the Forza 300 as a backlight through some smoke for an interesting mystic effect. A flat panel light cannot reproduce these effects in the same way.

For this shoot I needed to power the lamp off batteries. It is worth noting that if running the lamp at is maximum output of 300 watts you will be drawing over 10 amps from each of the 2 V-Lock batteries need to run it. This is right at the limit of what many V-Locks can deliver. As a result you may find your batteries cutting off before they are fully discharged. To run a high power LED lamp like this you should consider Lithium Manganese batteries or other batteries capable of at least a 12 amp output. My own preference is to use Pag Paglink batteries as by linking two batteries together you can double the amount of power they can deliver. Using 4 Paglink batteries (2 pairs of 2) I was able to run the lamp for 90 minutes at full power.

4 Paglink batteries will power the Forza 300 for around 90 minutes.

The lamp I used for the review was supplied by Prolight Direct UK. They are very knowledgable with many years of experience with all kinds of film and television lighting, so do contact them with your lighting needs.

I highly recommend the Forza 300. It is, in my opinion, one of the best of this type of lamp on the market today and very competitively priced. Please see the video above for more information.

Nanlite.com

cameras, cinematography, lenses, Lighting, shoots, Uncategorized

Anatomy of a shot. Night Scene in Arctic Norway – Fujinon lenses, Stella Lights.

March 31, 2017 alisterchapman Leave a comment

I have just return from one of the most challenging shoots I have been involved in. The shoot took place over 5 days in and around Tromso in Norway. The aim was to gather footage to show off the capabilities of a new type of 4K TV from Phillips.

We shot the Northern Lights, we shot dog sledding , snow mobiles, shots of the city and sailing on the fjords. Each part of the shoot had many challenges and a lot of the shoot took place at night and at night the crew slept in cabins, tents and on the yachts. Shooting from the ice and snow covered deck of a yacht in temperatures well below zero is not something I enjoyed. And to top it all off the weather was pretty grim fro most of the shoot. Heavy snow showers, freezing temperatures and towards the end strong winds.

Because image quality is paramount for this project I choses to use the best lenses I could, but at the same time space and time constraints dictated that zoom lenses would be desirable. We were shooting 16 bit raw as well as XAVC class 480 on my PMW-F5 and some pick-up shots in UHD XAVC-L on a PXW-FS5. For the PMW-F5 the primary lens was the Fujinon Cabrio XK6x20, 20-120mm PL zoom and to ensure we had similar looking images from the FS5 I used the new Fujinon XF 18-55mm. I have to say that I’m quite in love with both of these lenses.

Fujinon Cabrio XK6x20 PL mount cinema zoom. A beautiful lens!

The Cabrio 20-120 is a beautiful lens and it’s really nice to have a servo zoom that is truly parfocal. The 20-120 produces really nice images even in the most challenging of conditions and at T3.5 it’s reasonably fast throughout the entire zoom range. This was the lens that I used for the majority of the shoot, in particular for the many night scenes we shot. The E-Mount 18-55 on the FS5 produces images that matched really well with the bigger lens and camera. This is a combination I would love to use on more shoots where the budget will allow.

One particular scene that we had to shoot was particularly challenging. It was a set up shot of a night time arrival of a couple of snowmobiles at a Sami camp site. The Sami people are the indigenous people of Northern Norway and they have a particular style of tent know as a Laavu which is similar to a teepee or wigwam. The idea behind the shot was to have the snow scooters arriving with headlights blazing and for the drivers to then enter the tent lit only by the light of a campfire inside the tent. At the time of the shoot it was snowing heavily and was totally dark. Turn off the lights of the snowmobiles and you could not see a thing.

Wide shot of the snowmobiles arriving at the camp in the dark.

While modern cameras like the F5 are very sensitive, the light of a campfire inside a tent will not adequately light a scene like this on it’s own. I didn’t want a totally dark background, so I decided that I would subtly light the trees of the forest that we were in to add some drama and give some depth to the background and a sense of being in a forest.

A slightly closer shot of the tent with backlit trees behind it.

As we were travelling continuously on this shoot there was no space for a large or complex lighting kit and the remote location meant we needed battery powered lights. In addition I knew before we left that there was a chance of bad weather so I needed lights that would work whatever mother nature decided to throw at us.

A snow scooter comes into the shot. You can see just how heavily it was snowing in this shot.

I decided to take a set of 3 Light & Motion Stella battery powered LED lights. It’s just as well I had the Stella lamps as on top of all the other difficulties of the shoot the weather decided it was not going to play ball. We had to shoot the scene (and much of the shoot) in the middle of a snow storm. Fortunately the Stella lights are completely waterproof, so I didn’t need to worry about rain or snow protection. Just set them up turn them on and use the built in dimmer to set the light output.

To light the scene I set up a Stella Pro 5000 in the woods behind the Sami tent, aimed through the trees and pointed directly towards the camera. I chose to backlight the trees to provide a sense of there being trees rather than lighting them. I felt this would look less lit than throwing a ton of light into the forest from the front and I’m pleased with the result.

A Light & Motion Stella Pro 5000 was used to back light the trees and tent. The heavy snow was no problem as the light is totally waterproof.

The Stella Pro 5000 is very bright for a compact battery operated light, it’s 5000 lumen 120 degree output that is pretty close to what you would get from a 200W HMI, it’s very bright. It has a very high CRI and gives out great quality daylight balanced light. It was positioned so that the light itself was behind the tent on a small bank, about 20m back in the woods. You couldn’t see it in the shot, but the light coming through the trees created shafts of light in the snow and the trees appeared as silhouettes. It added depth and interest to what would have otherwise been a near totally black background.

Light & Motion Stella 2000 used to light the forground, again the lamp is waterproof so bad weather is no problem.

Then to provide a small amount of light so that we could see the riders of the snow scooters as they walked to the tent I used a Stella 2000. I didn’t really want the light from this lamp to be too obvious as this would really make the scene look “lit”. I didn’t need the full 2000 lumen output so I used the built in dimmer to reduce the output to around 70%.

The third light was a small Stella 1000 and this was placed inside the tent with a scrunched up orange gel. The Stella 1000 would typically be used as a camera top light, but it’s full dimmable and produces a very high light quality, making it suitable for many applications. The creases and folds in the orange gel helped break up the light a little creating a less lit look sympathetic to the fire inside the tent.

A Stella 1000 with orange gel was used inside the tent to give the light from the fire a small boost.

It allowed me to increase the illumination in the tent, adding to the light from the fire without it being obvious that the tent interior was lit. For some of the shots I had an assistant sit in the tent, out of shot and slowly move the gel in front of the light to add a little movement to the light to mimic the firelight even better.

One particular shot on the storyboard was the silhouette of the drivers entering the tent. The Stella 1000 really helped punch trough the canvas sides of the tent.

At the moment I can’t show you the footage. That will have to wait until after the launch of the TV. But I’m really pleased with the way this scene came out. It’s challenging trying to shoot in the dark, in a blizzard, in temperatures well below freezing. Every aspect of getting this scene was hard. Opening a flight case to get out some kit meant getting snow on everything inside it. Just positioning the light up the woods was tough, the snow was up above my knees as I waded through it. Operating the camera is so much harder when it has a rain cover on it. The viewfinder was constantly misting up as snow fell on it non stop. Seeing the witness marks on the lens is difficult (although thankfully the marks on the Fujinon 20-120 are huge and easy to see).

The Fujinon Cabrio XK6X20 lens all iced up at the end of the day. After shooting out in sub zero temperatures don’t take the camera inside until you are sure you have wrapped for the day!

But sometimes it’s challenges like these that make the job interesting. I know I was cursing and swearing at times trying to make these shots work, but seeing the scene come to life in the grade is all the more rewarding.

I’ll be writing more about the Fujinon 20-120 very soon, so why not subscribe to my blog using the subscribe bottom on the left.

Lighting, Review, Technology

Stella 1000 and Stella 2000 Camera Lights.

October 12, 2016 alisterchapman 5 Comments

The diminutive but incredibly bright Stella 1000 from Light & Motion.

I have been loaned a set of 4 Stella lights to test. I have the Stella 1000, 2000, 5000 Pro and 7000 Pro to play with and test. I’m going to take a quick look at the 1000/2000 now and will write up the 5000/7000 in a later article. These lamps are made by Californian company Light & Motion (www.lightandmotion.com) and I have to admit that this is a new brand to me. The portable lighting market is full of many different lights from different manufacturers, so it’s a tough market to stand out in. However these lights really do stand out from the crowd for many different reasons.

Build Quality: If you are going to stick a light on the top of a news camera it had better be tough. It’s going to get bumped, bashed, knocked and generally have a tough life. The Stella lamps are all beautifully made. The bodies are made from a very robust feeling plastic material while the lamp surround is made out of anodised aluminium that acts as a heatsink to keep the lamps cool. They have been built to withstand being dropped onto concrete from 1m multiple times without breaking and while I haven’t actually tested this, I do believe that they would survive this and the rigours of life on top of an ENG camera.

Power: The lamps have built in high capacity batteries. You don’t need to buy batteries or run the lamps of the cameras batteries. The internal battery in the Stella 1000 will run it for an hour on full power and around 7 hours at low power. The brighter 2000 will give about 50 mins at full power and 6 hours on low power. If you want longer run times you can attach an adapter to run the lamp from an external power source. Re-charging is fast at a little under 2 hours from flat and you can pack these in the hold of an aircraft as the battery is installed internally and under the current restrictions for Li-Ion batts on aircraft.

Control: The lamps have a built in dimmer that allows you to select one of 6 different brightness levels. Being LED units there is no color temperature change as you dim the lamps. The dimmer control can be locked in the off position to prevent accidental operation, plus the lamps have a thermal cutoff to prevent damage if left on by mistake when covered or perhaps packed in your luggage. There are 3 LED’s that indicate the batter state and dimming level.

Dimming and power control of the Stella 2000 portable video light.

High Quality Light: Instead of the more common LED panel design with an array of a large number of small LED’s the Stella’s feature a single high power Chip 5000K LED. This gives a beam angle of 120 degrees and the light is very uniform across this entire spread. The lamp heads are designed to take modifier lenses that can be used to reduce the beam spread to 50 degrees and 25 degrees if you need more of a spot light. I used the 25 degree fresnel adapter to turn the Stella 1000 to a mini spot light and it was very effective.

The high intensity 90 CRI/90 TLCI chip LED of the Light & Motion Stella 2000

The quality of the light from these lamps is very good. The have a CRI of 90 as well as a TLCI of 90. They are also flicker free so suitable for shooting at high frame rate. In use I found the lamps gave great skin tone rendition and I didn’t see any of the green cast that is often common with lower quality LED lamps.

These are surprisingly bright lamps. The Stella 1000 is 1000 lumens and surprise, surprise, the Stella 2000 is 2000 lumens. That’s one heck of a lot of light from such a small and compact unit. Everyone that I have shown these lights to has been impressed by the intensity of the light output. The Stella 1000 is similar to a 75W tungsten lamp and the 2000 close to a 200W tungsten lamp. As the Stella’s are daylight balanced if you are using them as a fill light when shooting into the sun there is no need to gel them as you would with a tungsten light. Add to that the ability to use a clip on fresnel lens to narrow the beam angle and you are approaching the performance of 300W gelled tungsten fresnel fixture but with a compact battery operated lamp. I would consider the Stella 2000 as a replacement for an Arri 300 fresnel in many applications.

Waterproof! The Stella 1000 and 2000 are waterproof! Not just shower and splash proof, but completely waterproof. They can be operated underwater at depths of up to 100m with needing to buy any extra seals or fit any bungs or plugs. I know that when I shooting in adverse weather conditions this will be a big deal as normally the camera will have a nice fitted cover, but the top light is almost always left exposed to the elements. Now I don’t need to worry.

Light and Motion have a wide range of accessories for these lamps including all kinds of different mounts and handles. As well as the usual barn doors there are some clever light modifiers including the clip on 25 degree fresnel lens, a clip on 50 degree lens, a clip on diffuser, gel holder and glo bulb.

So far I have been really impressed by what these small lamps can do. They may not have variable color temperature, but the consistency and quality of the light they produce is amazing. The companies tag line is “Beyond Bright” and I’m inclined to agree.

I’ve also been loaned the Stella 5000 Pro and 7000 Pro to test. I’ll be writing about these beauties in the coming weeks!