Light Setup on a tight budget

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dsp_418

Active member
Hi there,

I'm thinking to buy one light to start playing around.
Something portable I could use either at home just to experiment and start getting a sense of it, but also something I could easily carry around.
I spot a Genaray LED-6800 256 LED which seems to be pretty cheap and has good reviews, and also this Fotodiox FDX-LED-312DS, a little pricer but still with good reviews.
Has someone used something like that already?
Hints?

Thanks in advance
 
Anything's better than nothing, but an LED bank won't really give you hard light. If you want to experiment, get a hard light. You can soften that. You can't really harden soft light.

Of course, those banks you linked to are fairly small and will be harder than other light banks, but you should consider a proper hard light.
 
Thank you David,

didn't think about hard lights at all!
Do you have anything particular in mind? On a budget, so if it's possible on the same range of those two I posted?
 
They are right about hard lights. I have a basic LED panel and some inkies and an Omni and they all suck, but the hard light is better. If you buy and watch David's DVD on lighting you'll get a clue. I haven't watched it in ages but I know a lot of people will use Home Depo work lights in a pinch. There are good Arris for sale Ive seen pretty cheap. I know a lot of new cams have low light capabilities but if you're trying to shape a scene light can have a dramatic effect. Ask David Jones.... At least your trying. That's a start.... And I'm the last person who should be commenting on lighting, believe me.... Some halos with any kind of diffusion, bounce, 3 pt, hair, then gels, it gets tricky but like he said: "Anything's better than nothing", spoken like a true master.
 
For smaller scenes, especially those with existing practicals, once you know what you are doing, you can do a lot with one 650w "Arri" fresnel, a dimmer, some scrims and assorted diffusion. And a bounceboard and stand. And some improvised flags. One thing I found on this last project is, big bounce sources rule.
 
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I would start with this book: http://www.amazon.com/Cinematography-Theory-Practice-Cinematographers-Directors/dp/0240812093
One basic idea that will really help you when you are getting started is to pay attention to the way light falls and to stop thinking about the lighting unit. Ie. Pay attention to the way light comes through windows into a otherwise unlit room. Pay attention to the way a single bedside lamp lights a unlit room. How do overhead lights in a parking garage look?
A single led looks like a single led ie. The effect doesn't really mirror any of the sources we see in life. We need to get away from focusing on which light to buy and start thinking about which light we want to recreate.
For instance: for soft morning daylight through a window its entirely possible to set a large shower curtain or bedsheet 4-5 feet back from a window and to put 3 500w halogen worklights through the diffusion from say 8 feet up. Starting with a dark room and balancing to 2800k and using blinds and light diffusion on the outside of the windows so they blow out or shooting sideways to the windows (just so we can't see that it is in fact night outside) and we've created a soft daylight feel with hard halogen sources.
 
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