Lighting with the Accessory Lampheads of Rifa eXchange

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TH-X300 Head with 120V AC Tungsten-halogen, Dual Use AC / DC

Rifa eX Use: Rifa eX 66, AC Power, TH-X300 lamphead, 200w Lamp

The Job: A video of a student practicing the piano for a documentary on afterschool educational activities.

The Location: His home dining room which is lit only by a chandelier, hanging in the middle of the room, behind his back.

From camera position, the dining room chandelier provides enough light to read music by but leaves the piano player's face in the shadows. Overall, light levels are low, even for contemporary cameras. The ornate hutch behind him lacks visual detail, as does the piano. Both are murky.

We want to add soft fill light to the boys face, and generally raise the level of the rest of the room a bit, while still keeping the glow of the chandelier over the table.

The standard TH-X1000 lamphead of our Rifa eX 66 will take either a 500 or 750w lamp. Either lamp would be too strong for our purposes, and overwhelm the naturally warm light quality of the dining room chandelier. We swapped the standard head for the TH-X300 with a 200w lamp. Then we attached the diffuser, placed the light, and plugged it in.

We positioned the Rifa eX 66 close to our camera position in the kitchen doorway to get a little more distance & angle. To control the light spill on the piano we used a 40 degree soft fabric egg crate accessory on the light. By slightly panning the light we could allow a small amount of its output to spill on the piano and show the detail in the wood, while still lighting our subject.

The final shot is a big improvement. The lighting looks natural, not artificial. You can see good detail in the boys face, as well as the richness of the wood tones in the piano, hutch, and the back of the table chair. Yet, there is still the glow from the chandelier over the table for realism.

If we had lit this scene with the 750 or 500 watt lamp, the output would overlight the pianist, and we would have to compensate by closing down the lens. This would cause the background to go darker, requiring further work, by adding more light to compensate the background.

Working with the ambient light of a location keeps it simple, and more realistic.

TH-X300 Head with 12v DC

Rifa eX Use: Rifa eX 66, DC Power, TH-X300 lamphead, 100w Lamp.

The Job: A video demonstration on lawn tractor storage & off-season maintenance

The Location: Inside a small remotely located shed that has no AC electrical power. One small window on the shady side of the shed.

This image, taken from our camera position, shows the location with the only available light coming from the small shaded window. It is daylight, but the color temperature is not of concern since its brightness is so low that it will be easily overpowered by the tungsten light we will add.

We replaced the standard THX-1000 lamp head in the Rifa eX 66 with the TH-X300 accessory head, this time adding a 100w 12V lamp. We also swapped the Rifa's T1-80 power cord for the accessory R2-85 DC cable, which has a car cigarette lighter connector plug, since thats the connection our 12v battery pack uses.

The broad soft light from the Rifa provides a soft main light on the subject and lifts the dark engine out of the shadows.

There isn't a lot of room or placement options for the Rifa so we place it in the corner near our camera position. Its large diffusion screen is a benefit, not only for softening the light, but also helping to disperse it over a larger area.

Note: as our subject moves around the tractor, he could easily get too close to the Rifa & become over-exposed. A Soft Fabric Egg Crate placed on front of the light can help reduce that.

Note: See Egg Crates in the Light Controls DeMystified section of this site for more information.

The final camera angle shot shows a well exposed image. The subject is lit with a soft flattering quality of light that shows graceful fall-off on the far side of the face. Yet, there is enough brightness to bring out some of the detail in the dark engine parts.

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