DIY Light Kit-Videomaker article

[sek0910]

Here is a great article on how to make professional looking lights from the the halogen worklights sold everywhere. Shows you how to attach them to standard light stands, mount barn doors and umbrella attachments.

http://www.videomaker.com/article/1...tent=tip_enews_2010_05_4&utm_campaign=traffic

 

[ray gunnell]

I just saw this article today.

My question is, how hot do quartz lights get? If they're anything like the shop lights I have for my garage, they would easily burn any silks you have as diffusers I'd think.

I'd also wonder if you can get one/something with a light that is daylight balanced.

 

[paulears]

I've not seen any daylight linear tubes, but as they're quite bright, CTB is fine. Temperature wise they do get damn hot. I have a set of those yellow stand ones in my workshop, and I've tried to use them once for video - never again. The snag is the quality of light is horrible - the reflectors produce very uneven light, with a pretty sharp edge - a big hotspot in the middle band. My ones don't have barndoors, so clipping a sheet of Lee diffuser isn't easy - there's nowhere on the body to attach it too. Compared to a redhead, the light is quite poor. They're certainly bright, and cheap - but mine went straight back to the workshop. Bouncing of an umbrella wastes a lot of light because you can't have them that close because of the heat, and moving them to a safe distance means much of the output misses the umbrella!

 

[BrownCowVideo]

A Lowel Omni on eBay can be had for pretty cheap. They're lightweight, focusable, and actually made for video. I think DIY is fine for a lot of things, but bootstrapping a hot light kit sounds like too much work and carries some serious usability problems.

 

[dop16mm]

The upside is that the heads themselves are very rugged, designed for the construction site and all. I've had a bunch for years and will use them for background lights, ceiling bounces etc, keeping my redheads for cast. The old yellow stands are junk and need to rig up proper stand mounts, but those manfrotto adapters are not that cheap. Skip the barndoors though, cutting your own from sheet metal is a recipe for bloody finger tips unless you carefully buff all the edges. What I did is glue wooden clothes pins to the sides with epoxy and use that to hold black wrap in place. You can use high temperature diffusion or color gels as long as it is big enough to bow across the front.

I do like the umbrella holder Idea. This would be good with the translucent shoot through type, or rig up a rod for a lowel style gel frame.

Yes the light is not perfect, but its good in a pinch. Mine have been banging around in a hockey bag for going on 15 years and still work. I'd like to see that from a cheap britek. Lowel's won't even last very long if not packed in a protective case.

On a final note, carefully remove the cage, but keep the tempered glass front, as it protects you from bulbs blowing up.

 

[Eric Ferguson]

Ugh, these quartz halogen lights look too good to be true sitting there in the hardware store, and, they are. They get unbelievably hot in mere minutes; you can't even adjust them with your hands without gloves. They'll bake your talent and blow every breaker in your garage. They also throw a really awkward light pattern that leads to a very poor quality of light. But what do you modify the light with? They're so hot that they can't be diffused without very, very careful attention to the fire-proofing qualities of your material.

There's no shame in building a DIY lighting kit, but halogen worklights are not the way to go, IMO. Do yourself a favour, and get some daylight fluorescants. They're also dirt cheap and you can DIY a nice light kit using clamp lights or paint cans. Since they're cool, you can shine a few hundred watts worth into a white dollar store umbrella without worrying about melting it, and you can also make a cheap softbox with a stryofoam cooler. Reducing the power and the heat makes everything easier.

 

[El Director]

I diffuse my worklights by using a 5ft x 5ft PVC freestanding frame and a shower curtain.

For the low light look I needed, this worked great. For more light, you could build another kit or use a more transparent curtain.

 

[drapeama]

I've done one, completely DIY for under 40$. Bulbs aren't included at this price, but my setup can hold up to 1200watt of CFL lights.
I've tested it with 60w equivalent CFL bulbs (6500k) and it's quite good for the price, paid 2$/bulbs at the local dollar store.
Here's a picture: