How much light?

[Joel Mielle]

I'm curious to see how much light other DPs use with their EPICS or SCARLETS, I find these cameras can do with so much less light but I still see a lot of DPs use three 1K Fresnels, and more in an average size room set. If looking for high contrast, I find that I can get away with one 650 and a couple 300's and even less. Noise is minimised with more light but smaller lights are so much faster and easier to use. I know it's a very broad question and there's a million answers, but on average how much wattage do you use?

 

[Rob Ruffo]

I use daylight fixtures only, and quite a few. No matter how sensitive a sensor, you often use lights to shape or compliment daylight - and daylight is very strong.

 

[paul john pope]

I use daylight fixtures only, and quite a few. No matter how sensitive a sensor, you often use lights to shape or compliment daylight - and daylight is very strong.

Which daylight fixtures are you using?

 

[Peter Dmitriyev]

Rob, I'm assuming Joel is referring to closed sets where there is no actual outside daylight coming in through the windows because lord knows if that's the case, then a few 650's and 300's won't do as real sun light is way too strong for some 300's etc to do much against.
When you're on location and there's real daylight coming through the windows etc most of the time the pros use powerful hmi's to complement/extend and/or wrap that daylight for good facial modeling

 

[Satsuki Murashige]

I think the more experience you acquire, the higher foot candles you tend to light to. I find myself lighting to around 100fc these days, regardless of format (unless I have to balance to a practical source light like a campfire or expose for magic hour landscape). I used to work around 25fc and a lot of that footage looks underexposed to me now. Of course, you just may not have the G&E budget to get what you need but I would rather sacrifice camera for G&E than the other way around.

To the OP, is your interior room set supposed to be lit for day or night? Any windows or doors? If so, are there any backings that need to be lit? Any practical sources on in the room? Any lighting effects needed like golden hour sunlight, lightning, firelight? How much of the room will you be seeing at once? Lighting a room for 360 degrees of coverage will likely require more lights than just shooting a talking head interview. Just some things to think about.

 

[Rob Ruffo]

Which daylight fixtures are you using?

HMI, fluo, homemade special bounce and modifiers.