at a recent Toronto showcase for film gear, equipment sales, rental, and service house Cinequip demonstrated components of the Dedolight lighting system.

Dedo Weigert Film GmbH is a manufacturer out of Munich, Germany, named after its founder, Dedo Weigert, a director of photography who developed a compact, two-lens, low-voltage, tungsten-halogen lighting fixture, picking up an Academy Award for Technical Achievement in 1990 for his creation.

The Dedolights’ small size allows them to be placed unobtrusively in practical locations, and they offer a wide range of spot-to-flood focus (1:20), while retaining excellent flatness of field. The system has many light-control accessories, and although Weigert was not personally on hand for the presentation, Cinequip owner Don Hall displayed the Dedolights’ capabilities.

The lightweight and highly precise Dedolights are invaluable both in the studio and on location for commercial work, documentaries, and eng journalism. Cinematographers rave about the distance of the Dedolights’ reach and its excellent control, minimal spill, and very low projected heat.

In television work, Dedolights really shine, allowing cinematographers to set up efficiently without sacrificing creative control. And in broadcast studios, they can help add dimension to the flattening effect of fluorescent fixtures. There are even examples of 35mm feature films being lit entirely with them, but their function on the film set is mostly in conjunction with larger fixtures, either to add extra illumination or complement the main sources as a back light, fill, or accent.

One of the Dedolights’ most impressive features is the lamps themselves, whose tiny filament helps make the system so effective. The bulbs cost only $8, as compared to $30 for standard-voltage lights with similar output, and they live longer – a 12-volt, 100-watt lamp will last about 25 times longer than the average comparable lamp.

The lights are also highly durable, a point Hall emphasizes by smacking a lamp on a table top without breaking it.

‘When you have [other brand lights] on a stand and you walk into the stand, you’ve lost the filament of the bulb, but this is still going,’ Hall explains, holding up the intact bulb. The lamps for both the 12V and 24V Dedolight systems can be powered from any 12V or 24V ac or dc power source, battery belts, camera batteries, or car batteries.

Hall finds the Dedolight ideal for in-car work, especially at night – ‘You put a 20W bulb in it – you don’t want more than 20W at night and you [plug] it in a car cigarette lighter. It’s light enough that you can mount easily, and it gives an extremely smooth pattern – there is no hot spot. No other system of this size will give you that kind of output.’

The system runs off a transformer, and the kit Hall brought along includes the DT12-4 Power Supply/Control Unit for the 12V system, which takes an ac current and is adaptable to various power inputs.

‘You can set the transformer for whatever voltage you want, in 5V increments from 100VAC to 255VAC,’ Hall elaborates, ‘so you can use it anywhere in the world.’

Hall cautions, however, that the lamps are ‘very susceptible to over-voltage. If you have too much voltage, you will blow the bulbs.’

One can control the lights’ color temperature, from 3000¼K to 3200¼K to 3400¼K, and an entire kit of four lights will draw under 7 amps off an ac power source, so you will not blow breakers.

At $5,000 for the four-light kit (which also comes with transformer, cables, stands, barndoors and gel frames), Hall concedes the package is fairly expensive, but points out that with the low-cost, long-life bulbs, ‘in time you’ll make the money back on the cost of the system if you use it regularly.’

There are a couple of projection attachments for the Dedolight system which are used to produce various precise light and shadow patterns. They fit into the front accessory slot of most Dedolight heads, and come in two types, the DP1, which comes with an 85mm, metal-mounted f2.8 standard projection lens (DPL85M), and the DP10, which is the same but without the lens.

The attachments accept lenses of various other focal lengths to produce different angles and image sizes, and accessories to the DP1 offer gaffers even more options. For example, up to five framing shutter blades (dpfs) can be inserted to form various shapes of projected light (triangles, squares, rectangles, etc.), and there is also an ‘eye attachment’ (DPEYESET), a filter holder compatible with all of the projection lenses that will carry up to three filters at a time.

The filters themselves come in three levels of diffusion, so slashes of light can be softened by various degrees, the strongest of the filters creating a gentle glow for a perfect eye light. An iris (DPIR) is also available, forming near-perfect round images in different sizes.

The other accessories to the projection attachment are a slide holder (DPSH) and gobo holder (DPGH). The slide holder allows the Dedolight to function as a standard slide projector, accepting any mounted 35mm transparency.

Hall projects a slide onto the wall, then heeds, ‘I should be using a heat filter [DHF] with it, or the lamp will burn out the slide eventually.’

It is also recommended that one uses lamps no stronger than 100W when using the system in this capacity. An extension tube (DPX), which mounts between the projection attachment and the projection lens, extends the attachment 60-100mm for projecting images in miniature, special effects, and puppetry work, as well as lighting product shots in tabletop commercial situations.

The gobo holder is a two-part holder for round, standard m-size metal gobos. Dedo Weigert Film sells gobos (DPG) with hundreds of different patterns, including foliage, venetian blinds, clouds, and many others, and they will also make custom gobos with company logos or product names.

Gaffers can create whatever light and shadow patterns they want simply by inserting a piece of black aluminum foil in the filter holder and cutting out the desired design with a small knife. Color effects filters (DFCOL) and color correction filters can be slotted in the filter holder along with the light and shadow shapes for subtle color control, and taping strips of color effect filters into the filter holder will allow for smooth multicolor effects.

A four-light Dedolight kit comes all in one case, and it is heavy but quite manageable. With this mobility, along with the system’s adjustable voltage, versatility, and precision, Hall expects the Dedolight will become an increasingly important part of many cinematographers’ packages, ‘People can take one kit of these and do most of their lighting with it,’ he concludes.

*Dedolight kit components

K12B Basic Kit (12V with Multiple Output Control Unit – Switchable Input 100VAC – 255VAC)

Code Description

1 – DT12-4 Power Supply/Control Unit

4 – DLH2 Universal Dedolight head

4 – DPOW Light head cable

3 – DST Stand

1 – DH2 Dedolight mounting plate

1 – CLAMP1 Dedolight clamp

4 – DBD Standard 4-leaf barndoor

4 – DFH Gel filter holder

1 – DXBAT4 Battery cable with in-line switch

& 4-pin XLR connector

6 – DL100 12V / 100W halogen lamp

2 – DLBOX Plastic accessory case

1 – DCHD Heavy-duty transport case

Weight: 20.6 kg (45.4 lb.)

Size: 57 x 43 x 26 cm (22.5 x 17 x 10.25′)

Website: www.dedolight.com

*Photometrics

Lamp: 12V 100W (DL-100) at 10.65V – Color temperature 3200¼K

(Meters) 1 2 3 5 10 15 20

Distance————————————————————————————————————–

(Feet) 3 6 9 15 30 45 60

(Lux) 1615 416 186 66

Flood——————————————————————————————————————

(Foot candles) 150 38.7 17.3 6

(Lux) 5297 1733 680 275 75 40

Medium————————————————————————————————————–

(Foot candles) 492 160 63.2 25.6 7 3.7

(Lux) 34020 10550 4500 1605 405 175 100

Spot——————————————————————————————————————-

(Foot candles) 3162 980 418 149 37.6 16.3 9.3