Generally, hair lights are snooted down so they don't shine directly into the lens, which can cause flare. I like to put a grid in behind the snoot. I find the added texture it puts into the hair to be nice. I think you are correct about 400ws being enough for a mono light for general purposes based on my own experience. You can do a lot with one mono light for a main, and a reflector for fill, and you never have to worry about your fill ratio being to strong. A camera type flash mounted above the subject with a cardboard flag to keep light off the camera lens works fine as a hair light.
Dear William,
Thank you for your great advice. I thought of using a camera-type flash as hair light, too, in order to reduce my initial investment, because these can be zoomed to 105mm and get a pretty good guide number. Do I put this directly above the head, with some DIY barn doors to limit the dispersion of the light ? (I saw real studios putting a strip dome over the head as hair light.) I also saw a Lumiquest snoot on eBay for camera-type flashes at a very reasonable price but I am not sure if it is useful for hair, or how I would place it and point it. Also, most of our models are posed and they move around. I think the greatest difficulty therefore is to aim this hair light quickly. I think the "rules" say the hair light should not spill onto the face or to the background. Am I getting it correctly ?
Thanks again.
Bo-Ming Tong
