Need DIY lighting suggestions

Well, what kind of work would you like to do? Filmmaking, interviews, corporate video? Big scale or small scale? Outdoors and/or indoors? This gives someone a better idea of what kind of lights to recommend
 
ill probly be doing indoor stuff, filmmaking mostly. i just need some ideas for making some cheap lighting so i dont have to spend so much.
 
Well if you're indoors you might consider trying out fluorescent lighting first. Won't tax the air conditioner so much. You can enter that relatively cheaply with several solutions at your local Home Depot or Lowes. The spiral N:Vision bulbs come in several wattages up to 40w and have two interesting color temperatures of 3500K and 5500K which work well for video work. A 30 watt spiral is the equivalent of a 120w bulb and 40w is the equivalent of a 160w bulb. You can also get 4 foot tube solutions too for wide blanketing of soft light or lighting backdrops like green screens.
 
Honestly I would just get a couple of home depot halogen lights and go to filmtools.com and buy the color balanced replacement bulb. FDF500W, or the frosted equivalent if you want softer light. They worked for me for a couple years of DIY lighting before I had to buy my lighting kits!
 
I did the bulb swap and also added a 5.8" baby pin welded to the yoke of the home depot light to fit the light into a gobo or clamp. I wanna try and find a female 5/8" adapter to use directly into a c-stand. Then you can visit cool lights for barn doors (i think they sell them).
 
Here's a list from the top of my mind of diy lighting equipment that can be useful:

- worklights (halogen 500w, preferrably on a stand). In my opinion you don't need a special color balanced bulb unless you shoot industrial videos were corporate colors have to be accurate
- 250W E27 halogen bulbs, can be used in most practicals and cheap clamp lights (beware of the heat, though - some lamps might catch fire when equipped with a 250w halogen bulb)
- black aluminum foil - not as good as real blackwrap, but a lot cheaper
- flexible, white insulation boards are good reflectors
- real reflectors aren't that expensive on ebay, can be folded and have different uses (silver, gold, white, black and diffusion)
- any kind of fluorescent fixture that can take one or two large fluorescent tubes (diy kinoflo)
- clothespins and different types of clamps are always useful, not only for diy
- china lanterns are a nice source of soft light (be careful with high powered bulbs though, paper lamps catch fire quickly...)
- gels are not that expensive - get white diffusion (Lee 216 or something like that), conversion (ctb and cto in all varieties, 1/4, 1/2 and full), different ND (neutral density to reduce light). These are the basic gels in my opinion, most people also have straw, amber, cosmetic rouge and a couple of colors. The list of gels is endless
 
DIY Lighting

DIY Lighting

Any Table Lamp will do... Take off the shade and use silver foil to construct a cone which will make the source directional. Depending on the quality of the cone (foil, paper, color) you can impair the quality of light according to the need or preference.
Light Extreme
 
http://www.flickr.com/photos/70576028@N00/

Here's a 400watt (equivalent) fluro box I built in about 25 minutes with some precut plywood I had on hand - doesn't show the baby plate I added to the back. - very down and dirty but needed something fast - and works as a good softbox with diffusion on the front. Total with bulbs - around $35

Lots of good suggestions throughout the forum. The trick is to use what works. There are pros to buying nice gear, mostly safety and control, however there are plenty of options out there for minimal cost if you're creative.

mike
 
Good job. Love the reflector shape. Good spacing on the sockets too. Too close and they aren't so efficient in output. That's one thing lacking in a lot of the solutions like this you can just buy: the bulbs are too close to each other.

One thing though to simplify and make less heavy. It's really not necessary to use the heavier porcelain edison sockets since you're using CFLs. The plastic kind rated for 60 to 100 watts are more than good enough if you know you won't be using anything larger than 100w.
 
thanks for the comment, Richard. Kudos as well to your much nicer lights :)

I actually used the plastic Edison ($1 each at Home Depot) sockets for the piece - the weight is only really in the plywood backing but it works very well on a c-stand. The spacing of the bulbs is because of the sockets. I've used the screw-in to edison plug adaptor with lights and a power strip, and agree that the closer the lights are together that you lose some of the output. This actually worked out much better than planned as I had my kit rented out and needed to run and gun an interview within 90 minutes.
 
How balanced (really) are the bulbs that say they are daylight at home depot? I might just make one of these. It would come in handy and I wouldn't have to worry about the highschoolers breaking my lights when I start teaching them!
 
Silver Clamp Lights

Silver Clamp Lights

All suggestions on this thread are good, I have a penchant for the 1' silver reflectors with standard mogul (household) fixture that home depot sells for 5 bucks.. I used to always have one of these lights clipped to a baby stand with a squeezer (hand dimmer), 216 gel clipped to it (leave a big bulge in the middle and sideways it-- rotate the lamp so that the crack where the bulge of gel is points to the ceiling so the heat goes straight up). For globes I used 50w spots . This is a close quarters accent light or eyelight, it's throw is less than 6' but it works great to add just that little bit of fill to shape a shadow on a face just right, or to add a glint in the eye . If the color is too yellow(especially when using the dimmer) a little 1/8 ctb will straighten it out.
 
syncman said:
Richard, I've noticed how often you try to help people on DVXuser. Even though you are in the business of selling lighting, you always do your best to help the DIY guy. All I can say is I wish I knew more people like you!
Keep up the good work, we need guys like you.
Click to expand...

Just part of my philosophy of something for everyone. The reason I help is simple. I think the whole reason most of these things are super expensive is the (for lack of a better term) "ignorance" of what's going on inside. All ballast oriented film and TV lighting has been treated like a black box mystery and that hasn't helped any thing but keeping the price high.

Demystification by education is just part of the process in bringing the price down. So we show how things are built, enable the DIY process whereever we can with parts and information, and we also have fully built pro level units for those that don't have the time or inclination to do it.

I started with fluorescents because thats a really accessible and "no-brainer" mature technology. When you need soft light, thats your "cool" and efficient alternative. When you need hard light, HMI and LEDs (in an early state though and not ready to take over in "fighting daylight" yet) are the choices for energy efficiency. Unfortunately, the process of rolling out HMI at a lower cost will be a longer term process because the technology is just not that mature but we will play a part in bringing it down over time and also helping to make it more mature.
 
I just finished watching a 3 DVD series called " Digital lighting magic" by Elitevideo.
I found it to be a great resource. It won't appeal to the old pros but for someone
who wants to spend practically nothing to get some great images, it is perfect.
Explains how to use worklights, clamp lights, handheld auto halogens, cheap gels
from Hobby Lobby, shower curtain diffusers, all the low cost tricks, including several I have not seen here. Also covers the basics of using an Arri, Mole, etc.
How to light an interview, Hollywood style lighting, 3 point, 4 point, etc etc. Elite sells it for over $100 on their site, but they run it on Ebay all the time for about $30.
 
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