I'm interested in the type of HMI light used by some of the fashion photographers I've seen (such as Sante D'Orazio, etc.). These achieve a high output, a color similar to daylight, and seem to have a wide spread or angle of light. I've seen small HMI lights (200 watts including power supply) going for about $1600.. These are PAR type, or lights in a parabolic reflector. And 575 watt PAR HMI's going for about $2400. or so. Would these provide a similar quality of light, similar to daylight, that I've seen from these N.Y. photographers? Or are they using huge 2,000 watt fresnels or some other type? Thanks for any info.

-- Randall O. (robot@earthlink.net), March 20, 2002

Answers

The studio fashion and portrait shoots I've been on have usually involved par type lights, but in a 'soft box.'. We use 1000 watt dyna- lites through Wafer soft boxes which provide a nice, somewhat softened, natural appearing light. Unless you're going for a harsh, direct sunlight sort of effect you'll want to use some sort of diffusion, which the soft boxes nicely provide. I don't remember exactly how much a simple dyna-lite setup costs, but I think it's less than $2000. The Wafers area little pricey, but well worth it I think. T. Gorman

-- Tom Gorman (honeychrom@aol.com), March 27, 2002.