Living in Montenegro with limited choices - how would you choose lights?

B

bhuether

Member
Hi,

I am living in Montenegro and having been to many home goods stores, I can say that the choices are quite limited. No high CRI LED bulbs. Just 100W equivalent (at the most), 6000K plus. I am starting to think about buying LED strips and making an LED panel light. But before I go crazy, I am curious what you would do. I am not a video/lighting person. I am a guitarist who is making some video lessons, all on my own, without help of knowledgeable people unfortunately.

I don't really have the luxury of going on amazon.com or bhphotovideo to buy what I truly need, because shipping costs would be insane. So I am trying to figure out how to build a DIY kit in a country with severe limitations in product choices.

BTW - Lonely Planet voted a town in Montenegro (Kotor) as #1 destination for 2016. Kotor is 10 minutes from my house, so if one of you is looking to vacation here, maybe you can set up some lighting for me, and I will provide food, drinks, and lodging!

Thanks!

Brian
 
bhuether said:
Hi,
I don't really have the luxury of going on amazon.com or bhphotovideo to buy what I truly need, because shipping costs would be insane.
Brian
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This seems to be a common comment from some posters in Europe. Is this because of extra local taxes?
 
If you have nice location, you can try using natural light and bounce it from the side..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5ZanxkGrdM

If there is now wind, you can use some outdoor location and do the same..use sun at golden hour and bounce it..maybe..

Or you can do something like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWtTLuGQxwk


If I were you, and have limited budget for start, I would not complicate.. Forget about CRI.. Any lightning is better than no Lightning..
Just not make your face flat..leave some shadows on the face to get a 3D effect..

And dont forget on back light.. It can be cheap LED something.. there CRI is not important that much..

Hope I was useful, at all.. Greetings to Kotor
 
If your camera can do a manual white balance, it opens up many options, since WB adjusts color temp (orange-blue) and tint (green-magenta).

It won't fix really bad spikes of color, but most consumer daylight stuff is better now than a few years ago. For instance, here in the US, many offices with ceiling flo tubes are around 3700k with a green spike - I see that again and again so it must be somewhat of a standard. I've gotten where I can use gels to match my lights to the office lighting to get even color across a large room and still have control for faces and so on.
 
I'd like to reiterate some of the previous advice: Montenegro is a beautiful country, and you should take advantage of that!

Of course, you can't always shoot on location. One of the things that people overlook is tungsten lighting. Yes, it creates heat, but if you're at home using your house power, the power consumption may not be too much of a concern. This sort of light is available worldwide:

flood.jpg

They are very cheap, have extremely good colour rendering, and if you bounce it off a piece of something white (such as polystyrene insulating foam board) nobody will be able to tell the difference.

Naturally, if you do use something like foam board, or anything that may melt or catch fire, be careful of the heat.

P
 
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