Dealing with limited lighting equipment - when choices have to be made

It happens every now and then to me: when setting up the lighting for shooting I realise that I would like to have more lighting to achieve the desired effect. Not so long ago I was shooting an event at school where my wife teaches. The event consisted of several parts: some performance on the stage and a mini-concert on a piano (standing off the stage, just in front of the audience)
For the light setup on the stage I wanted to use a well proven setup for boosting the stage lighting. But then I have realised that photographing the piano player will be difficult. I had not enough light equipment to serve both purposes. So I needed to make a choice with my setup: concentrate the lighting on the piano or on the stage.
To decide I looked at the rehearsal of both events. It turned out that the singers on the stage are individuals, so the stage lighting provided for their performance would be enough. To make a sharp, steady shot of them I would have to crank up the ISO settings to the 1600+ regions, but it is not a problem to my camera.
Then the lighting for the piano. I wanted to create some drama during the pianist's performance on one side and show a context of his concert on the other. And to put enough lighting on the player of course, to make him the most dominant element of the picture.

The drama was coming from the stage lighting (a high power tungsten reflector). The light for the pianist was delivered by the SB-900 flash light put inside the Lastolite softbox. To balance the color temperature of the flashlight with the stage lighting I put the full CTO gel in front of the flash light.
So the whole setup looked like that:

The softbox being the extra light source gave enough exposure on the back of the pianist and also provided additional light on the keyboard.

Another advantage of the extra light source was that the piano was better exposed while shooting from another angle. 

First photography DIY project of 2014 started

There is a light-shaping tool that I really would like to have in my bag. It is a big light diffuser/reflector/screen. By "big" I mean something with the dimensions 1x2 meters, for instance.

There are dozens solutions available on the market which one can buy. It is an option, but the available solutions are quite expensive (starting from around 200 EUR). So I decided to give a try and create such tool by my own. 

Basically it consists of a frame with a proper dimensions, a handle and the fabric which is stretched on the frame. Depending on the fabric the tool can be used as a reflector, diffuser or a screen.

There are many descriptions of how to make it on Internet, I have used this one as a starting point.

I have set some requirements for the final product before start:

1. It should be substantially cheaper than available products

2. It should be lightweight,

3. It should be portable,

4. It should be easy to mount (with limited number of parts)

5. It should be extendible and flexible (i.e. I wanted to be able to easy build frames of different sizes if needed, like 1x1m, 2x2m.

First part is accomplished. This weekend I have finished building the frame:

My requirements are realized, at least for the products based on a frame:

1. It cost 44.60 EUR (in the Netherlands). The price of similar products of Lastolite or Sunbounce are at least twice as much. 

2. The frame weights less than one kilogram.

3. It fits in a bag of 115x30 cm

4. It consists of 7 elements:

5. With the current set I can make a 1x2m frame as well as 1x1m:

The next step is to prepare the materials. I'll start with the diffuser.

Final note: there are collapsible reflectors/diffusers available on the market in the similar dimensions, starting from 49.95 EUR (google for Godox 150x200 for example), which are all-in-one packets (flexible (collapsible) frame, fabrics, bag). My project cannot compete with them on price. 

But I think that the frame is more versatile, since you can mount it on a stand. And it is easier to hold by a person if required.