Recommendations for beginner

I suspect you've gotten no answers because you've asked the unanswerable question ;-).

There are all sorts of ways to look at this, but the first thing anyone would need to know is what you shoot and what you want to light. Another key question is what you have to spend. Clearly, these linked kits are quite inexpensive. Like most inexpensive stuff, they're going to have more limitations, perhaps including durability, than more expensive stuff (gross generalization, there, but you're getting the advice you're paying for ;-) ).
 
I started out with an even more primitive Smith-Victor bundle back in the mid-'70s that really couldn't do much more than raise the light level in a room sufficiently to make a decent exposure, but cast pretty harsh shadows and didn't allow many options for control and creativity. But that was enough at first and still set my work apart from my peers at the time. It saw me through many a successful early project, and I added more and better lights (and cameras ... and microphones ... and all the rest) as my needs, experience and budgets grew. If you're starting out with nothing, then anything that will help you expose a picture better is a step up.

Of the two kits you listed, I think you could actually do more with the softboxes, and maybe put some extra money into converting them into fluorescent lights (a multi-socket adapter and some new bulbs is all that is required) -- they will be cooler and easier to handle. Don't overlook the types of "found" lighting you can get at a hardware store -- halogen worklights, the big aluminum clamp-on "scoop" reflectors, and china balls -- which could supplement these for relatively little money.

Good luck, and keep reading here for more ideas on stuff you can do in the future.

- Greg
 
StuOS said:
I suspect you've gotten no answers because you've asked the unanswerable question ;-).

There are all sorts of ways to look at this, but the first thing anyone would need to know is what you shoot and what you want to light. Another key question is what you have to spend. Clearly, these linked kits are quite inexpensive. Like most inexpensive stuff, they're going to have more limitations, perhaps including durability, than more expensive stuff (gross generalization, there, but you're getting the advice you're paying for ;-) ).
Click to expand...

Thank you for answering. I see what you mean & the mistake I've made.

What I wanted was some sort of lighting for filming a restaurant scene. Not too bright but enough to light the scene/restaurant.

Greg Smith said:
I started out with an even more primitive Smith-Victor bundle back in the mid-'70s that really couldn't do much more than raise the light level in a room sufficiently to make a decent exposure, but cast pretty harsh shadows and didn't allow many options for control and creativity. But that was enough at first and still set my work apart from my peers at the time. It saw me through many a successful early project, and I added more and better lights (and cameras ... and microphones ... and all the rest) as my needs, experience and budgets grew. If you're starting out with nothing, then anything that will help you expose a picture better is a step up.

Of the two kits you listed, I think you could actually do more with the softboxes, and maybe put some extra money into converting them into fluorescent lights (a multi-socket adapter and some new bulbs is all that is required) -- they will be cooler and easier to handle. Don't overlook the types of "found" lighting you can get at a hardware store -- halogen worklights, the big aluminum clamp-on "scoop" reflectors, and china balls -- which could supplement these for relatively little money.

Good luck, and keep reading here for more ideas on stuff you can do in the future.

- Greg
Click to expand...
Wow, thank you for the advice & the story, much appreciated.

Would a fluorescent lit softbox work well with what I need above? Lighting a restaurant scene?
 
_bli said:
Thank you for answering. I see what you mean & the mistake I've made.

What I wanted was some sort of lighting for filming a restaurant scene. Not too bright but enough to light the scene/restaurant.


Wow, thank you for the advice & the story, much appreciated.

Would a fluorescent lit softbox work well with what I need above? Lighting a restaurant scene?
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Softboxes are good at providing light with gentle shadows. Such light is romantic and forgiving of skin imperfections, hence particularly glamorous for women. Soft light dominates most movies with a lot of dialog.

Softboxes with say a 1000 W tungsten globe are good close in and out to ten or twelve feet or so, but their light is scattered and their falloff is very fast, meaning it loses intensity rapidly with distance from the source. Fluorescents have a lot to recommend them such as being cool and possibly daylight balanced but even with multiple bulbs they are likely to have less punch than a tungsten globe so they can't be used too far away or to fill a room when in a softbox.

Falloff happens much less slowly with a lamp such as a fresnel, which is not very soft, because it is comparatively small, but which has good throw and is useful at far greater distances from the talent than softboxes. (Obviously, I'm talking about the usual situation because you can put a fairly large HMI in a big softbox and get a lot of light out of it, but you're not going to be doing that.)

So a softbox with or without compact fluorescents, CFLs, would be great for lighting a scene at a table in a restaurant, a little more difficult if you want to follow the actors walking 15 feet to the table and hopeless for greater distances or to fill a largish room.

Still, softboxes give beautiful results within their limitations.

For your restaurant scene it depends on what you want it to look like. If it's night and you want deep shadows then use the softbox on actors but create little pools of light at each table with small tungsten lamps and put some interesting stabs on the wall here and there to give some visual texture. You can decide whether you need to raise the overall ambient light level and if so you can do that with China balls (18"-30" Chinese paper lanterns with bulbs inside,) or by bouncing a source off a wall, the ceiling or a reflector. (You don't need a softbox to light the actors either, you can use a China ball provided you use a skirt or flags to keep the light from going where you don't want it to.)

Depends on what you want it to look like.

I agree with all the previous observations.

One problem in responding is that there are countless ways of getting the same good look and there are lots of good-looking lighting schemes so the variability of advice can be considerable.
 
Slondon did a really nice job on his advice, so I don't have much to add. Maybe just a bit of embellishment here and there.

If it's a romantic evening you want, and you'll be shooting almost entirely in a fairly close up establishing shot and isolation shots over the shoulder from both sides, then softboxes should work well for you. You'd want to use tungsten light softboxes, probably, because even when white-balanced, tungsten light tends to be warmer than daylight-balanced fluorescents (though I should mention that you can get tungsten balanced fluorescents, as well, and that you can adjust your camera's white balance to warm daylight flos). In this night, romantic shots, many restaurants will already have lighting that looks good to the camera. If you're shooting in an existing restaurant, you might want to go in with a camera on a typical evening and just take some quick shots to see where the pools of light may be so that you can set up your shot, later.

On the other hand, if your restaurant scene is in a busy, luncheon restaurant (maybe with Doc Oc about to throw a car through the window), you might want to seat your actors close to a window and just use some fill light or some reflected light from a bounce board or reflector (you can make a decent reflector by crumpling aluminum and taping it to a large piece of cardboard). In that case, you'd probably want flo softboxes that are daylight balanced.

Moving right along, suppose the restaurant is a greasy spoon, or a counter in a diner, and you want a more gritty look. You might actually like the greenish tint of old fluorescents, and you might want shadows under the eyes for atmosphere. Maybe that lighting could be very near just existing light that makes everyone look a little sickly. Or maybe the scene is in daylight, and it's a scene in which one character is imparting harsh realities to another. Maybe you want some strong shadows and harsh light.

Like Greg, I also started out with cheap lights, though my first set cost around $700 and included four fluorescent softboxes of four flos each, so I had a significant amount of light, even though it had very little throw. Over time, those lights have frayed, broken, bent, etc., but I don't regret buying them. They helped me make money, which has helped me buy better and more durable lights. I even dug one up and used it, recently, on a green screen, and it did a beautiful job.

Let me throw out some other cheap lighting options that may or may not be included, above (don't have time to go back and read it all). Shop lights from Home Depot or equivalent throw out a lot of raw, tungsten light, and use can bounce that light or aim it through an old bedsheet to reduce its harshness. You can also buy parabolic reflectors with spring clamps on the end and use regular light bulbs in them for either a broad wash on a background or, if you want something more controlled, you can make a snoot or barndoor-type controls from blackwrap or any other heat resistant, opaque material. I just used flashlights on set with a piece of diffusion material between the glass lens and the bulb, and it worked fine for what I was doing. '

Good luck.
 
Thank you guys so much for the extraordinarily helpful advice.

This would be the restaurant. Not decorated yet, just the basics. It's pretty bright already, wished there was a dimmer but there unfortunately isn't. Would I really need a light setup for this? It seems already well lit albeit pretty boring lighting in my opinion. Any opinions on what kind of lighting would help here to make it more... for lack of a better word, "un-boring". The scene would just be a straightforward comedy scene, focused mainly on two, if not one person. nothing romantic or dramatic.


2ziyq6p.jpg

 
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What I see in that shot is almost all of the light coming from fixtures that are directly over the tables. Not unusual or bad, per se; that's the way many commercial spaces are lit. But lighting like that tends to cast deep shadows in people's eye sockets, and doesn't make for very flattering portraits. Even if the overall light level is sufficient for photography, you're still going to need some fill light from an angle just slightly above the talent's heads to fill in those unattractive facial shadows cast by these lights. A softbox -- ideally, color balanced to match the existing lights and dimmed or scrimmed to be a little below their overall intensity -- will work well for that.

Getting a little fancier, you might want to add some backlight on the actors' hair and shoulders to help separate them from that kind of uninteresting background. Harder light sources are often used for this, and you could play around with colored gels if you wish, to make it look warmer or cooler.

Finally, since the setting is a little plain, you might want to experiment with projecting some slashes or splashes of light on the background itself behind your talent. Here, too, you can consider adding some color gels.

Personally, I'd get some pictures, curtains, knick-nacks, etc. to hang on those walls -- or something! The environment is pretty sparse as it is and (even if it's not) it doesn't look like a real, live, lived-in space. People will think it's a set you built in a studio, or a converted factory space or something, not a real live location. Filling it with more people will help as well, although that may not be appropriate to your story or budget.

- Greg
 
Greg Smith said:
What I see in that shot is almost all of the light coming from fixtures that are directly over the tables. Not unusual or bad, per se; that's the way many commercial spaces are lit. But lighting like that tends to cast deep shadows in people's eye sockets, and doesn't make for very flattering portraits. Even if the overall light level is sufficient for photography, you're still going to need some fill light from an angle just slightly above the talent's heads to fill in those unattractive facial shadows cast by these lights. A softbox -- ideally, color balanced to match the existing lights and dimmed or scrimmed to be a little below their overall intensity -- will work well for that.

Getting a little fancier, you might want to add some backlight on the actors' hair and shoulders to help separate them from that kind of uninteresting background. Harder light sources are often used for this, and you could play around with colored gels if you wish, to make it look warmer or cooler.

Finally, since the setting is a little plain, you might want to experiment with projecting some slashes or splashes of light on the background itself behind your talent. Here, too, you can consider adding some color gels.

Personally, I'd get some pictures, curtains, knick-nacks, etc. to hang on those walls -- or something! The environment is pretty sparse as it is and (even if it's not) it doesn't look like a real, live, lived-in space. People will think it's a set you built in a studio, or a converted factory space or something, not a real live location. Filling it with more people will help as well, although that may not be appropriate to your story or budget.

- Greg
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We are absolutely adding more things to the environment, it was the first day of setting up today so we got as far as we could today.

So say that the talent will be in that first table on the left with the blue chair. A softbox would approximately be located on the other side of the divider facing towards the talent. Is that about right?
 
_bli...Lots(!) of Great advise in your thread here! Not certain what camera you're using, but White balance will change things, right? Also aperture, ISO, or even an ND filter can lower those light for you! The lighting kits you mention have been dealt the death knell. As someone else mentioned there's more than one way to light this. How do you want it to look? What camera are you using? What Post programs are you using? Often times I might shoot this, bright and light then in post ( AE) give it a spot and ambient light and create my own mood. so how about some more answers from you?
 
Hey tom_wise

I am using a GH2, pretty good versatility in terms of settings in my opinion. I only want it lit correctly. How any comedy scene in a restaurant would be if there is such a genre of "comedy lighting" in the world. (as you can tell, my amateurish vocabulary explaining my needs exposes what an amateur I am in lighting).

I use FCP for most of the editing & I'll use AE rarely for some effects like Time Warp.
 
_bli said:
Hey tom_wise

I am using a GH2, pretty good versatility in terms of settings in my opinion. I only want it lit correctly. How any comedy scene in a restaurant would be if there is such a genre of "comedy lighting" in the world.
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Lit Correctly? That to me means proper exposure, and I always begin by ensuring that! As far as lighting on that particular scene I'd venture there's as many ways to light it as there are folks in this forum. SO what you really have to do is ensure proper exposure first and then creative lighting second. That said, If I'm Shooting this restaurant, and having a intimate scene of one or two folks engrossed in a comedic scene, then I might just use the lighting at hand, adjust WB to give me proper color, or I might even allow the color of the lights to color the scene. For instance in the below video,opening scene was a Doctors office, and I thought the lighting was perfect for what we were shooting, so, no adjunct light. People are colored by ambient lighting. We/Movies, etc often change that lighting to give a proper skin tone. but just as many times allowing lighting to color a scene keeps you in the scene too.


 
tom_wise said:
Lit Correctly? That to me means proper exposure, and I always begin by ensuring that! As far as lighting on that particular scene I'd venture there's as many ways to light it as there are folks in this forum. SO what you really have to do is ensure proper exposure first and then creative lighting second. That said, If I'm Shooting this restaurant, and having a intimate scene of one or two folks engrossed in a comedic scene, then I might just use the lighting at hand, adjust WB to give me proper color, or I might even allow the color of the lights to color the scene. For instance in the below video,opening scene was a Doctors office, and I thought the lighting was perfect for what we were shooting, so, no adjunct light. People are colored by ambient lighting. We/Movies, etc often change that lighting to give a proper skin tone. but just as many times allowing lighting to color a scene keeps you in the scene too.
Click to expand...

Seems like I should give ambient lighting a chance. I liked the doctor scene lighting, it worked well for the particular scene.

As for adjusting WB, I know how to do it but it only takes me so far as to what effect I'm trying to accomplish. Creative lighting like you said is what I'm trying to do. I think what I'm roughly going for is lighting like this:

2rcaohx.png
For closeups

wb8bo3.png
For semi-wide shot
 
_bli said:
We are absolutely adding more things to the environment, it was the first day of setting up today so we got as far as we could today.

So say that the talent will be in that first table on the left with the blue chair. A softbox would approximately be located on the other side of the divider facing towards the talent. Is that about right?
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Where's the camera?

One useful technique is to use a setup called back cross keys. Stay with me here. I don't have a diagram so I'll have to give you the thousand words.

Imagine your characters are seated opposite each other at the table. The camera is perpendicular to their line and frames them both. To the left of the person on camera left, and on the far side of them from the camera, you place a softbox that is aimed at the character on the right. It is the person on the right's key. You position the softbox so it spills some light on the hair and shoulders of the person on the left. It is the person on the left's hair and rim light. You repeat this with a softbox on the right.

This setup looks great for two-ers and for when you move the camera a little left for closeups of the actor on the right and when you move it to the right for CUs of the actor on the left. You can even shoot them dirty and it looks good. And, it has the great virtue that you don't have to change the lighting setup when the camera moves in.

The barrier will help you hide the stands so you don't have to boom anything out.

Clear?
 
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slondon said:
Where's the camera?

One useful technique is to use a setup called back cross keys. Stay with me here. I don't have a diagram so I'll have to give you the thousand words.

Imagine your characters are seated opposite each other at the table. The camera is perpendicular to their line and frames them both. To the left of the person on camera left, and on the far side of them from the camera, you place a softbox that is aimed at the character on the right. It is the person on the right's key. You position the softbox so it spills some light on the hair and shoulders of the person on the left. It is the person on the left's hair and rim light. You repeat this with a softbox on the right.

This setup looks great for two-ers and for when you move the camera a little left for closeups of the actor on the right and when you move it to the right for CUs of the actor on the left. You can even shoot them dirty and it looks good. And, it has the great virtue that you don't have to change the lighting setup when the camera moves in.

The barrier will help you hide the stands so you don't have to boom anything out.

Clear?
Click to expand...

So something like this? Apologies for the bad diagram.

68c7kh.jpg
 
Thanks for taking a stab at a diagram but I should have been more clear. The softbox on the left is correct. The softbox on the right, which is the key light for the person on the left and the back light for the person on the right, is on the same side of the divider as the first soft box, not on the opposite side as drawn.

Sketch it again, please.
 
slondon said:
Thanks for taking a stab at a diagram but I should have been more clear. The softbox on the left is correct. The softbox on the right, which is the key light for the person on the left and the back light for the person on the right, is on the same side of the divider as the first soft box, not on the opposite side as drawn.

Sketch it again, please.
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Gotcha, so like this?
j16dly.jpg



I took a stab at the two scenes I posted above, does this one look about right in terms of placement?
333vkav.jpg


I'm not sure how the lighting is on the second scene is though with the three subjects. One to the camera right & one right above the camera centered?
 
Don't laugh, I'm mainly an audio guy so this is probably a stupid question.
Do you ever shoot the interior version of "day for night" in a situation like that? :huh:
 
Yes.

Yes, that looks about right. You're doing the right thing, looking at the shadows and the light and deciding where the sources must be and how soft are they. Notice that the key on the close-up is a little higher than drawn to produce that nose shadow.

Notice in the medium shot the actors' eyes are a little dark and there is no sparkle of reflected light. A small eye light near the camera would help.
 
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