Budget Lighting

S

srproductions

Well-known member
Hi!

I am looking to buy some regular Home Depot lights to use for some upcoming shorts. Which ones should I get? My budget for now is $100. Thanks!
 
I would buy some china balls, clamp flood lights, some diffusion, and like 2 cheap stands instead of the home depot work lights.
 
Both of these suggestions are good. If you really want the worklights what you're looking for the is model you see with two lights at the top of the stand. They are usually putting out 500 watts per side for a total of 1000 watts.

While the brand or type may vary from one home improvement store to another they all have the same types usually for sale. The basic models available include: a stand + one light, a stand + two lights, maybe a fluorescent worklight. Papa is using the lighting slang of "heads" to describe the one or two light units at the top of the stand. I've seen these range from $15 to over $100. The price is affected by the length of the stand, the number of "heads" at the top of the stand, the wattage of each head and also, by the part of the country you are in. Yes, ones in CA may be more expensive than ones in TX.

Also, as Noah pointed out, there are these aluminum clamp on worklight "scoop" models that take regular edison base light bulbs (you know, the screw in kind) whereas most of the worklights take a halogen bulb which is a two ended bulb that plugs into two sockets (some worklights take tube type fluorescent too now though as I pointed out above--these usually look like a lantern).

The nice thing about the aluminum ones is that you can use fluorescent spiral lamps in them or other kinds of edison base bulbs too like Photo Floods. Of course, the halogen ones put out more light though--usually 500 watts per side or "head". They also put out heat too. But all these options are a common entry point for people that are just starting out in video.
 
what good is spending the money to rent a kit if one doesnt know how to properly use it?

what is your knowledge of lights ,and experience?

if none, i would say get you some work lights, learn how to use them, and then move on.
 
srproductions said:
Where can I get what I need? Or would it be better to just rent an Arri kit for the shoot?
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Home Depot or Lowe's or whatever Home Improvement store you have in your area. I second the opinion about knowledge vs. renting. Don't rent an expensive light kit until you know more about lighting. The nice thing about worklights is they provide an inexpensive tool to let you experiment around until your ready to graduate to more pro solutions.
 
srproductions said:
OK then. Where can I get a lighting training DVD for DV?
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I don't know what other people are getting, but the original one I got four years ago was "Digital Lighting Magic" by Elite Video. Its a 3 DVD set:

http://www.elitevideo.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=60


I thought it was pretty good, didn't find it boring at all and it actually shows starting out setups like worklight usage. I should also mention that it includes most of the relevant topics you need to know for lighting indoors as well as handling outdoor scenes. They cover cookies, gels and other lighting modifiers and special effects, reflectors, starter setups, regular pro video lighting and all kinds of other interesting topics.

They also sell on ebay too and you can sometimes pick the video up there cheaper than off their site.

Good luck with whatever you do!
 
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Watched the same video as above. The videos are really good but the majority of it covers 'interview' setup. But again, most of the knowledge is transferable to a "narrative set".
 
Hi Miracom,

I'm having a hard time deciding whether to buy lights from you or the folks at flolight.com. Please tell me why I should choose yours over flolight. Thanks for your time!
 
Ok. Now, I have a couple of questions. I don't have enough money to buy work lights to practice with and rent pro lights for the shoot. Which one? Should I get training and soak up knowledge, then rent the pro lights for the shoot? Or should I just set up a low budget lighting kit to learn with and shoot with?
 
bennycord said:
Hi Miracom,

I'm having a hard time deciding whether to buy lights from you or the folks at flolight.com. Please tell me why I should choose yours over flolight. Thanks for your time!
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Hi bennycord,

Well asking one manufacturer to compare to another is hard to get an unbiased opinion ;-). Personally, I only use my own fixtures. haha.

Anyway, all I can do is list reasons I like mine. Construction, looks, usability, reliability and price. After that many of the features are all the same across the competitors. Probably mainly comes down to price and what you need to accomplish with the fixture. We're offering an affordable solution to try to level things out for budget minded media professionals.

I guess a good relevant question to you though would be: which of the flo lights units are you looking at--the dimmable line? If not, then the CL-655 on our site is comparable to their 6x55 unit but ours is less expensive and seems to be more well-built from the pictures I can see of that unit. They don't have a non-dimmable 2x and 4x so nothing to compare there. We win hands down. In my opinion, its a strange decision to offer a non-dimmable 6x but no 4x and 2x (like our CL-255 and CL-455)--the latter two are most interesting to the price-conscious crowd as my sales data shows.

We don't have dimmable fixtures yet so you can't really compare to the other line very well. Dimmable is important to some and others (like me) just find creative ways to dim (on/off switches per bulb pair, extra diffusion material, etc.) in the name of saving money.

We will have dimmable sometime later this year though. I'm working on my next batch of product development right now and will have some other exciting stuff to offer too.

You might talk to "USLatinContent" -- another DVXUser though. I know recently he was torn between mine and flolight and chose them because they had dimmable. That's about the only reason I am aware of to do one or the other. I think the rest comes down to budget and price.
 
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srproductions said:
Ok. Now, I have a couple of questions. I don't have enough money to buy work lights to practice with and rent pro lights for the shoot. Which one? Should I get training and soak up knowledge, then rent the pro lights for the shoot? Or should I just set up a low budget lighting kit to learn with and shoot with?
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I just consulted my magic lighting crystal ball (it has a nice 5500K fluorescent light glowing in the middle of it by the way) and it asks: are you worried about perceptions with your client at all? What it then says is that, if so, you may need to rent some pro lights.

Showing up with bright yellow worklights can sometimes be problematic with savvy clients. If you're mostly in your own world, at home or whatever the worklights are great. If your working with small, unsophisticated clients, it may not matter too much either. I think client level of sophistication is a key thing to consider in your decision.

This was one of the criteria that drives some of us to do DIY lighting and try to make it look like pro lighting without having to pay pro prices. Its what my Cool Lights Video was about too. Saving people money over what the expensive manufacturers are charging for pro lighting by showing them how to build lights that can look pro-level without spending so much. Perception is reality and you do have to consider that and how it affects your ability to get more work from clients in the future. You have to "look" like what you're trying to be--a video professional so while it sounds superficial, anyone that tells you client perceptions don't matter is fooling themselves.
 
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Well, I shoot for my own films. I only have clients in the 3D/VFX area. So it doesn't really matter too much how they look. Well...it matters how they look on the screen. I don't care what the actual lights look like. I just don't know what to buy!
 
I was just looking at you DVD. It shows you how to make lights from parts from Home Depot/Lowe's? Also, what are the pros and cons of flourocent lighting?
 
Well that's good news then. You don't have to worry. Just get what you need and be pragmatic about it.

The Cool Lights Video (which came out about almost a year ago) shows you how to start out simple and progresses to more complex projects which require sheet metal work (either by yourself or at a shop that does it). Yes, home depot is a great source for much of what you need--especially the simpler projects. Our site has also become a source for some of the harder-to-find items. And we'll have more over time too. Some people disagree with me about Home Depot N:Vision bulbs but I don't have so much trouble with them and you can just run down and pick some up when you need them. You have to order some of the other ones and a difference of 10 CRI or whatever is not enough sometimes to make me pay more per bulb plus shipping and wait a week to get it. You can also experiment (as I show in the video) with the 2 and 4 bulb / 4 foot fixtures that they sell there. You'll want to stay away from the ones with magnetic ballasts as there can be some issues there. I explain all this in the video though.

Pros and Cons of fluorescent lighting:

Pros

Inherently soft--doesn't need more diffusion. I use it personally now for most of what I do. I haven't used a tungsten light in nearly 2 years.

Cool and energy efficient (fluorescent, in general gives our more light per watt than tungsten). If you're working in small spaces you'll really appreciate this and so will your air conditioner in the middle of summer

Relatively inexpensive technology

Bulbs have a long life

It's not going away and will only get better as time goes on

Many choices of packaging, bulbs and fixtures makes it somewhat versatile and adapts to different budgets well



Cons

Can't be a hard light source which creates well-defined shadows (tungsten, metal halide and HMI are point or hard light sources). Hard light is useful for dramatic effect. This kind of light throws farther too.

Fluorescent has a quicker drop off than hard sources (as mentioned in point above)

If you get the wrong bulbs you can have flicker or color issues but if you consult people on these forums you usually can't go wrong

Fluorescent needs a ballast (a power supply that converts line voltage to the voltage that a fluorescent bulb expects to run correctly). Tungsten just plugs into the wall--no other added circuitry to go wrong.

You may be able to get cheap, used tungsten type lights more readily than fluorescent ones (places like ebay as others have mentioned for example). Haha--but ask yourself why these people are selling these old klunkers though.

Maybe some are tired of heating up their clients and studios and enriching the electric company.
 
srproductions said:
Well, I shoot for my own films. I only have clients in the 3D/VFX area. So it doesn't really matter too much how they look. Well...it matters how they look on the screen. I don't care what the actual lights look like. I just don't know what to buy!
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Don't think about it too much. Just jump in somewhere and start. As mentioned before worklights are a good point of attack or if you know that hot lighting is going to be an issue in your setup then start out with some inexpensive fluorescent lighting and see where it goes.

The way it went for me was I started acquiring some equipment in 2002 and then realized lighting was going to be important. I saw the video I mentioned earlier and got it first. It talked about using worklights for beginners. I thought it was sage advice. I got a 1000 watt unit from Home Depot and used them quite a bit but in the middle of July it can get very hot in Houston which is where I was at the time. Over time I acquired more pro type lighting on Ebay. It got to where I hated going out to work on stuff though--just too hot. So I started looking at alternatives. In early 2005 I learned about fluorescent lighting for video and couldn't believe how expensive the "pro" fixtures were.

I know something about electricity and electronics as well as product development so I wasn't afraid of experimenting. During the process I realized that I did save some money over buying ready-made ones and I also realized I wasn't going back to tungsten anymore because I was enjoying to work again in a cooler environment. I also think fluorescent, being a very soft light is a flattering light too for many types of subjects.

I had already started to get the idea for the Cool Lights video by this time too. So I started documenting everything and shooting footage. By fall 2005 that's all I was doing really along with product development. I quit all other activities and worked only on "Cool Lights" as I already had some vision forward to where I am now which is living in China--I have more stuff I'm working on and a whole backlog of product ideas that can all most effectively be executed from here.

My business operates from the USA though in my absence and all products on the site are supported with warranty, in stock and ship the same day usually.

Anyway, all this is to say: just jump in somewhere and see where the world of video takes you. You never know where you'll end up!
 
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