Project a pattern or an image

Two tools throw a picture into the set, and they are not interchangeable. A gobo is a stencil in the beam of a studio head: hard-edged shadow patterns — a window, a venetian blind, leaves, an abstract breakup, what a film crew calls a cookie. The Light Blaster is a small slide projector that clamps on a speedlight and throws a full-colour image, which is how you get a logo or a city skyline onto a background.

Applies to BASIC, STUDIO, CINEMA · Gobo shapers need STUDIO or CINEMA · The Light Blaster mounts on a speedlight only · You need: a project open on the SETUP tab with a light selected.

Where to find it

Both are light shapers: fit them from the Light Shaper button in the Equipment group of a light, or drag them out of the LIGHTS tab under the Light Shapers filter. The controls they add appear in the same group, directly under the shaper.

Project a pattern with a gobo

1. Fit Gobo – Projector to a flash head or a continuous fixture. → Three controls appear under the shaper.
2. Click Gobo Mask and pick one of the 64 bundled masks, or one of your own.
3. Set Aperture Angle (10° to 170°, default 90°) for how wide the pattern is thrown, and Gobo Blur (0 to 0.04, default 0) for how sharply it is drawn — 0 is sharp, 0.04 is the softest the projector goes.

Distance and angle do the rest of the work: the closer the head, the smaller and brighter the pattern, and a shallow angle to the wall stretches it. A little blur usually reads better than a razor-sharp edge, because a real cookie is never perfectly in focus.

Prepare your own mask

Draw it square and greyscale, with a black margin around the pattern: white passes light, black blocks it. The importer accepts .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .tga, .tif and .tiff, and then does two things to whatever you hand it — it resizes the image to exactly 512 × 512 pixels and averages the colour channels to grey. A rectangular drawing therefore comes out squeezed, and a coloured one comes out as grey tones, so do that work before the import. The bundled masks are 512 × 512 too, which makes them a good template to draw against. Own masks live in the App Manager under Resources → Gobo Masks; see Add your own lights and light shapers.

From 07:53 the App Manager tutorial opens that page and says the same two things — white passes the light, black blocks it, and the built-ins are 512 × 512 — then moves on to the projector images the Light Blaster uses.

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Project an image with the Light Blaster

Fit a Speedlight head first — the Light Blaster appears in the shaper list only there — and then work through its four controls in the Equipment group:

• Image Template — the slide: one of 10 bundled images, or one of yours.
• Lens Luminosity — the aperture of the projection lens (default f/2.0). A faster lens throws a brighter picture.
• Focal Length — 12 mm to 130 mm, default 50 mm. Short is large and dim, long is small and bright, exactly as with a real projector.
• Manual Focus — off by default, in which case the projection focuses itself on whatever sits in the middle of the beam. Switch it on and Focus Distance (0 m to 20 m, default 3 m) sets the plane yourself, which is what you want when the beam centre misses the surface you care about.

A slide eats a lot of light, and the program says so in the import dialog. Three habits make the first attempt work: pick a bright, high-contrast image rather than a dark moody one, open the projection lens, and give the camera more ISO or a wider aperture than the rest of the set needs. 2:3 is the natural format — it is a 35 mm slide — and your own images keep their aspect but are resized to fit 2048 pixels.

Tips & limits

• Own images are counted per library, and BASIC allows 7 of your own projector images; own gobo masks need STUDIO or CINEMA, because in BASIC the page for them is not in the App Manager. At the cap the dialog refuses a new image; editing one you already have stays open, because replacing a file does not make the library any longer.
• Save without transparency: the in-program help asks for it. A mask is turned into grey tones on import in any case, so draw what should pass light in white and the rest in black.
• A gobo pattern is a shadow, so it needs something to fall on. On a wall two metres behind the model it reads; in mid-air it does nothing.
• The beam angle is the gobo’s own, not the head’s Zoom. See Light settings for both.

Troubleshooting

• My mask came out stretched, or lost its colours. Every import is resized to 512 × 512 and converted to grey. Re-draw it square and in grey tones.
• There is no Gobo – Projector in my shaper list. Gobo shapers need STUDIO or CINEMA; in BASIC they are not in the library at all.
• The Light Blaster is not in the list. The head on the light is not a speedlight. Fit one, then the entry appears.
• The projection is out of focus. Automatic focus follows the centre of the beam. Switch Manual Focus on and type the distance to the surface.
• More symptoms: Lighting problems.

Related

• Light settings
• Choose and fit a light shaper
• Add your own lights and light shapers
• Add and place lights
• Lighting problems