Daylight separation or fill light

[gorillaonabike]

I will be shooting guerilla style outdoors in a public park and would like a portable, movable light either to create separation or alternatively as a little fill. This is for a dancer so I need something I can move around a little.

Budget is probably $450 USD max but the cheapest I can find to do the job is a Felloni light panel. http://www.videogear.co.uk/Lighting/Led-Lights/Tecpro-Felloni-LED-Daylight-Panel/prod_1483.html

What is the minimum I can get away with? What do you use?

 

[ItDonnedOnMe]

Are you talking about daytime or nighttime? If it's daytime you'll probably get farther with a shiny board than a light. They're a couple hundred bucks, probably can rent one for cheap though, and no power source needed. Super cheap alternative is to find foam insulation boards with a silver side from home depot, a 4x8' board is probably $15.

 

[gorillaonabike]

Are you talking about daytime or nighttime? If it's daytime you'll probably get farther with a shiny board than a light. They're a couple hundred bucks, probably can rent one for cheap though, and no power source needed. Super cheap alternative is to find foam insulation boards with a silver side from home depot, a 4x8' board is probably $15.

I will be dealing with daylight.

A secondary issue is I will probably be a one man crew unless I can find someone else that wants to shoot at dawn...

 

[ItDonnedOnMe]

Got it - my fault for not actually reading the title carefully! I'd say grab one of the shiny insulation boards and a c-stand - if you don't have one they're cheap to rent, about $5/day in my area at least. The insulation board is far lighter than a true shiny board so it's easy to set up and move on your own, grab some spring clamps while you're at the hardware store and just clamp it to the gobo arm on the stand, should be easy to position it to reflect on your subject.

 

[Cracker Funk]

Yeah, I'm with IDOM. I don't think that light is gonna do much when competing with sunlight. The "daylight" moniker only applies to color temp.

Spend 50 pounds to hire a grip for the morning, and follow IDOM's advice.

 

[jax_rox]

Whether that light is going to help your or not depends on all sorts of things - the day (cloudy or sunny? Summer/bright cloud or Winter/dark cloud), the location (are you shooting on a beach in broad sunlight or under cover in a school walkway on a cloudy day), what other equipment you have (do you have neg fill/blacks? some sort of diffusion?) and the overall exposure you want/need.

You could throw up a diff frame to diffuse the sunlight on your subject then neg fill the part of their face you want darker and you wouldn't need any light. If you're competing with broad sunlight on a sunny summer's day, you're going to want 4k HMIs, and you'll probably be lucky to even see the light being cast by that LED.

Personally, if on a low budget, I'd take neg fill and a poly board with a soft silver (perhaps Lee 273) on the reverse over any LED light.

 

[gorillaonabike]

Whether that light is going to help your or not depends on all sorts of things - the day (cloudy or sunny? Summer/bright cloud or Winter/dark cloud), the location (are you shooting on a beach in broad sunlight or under cover in a school walkway on a cloudy day), what other equipment you have (do you have neg fill/blacks? some sort of diffusion?) and the overall exposure you want/need.

You could throw up a diff frame to diffuse the sunlight on your subject then neg fill the part of their face you want darker and you wouldn't need any light. If you're competing with broad sunlight on a sunny summer's day, you're going to want 4k HMIs, and you'll probably be lucky to even see the light being cast by that LED.

Personally, if on a low budget, I'd take neg fill and a poly board with a soft silver (perhaps Lee 273) on the reverse over any LED light.

Great advice - thanks to everyone and sounds good to me. It will be guerilla style in a public park, albeit a really out-of-the-way public park... at dawn. I want the light of the golden hour, no-one around (have to pay money to shoot in public parks) and get it all done and dusted really quickly.

It will be a dancer and therefore a real pain in the butt to light as she will be moving around.