24 Better Available Light Digital Photography
Moulin rouge!
Lowel’s (www.lowel.com) Ego is a tabletop-sized fl uorescent
light that looks like a lamp straight from the set of the Steven
Soderbergh fi lm Solaris. Setup is a breeze: attach the Ego to a
lightstand and turn it on. The Lowel Ego is provided with two
27-watt screw-in daylight fl uorescent lamps that have a 5,000- to
10,000-hour rating. Their Color Rendering Index (CRI) provides
a more natural and realistic color balance than standard fl uores-
cent lamps do. Lowel includes a small white card that can be
used as a refl ector.
When using the Ego as a main light for portraits, be sure to
place the light as close as possible to the subject without
getting it in the shot. Because of its small size, the Ego light is
probably best suited to headshots. Joe used to hate headshots; it
just took too much time fi ddling to get the light looking like
he wanted. The Ego sets up quickly, and—when used with a
larger refl ector, such as Westcott’s Illuminator, placed close to
the subject on the opposite side of their face—it makes an ideal
headshot setup.In Out of the Past, Jane Greer
portrays a woman running to
escape her future; meanwhile,
Robert Mitchum is trying to for-
get his past. Ashley Rae has
the perfect look of a 1940s fi lm
noir heroine and was photo-
graphed using a Sunpak DigiLite
600 placed camera left. No
refl ectors were used because Joe
wanted to create shadows that
are a hallmark of this genre.
The photograph was captured in
Monochrome mode using a Canon
EOS 20D and EF 85 mm f/1.8
lens at ISO 400. Exposure was
1/200 at f/2.5 in Program mode
with a -1^1 / 3 stop exposure com-
pensation. © 2004 Joe Farace.