How powerful lights do I need for a night street shot?

T

Ticonderoga

Member
This will be my first time shoting outdoor at night with lights so I would really appreciate any advise. We will be shooting in the middle of a two-lane road with street lights; there will be five to six actors pretty close together. I will be renting everything--thank you dvxuser for introducing me to that--and wonder if one 2KW tungsten fresnel and one 2KW tungsten soft light works fine? Thanks!
 
make sure to take a reflector or 2 along
reflecting the street lights is what i would do....
but.....
then again....
i don't have the means to take 2 2KW lights out on the street.
 
This question is hard to answer, mainly because I can't see the framing of the shot. For example, are there lots of lit up stores in the area? Or is is just darkness? Post some pictures of the shots you're trying to light up, you would get better advice that way.
 
I'm curious about street lighting as well.

Street lights always give off so much orange, so I wonder how to get the right color temp.
 
Streetlights are very very very red mercury vapor or orange sodium vapor. Big productions usually pay to have them turned off.
 
themagickite: Thanks for the advice. Lights rental are actually not expensive at all; I decided that instead of buying anything I will just rent my way out.

Horsefilm: Portable Honda generators.

cardmaverick: Good point...I don't have any photos at hand, but I can say street lights are probably going to be the dominate natural light sources.

Abaddon and Arson: Just as an example, last Monday's "24" has a street scene. It seems to me that they neither turn off the street lights nor did much to correct for color temperature--you can clearly spot the white lights they use against the orange street lights in the background...
 
I wouldn't worry about streetlights either. If your cast is standing under a street light and they look red, then so be it. That's real life.
 
taormina said:
I wouldn't worry about streetlights either. If your cast is standing under a street light and they look red, then so be it. That's real life.
Click to expand...
The actual color of the light may be red, but cameras record light differently than our eyes perceive it. But that is not the real problem, because he can always white balance it so it looks more or less how he wants.

The problem is that not all street lights are the same color, and the camera will really highlight the differences between the different kinds of streetlights, differences that you might not really notice if you were just standing on the street. Some streetlights will be red, some orange, some might be even more blue-white colored.

Probably his best option is to balance to whatever is the most dominant streetlight color, and he has to be careful not to show other types of streetlights. If he wants to use other lights he needs to balance those lights to look closer to the streetlight color, but if there is just so much more light coming from the streetlights it might not be necessary.
 
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