How much (wattage) is too much?

K

Kugar13

Well-known member
How much wattage (without controls, dimmers, diffusors, and such) is too much for a typical middle class living room? I have two 1000w lights and they appear to be too powerful for most living rooms. I have a 650w light, but it's spread is very narrow. What wattage would you typically use?

I carry a variety of bulbs with me to replace existing lights in a home I'm shooting in. What bulbs do you like to use, and at what wattage?

Thanks!
 
When your talent starts passing out from the heat--that's when you've got too much light!

Bus as far as how much actual light you need, it all boils down to the look you're trying to achieve. For example, here's a test I did yesterday:

1227478043.jpg

(excuse the mess)

The setup consisted of an open face 1k, 4 feet away from the sliding glass door, right off the left side of frame, through the window blinds. On the back, a 650 open face bouncing off the back left wall, and another 650 at the top of the stairs (also lighting the top of the couch.

I shot it on my dvx, using normal matrix at about a 4.0, with the first nd filter engaged. So it certainly was a good amount of light, but when you're going for specific contrast ratios, things get more complicated.
 
Like Evil said, it all comes down to what you need. Probably the lowest amount of light I have ever used was a single 300watt bare bulb in an empty garage. Other interior scenes I have shot requires all 12kwatts of tungsten I had because I had to shoot looking toward a large window on a 3 story tall building and couldn't hang a net or ND on the window.

On an average interior scene I tend to use a mighty and and a pair of babies
 
Too powerful? What are you shooting on?

I usually need at least a 2k if not more to light a living room with an hvx/letus. That's shot through some sort of diffusion though, so that usually knocks it down a bit. It's going to come down to what camera you're using though, different cameras are more or less sensitive to light.
 
No hard and fast rules. The idea is to paint with light, you use small pools and streaks of light, not just blast the whole room with an open faced light.

I have lit a 20'x 30' room with as many as twenty to thirty lights including tungsten, fluorescent and LED, all in the same shot. Personally for my style, I generally don't like big lights, I like to use a LOT of little, small wattage lights tucked all over the place. Just depends on the look and mood you are trying to evoke. It's all about controlling the light and getting it to do what you want to. Takes skills, time, effort and you need the right grip gear to control the light.

Dan
 
Kugar13 said:
How much wattage (without controls, dimmers, diffusors, and such) is too much for a typical middle class living room? I have two 1000w lights and they appear to be too powerful for most living rooms. I have a 650w light, but it's spread is very narrow. What wattage would you typically use?

I carry a variety of bulbs with me to replace existing lights in a home I'm shooting in. What bulbs do you like to use, and at what wattage?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Have you tried bouncing light of walls, ceiling, reflectors, bounce boards, or an umbrella?

Anyway, since there are numerous funcional types of lighting, we require a wide assortment of lights and wattage. 300 watts is way too much for a catch light and 1,000 watts may be insufficient with a gel that's 10 feet from the subject.

Regards, Michael
 
puredrifting said:
No hard and fast rules. The idea is to paint with light, you use small pools and streaks of light, not just blast the whole room with an open faced light.

I have lit a 20'x 30' room with as many as twenty to thirty lights including tungsten, fluorescent and LED, all in the same shot. Personally for my style, I generally don't like big lights, I like to use a LOT of little, small wattage lights tucked all over the place. Just depends on the look and mood you are trying to evoke. It's all about controlling the light and getting it to do what you want to. Takes skills, time, effort and you need the right grip gear to control the light.

Dan
Click to expand...

This just goes to show you that there are a million different ways to do things. While he may be a fan of using lots of small low wattage units, I'm much more of a fan of using 1 or 2 large instruments and then controlling the light with cutters and bounce boards. Is any one way better? Not necessarily, but it just comes down to preference in the end. Whatever works for you is all that matters.
 
dumb

dumb

ever had one of those moments where you knew you were asking a dumb question, but you couldn't help youself? yeah, i had one of those moments when i created this post. lol.

in short i was curious how many answers i'd get and i am impressed with the variety of ideas/answers from you guys.

i love lighting, but sadly i'm an amature at it. i've tried to master the craft with no luck over the last two years. i love the equipment and love doing research on it, yet i can't seem to 'get it'. i truly is an art.

i'm usually shooting on a tight schedule, so i have to resort to time saving techniques. including bouncing 1-2 1000watt lights off ceilings/walls and such. i love replacing existing light sockets (ceiling mounted) with high watt bulbs, but usually this doesn't do the trick.

i'm shooting on a dvx100a.

thanks for the input guys!
 
I shot an interview today with one 50W key (on-camera) with 216 diffusion and one 40W tungsten practical as a rim light. Background was lit by a window with diffuse daylight which also gave another rim and hairlight. It looked really nice and all I had with me was my 50W with 216 diffusion.

Then there's this kitchen studio setup that I lit for the regional tv station. The set itself is the size of a smaller kitchen, only open to the front facing the studio (the set and its size was out of my control).
It is now lit with 8,250 Watt tungsten and 300 Watt fluorescent alltogether (3 double studio soft boxes with 2x1kW each, one 300W 6-piece fluorescent softlight, two 650W open face with large diffusion, one 1K open face with 1/4 diffusion).
All lights are on dimmers, but I think only the back/hairlight (1K open face) is actually dimmed down. All other fixtures are at 100%
I needed soft light everywhere, so the two actors (cook and presenter) can move freely and everything is lit evenly, including the stove and the ingredients on the table.
The f-stop is now about 5.6 on the JVC GY-HD251 studio cameras - that's all right for the purpose. There wouldn't be much of a shallow DOF with the 1/3" cameras anyways, and I really didn't want shallow dof for a cooking show in a small kitchen setup.

So, how much light do you need? 50W + practical and a window?
Or 8,550 Watt? It really depends. Very much.
 
Kugar13 said:
ever had one of those moments where you knew you were asking a dumb question, but you couldn't help youself? yeah, i had one of those moments when i created this post. lol.
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i'm usually shooting on a tight schedule, so i have to resort to time saving techniques. including bouncing 1-2 1000watt lights off ceilings/walls and such. i love replacing existing light sockets (ceiling mounted) with high watt bulbs, but usually this doesn't do the trick.


thanks for the input guys!
Click to expand...

Good for you, bouncing 1K's for a quickie. I had a similar situation at my second shooting location a few days ago - additionally the shoot was up 40+ stairs and I had less than two hours for a 4 shot scene. So no softboxes, umbrellas or gels - just improvise and do it.

Michael
 
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