THE WORLD OF REFLECTED LIGHT, PART 8: DEDOLIGHT LIGHTSTREAM REFLECTORS

THE WORLD OF REFLECTED LIGHT, PART 8: DEDOLIGHT LIGHTSTREAM REFLECTORS

Watch 13 part series at: https://tinyurl.com/3u8vpb7h

How are they made? It is not much of a secret. The hard carrier material has been around since about 1960.

This type of material was first constructed for race car technology, employing two surfaces of hard aluminium, bonded with a honeycomb in the center, making it very lightweight and robust.

Such materials are available worldwide through relevant distributors.

The reflecting surfaces are also commonly available in many different versions by a company that supplies not only the professional lighting industry, but also most of the home lighting industry.

Even the reflector in the 200,000 Watt SoftSun light of my friend David Pringle has the same origin.

If you look at the ceiling in your office, there may be a reflector employed from the same origin.

The lamination of both of those materials takes a little bit of a learning curve. On the rear side of these reflectors there is a grooved rail. The channel in this rail allows to slide in the locks which can be arrested firmly at any place, and will accept mounting devices of many different sorts — anything that is featuring a baby stud (16 mm stud).

This channeled rail is also my design, my tooling, and my product. I provided this to other manufacturers of reflectors as a free gift, to support professional collaboration. This gesture has not always been rewarded when the recipients of my gift claim that it is their own patent (in reality such patents are non-existent).

We presently make reflectors mainly in five different sizes. The largest one is 1x1 m, and usually used in conjunction with the parallel beam light PB70, to redirect the light with the surface #1 which does not change the exit angle, but merely redirects the incoming beam.

Other sizes presently in my production are 50x50 cm, 25x25 cm, 12x15 cm, and the smallest one is 7x10 cm.

The surfaces have different structures. The aforementioned reflector #1 is hard, works
a little bit like a mirror, and simply redirects the incoming beam.

Reflector #2 has a spread angle of about 12 degree.
Reflector #3 spreads about 50 degree, and reflector #4 has the widest spread angle of 95 degree.

Reflector #5 offers a directional spread. Maintaining the virtual light source — Reflector surface #1 by simply redirecting the incoming beam, maintains the property of the virtual light source and the illusion of light coming from a very far distance, like natural light.

Reflectors #2, #3 and #4 show a drastic shortening of the distance to the virtual light source, depending on the spread angle.

The reflectivity of all of these reflectors is pretty much similar, between 95% and 98%.

Reflector #5 again has its own surface, but also has the property of spreading the incoming beam in one direction.

Depending on the placement and the distance of the light source, in relation to the reflector, the transition between the reflected spread beam and the unlit area can show a soft and gentle transition or be harder. Thus, the character of this spreading beam can be modified by adjusting and controlling the distance between the light source and this
reflector.

In preparation - Various reflector surfaces, which have mechanical attachments, to allow varying
degrees of spread angles.

Many years ago, my friend, the DOP and lighting manufacturer Ross Lowel had already created something in the same direction. He called it a 'Variflector'. It worked very well, but did not feature the defined character of the different surfaces employed by dedolight Lightstream.

The large 100x100 cm reflector comes in its standard version with a #1 surface for redirecting the beam. The rear side can also be used — it has a large spread angle, similar to my reflector #4.

Alternative versions of the 100x100 cm reflector —
For special order this reflector can also be provided with the #2 surface on the one side and #3 on the other side, or any other combination. For these there is a surcharge as opposed to the standard version.

All the other smaller reflectors have only one working side, whilst the other side holds
the channeled rail for attachment, and cannot be used for reflection.
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27th
Apr 2021

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