Dedo Lightstream Review

Dedo Lightstream Review

The visual brief for the latest corporate video production for Monitor Audio and their Roksan brand, was to create a homely environment that felt both light and airy. To achieve this, we decided to gear up with the Dedo Lightstream System. This our review.

Going into this we knew that natural light was going to play an important factor, as the location chosen had large floor to ceiling windows wrapping around the back of the house. We decided to work with the light and amend our schedule and the blocking of the various scenes to give us the best light for each set up.
With this in mind we naturally felt that using Dedo Lightstream reflector kit would give us the ability to enhance and augment the natural light coming in through the large windows, as well as enabling us to control the contrast levels on both subjects and the products.

The small footprint of these reflectors meant that we were able to position them close to the talent and not cause too many obstructions to them or their performances.
Building a ‘tree’ from a C-Stand and magic arms meant that we were able to make the most of the various strengths and sizes of the Dedo Lightstream reflectors.

We mainly opted to go with the larger 50×50 reflector in strength 3 or 4 to control and push in more level on the subject, cutting into that with smaller reflectors of the stronger strengths such as 2 and below, we were then able to pick out the key areas that we wanted to draw the audience’s attention to.

Using a Source 4 Zoom 15-30 in tandem with the Dedo Lightstream system meant that being an ERS source we could get a lot more punch out of the fixture over using a fresnel or similar. We were also able to control the size of the beam of light so that we knew we were using as much of that source as possible to fill the reflectors rather than letting some of the spread escape around them, this insured we were able to use the full power of the fixture at all times.

In addition to using the CRLS we opted to bring in as much negative fill as we could for the various scenes, this meant that we could cut down any ambient light bouncing around the large rooms and really focus on manipulating and controlling the natural direction of the light.

Having the ‘reflector tree’ by the window we were able to split the light beam from our source to be able to pick out and highlight both the product as well as pull out our subject from the background.
A bigger softer source on our talent kept the light feeling sourceless while just subtly bringing up the exposure values. Whilst a harder reflector on the product kept it from falling too far into the shadows.

In a darker north facing room we were able to again split the beam in order to pick out both the product and the subject, lighting from through the window kept a natural feel to the source.
For this set up we used the smaller 25×25 reflectors so that we could clearly pick out the two areas in the frame that our subject travels between.

The harder reflectors 1 & 2 allowed the creation of shadows to give more visual interest and depth to the scene. Using the shadows alongside gels on the Source Four enabled us to quickly and effortlessly create different looks for various times of the day.

The quality of the light coming off of the reflectors is noticeably more natural due to the way that they are able to manipulate and extend the inverse square law. This gave the images a clean and well balanced look, without ever feeling as though they were ‘overlit’.

If there was ever going to be a downside to the Dedo Lightstream system it can be seen through the man hours needed to make the micro adjustments to each reflector. Once the light source is in place and you’ve got your large soft reflector in place, adjusting magic arms and the positioning on the smaller mirrors can sometimes be a time consuming process. A process that if planned for and scheduled in is well worth the results. It’s a lighting system that for the right job is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful and natural ways of lighting.

Roksan, Hi-Fi, Simplified was selected by DesignRush as an awarded entrant in their Video Design category, cited as a quality example of a commercial video. The full film will be available on our Video Portfolio Page.