Help me with a $500-ish complete lightning setup.

I

ICD Films

Well-known member
I got a bunch of 500w work lights. These give me roughly 3000k-ish light. I will not replace these lights. But build around them into a working package for home indoor cinema.

How about LED? Should I get a set? Waste of money? (going to need 1 or so anyway, for shooting in a cave).

For $500. Should I get one decent light, or several cheap ones? The work lights provide light, so to speak... but not much control, and heat is an issue regarding placement, size of dimmer (errr, sheet...) and so on. So, smaller lights to complete the work light setup.
 
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It really depends on what you're looking to shoot.
Me? I'd spend (and have been spending) the money on various lowel lights. They're fantastic, professional, lightweight and versatile... because I'm focusing on production, with an eye towards making features, and I'd like to have a base kit that I can take with me easily and use rentals to supplement. It's also important for me to learn good production techniques and, like I said, eventually make several shorts and a feature... so using home-made rigs aren't going to get me the same experience i'd need for on-set stuff

if I were just looking to shoot one or two small shorts, I would probably buy things a little more specialized like a rig of flourescents I could mount together, or possibly look into kinos (ruled them out for my purposes so I can't give you much info... but I hear they're great). Also, if I had a car, a home-made rig like that would be much more tempting.

If you're doing documentary or interview type stuff, that's a whole different ballgame too.
Also, is this $500 going to be your total lighting kit, or just the first part? Getting one really good light is not going to get you through many productions, so if this is your whole kit get a few smaller lights... but getting one really good light now is your best bet if you're planning on expanding, so you can learn how it works and eventually what it can and can't do.

(Also, I don't know what your lighting set-up is, but I've found that creating softboxes out of home depot cardboard boxes with diffusion paper taped inside does wonders for softening and controlling those scoop lights, the top wings of the box act as barndoors... if those are the work lights you're talking about)

So... what do you want to do, and how do you want to do it?
 
Just zero-budget filmmaking at home... needing a more controlled cinematography for my next film (lighting a big part of that, when indoors doing chroma+sets). I'm just thinking, maybe won't be worth the investment with kinos & that price point for a single lamp... basicly, cus when my game justifies "pro" gear I'll either be on a real budget, or in a real studio (=renting equipment), or, like you mentioned out-and-about, and then we're LEDs & batteries and stuff... So, investment-vise, something portable & small would make sense... wich then is the opposite of what I currently have, ie work lights.

I totally get that good lighting is a lot of $, but again I'm in my apartment here doing "vimeo-cinema" with friends, so to speak. If I can keep on the el cheapo route... just buying some stuff that will make it work, in a technical & cinematographic sense. Fill-lights, maybe one bigger key light when the worklight is too damn unusable... that nice fill on the actors face etc... for example gonna be putting up a tent indoors, I want that small light that it somewhat adjustable (not like the super-cold LED-sticks you can find in general stores)

This runs on Sony-batteries... just a waste of money? "Worth a try"? (just generally getting the feeling people don't like LED, at all)

http://www.ebay.com/itm/CN-160-LED-...ltDomain_0&hash=item415ec2a539#ht_6060wt_1030
 
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Led light is popular and many folks like it. But for some shooting ,only led lights are not enough, so they need more other lighting kits. But as fill light , led lights are good choice especially for travel.
z96 is a welcomed led light and many of my friends use it.
 
LEDs are still hyper-expensive for decent lights. You need to think about hard/soft issues; do you need some fresnels (you can find very good theatricla fresnels cheaply on eBay and Craigs List)? Do you need some big, soft fill?

The main thing these days - IMHO - is getting as much daylight-temp lights as possible. They pull less amps and create less heat. I'd look into the piles of affordable biax flo's that are out there. A 4-tube quad puts out a lot of light.

I've played with the lowell stuff and rented it - the only light I liked was the tota for bounce or using with big diffusion frames, but theatrical open faced lights use the same lamps and have actual barn doors that are useful. The Tota is just sort of a work-light-plus and kind of a ripoff. Many of their other fixtures I found to be just too small and weak. I pretty much gave away a lowell kit with those little 300 watt lights, they were only useful for music videos when I wanted "stage" lights flaring behind the set.

Currently I have about 5 6" fresnels which I can lamp from 500 to 1k; one of these converted to an 800-watt equivalent HID; 3 similar HID open face lights; several small fresnels from 100-300 watts; a couple quad and twin biax flos; and 4 or 5 rectangular open-faced theatrical lights which can lamp from 150 - 1k. But for most shoots, I grab the flos, maybe one or two fresnels, a couple HIDs, and lots of scrims, flags and bounce. It's really nice to not be blowing breakers and heating the place up. I never seem to have enough CTB for the hot lights; I use some 1/8 minus green sometimes on the daylight gear, but it lasts forever with the low heat. I often bounce the flos off unbleached muslin for some warmth.

Most modern digital cameras shoot a cleaner image when set to daylight (they gain-up the blue channel for tungsten) and everyone's fighting noise these days. The 500 watt work lights do kick out some lumens, but moving up to flos may make you very happy.
 
The hardest thing to do with home lighting is have enough light without tripping a breaker or fuse. 5600k flourescents will do that. (A 15amp livingroom circuit will handle ~1800 watts if nothing else is plugged in. That's only 600 watts per light tungsten and only 3 lights.)

The second hardest thing to do is not create harsh shadows in small ordinary rooms. Soft boxes are great for that. Fresnels and open face lights aren't.

For that reason I'd start with a cheap three light soft box set with a boom arm and 5600k CFL bulbs. You'll have a few bucks left for something else.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/2275W-Digit...984?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item43ac213bd0
 
Thanks for the input guys. I'll be starting off with a bunch of chinese LED's + try to make softboxes for the worklights.... i know, bit silly asking for advice this low budget, but still nice with some opinions & what's out there. Cheers
 
nice recipe for easy softboxes for those worklights... go out to home depot, get some of those 90 cent moving boxes, some of those 90-degree metal thingies they use to stabilize shelves, and some diffusion paper.

tape the diffusion paper inside the box, use the 90-degree thingies to make it stay box-like, and tape it to a stand... voila, softbox (with barndoors!)
 
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