tight spaces and inexpensive lighting?
 

hello all,
i am being asked by my moms boss to shoot a commerical for their business, a cosmetic laser center which specializes in laser hair removal, tattoo removal, and skin care.
the rooms that they do these procedures in are pretty small, and space is limited. i want to light the subject for my shots, there is flourescent lighting on the ceiling but i know it will not suffice.
right now ive got a basic little work light from home depot and i plan to buy one more... i would like to keep this inexpensive and stay away from buying professional lights because i will only need them this one time.
are there any tips or suggestions you all could offer with regard to how to light this room without making it overly bright and using only one or two shop lights?
thanks, i hope this question isnt too much of a reach

If you have a camera that has an AWB Auto White Balance you could get away with it. As for a cheaper way and better look at utility lights with the reflectors meaning the shiny metal ones with a clip. Now comes the fun part getting Par 38 lights with some clothes line clips and clip on filters to tone down the light and also with the claps you able to redirect the light. If you go with this lighting you ill need to down off the overhead lights and use this, as it will give a better tone and temperature as well.

Since you need clairity, not so much beauty in your shots, think about using a couple of 500 watt halogens aimed up at the ceiling and high enough to not put any direct light on the subject.

Then use reflectors to move the light into where you need it. This works fairly well and seems to kill most shadows. It does assume that the ceiling and walls are white.

I used this for shooting some ergonomics demonstration footage for the School of Dentistry at UCSF. Worked OK. Made them happy.

Halogens give off a yellow light whereas a Par 38 will give you a better spread towards tungsten.

Specs:

FEATURES:
Watts: 80
Volts: 120
Base: E26 Medium
Bulb: PAR38
SPECIFICATIONS:
Average Life (Hours): 3000
Max. Overall Length (MOL inches): 5.3125
Lumens: 1500
Color Temperature: 2950
Color Rendering Index (CRI): 100

They are classified as a halogen yet when most buy the basic halogen that forget that they are yellow in color.

Notice the CRI it’s 100

thanks alot you guys, thats a big help!

How much do these PAR38 lights run and where would I find them? I have some can light's I would like to use before I run to Home Depot and get some utility lights.

About 5 to 7 dollars GE and Sylvania make the best ones. One the package you will see the following: Halogen Standard Par 38 100 watts.

On our last shot I had to buy over 100 and replace all the lights in the recessed cans of a banquet hall. As these gave of a yellow cast and would have reacted with the tungsten lights we where also using for the side light as a fill.

Best part was with so many lights in use that the coverage was so good that we could do a full 260 pan on over 100 people and not see any lights.

Just look for the Par 38 as some workers at the stores really don’t know about this and they miss lead their shoppers.

Tom, I understand the color temperature concern in mixed lighting. But if the halogens are the only light source, a few hundred degrees difference will not be noticed after White Balancing.

One light casts yellow whereas the other cast white this will make a difference. It's really not good with to many light sources that are different.

I'm saying that if all the lights are one color temp, within reason it really doesn't matter what you use. I understand the issues of mixing color temps. BUt my previous post wasn't too clear.

it is not the temp if you have a halogen 90 watt, and then a 90 watt flood and then a 90 watt par 38 is there a diff.

I don't understand your comment. I do not advocate mixing lights of different color temperatures or colors (like a filter).

Lights of identical color temperature will appear to be the same 'color' when taped. If one color balances the camera to those lights, the resulting video will show the lights and white objects illuminated by them as white.

The three lamps you mention will obviously have different color temperatures.

Gents:

Mixing color temperatures is a choice, not a rule. No-one ever said that you have to make all of your sources match, that's sort of like insisting on painting with only primary colors rather than using tints and shades. The difference between a tungsten lamp in a professionally-oriented light such as a Mole or an Arri and a common household bulb is a mere 300 degrees Kelvin, which barely registers on video.

The reality is that most DP's use a variety of color temperatures within the frame to create visual interest and depth. It is common, for instance, to have a scene lit with daylight balanced light such as HMI and use uncorrected incandescent bulbs in the practical fixtures visible in the shot to give them a nice warm glow.

Otherwise, for scenes shot completely under one kind of lighting fixture (tungsten or 3200 Kinos, for instance), it is also common to gel units so that they are of differencing colors and color temperatures for the reasons above.

Mike is correct that regardless of the color temperature of the primary light in the room, you can white balance to that to achieve pure light.

In the case of changing out 100 bulbs in the ceiling, I would think it would have been easier to add some 1/4 CTO to your tungsten units to balance them to the existing ceiling bulbs, if that was the desired effect.