Anyone tied this lighten kit for interviews?

jamedia.uk

jamedia.uk

Well-known member
Hi

We are a small 2 camera outfit who have been doing conference videos (fixed tripod, general ambience and some run and gun interviews) We now have to do some set piece interviews of 2 and 4 people in shot, seated in room. These interviews (and talking bodies) are documentary not dramatic. However we want to improve our lighting setup and we found this kit whilst looking for camera mounted lights
http://www.kenro.co.uk/brands/nanguang/nanguang_led_luxpads/nanguang_led_light_luxpad43_4k_kit/

EDIT Video of system in use (from Mfr) https://youtu.be/2W5umE7f_4U

Has anyone used this kit or know anyone who has?

This is for doing perhaps a dozen sessions a year. So it is light use (no pun in tended but what the hell! :- ) and we can't justify vast sums on this. I appreciate we get what we pay for but this is a step up from where we are. Anyone recommend anything as a similar price point?
 
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1. Never heard of NanGuang, as a brand, but these appear to be low rent Chinese stuff. Probably very fragile.
2. No barndoors on any of the four lights means you will have light bouncing all over the place
3. No CRI listed means these probably have a nasty green spike you'll have to deal with and you may not be able to get good skin tones no matter what you do with low CRI
4. My personal opinion with kits is, a pro, with a lot of addition a grip gear, can take a kit and make it work but a noob will have a hard time getting the best result from some arbitrary kit. Most pros have a body of gear to draw from and assemble their kits from the overall cache of gear they own. No premade kit has everything needed to effectively light every situation. A single camera interview needs vastly different light and lighting control than a four person round table in a conference room.

Three and four person set ups usually require a lot of light sources to effectively light everyone in the room. Everyone has their own lighting style, mine has evolved to using a large number of smaller sources, probably because I rarely have access to a generator to use large wattage sources. My point being, this kit will not effectively light up a small room without spilling light everywhere and generally not making the people look very flattering. Lighting is all about control and this kit has none. Flags, cutters, barndoors, dots, fingers, diffusion are all necessary and indispensible in making the light do what you want it to do. While bouncing light off of the ceiling is not my favorite strategy, short of recreating a TV studio overhead grid in a conference room, it is difficult to light for the whole room. My favorite strategy with that sort of situation is a single large key source like a powerful LED or HMI in a Chimera Pancake in the center and then fill accordingly with possible hair and or rim/cheek scratch on each. There is no price listed here but I suspect it is fairly cheap. You could possibly get a good result with this kit for single or even two person interviews with some additional grip gear to control spill, but for larger setups, this kit would not typically give you enough options to effectively light that many people.

I know you need to start somehwere, but this kit strikes me as inadequate and somewhat disposable. You would be better served taking the same money and shopping for some good used professional lights and gear, there are occasionally people getting out of the business who have great deals on real video light and grip gear that you can pick up cheap. It takes patience and good timing but there are deals out there for stuff that will last you a decade, instead of this which may last a year or less without falling apart. I've never used these lights but they appear to be cheaply built.
 
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I agree with everything Drift said. You will likely be very disappointed with that kit for the quality of light, build quality, and it's just not enough kit. If you really want to go the LED route, there are plenty of discussions on this forum and many other reviews of LED lights that will give you guidance on proper LEDs that won't disappoint. But you will have to spend a lot more money to get a proper kit of lights.

There is a tendency to want to use what is in vogue rather than what will work. LEDs are the current vogue light, but consider that tungsten may get you what you need for a lot less. We all know the pluses and minuses of each.

Before you go looking for a kit or a set of lights, consider what it is you will be shooting and then get a lighting plan. Look at what others have done and if you see a look you like, copy that or come up with your own lighting design. Once you have a lighting plan, you will then be able to determine what lights you need to get the look you want. Remember that reflection is your friend. A lightweight reflector can be a second light to provide fill without the need to plug in or carry a second light. There are plenty of other light modifiers you may want to take with you to make for an effective, but lightweight kit.
 
Thanks for that, We have 3 * 500W tungsten lights we used for stills and other work in the past. Trouble is they are fixed output (and hot)

Electronics and related kit is getting more features and less expensive all the time.The problem is working out where less-expensive becomes too-cheap.
 
jagraphics said:
...The problem is working out where less-expensive becomes too-cheap.
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The kit you posted the link to looks cheap and disposable. Read up and buy quality. Paul makes a good suggestion about Tungsten. Good LEDs that will last you and have decent output are in the U.S. $500.00 to $800.00 PER light cost range. Sure, there are lots of LEDs that cost a lot less but understand that they are disposable and will not last, nor will generally have high CRI and accurate colors/skintones while a tungsten kit will. Take a look at this DPs website with lighting setups he uses for shooting a YouTuber. His shots look pretty good and he is using "old, outdated, hot" tungsten lights. Many of us have this same or similar kit, they cost about $2,500.00 new, perhaps $1,500.00 - $1,800.00 used. Look at how many modifiers he is using, barndoors, gels, flexfills, C-stands, etc. This is how to light effectively on a low budget. https://onelightkitorless.wordpress.com/2016/09/03/anna-akana/
 
Also, a lot depends on how these people are seated. If you got a high school auditorium - or its equivalent in the UK - and the stage is relatively large, then you'll probably have no choice but to rely - at least in part - on the existing lighting. And then there's going to be all sorts of casts. But, if one can get them close to one another and the room is small, then there are more options.

And then there are windows ...
 
Just remember, big soft blobs of light are good for lighting people as key and fill, but if that's all you have to work with, it's generally going be boring looking, it will all always look the same and it's hard to control. Good lighting is all about controlling and taming the light to do your bidding. Do your existing lights have barndoors? Are they fresnels? You can't really make a cut on soft light that this would put out, you kind of need a combo of hard and soft light to light interestingly. Hair, rim, cheek scratch, throwing patterns on backgrounds are generally all the realm of hard lights/fresnels. Lighting people with soft lights requires big soft sources, which these would be. So these would get you part of the way there but you would be pretty limited without some fresnels, and a good assortment of grip tools to shape, control and flag off light. The cool thing is, you can improvise with light control more than you can with lights.

There is nothing to stop you from buying a £25 roll of CineFoil and making all kinds of cutters, flags, gobos and cucloris. But you need stands, arms, grip clips, C47s, stingers, gels and ideally, two to four fresenels besides perhaps two or three of these flourescents. Keep in mind also that a soft fluorescent has incredibly rapid falloff and they aren't very powerful to begin with, even bare. Can you 100% control the light in your setups, starting with a black box (dark room) or do you have to deal with windows, atriums, ambient lighting you cannot control? If you can start with a black box, these would probably work. If you are trying to enhance and or compete with ambient and or window light, may find these too wimpy.
 
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In another (new) thread next to this one (don't people look at previous posts before posting any more?) someone has asked about this set up for interviews

boke said:
I'm looking for recommendations for a budget lighting kit that I want to use on some Youtube videos. The videos will be of one person, waist up shots, in front of a greenscreen and also occasionally in a classroom setting. I understand that lighting the greenscreen is all about lighting it as evenly as possible and getting as much distance from the talent as possible to reduce spill but I'm having problems with what kind of kit should I get to light the talent. At first i figured basic 3 point lighting setup (key/fill/backlight) and try to make it as soft as possible, which led me to these rather cheap kits
amazon lighting kit

but then I saw this video where the guys does an interesting setup with only a key and hairlight
DSLR Video Shooter

here he uses 2 octacool lights for his key

I'm trying to keep my intial lighting kit around $500, can anyone recommend anything?
Are those cheaper amazon lighting kits not worth it?
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However I note that on the amazon reviews for the kit as with the one originally asked about whilst many say "great kit" quite a few say "flimsy" and I am minded of a professional review of a camera slider rail where the comment was "is it worth the money and what about the cheap sliders" The point was made that those who rave over the cheep "ebay" sliders have never used a decent one. the review made the point about going "too cheap" was false economy.

One of my problem is going to be heat. today (yes I know it is a Sunday !) ?I have to look at a location for an interview shoot. It is part of a castle that is 16th century (lots of wood paneling, paintings, tapestries and old cloth) and 1500 watts of Tungsten lighting is probably going to trigger the fire alarms even if they let me use it hit eh small rooms close to the irreplaceable 15-17th C paintings and tapestries.

So It will have to be low temperature (heat not colour) lighting. IE LED or florescent for this shoot. So where do I start for an inexpensive but not "too cheap" basic system for video interviews.
 
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jagraphics said:
In another (new) thread next to this one (don't people look at previous posts before posting any more?) someone has asked about this set up for interviews



However I note that on the amazon reviews for the kit as with the one originally asked about whilst many say "great kit" quite a few say "flimsy" and I am minded of a professional review of a camera slider rail where the comment was "is it worth the money and what about the cheap sliders" The point was made that those who rave over the cheep "ebay" sliders have never used a decent one. the review made the point about going "too cheap" was false economy.

One of my problem is going to be heat. today (yes I know it is a Sunday !) ?I have to look at a location for an interview shoot. It is part of a castle that is 16th century (lots of wood paneling, paintings, tapestries and old cloth) and 1500 watts of Tungsten lighting is probably going to trigger the fire alarms even if they let me use it hit eh small rooms close to the irreplaceable 15-17th C paintings and tapestries.

So It will have to be low temperature (heat not colour) lighting. IE LED or florescent for this shoot. So where do I start for an inexpensive but not "too cheap" basic system for video interviews.
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I've been in several of those castles and yes, I agree, I would not have hot lights anywhere near those ancient tapestries, linens or paintings. At this point, I think you should rent a proper kit, there is little incentive to buy unless you know exactly what you want/need. Why not rent for a couple of shoots and try LED, then fluorescents? Look at your video you light with the rental units and see of they are hitting the mark for what you need and most importantly, for what your clients expect. Lighting is definitely one of those things you should try before you buy, if possible. Those things we were talking about like falloff, microshadows, color accuracy really cannot be divined from a spec sheet, you need to get your hands on them and try it, with your cameras, in your situations. I would rent.
 
If money is of concern, don't buy cheap LED's, because they more than likely SUCK. If you're shooting PEOPLE, then the most important thing is SKIN TONES. Look at used tungsten or if you want new, Lowel. I'd say MANY of us started out buying a Lowel light kit. 20 years in and I still have some Lowels just to shoot through Chimeras.

LED's have lots of advantages and are "sexy and cool", but they still don't render skin tones as good as tungsten. I still light a LOT with tungsten.

Regarding fluorescents, don't bother unless you're getting a SCREAMING deal on some used stuff and all you're worried about is providing "illumination" and not really "lighting". I've been trying to get away from Kino's for a while and finally did at the end of '16. Pulled them out of the truck and don't plan on ever putting them back in. Like one of my guys says, "The only reason to use fluorescents is if you don't care about skin tones".
 
puredrifting said:
...Those things we were talking about like falloff, microshadows, color accuracy really cannot be divined from a spec sheet, you need to get your hands on them and try it, with your cameras, in your situations...
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Yeah, it's kind of like trying to evaluate a lens or a camera based solely on video on the internet. You do not necessarily know the situation/circumstance of the shoot or how much post may have been done that affects the final image that may have improved or degraded it.
 
Run&Gun said:
LED's have lots of advantages and are "sexy and cool", but they still don't render skin tones as good as tungsten. I still light a LOT with tungsten.
.
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Tungston isn't an option. Having just got back from the castle the interior is 15th Century full of tapestries and paintings. I can use tungsten on other shoots but this one will have to be cool lighting.
It will be a preference for other shoots too.

LEDS have the advantage in that they tend to be a LOT lighter, smaller and easier to move around with. The cool running is also a plus as is the low power requirement.

So what non-tungsten do you suggest for interviews?
 
puredrifting said:
I've been in several of those castles and yes, I agree, I would not have hot lights anywhere near those ancient tapestries, linens or paintings. At this point, I think you should rent a proper kit, there is little incentive to buy unless you know exactly what you want/need. Why not rent for a couple of shoots and try LED, then fluorescents? Look at your video you light with the rental units and see of they are hitting the mark for what you need and most importantly, for what your clients expect. Lighting is definitely one of those things you should try before you buy, if possible. Those things we were talking about like falloff, microshadows, color accuracy really cannot be divined from a spec sheet, you need to get your hands on them and try it, with your cameras, in your situations. I would rent.
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Fortunately tomorrow I am at http://https://www.photographyshow.com and hope to find some answers. (now very DLSR user is a cinematographer continuous lights, as opposed to flash, are back in vogue) Though of course *every* salesman with a lighting kit will tell me why his are the best and only option for my needs :-)

So in 24 hours time I will probably be back on here asking opinions on the options I have been given.
 
jagraphics said:
Tungston isn't an option. Having just got back from the castle the interior is 15th Century full of tapestries and paintings. I can use tungsten on other shoots but this one will have to be cool lighting.
It will be a preference for other shoots too.

LEDS have the advantage in that they tend to be a LOT lighter, smaller and easier to move around with. The cool running is also a plus as is the low power requirement.

So what non-tungsten do you suggest for interviews?
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I understand about not wanting to get a hot instrument close to something flammable, priceless and irreplaceable. I also imagine power may be of concern in an environment like a 600-700 year old castle, so being able to battery power your lights can really come in handy.

If you're comparing like output/type/photometrics, LED fixtures may actually be heavier and bigger compared to their conventional counterparts(especially if you venture into HMI territory).

The LED's that I use aren't inexpensive, but the light quality, which is the important part to me, is there. I own four Astra full power, bi-color units all with Chimeras and a "flight kit" of three Sola ENG daylight fresnels. You can actually do a lot with two Astra's and three Sola's. I have lit feature sit-downs with that with good results.
 
Having done the photography show and asked around this set https://www.rotolight.com/product/neo-3-light-kit/
seems to be a good option. There are positive reviews from ENG and people who do interviews. I am not looking for cinema graphic lighting.

Build quality is good and the company is about 100 miles from me in the UK... (actually based in Pinewood)

Does anyone have any experience with these lights in use ?
 
jagraphics said:
Having done the photography show and asked around this set https://www.rotolight.com/product/neo-3-light-kit/
seems to be a good option. There are positive reviews from ENG and people who do interviews. I am not looking for cinema graphic lighting.

Build quality is good and the company is about 100 miles from me in the UK... (actually based in Pinewood)

Does anyone have any experience with these lights in use ?
Click to expand...

I reviewed the Anova Pro lights for a recent article. Good stuff but the light they sent me was $2,200.00 for a single light, probably more pricey than a lot of people can spend these days. From what I experienced, the quality was very good, I would buy one if they were in my price range.
 
They do seem reasonable quality. The lights I am looking at are the smaller versions. Good for fill lights on interviews and small sets.
Also I spoke to the people who design and make them and can get to the factory if there is a problem.

More to the point most of their kit seems to be aimed at the serious professional market. Not surprising as the are based in Pinewood at the studios.

I think I will take a chance on them.
 
jagraphics said:
They do seem reasonable quality. The lights I am looking at are the smaller versions. Good for fill lights on interviews and small sets.
Also I spoke to the people who design and make them and can get to the factory if there is a problem.

More to the point most of their kit seems to be aimed at the serious professional market. Not surprising as the are based in Pinewood at the studios.

I think I will take a chance on them.
Click to expand...

Generally, I think they make decent gear. Please report back with an update once you have used them on a few shoots, it would be nice to hear how they work for you. They are leagues better than the kit you posted to you in your original post.
 
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