Continuous Lighting

sbeecroft

sbeecroft

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Stephen
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I was wondering what people used and could recommend in the way of budget lighting to light up 1-3 people standing close to each other against a plain background, could be a green screen.

I work in a School and so we are just after a simple solution to get some consistent results from filming quite a few people at different times in front of this screen.

Currently I am using 3 lencarta flash lights and using the modelling lights, which naturally gives an orange cast. I am having to use a room/cupboard for this.

i was also interested in how many lights I would need and where to position them for best results.

Thanks in advance
Stephen
 
that's a "how long is a piece of string?" question I'm afraid...

Cheapest solution - north faceing window.

Bodge solution - angle-poise lamps, experiment with bouncing off white ceiling & walls

Proper (but Expensive) solution - buy some real lights. Gets expensive once you add-in the proper heavy stands you'll need. I'd suggest looking at flourescents, e.g. Photon Beard or Kinoflo, not Fresnels, for your purposes. Just make sure you select the right colour temperature, don't use 3200k lamps if you have natural daylight anywhere....
 
Positioning for video - basically if you are shooting one person with a single locked-off camera, you need a Key light and Back light. Add a Fill light as necessary to achieve 3-point lighting - if the camera and eye line are perfect you can get away without any Fill but its best to work with 3-point and adjust from there.

Key light should be above the camera, at angle of about 30 degrees or less from horizontal, and straight on to the persons main eye line. Fill about 30-45 degrees off to one side, needs to be at much lower intensity than Key. Backlight should be nice and steep, of course.

Alternatively, go for a Cross-key approach (basically two even Fills from each side), this is best if you have no idea how people will stand and be filmed, but it can cause some funny nose shadows...
 
Thanks Richard.

I think I am looking at the bodge solution. (I like that word seems to describe a lot of solutions I end up employing!)

Have you got any specific recommendations on the type of lamps I could get, for instance I have seen some lights at a local DIY shop, sort of small floodlights.

I was wondering what sort of Wattage I should be looking at, I know the know the higher number equals brightness, but do you know how high I would need to go to get "natural" looking skin tones.

Unfortunately I dont have any window light as an option. I literally am working in a cupboard.
 
I can't really recommend anything specifically, as there are so many variables. "More light" is obviously going to help, but at short range you should be ok with stuff in the 100-300W range...Don't get sun-floods (those nasty 150-250w outdoor lights) though, even though they are high wattage, they are just unusably harsh.

as for "natural" looking skin tones - you simply can't beat genuine old-fashioned tungsten! Unfortunetly as the politicians have made tungsten the scape-goat for the worlds problems, its now impossible to buy either high-wattage or Pearl (diffused) bulbs. Flourescents can be very good alternative, but non-purpose made ones will be a bit hit-and-miss when it comes to full spectrum and you can get some odd spikes which only show up in certain skin tones. Forget LED's, they are only just getting nearly there at the pro level, domestic ones are way too spikey...
 
Right I understand what your saying.

The sort of thing I have seen is like this Amazon

This says 500w. So would that offer an acceptable amount of light do you think?

Thanks again.
 
meh...those are the sun-flood things I was saying to avoid. You'll get a lot of light...in fact, far too much light for a cupboard! You could use them if you heavily diffused the light and put them a long way away... but then you've just defeated the high wattage...

sorry i'm not being too helpful, maybe some other people have more experience at this basic level, I don't really know what's available in shops and cheap/suitable...
 
Right am with you.

I naturally went with the assumption that the more light meant best, but I get what you mean.

I know you can get those daylight light bulbs, am wondering about a couple of them in normal desk lights, as I say I am just aiming to light up a couple of people, not a whole scene.

Thanks for your replies.
 
I have found the following 2 setups and I wondered if any body had any expierence of buying from this company and also of either product -

Product 1

Product 2

Thanks
 
What you're already using is perfectly OK for home video use, you just need to either adjust the colour temperature on your camera or set it to auto white balance.

If you really want to take it more seriously and get something designed for the purpose, Lencarta will have some very powerful fluorescent lights, mounted in softboxes, at a very reasonable price at the end of this month. I don't know the exact price yet but if you're interested just PM me and I'll find out for you
 
The other thing to consider is the lighting on the green screen ideally needs to be pretty consistent around the people you are filming. Further away doesn't matter so much as you can always use a mask in something like after effects.

At the risk of going very OT here is what you can do with some clever use of green / blue screen! (and a few other FX)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clnozSXyF4k
 
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