Thus is my day today. My mind is jumping from topic to topic and I can't focus on any of them. So timeout, breathe, and write something.
Last night I spent some time building up some new lighting instruments. One is a six-bulb fixture (possibly seven) designed as a softlight-- I'm using the same fluorescents that I used in the chinaballs, but six bulbs instead of one, and a bit more directed light, like a chimera or an acorn. The bulbs are a 200-watt equivalent more or less, but even with a conservative estimate, it's like having a 1k softbox which is a nice light to have for people. The soft diffused light looks great on skin, and it only takes 300 actual watts to run. Besides, it's much cooler than a quartz light, which is a thankful thing when you have a lot of lights that you're using. I'm also setting it up so that each light can be individually turned on or off-- it's sort of like being able to dim the light as necessary.
The other light is a modification of Big Blue, the 1k metal halide. Basically it's a bigger reflector, and one that can be mounted on a baby post so I can use it with a C stand without as much hassle as the old cobbled-together reflector. Big Blue isn't a good color-balanced light source, but it does some fun things for shooting night scenes, when you want that old movie shorthand of blue = night but still want to be able to see: the light is very blue just by itself and doesn't need a gel.
This building spree was triggered by visiting this site. Well, kinda-sorta: they're both things I was planning to do anyway, and visiting this site just convinced me all the more. I hafta say that I'll very likely be buying lights from here in the future.
In other news... well, there really isn't that much happening in my life that I can talk about that I haven't already yakked about to death. The normal stuff is still there. It's cold. Work on the porch is summarily halted because it's cold.
More later, maybe.
