Waterproof outdoor lighting

[tiddlybiz]

I have been asked to photograph portraits of people at an event in June and the client would like them taken outdoors on a bridge and showed example photos of a past event. This seems fine in principle but I would usually use studio strobes for this and I said this would be a problem if it rains and suggested that they could invest in some waterproof continuous lighting which would light the background and the people. Only issue now is that I have no experience with sourcing this kind of lighting and they have asked for a quote. Anybody got any suggestions for a good place to hire or buy this or if there are any better alternatives I could consider?

 

[Garry Edwards]

Forget continuous lighting for this, you'd need an unbelievable amount of power to light both the background and the people - 2 separate subjects.

Studio flash will do fine for this as long as you can get power to it or can run it off of one of the battery solutions. If it rains, just stick a plastic carrier bag over heach head, it's the standard pro approach - BTW, the top pros use Sainsbury's carrier bags, the Tesco ones drop to bits

Or, if you have the budget, you can use our Safari 2, at least you'll have plenty of power with that. It isn't fully waterproof but you can see it getting wet in this video and again, if it's going to be very wet, just use a carrier bag

 

[tiddlybiz]

Thanks for the tips! The plan was to use multiple lights for the background and subject and I had in mind the sort that they use to light buildings with. It is a big event and they will be using those anyway so I could possibly get a few strategically positioned but they will probably be far too harsh for lighting people. Going on what you said, I might use them for the background and use my usual studio strobes for the people. Light rain should be fine with a bag and if it is pouring down then nobody will be out there anyway! Slightly concerned that a bag will be sucked into the fan on my strobes but I should be able to prop it up with something.

Interesting thoughts on bag brand I've always found sainsbury's to disintegrate! I might go wild and use something a bit bigger and sturdier like Debenhams!

 

[Jayst84]

I'd just use speedlites and stick a plastic sandwich bag over them if need be. But then I like to keep things simple. (Obviously I haven't seen the example photos that they like).

I have shot media wall stuff at events with worklights before as well. They do the job if they're happy with hard lighting, which there is nothing wrong with of course.

 

[tiddlybiz]

Not sure speedlights would be powerful enough to uniformly light a background at night. I could try it though and I wouldn't be too worried about them getting wet. The example shots were nothing special which is why I am trying to improve them. The area is basically a small lake/pond surrounded by trees with a bridge going over it. Usually the area is not lit at all and is in a dark corner so all lighting will need to be artificial which I suppose gives control over how it is lit. Since they are portraits and not landscapes, it is fairly likely that most of the surrounding area will not be in the shot but an unlit black background looks terrible in my opinion and I am trying to avoid that! I might have access to some coloured LED lights which were used to light a building exterior for a past project.

 

[Jayst84]

Depends how big your background / groups are, and what you want to do of course. Two speedlights can light a hell of a lot. Of course, if you're doing it like a slightly fancier red-carpet style, you don't even need separate lights for the background.

Just realised, they want the actual landscape (fairly distant?) in the shot. In that case I would be tempted to tell them to light it how they want, assuming it's part of the event, then just pop a speedlight on the people. If they aren't lighting it for the event, then I'd probably stick a worklight up to give some ambience to the place, and again, speedlight on the people as it would be easier to balance than a monoblock.

Or you could get fancy and start hiding little flashes all over the garden with different gels on them, and light the crap out of it.

 

[itsdavedotnet]

Depends on how rainy it is...

umbrella, magic arm with two superclamps, clamp it off the stand just below the head.

Put a poly bag loosely around the flash head, and make sure that all of your mains cabling is up to outdoors spec, ie use 16amp cabling with industrial connectors.