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Lighting Suggestions?

Tony Augustinack

Tony Augustinack

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I am in need of purchasing some new lighting gear. I shoot mostly corporate educational videos, commercials and weddings. I don't post a lot but have been a dedicated lurker for the last several months (I probably spend 2-3 hours reading on here a day :) ) trying to learn as much as I can about RED™ along with its community and just general knowledge from everyone on here. I have searched the threads and googled it several times but can never find an easy answer so i thought I'd just ask. I plan to purchase a Scarlet or two and just want to know if a type of light is better on RED™ or not? and I'm asking if anyone has any suggestions for me?

Thanks for any advice!! :)
 
Ring Light or Obie Light

Ring Light or Obie Light

An Obie Light can be useful for fast setups to get enough fill with mixed light, if you are 5500K then you would want a 5500K Obie as well, or at lease one you can tape a CC gel onto.

http://www.iatse728.org/history/lingo.htm

http://forums.creativecow.net/archivethread/54/198554

With compressed digital shooting it is important to keep everything above the minimum signal, so some fill should be used more or less all the time, you can push the blacks down in post when you grade, but if you pull them up too much you will see noise issues, so its better to have more lights than too few with you.

A ring light in front of the lens of matte box gives you some extra light all the time, and you can use ND gel if needed to dim it to balance with the natural light, or add orange or blue CC gel to match the color of the ring light to the natural light as well, and you should have some greenish gel for when you need to shoot with mixed light that has florecent in it, lee makes such gels,

http://www.filmtools.com/31-lee-s242.html
 
The never-ending quest for the perfect kit continues...

If I were stuck on a desert island and could only bring 2 lights, they would be a Kino Flo Diva-Lite 400 and a Source-4 Joker HMI (Joe Leko).

If money were an issue on this island, it might be a fresnel kit (1k, 650, 300) with a Chimera and just deal with balancing gels as necessary.

If I had to shoot a wedding on the island, I would want that on-camera LED, too.
 
Cool Lights, a site sponsor, has a lot of affordable lighting products. You might check with us at info@coollights.biz. We answer a lot of questions for those looking to set up a lighting kit and we have lots of energy efficient options ranging from fluorescent, HMI/metal halide and LEDs. We still have traditional tungsten fixtures as well. Overall, RED has stated that their sensors are optimized for 5000K which is in the range of daylight. Thus the camera probably is more at home with daylight than tungsten although many people use tungsten every day with good results as well. Most of our customers that have a RED camera are buying daylight color temperature though.
 
Definitely check out Cool Lights - I've been extremely happy with mine!

Cheers,
Tim
 
Thanks guys for all the advice!! I really appreciate it! Ill definitely check it all out! Can anyone recommend a specific HMI they love and isn't to expensive?
 
I'm not sure there is an HMI that's not too expensive (someone feel free to prove me wrong). The cheapest I've seen is $2500. But Coollights makes some CDM fixtures, which are very close.

I have their 150w CDM and I like it a lot. It's basically a 650w fresnel (like the Arri, pretty much the exact size and shape), but only draws 150 watts. The ballast makes a very slight buzzing sound, but the cord (from the ballast to the light) is long, so if you're shooting in a really quiet environment and you're worried about it getting picked up, you can just stuff it under a pillow. The only downside is, once you turn it off, you have to wait 5 minutes before turning it back on again (there's a built-in timer that prevents it). Being able to switch it on and off would be nice, for sure, but not thousands of dollars nice.

In short, it's an Arri 650w fresnel that doesn't make your talent sweat, offers tungsten or daylight balance, draws 1/4 of the power, is $500, and you can't switch on and off quickly.

He has some fluorescent banks too that I've heard good things about, and are less than 1/2 the cost of Kino's. The really nice thing about using HMI/CDM and Flo's, of course, is you can shoot in people's houses w/o worrying about blowing a fuse.
 
The main other benefit would be that its a 575w/1200w ballast so could be used to drive a 1200w head as well and its universal voltage input so works on anything from 100v to 240v AC. And power factor corrected too.

Hot restart is probably the main thing though.
 
We sell a number of nice lighting kits on our site. I really like the Dedo lights for their small size, small power requirements and wide range of control and adjustability. I know a number of news/doc shooters who run with a Dedo kit as their only lights.
 
Dedos are a great ENG solution, small, light and adaptable, though their soft-box is on the small size and you might want something with more punch as a key. They are tad expensive but they will last.

Lowel make a good affordable kit that includes their Rifa light (a clever little soft-box) with a range of different fixtures.

For tungsten, you'd go a long way to beat a set of Arri juniors -they are bullet proof - I've abused mine all over the world!

I own a couple of Richard's fluorescent Cool Lights which are still going strong after four years or so. They are a good affordable solution.

Generally, I like to use a Kino Flo Diva light or similar as my main light for interviews, unless I'm shooting a politician , in which case a bare bulb 2K fresnel does the job nicely;)
 
Liam Hall said:
Generally, I like to use a Kino Flo Diva light or similar as my main light for interviews, unless I'm shooting a politician , in which case a bare bulb 2K fresnel does the job nicely;)
Click to expand...

Get them sweating
 
here's what I use for small interview type setting:
dedo kit
lowel rifa 1k
1x1 litepanel.
sometimes a rosco litepad for edgelight although they need to be gelled to take the green out.

the rifa is cheap and does the job but the diva works really well and is dimmable.
 
I have seen the future of lighting and I've been doing a lot of reflecting on it recently. Less light sources, fewer stands, less flags, happier actors.

For everything else, everyone has already made some great suggestions.
 
Interesting... I guess HMI is the way to go due to the temperature of the light?

Steve what do you mean fewer items are people more effective with less equipment or because of newer equipment you need less items to control your light?
 
B&B Cine Reflect Lighting System

B&B Cine Reflect Lighting System

Are you referring to the B&B Cine Reflect Lighting System?

-Ben Rowland

Steve Sherrick said:
I have seen the future of lighting and I've been doing a lot of reflecting on it recently. Less light sources, fewer stands, less flags, happier actors.

For everything else, everyone has already made some great suggestions.
Click to expand...
 
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