Permanent lighting for green room: Kino Flos or...?

[Shon Troelstrup]

My boss has asked me to price out some permanent lighting for our green screen studio. We shoot a lot of talking heads, but also a lot of full-body shots for sports teams, so I need a lot of light.

The wall in question is about 12'x8' with a t-bar ceiling in 2x2 grid. We are looking for a permanent system and have an electrician waiting for some specs/info so he can give us a quote on the installation. Ideally, it would be as easy as hitting the switch and having the room ready to go.

My 'sensai', who always has great (but expensive) advice, has recommended the Kino Flos with green bulbs, but after doing a few searches on this site, I see there are plenty of alternatives.

Any suggestions or links to good discussions would be much appreciated!

[Robert Turchick]

I have almost the same size studio, 12' wide, 9' tall 9' deep with a cyc curve.
My grid holds 5 lights. 4 are kino-bulbed 220 watt fixtures I built and the 5th is an LED hair light.
I use two lights for the wall at 45 deg down and the other two for floor angled in at about 30 deg. The hair light is slightly off center and down at about 45 deg at the back of the talents head. I have also mounted a boom to hold my shotgun.
Front lights for talent are two large 500 watt soft-boxes with cfl's. Occasionally I use an LED on the floor in front of the camera as a "leg" light.
I've kept all bulbs and fixtures at daylight temp. Setup is two switches to turn on. Two seperate 20 amp circuits handle everything just fine. I have two other circuits dedicated to computer and general. And another for the AC.

I have tried the green kino bulbs and found in small spaces there was just too much bleed. They are obnoxiously green!

I recently built a larger space for a client using the same philosophies. Their space is 17x10x10.
Don't forget to do acoustic treatment everywhere you can. Even the ceiling! It will make a huge difference in the end product!

Take a look on my site for pics of my studio. email if you have any questions.

[Shon Troelstrup]

Hey, thanks, Robert. Is the picture on your homepage the only shot of your studio?

I take it we're looking at about a five-light setup?

I made the mistake of bringing in a softbox photography kit (my personal kit for playing around at home) that did a half-decent job, but wasn't ideal. It was lot better than the nightmarish mix of random lights they had when I started here, though. Unfortunately, I may have an argument on my hands if I ask for a $5000 permanent lighting setup when we could get a "cheaper" lighting kit like my softboxes.

[Robert Turchick]

That's probably the best shot of my space.
5 lights is probably not going to be enough. I actually use seven if you go back and count. It takes four to light the wall and floor. The other three are for the talent.
There are a TON of Kino-clones out there that work just fine. The studio I just put together used 11 CoolLights brand heads. CL-455 Cool Lights 4 X 55 watt Fluorescent Video Soft light - Cool Lights USA
(I think we bought them out!) Even going with the dimmable ones youre at just over $500 per head.
I built my own fixtures using cake pans and high quality aquarium ballasts. I use Kino Bulbs and they are instant-on, dead silent and generate virtually no heat. Cost me about $350 per fixture to make including bulbs and mounting hardware for the grid.
Here's the link to the ballast and reflector kits...
A H Supply - Easy Ordering

Hope this helps!

[Shon Troelstrup]

It does! Thanks!

[Rohan Dadswell]

The Green Kinos tubes are great, you'll never get a more even green background - so long as you have enough space to keep your talent away from their spill - as Robert said it goes everywhere in a small space.