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.

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

Work lights
 

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.

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

Home made kits
 

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.

LIGHTING
 

THANKS ALOT GUYS

Nori,

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

Thanks!

Rob

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.

-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

Thanks!

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.

lighting
 

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

C-stands and Flags
 

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

i didn't say...
 

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!

all one color
 

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.

Cola SC?! I spent a semester there once... is Goat Feathers still in operation down at Five Points? I used to live in Shandon, within staggering distance...

All this lighting stuff keeps sounding difficult to learn. Best way
is to just do it I assume. Problem here is that I need to find
a place to get all this stuff. I also can't import from the US because
we are on different power cycles and all...

How do you use such equipment when out in the field? Rent
some big diesel power thing?

hi rob
 

hi rob,
for lighting i would advice to at least read 2 books and even more adviced is to look on small productions how they do it, or even better help them, best experience is hands on experience. books i can advice you to buy are : set lighting technicians handbook, the grip book, film lighting by kris malkiewicz and cinematography by kris malkiewicz. good places to rent are EFF and Singel lighting in the netherlands, i both think they are located in amsterdam. and for power you would need to rent a generator. if you want to learn more you could also contact me, in 2 months im going to shoot a 15 minute film with a reasonable crew and a great lighting package (and its being shot with the xl1) so if you would like you could join our team as production assistant or grip and learn lighting.

Re: hi rob
 

Bryan,

I'm planning on buying some lighting books indeed. I already
bought a pile of books so I'm waiting for my next credit card
month to arrive... Do you know if EFF & Singel have a website?
It would be nice to check those first.

I would love to join you on your 15 minute film shoot! Thank you
very much for the offer. I own an XL1S myself. I'd be happy to
help around assisting or gripping. Please contact me at
visuar@iname.com (I cannot contact you due to e-mail problems
with this board).

Again, thanks!

I just put together a lighting system ( all halogen) that cost me a whopping $120. I got everything from Lowes Big O'hardware store. Two really sturdy stands, 2 500w fixtures (too bright) - replaced with two 150w fixtures and two 60w fixtures for key and back lights. They all came with a UV glass filter and are well build.
Then I made some barn-doors and bingo! Saved about $1500.00. These lights, in combination with my on-cam canon light are making for exquisite video.

hmmm
 

hi there,
congrats on building a effective system that works for a low price, however i don't agree on what you said "Saved about $1500.00", that is not true. for some extra money you will have proffesional tungsten fresnel lights corerctly balanced and with barndoors, scrims, and its focusable. im not saying your system is bad, but for the 1500 extra you will have a great package too!

bye

Hey Randall, more detsail please! We all could use more lights, and at these prices, why not just whip it! I'm using Smith Victor halogens on regular stands (they're 650's and they are real bright), plus a Frezzi on the cam. But this sounds like fun. Got any brand/model info? How did you make the barns and how' you fasten'em to the lights? Etc.

Bryan,

Did you send me an e-mail by any chance? My mail service
seems to be a bit buggy.

Thanks.

Lighting links
 

I browsed the web and found a few useful (some more some less) links for those who want to learn more about lighting. Most of it is basics and low budget.

http://www.theallwoods.net/studio/hintstips/light/light.htm
http://www.exposure.co.uk/eejit/light/index.html
http://www.cybercollege.com/tvp027.htm
http://www.wwug.com/forums/lighting/index.htm (that´s a forum)
http://www.elitevideo.com/10-2.htm

3 part article:

http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0011/columns_frameset3.html
http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0012/videosmith.htm
http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0101/videosmith.htm

Cheers,

cyber college link
 

I checked out the link for cyber college that peter posted,

and wow, ive never seen more information on lighting before
online. what a great resource for basic lighting techniques.

for anyone who is still confused about lighting i suggest you
look at the link..

http://www.cybercollege.com/tvp027.htm

Thanks peter!

rob..
 

rob, i didn't email you yet, but i will in the coming days, i gotta prepare for that film i was telling you about.

Bryan,

Okay. Thanks for letting me know. Your mail didn't end up on
the digital hunting planes then :)

Sounds interesting in all, we'll talk about it later then. Have
a nice easter!

Black tin foil
 

Regarding the tin foil that was mentioned earlier in this thread:

I used this black tin foil on a shoot a couple of years ago in LA, this seems to be a pretty common product to use in the US.

Now I tried to get some here at home in Austria and it seems impossible to find as nobody knows what this is and no german word seems to exist for it.

Any of the europeans in the community know if this is being used here?

And to the ones who do use it in the US:
Is this foil a film business product or was it picked up from another industry and became common use in film? Maybe I can find it at some totally unexpected place if this is the case. BTW where could I get it in the US (haven´t checked the dealers websites yet)?

Cheers,

http://www.studiodepot.com/store/index.cgi?cmd=view_item&parent=1013-1174&id=7080

peter

i think this is what you are talking about blackwrap also known as cinefoil, i never used this but what i can make up from this is that they use it to make flags cheaply or close light leaks. but for flags a material called duvetyne is used, you can buy these in large rolls and make your own flags!!!

c ya

This is it!

Many thanks Bryan!

Cheers,

your welcome ;-)