Wattage lights for the HVX 200

A

atholtonproductions

Member
I am about to buy my lighting kit to use with my HVX 200. But, I was wondering what wattages I should get. I seem to remember that the DVX was very good with lower wattages so I figured I should ask. My choices are 600/300w and 1200/650w lights. Please someone shed some light on this for me. Ohh god i didn't realize what a horrible pun that was.
 
I've found that the HVX seems to run roughly 1 stop to 1.5 stops slower than the DVX.
(note - i didn't test anything, that's just my rough estimate off my experience)

I use mainly 650watts for my shooting, but it all depends on what you're doing.
IN GENERAL - I think you'll be alright with a 600/300 combo, but again, all depends on the particulars of what and where you're shooting.
 
Well I want to use the lights for many things interviews with softboxes, interior dramatic stuff, interior horror stuff, evenly lit comedys. So, with that wide range should i get myself the option of more light?
 
Personally, I'd go with more light. I just spent the last week, and actually all of this morning shooting with a kit of 3 500w Omni's and a couple of Totas. In close they are OK but in larger rooms the falloff is noticeable. I rode between 3.4 and 4.8 for my f-stop quite often. Alot of time I couldn't throw diffuser on it because it would have been too dark. That being said, I'm very happy with my footage and it came out great.

I always go with higher wattage lights, because you can always lower the amount of light (scrims, ND gels, diffusers) but you can't always increase it. Just my $.02

Also, my experience with softboxes says you need at least 750 to keep a strong light emission from those.
 
What lighting kit are you looking at? I have an Arri Kit that includes a 1K open Face, 2 650s, and a 300. That's good for corporate work fairly close in. Then I got a handful of "popper" lights around 200w(minimoles), a couple of 1k floods(totas), and 2 2k spotlights(???). I keep building around my basic Arri kit for location work. I also made some homemade KinoFlo's out of some Coralife aquarium fixtures. It's a real hodgepodge mix of stuff, but it works great. Also don't forget grip stuff to control the light. Homemade cukaloris, and flags are great. Over the years I have collected and made quite a bit of stuff. I'm now making L.E.D. litepanels on the cheap. If you ever use those hardware halogen lights to supplement, use 1/3 CTB or 1/4 CTB gels to match to tungsten. You can never have too many or much light.
 
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