lighting

does anyone knows what type of lights to use when lighting indoors and how many watts to use? what about what type to use outside/ also what is the black thing they use during lighting. it is usually on stands. they have them everywhere on the set.

[Greg Matty]

Take a look at lowel.com. They have many kits available as well as books and how to's.

DV magazine did a "home made" light kit project about a year ago. Check dv.com and see if it is archived. They used the halogen worklamps which are real close to 3200k. That is what most of the lowel lights are set to. I also ordered a video from DV called Basic Lighting for DV. It is a pretty good tape with a lot of useful information.

The best advice I would give is two fold:
1) Try to use only one type of light. All daylight, all fluorescent or all tungsten (like the lowels mentioned above).

2) Use as much light as it takes to make the shot look right. Nothing looks more amateurish than an underlit scene.

Good luck.

Greg Matty

[fargograf]

I bought 2 halogen work lights at Home Depot (only $8 each)

They threw out a lot of light, but both bulbs failed within two weeks. I guess you get what you pay for.

A good lighting kit is on my "to buy" list.

[Nori Wentworth]

Check out the Lowel DPKit, it's awesome! All the basics you need to get started are in there.
-Nori Wentworth

[J. Cody Lucido]

I am experimenting with using the halogen stands I bought at home depot.

The 500w bulbs that come with it are way to bright for normal filming, unless you are trying to achieve an omni affect.

I am having lots of luck after I replaced the bulbs with the GE 225w bulbs.

I also removed the wire grill, as it casts an image. These things get hot, so keep the grill around for general use.

I make barndoors from heavy duty tin foil. Not pretty, but effective. With the lower watt bulbs, I am not having serious heat issues. I can even make a funnel to focus the light for a spot effect.

After dropping so much into my camera setup, I need a few months to get solvent again. At that time I will be popping for a pro lighting kit. But for now this works well.

THANKS ALOT GUYS

[Rob Lohman]

Nori,

Could you tell me, exactly, where to find this at the Lowel
site? It is hard to find stuff there.

Thanks!

Rob

[Ken Tanaka]

Rob,
I think you'll have to download the whole Lowel catalog for more info on their various DP kits. (The catalog is worth the ddownload.)

The kits come in a wide variety of forms. Doing a search on "DP kit" on bhphoto.com will turn-up 2 pages of kits.

[Nori Wentworth]

-Go to the lowel site
-click equipment at the left
-click full lowel equipment catalogue
-click cases and kits
-click dp kits

I have the close quarters kit. Other than some "C" stands and flags, it has everything you need to get going.

-Nori Wentworth

[Rob Lohman]

Thanks!

[Mike Butler]

While we're on the subject of Lowel, let's mention Ross Lowell's great book "Matters of Light and Depth" which contains answers to many of our lighting questions.

[Bryan Johannes Onel]

best way to get good lighting is to go to a rental house, for indoors people mostly use tungsten balanced light (3200K), for outdoors most people use bounced light and HMI lights (5600K), wich are mostly par lights. indeed you must shoot at a nice light level. in a strange way lenses tend to give best image quality at an T4-T8. a common light to use for indoors tungsten is a redhead wich is 800 watts and a blonde wich is 2000 watts, also very popular these days are the soft kino-flo lights wich can be balanced at tungsten or HMI light. for outdoors use the most common lamps are 4K-6K PAR lights bounced. but normally there isn't any light used outside, because of the light levels. also when lighting try to make a decision about lighting ratio and try to maintain that within a scene.

hope i could be of service.
for further info JUST ASK :D !

Bryan Johannes Onel
Director and Director Of Photography
Amsterdam, The netherlands

The "stuff" you see on larger sets in mostly manufactured by Mathews. The Stands, Century or just "C stands" are an industry standard and upon them you can put any number of pieces. The Black cards are called flags, but you can get any number of scrims to do what you need to do. I own a simple black flag, an open ended double, an open ended single, and a 24x36 silk. The double removes exactly one stop of light, the single removes 1/2 a stop, and the silk plays where I have plenty of light but need an even layer. I put it over, say a coach on a field, and let the background stay lit, yet the light striking the subject is diffused by the silk.

I also own the 500 watt Lowell soft box (Riffa) kit with an 500 watt Onmi and a 750 watt Tota. it has stands and a case. it is my main kit.

When I need the big guns, I own a 1000 watt Arri-Flex tungsten.
Over light and then cut back with scrims and flags and color.

Mix color. (not all 3200 not all 5600). I have an expendables kit with full and half CTB(Color Temperature Blue) and full and half CTO (Orange) with some tough spun diffusion and (my favorite) full and half Opal diffusion.
It makes make up look beautiful...

Lighting is the key ya'll...
Learn it, live it, and love it.
After all, it’s what we are really capturing.

I bought my stuff from Tony at Photomart in Florida. Absolutely the best prices for Lowell and Mathews. +1 (800) 443-2901

[Bryan Johannes Onel]

hi,
i didn't say that its all 3200K or 5600K what i said was that those lights are industry ISO standard rated at 3200K and 5600K. and all those equipment like flags, cutters, scrims, gatorboards, bogo arms and lots more are just standard small equipment, you don't even need to study that, with that kind of equipment it is very simple to learn to use it, just rent a light package, and experiment!

I am sorry...

I didn't mean to imply you had a narrow view.

I was simply rambling out some advise to others who might have had less experience in this department.

Lighting is my favorite topic and I often pride myself in my ability to manipulate it and use Gobo's and all sorts of other tools and for good effective results.