Some days lighting can be really hard

That's excellent and very informative. Thanks for posting.
 
Good video, thanks for sharing. But...

"We recon if you drop one of these in the pool, everybody in the pool is probably dead"

Not sure if that is tongue in cheek, but if not, that is no-where near good enough. It's totally irresposible. You have at least 7 people on hand in case someone gets tangled in their dress etc - all sounds good, very sensible and good advice to those watching. But you basically say that if the person looking after the mains flash trips over, and knocks the flash into the water, everybody dies. Well lets hope they don't trip over.

You just need to check with a sparky - if that mains is RCD protected it should be ok (ie, you wouldn't kill anyone). If not, you can easily get an RCD protector to add to it.


But if you weren't being serious, no worries. Those trying to copy your work could do with some tips on how not to kill people with mains electricity.
 
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Triggaaar said:
But if you weren't being serious, no worries. Those trying to copy your work could do with some tips on how not to kill people with mains electricity.
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Not exactly. I was exaggerating the danger to (a) make myself look cool (b) provide a safe margin of error and (c) impress on people that they really shouldn't be taking this lightly.

We took a couple of precautions. There's a significant amount of weight on the boom independent of the guy watching it. It's a pack based light so worst case the head will go in - there's plenty of slack in the cable to stop it dragging the pack in. At that point the sparks I spoke to said the internal fuses in the pack would trip (it's designed for outdoor use and had recently been tested). Mains cable is on RCD too and the power point it's plugged into has separate fast trip RCD - it's a plug socket next to a swimming pool ;)

We worked on the assumption that it would be fatal for it to fall in to make us all aware of the safety precautions to take. But I had some solid assurances it wouldn't be. Especially as I was the only person in the water the whole 7 hours.
 
JonathanRyan said:
Not exactly. I was exaggerating the danger to (a) make myself look cool (b) provide a safe margin of error and (c) impress on people that they really shouldn't be taking this lightly.
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Well the photos looked cool :) Actually, I guess the easiest solution would be to make it so the mains lead would be long enough for it to reach the pool - take it up over a beam, so that even if you were daft, the head would get disconnected before reaching the water.

There's a significant amount of weight on the boom independent of the guy watching it.
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I saw that, but if an 80kg guy fell on it, it would go in. Particularly a problem if someone was panicking in the water and people were rushing to help.

Mains cable is on RCD too and the power point it's plugged into has separate fast trip RCD - it's a plug socket next to a swimming pool ;)
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I think that on it's own is probably enough.

We worked on the assumption that it would be fatal for it to fall in to make us all aware of the safety precautions to take.
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If you told the models that, I'm amazed they got in :)


Anyway, I didn't want to sidetrack this thread from what is a great video - I was just very shocked when you gave the safety warnings. Reminds me of some tablets my wife was on, which included in the list of possible side effects: 'Death'.
 
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Very interesting Jon :thumbs: Well worth the effort :)

On the lighting, what is doing what? It looks like the subject is pretty much lit by the pool light. Is the gun in the box mainly an optical trigger for the big studio flash, which is providing background illumination? Something like that?

Must get a softbox in there next time :eek:
 
It's not us you have to convince, its your insurance company.

I assume you were insured and ok'ed it with them?
 
Kris said:
I assume you were insured and ok'ed it with them?
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Yes I have insurance. No there is no requirement in my policy to prewarn them of individual shoots ;)

>> On the lighting, what is doing what? It looks like the subject is pretty much lit by the pool light. Is the gun in the box mainly an optical trigger for the big studio flash, which is providing background illumination? Something like that?

The flash on camera is triggering the main light out of the pool. That's really just boosting the light to make it look like a lot more light is coming from above than there was - this is an indoor pool. It's also triggering small amounts of fill from the SBs in the sandwich boxes. These got less relevant as the pool became choked with makeup :)

If I was doing it again I'd simplify the lighting a lot by doing it in an open air pool in Spain ;)
 
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