Talking head Interview kit reccomendations

[djkarn105]

So I'm doing enough of these medium budget corporate things that I think it's worth it for me to invest in owning a lighting kit. Because these shoots are usually a 3 person crew max, and usually less, portability and ease of set up are the prime concern so I'm leaning away from Kinos. My priorites are ordered something like this

1. Light output (obviously, I need enough punch
2. The whole kit fits into one bag, preferably including stands.
3. Durabilty ( this kit is made to travel )
4. Price

Trying to keep the total spend under 2000 so that kind of rules out probaly the best option of litepanel 1x1's.
With those in mind, the two option I'm currently looking at are a Lowel kit based around a Rifa and some sort of LED setup.

Pros of Lowel
- Cheaper
- smaller physical size
- Tungsten is a known factor
- reliably dimmable

Cons of Lowel
- Color temp may be an issue in a lot of office environments.
- Heat
- Fragility of tungsten bulbs

Pros of LED
- Theoretically more durable
- Daylight balanced ( most of the time there is a window in the scene )
- battery powered.

Cons
- Color flicker and temp issues when dimming.
- cost

So, anyone that does this kind of stuff have any advice?

 

[Patryk_Rebisz]

You can pack 6 lights into a medium rolling Arri case. I bring it on EVERY job when i travel because there was not even ONE job that didn't use something from the case. You should see the number of times my producers said to simply go with LitePanles.....

 

[starcentral]

There's some pretty good LED lights down a notch from litepanels and as long as you don't mix them with too many other lights sources you don't have to worry about shifts in color etc,

If you do plan on mixing your lights with existing light sources such as daylight exterior or overhead flo's than you should fact that into your equation. You did mention there would mostly be windows in your shot so I would probably opt for some powerful daylight balanced lights, not tungsten ones or you will have to put large sheets of CTB on your softbox, or cover your windows with CTO. If you're looking for fast setups I see that as a slow down. You can get 85w CFL's and put 4 of them in a softbox for some pretty powerful daylight balanced lighting but CFL's are generally not dimmable.

So if it were me, I would probably lean towards the Kino flos or look at the Alzo Digital flow which are great. In either case you can get 3200k or 5600k bulbs and depending on the fixture they are dimmable. The Alzo's are under $400 for a 4-bank 2 foot light fixture and they are dimmable. They also have a 2-bank 2 foot light fixture as well.

Flo's are not exactly lightweight however nor can really fit into a small bag like a tungsten based softbox, but its all about the trade-offs here and which ones are most important to you.

Don't forget to get at least one or two hard light tungstens anyway which can be used as a strong backlight on your subject if you want, even if tungsten in color, or you can gel it easily with CTB.

Decisions decisions !!!

 

[djkarn105]

You can pack 6 lights into a medium rolling Arri case. I bring it on EVERY job when i travel because there was not even ONE job that didn't use something from the case. You should see the number of times my producers said to simply go with LitePanles.....

Which lights? You mean an arri kit? Do you find that you lose too much light balancing the tungsten kit to daylight?

 

[Patryk_Rebisz]

Which lights? You mean an arri kit? Do you find that you lose too much light balancing the tungsten kit to daylight?

Yeah, i meant 6 lowel lights into arri case. With over 3000w of electricity you have plenty of punch even if having to gell - which i usually don't do. Simply let daylight go blue and place the subject in such position where i don't get the bluish spill on my subject.