Recommendations for building hireable lighting kit

[Tim Sewell]

Hi

I'm looking to buy a light a month for the rest of this year to build a lighting package to hire out to small independent film makers. My budget is up to £300 each and I want to go for a mixture of mainly tungsten - probably fresnel, a couple of small HMIs and a couple of daylight LED panels.

Could the list help me with a few suggestions as to the brands I should be looking at? I'm more than happy to buy second hand.

Thanks all!

 

[Grug]

I'd be looking at something like this (fixture-wise):

1x 2.5kw HMI
1x 1.2kw HMI
2x 2000w Blondes
2x 650w Fresnels
2x 150w Dedolights
2x Bi-Colour Soft lights (Kinos or GOOD LEDs)

That'll give you a genuinely useful small lighting kit that can cover a lot of bases.

Buy good brands, and buy used if you need to - the last thing you want for rental purposes are cheap clones, they just aren't up to the rough lifestyle rental gear faces.

 

[David W. Jones]

The first thing you should do if you are planning a rental kit is... Talk to the actual clients who would be renting your lights to find out their needs. It would be fruitless to purchase lights based off of internet forum interjection, if said lights never earned any income. I could make lighting suggestions all day, but without knowing your local market I might suggest as many misses as hits. Something else to think about would be your budget breakdown. While it is plausible to purchase used Tungsten lights for £300, it would get pretty tough to find used HMI lights at anywhere near that price. Also in your budget breakdown, you might think about adding what I consider lighting and grip essentials to go along with your lights. Quality light stand, extension cord, sand bag, C-Stand, rag & flag set, as well as some form of case to hold and transport your rental fleet of lights.

All the best!

Dave