added 22 February 2001

 

Build a Light Kit with a Trip to Home Depot
by Martian Welk

"I have made Home Depot work lights into a great lighting package, and they aren't flimsy moth catchers either. Indeed they aren't as portable, but I will put them up against any halogen kit."

Some pro lights cost about $1000 for four to six of them. Their stands are so flimsy, they wouldn't hold a piece of sheet music. If someone stepped on them, they would have a burning lamp on their head. Barn doors were extra money and they seemed like they were mostly for looks, as they didn't have full blockage of the bulb filament, let alone the spill light. Bulbs on some of these pro models were completely exposed. The metal was so cheap on them (lightweight for transport) that the demo models in the store looked like garbage. The wiring job on the units, just like its framework, was lightweight for transport. Apparently unlike "Home Depot" lights they have no fear of lawsuits, because they're supposed to be used by professionals.

Well to me, I was pretty disgusted, and also very broke, but that was besides the point. If I couldn't make a better light in my shop with a Dremel tool and some aluminum, I would have given up and bought the pro lights.

Now before I give a blow by blow description on what it takes to make a good light or a better light kit, I will tell you that I wish I did have had a pro light kit, it would still be nice, for the sake of transportability if nothing else.

Here's how we did it. First, we chose a single 500w light -- not the T-like dual lights on a crossbar. There is no advantage to sucking up ten amps on one unit when most available circuits are only twenty amps total.

The ones we chose had a large reflector and the pattern they put on the wall was not terrible. They had built-in waterproof switch boxes, and the whole unit is waterproof, but don't try to test this with an exposed bulb. If it rains, it's not a problem; put a jacket on the camera and shooting still continues.

We put cheap Radio Shack x10 dimmers in the waterproof switch boxes, this allowed remote switching or dimming and better control of the light.

Turn them on and there is a big nasty filament line, time for some major diffusion you might think. But not so... we pulled the reflector out (only one screw holding it) and reformed the back of the reflector into a more circular pattern. Now we finally had a useable light.

So a few jobs and a few dollars later, we want to diffuse them. So we go and get some spun glass and wedge it to the front of the lights right against the glass for the bulb. This was dumb idea number one. although it offered perfect diffusion and we got through the job, it turned a bit brown, giving a cool tan to the actors, then eventually smelled bad and fell to the floor. Also I might warn you about dumb idea number two. We did not try this but I have done this with other lights and it does not work: getting your local glass company to cut a piece of frosted bathroom glass. Don't do it, it will break from the offset heat. Apparently the glass in front of these bulbs is tempered for heat.

We still had no good diffusion solution, so we formed wire diffusion holders with coat hangers with a brazing rod and a butane torch. We formed some nice wire diffusion frames and soldered alligator clips to the ends. Problem solved.

Then we were doing a three camera shoot with four or six lights. The cameras are close to aiming right into the lights, as we were shooting cross angles, so we had some bright light rushing into the lenses which is not a good thing. We threw some aluminum foil in and continued. Now you might think "aluminum foil, no way."

Well, I will tell you another thing that peeves me about lighting, and that's taking a 5000 watt heater and having 200 watts of directed light coming out of the front of it and then calling yourself a pro. It doesn't make much sense to me to have flat black reflectors.

So we searched for barn doors, and professional ones are about $100 apiece. Call me a cheapskate, but the money wasn't the problem. The problem was they wouldn't have worked. We headed back over to the overpriced student filmmaker store and found that the barn doors on the pro lights sucked completely. They didn't even block the filament itself from shooting out of the edges, now what good was that going to be? They didn't close completely, even with the cheaply riveted slide-out triangles, but they sure looked cool. So what, I wasn't having a problem with looks... I already had the job, and the lights aren't in the pictures I'm taking.

So as usual, if you want it done right, do it yourself. We worked out a pattern in cardboard and made a perfect template. Then we proceeded to make the first one by hand, with four hinges and sheet aluminum (I might add that it was one gauge thicker than the they used on the pro lights). I was intelligent enough to paint the outside only with high-temperature barbecue paint, leaving the highly reflective aluminum on the inside. Well, my intelligence didn't work quite right. Having the interior reflective instead of black resulted in bouncing the filament reflection out onto the barn doors. So it was a minor correction to continue painting the inside parts black.

Then we took this single perfect finished one, went to the local machine shop and had them cut out all the others to spec at a cost of $24 apiece. We brought them back home and assembled everything using large fat rivets and rivet washers, making its parts much more movable and longer lasting.

The diffusion material is clipped to the front of the barn doors with alligator clips. Black clips, of course!

Then, off to more jobs and of course another eventual problem. One shoot was up on a stage and our lights didn't go up high enough. Back to Home Depot.

The light base would take any kind of pole, so all I had to do was find the right one. They sold painting poles made of fiberglass, perfect size for the bases, and they had heights of way up to 16 feet. So we bought some poles which were 12 feet long. The end part would also snap out with a pushbutton, so we cut the paint pole threads off of this top end and drilled a hole in its center. Then we shoved a bolt through and bolted the light to it. With that, not only did we have high poles in good bases, but they also go up and down with a push of a button... and the top pops off with a push of a button, so the lights could be taken off. Then of course everything is painted black.

I went out to Wal-Mart and picked up a footlocker for $25, bought an egg crate foam mattress cover, some automotive trim adhesive, and this cool polyseal black rubber spray paint. Mount the foam inside the footlocker. The four lights, the barn doors, the light controller, extra bulbs and diffusion all fit in it perfectly.

Total cost per light is about $125, total time required is about two weeks... now didn't I just save you some of that. I knew I shouldn't have gotten into this...

And as a footnote, we also have floor lights, still using the coat hangar diffusion holder method, made from the little squat work lights that don't come with stands.

Written by Martian Welk
Thrown together by Chris Hurd.