Many of you know and a bunch of you don’t know that Photography and Filmmaking are actually all about light when it comes to the image. Light is the key to making an image look great. Not enough light and the image is noisy and the colors will look strange, the sharpness of the photograph will be terrible making the image look grainy. In film/video it’s even more of a problem. The sensors our camera use today is light years beyond what was available just ten years ago but even still, they aren’t even close to the old celluloid film and much less, the human eye with its big grey central computer with the far superior AI built into every model.

This last week, I jumped off the deep end and bought my first professional film/video/photograph light. I have never bought one before because of the high cost. With some models costing as much as twenty-nine thousand dollars, there was absolutely no way I would ever have a pro-level LED light of any kind.

The good news is, the technology always advances and the price comes down.

I searched the web and scoured the pro photography sites like B&H and Adorama and found that there is a brand out there that video/film creators have come to trust. The price point still being eleven hundred dollars for the buy-in though, I was hesitant. While I know that the price is pretty much the lowest it has been for this type of light, it is still a bit much. Actually, it is ALOT. I mulled it over and thought about the way it could improve my shooting. I wondered for a very long time if the light would actually be that much more powerful than the current Panel LED’s I was using. I scoured the internets looking for a direct comparison of the two types of light for weeks but found none. The unknown kept me from purchasing.

Then one night I was making a small thirty-second pitch to Imagine Impact about who My screenwriter Donald and I are and why out movie the “Conscript” should be made. I filmed Donald easily, as it was done in my home office against the couple of hundred books and an old manual typewriter I have laying around. Then I went to film my part. We wanted to separate the two of us and use the “atmosphere” to tell the viewer who we are since we did not have any time to use words for the explanation. I set up the lighting I had, two LED panel lights, in my yard against a spooky background. I wanted to use a Gel or a semi-clear plastic colored red to light the background and a blue, daylight color for my light or “Key Light”. I saw it in my head and it looked absolutely great. In reality, though, it was far from what I pictured.

The background was only slightly red and some foreground elements were red too. It is what cinematographers and photographers call “light Leak”. I tried to get it to look good but I couldn’t pull out the background with my Sony a7III SLR. I didn’t have enough light. It was such a colossal failure that Donald and I contemplated scrapping that idea and the footage to make something else. I hate having to go back and something again just because I cannot make it look right, especially when the performance was right. So, I caved and used it anyway.

Here is the final product:

It actually turned out pretty good and most definitely expresses that there is a major difference between Donald and me when it comes to the different approach to screenwriting and filmmaking. Mission accomplished, sort of. As a filmmaker, if I cannot match what I see in my head, it is actually a failure.

The only solution to my problem is to up my game when it comes to lighting. Because of the way I create is often spontaneous and usually happens fairly quickly, renting is out of the question. So the only choice I have left is to own the correct lighting so it is available when I need it. I have tried to plan shoots in the past but it hardly ever works out because of the commitments of other key players in the plan or lack thereof.

So this last week I ordered the Aputure 300D MKII COB LED Light. It actually scared me to spend that much money on such a thing. I mean I have managed to pull off some amazing stuff in the past ten years with the absolute cheapest lighting gear I could find, and you know, thinking like that is probably what has held me back.

Now, I didn’t just order the light and go on, I know I am going to be faced with lighting challenges that are going to be super technical and I will need everything I know to get the job done right. That means I am going to need an arsenal of light modifiers to help me get out of any future tricky situation.

It does come with a very good light “can” as I call it and it is super useful. But that isn’t going to be anywhere good enough to make the 300D MKII a rounded tool that is capable of lighting multiple situations. The light by itself only lends itself to what is called “Hard Light”. If you have ever taken a photo with your phone during the afternoon and thought that it could have been a great pic but there is something that just isn’t right, that’s because you shot it using the hardest light out there, the sun.

So, I also had to get three hundred bucks worth of other things: a softbox, a Fresnel (pronounced Frenel), and some barn doors.

While you may not think much of these things, I assure you, they make a monstrous difference when trying to control light. The softbox basically softens the light, the Fresnel Sharpens, and amplifies light and the barn doors keep light from spilling onto unwanted areas or creating a “sliver” of light for more dramatic stuff. All of these tools can be used in extremely creative ways that add nuance to any Photograph or movie and boy was I anxious to try them out.

I ordered the entire set up on Monday and wasn’t able to get them for almost a WEEK! Seems that COVID19 has dropped the speed in which you can get your stuff delivered from two to three days to as excruciatingly long as one can wait while still being considered express. I watched the FedEx tracking number like a hawk. You can go to the website and see exactly where all of your packages are, or at least, where they were, whenever you want. It isn’t very accurate and it also shows you just how inept large companies can be at keeping inventory centralized. It seems that three of the four boxes this stuff came in weren’t even in the same location. It also let me know that FedEx runs at least two trucks at the same time from New Jersey to the Kansas City area. I wonder if the drivers ever noticed that they pass each other on the highway but never go to the same place? Anyway, half the packages landed in Kansas City while the other half landed in Lenexa Kansas, at almost the same time and only ten to twenty miles apart. I sat at my desk cringing and then cringing more until finally, it said: “on the truck for delivery”. Man, that was a long day. Finally getting my packages I put off tearing into them immediately for about an hour trying to retain some respectability. But, I couldn’t take it anymore and unpacked it all, put the light together, and trying out each attachment so I could see.

Oh boy, did I see

Getting the light out and setting it up, I compared it to the small light panel, praying under my breath the entire time that it would be substantially brighter and my money wasn’t wasted. Thank God I was not disappointed. Comparing the two lights I discovered that the small light quickly was overcome by the 300D. In fact, the 300D overtook the (now confirmed) dinky light panel with only Seven Percent output. Seven Percent! That means it would take ten light panels to create the amount of light of the 300D. Holy Cow!

So now it was time to put it to the test. I arranged for a model to show up at the house to be a guinea pig for my new found light source. I decided to only use the 300D and no other lights for the test. Because of its massive amount of light, I figured the best first test of its natural ability would be to recreate the old Hollywood lighting from the days of Noir and before. Truly a good place to start learning the nuances of the light. Plus the Fresnel is basically a spotlight so I could definitely use that for this type of photography. Two for one!

The day of the shoot was hot, muggy, and miserable. Within ten minutes of setting up, I was soaked to the bone with sweat. The model was suffering too, her hair, while straight and quaffed at the beginning, by the end it was crawling off of her head like Medusa’s snakes. Add to that the approach of a massive lightning storm moving in, well, I was in a hurry. When I am in a hurry, I make mistakes, as we all do. Out of all the photographs, every one of them was underexposed two to three stops. ug…

This is a photo straight out of the camera. I was using a manual lens with a custom white balance and I thought I took the photo correctly. Sadly, I didn’t. I have been shooting film and video long enough that you would think I would recognize when the image is underexposed this much. When shooting film/video I always over expose the frame to I can bring it down in post to keep noise out of my black or dark colors. For some reason, that strategy went out the window and I didnt pay attention to my camera when it told me I was under exposing.

Again, I was in a hurry because it was seemingly about to rain and I wouldn’t have been a happy camper if I immediately lost my light to moisture before getting to use it for the first time.

The saving grace, once again, was the power of the little Sony a7III. In movie mode, it only has six to eight stops of dynamic range but in stills mode that shoots up to eighteen. In other words, I can raise the exposure three to four times the brightness of the original without losing the range of color or introducing noise to the photograph and ruining it. Thank God once again for technology that saves my worthless butt.

Putting the photographs into Lightroom I was able to see what I was after. A giant sigh of relief was exclaimed and I began working on the photographs. While these aren’t the most perfect set of images in the world, I think they are pretty damn good, considering.