Lighting with the Accessory Lampheads of Rifa eXchange

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FLO-X1 Head with 120v AC Screw-threaded Fluorescent or Household Incandesce

Rifa eX Use: Rifa eX 66, 120v AC Power, FLO-X1 Lamphead, 65w Screw-threaded Daylight Fluorescent Lamp.

The Job: A video shot of students learning to bake at home, for a documentary on afterschool educational activities.

The Location: a kitchen counter with indirect daylight from a window in the background.

Looking at our shot, the background has a nice soft natural daylight hitting the walls of the kitchen behind the subjects. The foreground, does not have a convienent window placed to light it. We could turn on tungsten lamps, but that would give us color problems when mixed with the daylight. We opt instead for some frontal daylight fluorescent fill.

If we add too much frontal fill, it will force us to close down our lens & we will lose some of the background light. This would create a higher contrast ratio between the 2 light sources than we want. We select the 65w daylight fluorescent lamp, screw it into the FLO-X1 lamphead which has been installed in the Rifa eX 66, and replace the diffuser.

We place the Rifa on the right side of the camera position. Turning it on we see a good color match between the daylight fluorescent & the daylight from the window. We move the light back a bit to cut down the output on the subjects until we get a good balance of outputs between the foreground & background lighting.

Our final shot shows a big improvement. The foreground matched perfectly with the background in both light levels and color temperature.

The larger diffuser size of the Rifa eX 66 makes the light soft & flattering. It also helps spread the light evenly over a larger area than might be possible with the smaller sized Rifa models.

Soft light is less glaring in the eyes, and with our subjects being amateurs that helps them to be more relaxed and less distracted.

FLO-X1 Head with 120v AC Screw-threaded Fluorescent or Household Incandescent

Rifa eX Use: Rifa eX 66, 120v AC Power, FLO-X1 Lamphead, 65w Household Screw-threaded Incandescent Lamp.

The Job: A video shot of a student studying at home, for a documentary on afterschool educational activities.

The Location: A living room easy chair, next to a fireplace, with an overhead standing lamp.

The reading lamp and the fire give this scene a warm, cozy feel.

While a bit of light from the lamp bounces off the book pages to provide a small amount of fill on his face, most of the light is coming from high and behind the subject.

We wanted soft frontal fill on the scene, with the same warm color as the overhead lamp.

We increased the brightness of this image to clearly show the placement of the Rifa eX 66 in relation to the subject in the darkened room. Notice that it is placed just a little above his head height to simulate a mix of the overhead light & the fireplace glow. Its distance from the subject was adjusted to control the intensity.

Normally used with daylight color screw-threaded fluorescents, the FLO-X1 lamphead can also take a household incandescant lamp. We used a 65w, so the warmer color temperature of our added light will match that of the reading lamp, which suits the mood. Plus, if color correction is needed, both lamps being the same color, they will correct together.

Our final setup shows a good balance of clarity and mood.

The fireplace has little effect on the actual lighting but by placing the Rifa lower on the stand, the illumination on his face feels like it could be coming from a combination of the fire and the overhead lamp. Having shadow falloff on the near side of the face also reinforces this effect.

We took creative license in 2 ways:

- The light was positioned a bit out & away from the fireplace, to be more flattering to the subject.

- The Rifa eX is a larger soft source. The flames shown here would have been a smaller hard light source had they been bright enough to actually be used for an exposure.

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