Newbie Lighter here! Help me find what to buy!

darst

darst

Active member
Hi everyone, I have been reading this site for quite a while and have learned a lot... However, my lighting skills are lacking, I would like to buy some starter lights from Home Depot just to learn with and do basic setups. I would like to spend no more than $400. I am reading some books on lighting and would just like some decent lights that look decent that I can learn with. We don't really have a place to rent close to where I am I want to mess with. I would like to make a complete "kit" the best I can from Home Depot, all help is very, VERY appreciated!! Thanks

Matt

P.S. Sorry for being a Newbie :cheesy:
 
Forget Home Depot. Get on ebay and look for some deals on some old fresnels. There are deals out there on old lights for under $50, and the cool thing about old fresnels is that the light quality is comperable to the new $500 stuff, it's just weight and balance that makes them inexpensive. I'd take my $400 budget and try and get 2 fresnels, 2 stands, a
c-stand & arm, a sandbag or two, and some mini par track lights form Stage-n-studio.com to use as backlights and background lights. This way you're learning with the real tools, and you'll have lighs that you can use for a long time. If you get worklights from home depot, you'll be throwing them away later when you get some real stuff.
 
yea darst, filmmaker58 has a very good point. Save up and spend your time and money investing into some quality lighting... You own a dvx right? Thats pretty top-notch in the dv world... why not take a couple steps up in lighting equipment?
 
I have several "pro" lights in my kit but find myself also using worklights and flood lamps on everything I've shot.

Pro lights are pro for a reason, get them, but $30 for those 250/500/750/1000 switchable watts with a stand is hard to beat and always useful :)
 
I agree with cheese....work lights can be very usefull if you use them right and they can help you learn alot!
 
I agree with the others, if you have $400 to spend forget about work lights. They are great for flooding a large area with light but are very uncontrollable. Great lighting is as much about shadow as it is about light. Unless you’re lighting a whole set, you don’t need a lot of light. Less is definitely more with lighting.

I also agree with filmmaker58 that getting used pro equipment is the best use of your money but if you don’t know anything about lighting or what to buy, you can also waste $400 very quickly. (especially on eBay where you don’t know what you’re getting) I’d say a pro can find great deals on eBay but a beginner probably couldn’t.

For $400 you might want to get a complete Britek light kit from rostronics.com. I’m just starting in lighting like yourself and I purchased this 1400 Watt Dual Power 3 light Kit for $465 and it has been great for me. Depending on what you need to light, having a softbox is indispensable and you would easily spend the whole $400 on just a Chimera or Rifa. Obviously the Briteks are not as good as Arri’s but they are still a lot of light for the money and worth considering. Lot’s of people here use them and you’ll get a 5% discount if you use "DVXuser" as a coupon code when you checkout.

~jr
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top