KOTW Broad Lights (x Lights / Goya Lights)

Broad Lights (x Lights / Goya Lights)

Well what’s in a name anyway eh! Todays bit of kit started with a request to focus on our latest light from Filmgear, the 5000w Tungsten Broad light.

A bit of research showed me that this was part of a family of lights that go by different names depending on the manufacturer, but are all basically very similar. So with the intention of killing many birds with one stone I thought I would cover the whole broad light genus in one blog.

So what is a broad light or for that matter an X light or even a Goya light?

Well for one thing they have absolutely nothing to do with Francisco Goya, the Spanish romantic painter (best known for being the first artist to explicitly depict hirsute ladies in art “edited for online content”, that’s a good one to use at a dinner party) or anything to connect them to the varicose waterways of Norfolk. We are talking broad as in “larger than normal from side to side” (at this moment I am biting my tongue to protect my love life.)

The Filmgear broad light, Arri X light or DeSisti Goya lights are all very very similar to each other, they are all open-faced lights and feature a very wide “broad” beam of un-focused light (approximately 130 deg)

They can be pointed in any direction including straight down or straight up.

When used with diffusion they become a softlight and when used without diffusion they produce a lovely hard shadow (great for silhouette work)

Many users simply bounce them off a wall to create an extremely large and hence soft light (remember, the bigger it is the softer it gets, that’s another one for the dinner party)

But the main feature in my opinion is that they can be positioned very close to the subject and give a very wide, uniform illumination with a very short throw.

This makes them ideal for lighting backgrounds, buildings and so on.

Being able to operate pointing straight down they lend themselves to be used as a space light and are frequently employed in this way.

Because they produce such a wide beam of light, less are required to evenly light the subject.

The light produced is very clean and even across its entire spread.

We have several versions here in HMI

.575 KW

1.2-1.8 KW

2.5 KW

4 KW

As well as our new baby

5000W Tungsten (if you want to warm things up a bit!)

Please note that all the specifications on this are for our new tungsten 5000 w unit.

Cheers BB