What is the most flexible, cost effective lighting package?

hazelwould

hazelwould

Well-known member
I'm trying to put together a basic lighting kit. I'm looking for having many situations covered, portability, low price, and flexability. And did I mention flexability? :)

All feeback welcome.

If there is a thread for this, forgive me. Guide me there and we'll delete this one.

Thanks!!!
 
Cool Lights is a site sponsor and we help many who aren't sure about what to get. We have many different solutions and we can discuss it in more detail if you send me an email at richard@coollights.biz.

In general though, a good kit will consist of both hard and soft light sources. And also in general, there are two types of lighting instruments (with many variations though): spot and floods.

Hard light sources have projection which means they can define the subject very well, the light has a long throw, shadows are well defined too, and because of all this, can even show a cucaloris (cookie) pattern well on the wall when you want some interesting lighting on the wall behind a subject. The best hard light comes from a single tiny point source. With this single concentrated source, you can get the projection and throw you are looking for when you need that. Sometimes you do want well-defined shadows for drama or whatever reason. Hard sources manifest in instruments like fresnels or other kinds of spots. The spotlights will usually have a control that allows focusing and varying between wide and narrow beam. Hard light can be found in open face flood lights too but the effect is a bit different and not quite as focused. The point light source itself can be tungsten or metal halide. LEDs can provide a pseudo hard light but the shadows aren't well defined when you need that.

Soft light is used when you don't want detail or shadows well defined. When you want to flatter a subject. Soft light comes from diffused light sources and in general that means that the source has been made larger or more broad. This can manifest in many ways but the most common ones are either with a softbox (reflector and diffusion) placed in front of the light source or with using something like fluorescent which is an energy efficient broad source by itself without extra diffusion. Sources in a softbox can be tungsten, metal halide or fluorescent. LEDs with a wide beam angle can give soft light. All these soft light sources will fall into the category of flood light in general since they don't have focus controls and that wouldn't work all that well for soft light anyway. A fresnel though could be "softened" up though with diffusion on the front of it which could be done in several ways.

There is a good starting point for discussion with whoever you decide to buy a kit from and those concepts are universal.
 
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Thanks Richard!

So for most shooting situations to be covered... How many hard/ soft lights would you need?

I currently have access 3x 650w quartz lights (they are damn hot too, they melted through our gels in seconds!), with stands/ diffusers etc. Would this suffice for most situations that alot of light is needed?

I'm looking for a basic kit that will take gels, cover most indoor situations, and be portable.
 
You're going to have to define what you mean by, "most indoor situations". Are you lighting a small office, or a hotel lobby. Are you lighting a bedroom in a house, or a ballroom.

Without some type of directions, it's really hard to give you really solid advice. There is also the interest in whether you will be working with daylight or solely your own lights. This will dictate what kind of lights you should be looking for.

I would say that once you get above 4 lights, portability begins to be a problem. And if you are working in a limited area, 4 lights (assuming tungsten) is going to raise the temperatures rather quickly. I did a shot in my 30x20 living room this week with only a 1000w softbox and the temps rose 10 degrees in half an hour! (or at least it felt like it did).
 
I'm wanting to shoot anything from commercial buildings (confrence rooms, offices) to schools (classrooms/ halls/ bathrooms) to homes (small living room/ bedrooms/ even smaller rooms) to greenscreen work.
 
hazelwould said:
Thanks Richard!

So for most shooting situations to be covered... How many hard/ soft lights would you need?

I currently have access 3x 650w quartz lights (they are damn hot too, they melted through our gels in seconds!), with stands/ diffusers etc. Would this suffice for most situations that alot of light is needed?

I'm looking for a basic kit that will take gels, cover most indoor situations, and be portable.
Click to expand...

Its really hard to say what most shooting situations would be as there are so many different types of settings. You mentioned some of the settings but some of those could take quite a bit of coverage. The hard lights would, in general be used for background lighting behind subjects since they define objects really well and punch through gels and "cookies" more efficiently than soft light which wouldn't work for projection well at all. These would need to be strong enough to overpower any natural daylight coming in through windows. That can be a tall order and can call for large wattage HMI fixtures. You may not be ready for that. You'd also use hard lights to outline a person and help separate them from the background too.

You'd use the hardlights also on the subjects themselves when you want to imitate daylight coming in through a window (highlight from one side, more defined shadow on the other side) or when you need throw for a long distance across a room.

The softlights would be used on the subjects themselves for those times you want the soft or flat lighting look with minimal shadows--something that flatters the subject. They can also be used to light a room in general of course (as for instance fluorescent lights which are inherently soft are used every day as general room lighting in offices, grocery stores, warehouses, homes, and even studios every day. You can imagine the effect--its more of an overall well lit look with minimal shadows but everything is evenly lit or "flat" as we call it.

The thing to remember is that we are working with a 2D medium (TV or photographs) and want to make it as 3D as possible. This means making the various layers of an image (moving or still) pop out as much as possible. Particularly on the subject--we light the rim of the person to make them stand out from the background. We light the front and from one side with a stronger light (key) and a weaker light (fill) from the other side. This again is a simulation of 3D that is taken straight out of Painting 101 where they teach the painter how painting (and video / film / photography for that matter) is nothing more than the creative use of light and shadow.
 
hazelwould said:
I'm wanting to shoot anything from commercial buildings (confrence rooms, offices) to schools (classrooms/ halls/ bathrooms) to homes (small living room/ bedrooms/ even smaller rooms) to greenscreen work.
Click to expand...


I'm a huge fan of open face quartz fixtures and I feel these offer the most flexibility:

2K Blonde
1K Lowell DP

You can bounce or shoot-through diffusion with these and they are lighter and smaller than fresnel fixtures which are comparatively less efficient due to the lens.

.
 
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