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Affordable light set?

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gregbankley

I am looking into investing in a light set for my future film shoots. I haven't used many lights in the past,( a couple times with LED lights), but I think its necessary for the stuff I am trying to shoot. I will be shooting a TV show this spring and also a short film coming up. I enjoy low light lenses but I figure lights will be a help as well.

What are my options as far as budget? Can I keep it under $500?
 
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Auto white balance is the only AUTO part that I use. I don't know how to white balance, can someone point me to a good read or video on the subject. Or if you could explain yourself. Thanks.
 
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Most cameras have white-balance presets (sunny, cloudy, tungsten [eg. incandescent indoor light bulb], florescent, etc...).

Many also let you point the camera at something grey or white and then hit a button that tells the camera "That's white, you silly camera!" and now you're balanced for whatever light source you're shooting in. This gives you good color consistency as auto white balance will keep adjusting itself -- if you're not shooting what the camera maker's considered a "standard" shot, the you'll get flat, ugly colors.
 
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You set your camera to manual white balance, you get something like a big white foam board and put it into the center of your scene with the lighting conditions that your actors are going to be in. Then you fill the frame of your camera with the white board and press the set white balance.

The important part is that whatever is white that you are using, make sure it is under the lighting conditions that you are going to be shooting for that shot. Generally you change white balance whenever you change a lighting setup.
 
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If you can get it, an 18% grey card can serve a good double duty, as it as better at getting a white balance from (as long as it's a proper photographic 18% card from the likes of Kodak or someone) and then you can also use it to set/verify exposure very easily.
Also, a pure white card, if the light is too bright, will be too hot to be accurately measured by the camera. The camera should refuse to calibrate under those conditions, and you'll need to stop it down enough to bring the white back into a reasonable exposure. The grey card doesn't suffer from this issue nearly as much, as it's only reflecting 18% of the light that hits it, but it's still reflecting all components equally, allow a perfect white balance reference.

CraigL
 
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That particular kit is only really suitable for up-in-your face closeups. No throw power at all.

Here's a cheap & basic three-point lighting kit: linkage

The bulbs that come with it are all daylight-ish colour, but you can spring a few bucks down at Home Depot and get replacement bulbs in different kelvins to swap out when you need/want to. You should have an assortment of bulbs anyway, for general matching, in your indie lighting kit.

The build quality of the lightstands ain't that great, but the softboxes aren't that heavy either - so just take care of them and they'll last. You'll want to keep a tube of epoxy on hand, for when the plastic knobs start to slip a bit. No big deal.

Those lights will last you a while, for a general starter set.

You'll definitely want sandbags to keep these lights in place. With softboxes on, these stands are quite top-heavy. They are also very lightweight, so a small bump can send them toppling. You can get empty sandbags here (empty sandbags) and buy a huge bag of pea-gravel down at Home Depot for about $5 to fill the bags with. (Don't use sand - that will go all over the place. Rinsed pea-gravel's much better choice) You can prolly find these sandbags cheaper on Ebay, btw.

The above is well below your max budget of $500. Maybe spend some bux on other lighting tools, such as bounceboards (or a 2' x 4' white foam board from HD for $5) or diffusion?

I enjoy low light lenses
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What in particular is it about "low light" lenses that you like? I hope it's not that you think you can get away without lighting properly. :hmm:
 
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Dang Zensteve, you beat me...

gebo said:
That's cheap! Is it any good?
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gregbankley said:
Interesting that is real cheap. So do you not use auto white balance?


Any other words on it?
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gregbankley said:
Also, would this be good for video or just photography? I'm willing to spend more if there is something to better put my money towards.
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escher said:
From what I've been reading, they are apparently a bit underpowered -- you might not get the quantity of light you'd expect.
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So far they work great for both video and photo work. They are lower in the power range so no wide angle night scenes expecting to light up a football field (lol), but for DSLR video they are plenty to start with and can be supplemented by getting some silver lined umbrella's to focus the light, if wanted, or stronger bulbs if available. I didn't have huge expectations for this price point but they blew me away. There are definitely better lights available, but I've learned the basics with these and still learning. Setting the white balance will help a lot if you need to add different brand lights or use multiple sources for your projects. Auto will tend to make the pictures "temperature" change as you move around.
You could go for these: http://www.amazon.com/Britek-1950H-...360186028&sr=1-1&keywords=britek+lighting+kit
But they are just better than work lights (http://www.amazon.com/Designers-Edg...TF8&qid=1360186093&sr=8-1&keywords=worklights)
And way more expensive.
The fluorescent lights put off way less heat than halogens, but produce less light as well, I think the trade is worth the savings so far.
I would check out these: http://www.amazon.com/Fancierstudio...qid=1360186295&sr=8-14&keywords=film+lighting
Or these: http://www.amazon.com/Focusable-lig...qid=1360186359&sr=8-17&keywords=film+lighting
According to your budget...
:)
 
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Those can go on stands with simple adapters... mine does (only a 48 led). They seem to get reasonable reviews. Make sure of a warranty or at least an excellent E-Bay shop, just in case.
 
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gregbankley said:
As far as LED lights, What can you recommend?

I have been looking at these

http://www.ebay.com/itm/4X-96-LED-V...509?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item45f9fb7c15

I am deciding between something like those or something that I would have on a stand. What do you think?
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Between my partner & myself, we have about 6 of these LED lights. These particular ones fit to a camera's shoe mount, but there are very similar models that pop right onto a simple light-stand instead.

The light from these are very harsh, and you'll almost certainly be wanting to use one of the filters included in the box. Fwiw, the filters are a bit meh anyway, and you'd be better off using actual gels for color-correction or diffusion - but at least it comes with something. The actual throw distance is very short.

They are really good for quickly setting up on off-camera hairlight or on-camera highlight. Pop a couple of these in a dark bookshelf at low power, for example, to give your background a more interesting look. Or tape on to the steering wheel of your car, to illuminate actor's face. Hundreds of ways to use them - not recommended for replacing your main illumination sources, though. At least, in the way that I use them. Your mileage (and experimentation) will vary

:cool:
 
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Here's a comment I found on this topic recently:
"LED's are all the rage, but good ones don't come cheap, and cheap ones have limitations. First and foremost with most cheap LED lights is the non-continuous spectrum, often spiking in green. You might be able to overcome this with filtration and color correction, but it's a crap shoot. If the manufacturer doesn't list the CRI (color rendering index), or its below a 90, then you might get some funky skin tones that don't look healthy.
You might also get some strange banding when you try to snoot or barn-door these lights to a smaller pattern. I've seen some cheap units that exhibit flicker as well.
If you're expecting to make money from your videos, I would invest in better quality LED lights (Flolight makes solid units) or go with fluorescent fixtures (more cost effective than LED's, but with similar benefits).
That being said, I do use a larger version of this LED as a hair light or background light when I need a quick setup or I don't have access to AC power."

Even at that, colors can get really weird. You won't get more than 10ft out of cheap led's and less from the good one's (Z96's). I don't know what your needs are but flourescents (if temperature is an issue) or plain old work lights may work better for you. If you have cash to spare, do us all a favor and buy a bunch of different ones to test, then let us know. 8^)
 
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