Question for video Lighting.
 

The lights I have are big, bulky and a pain to travel with. Can anyone recommend a decent kit for travel? I'm thinking something I can bounce off the ceiling in a hotel room that will be very bright.

Thank you :)

Lowell makes Tota lamps. Not daylight balanced bulbs, so don't forget to white balance, and they get really freaking hot but they are small and great for travel. You just need to make sure you know the power of where you are going because if you smaller bulbs on higher power they will literally explode. 800w - 1000w will work anywhere.

I've also seen some small LED kids. Have not used them yet but they look promising.

We have two foldable lights we use for our fitness videos. Setup in about yep minutes and fit in a small sports bag. I wil find a pic of them

That is the nightmare I have heard about. the small lights exploding. I'm looking on B&H but seems they max out at 750 watts? I will only be shooting in the USA so I'm guessing power sources will be the same everywhere.

Thanks I just ordered two sets with extra bulbs and light stands from B&Hphoto with over night shipping and was only $398. :thumbsup

Just the bulbs for my main lights are $100. each...

many is the time I have used "disposeable lighting"

go to home depot buy the quartz halogen worklights and leave em when done


carry an assortment of blue gels if you want consistent color temp

I have tried that when I first started shooting. White balanced and everything, But couldn't get the video to look professional...

I'll let you guys know what I think of these after the weekend :)

Totas get the job done if you need to pack really light. They are tungsten bulbs so of course white balance it, but if you're just in the USA you can use any watt bulb they have. Only out of the USA is where we had exploding bulbs, but 800w - 1000w bulbs fix that.

The heat is the only real pain with them. They get REALLY hot. Take 20 mins to cool down and can heat the room up. You can also buy blue gels to go on them to give a daylight color, but it turns the room blue while you're shooting. Whatever your comfortable with.

Also, don't put them too close to anything. They WILL burn things if too close.

They go up to 1000w but they are not easy to find because they are not needed in the USA. We get ours in Bangkok.

you wanna look at the low wattage type daylight balanced lights.
they dont emit a lot of heat and are much safer and easier to work with.
close up like a flat box.
like these:
http://www.smithvictor.com/images/pr...rge/401027.jpg

different companies sell them using different names, the quality is OK.

We use the 1x1 LED lights. Small, cool, pretty durable. Nice lite and since it's spread out to 1x1 with adjustable power and no white balance change they are always in our travel bags.

These are awesome:

http://www.flolight.com/led-lighting...deo-light.html

About the same size and weight as a 13" laptop.

quickfix: buy a 6 pack of 200 watt lightbulbs and swap out every light in the room. less than $5. for best results use a hotshoe LED cluster light ($50 ebay) in tandem. for a nice even glow diffuse it with waxpaper and strap it on with rubber bands so it doesnt look like a searchlight on the chicks face. the worklight idea is a good one too but even they are always blowing out at the wrong time then you need extension cords etc. i like to fit everything in a small backpack. back in the good ole' GL1 days...

http://www.ndngirls.com/ndngirls_nat...porn_raina.jpg

These are awesome. We've been investing in these units and have had great success with them. They're very lightweight, portable, heatless, versatile and pretty bright for such a small package. Here's a BTS shot of what we call our "light tree". It's four of those LED lights on a single stand and we use it when we need more power than a single unit can produce. For this shot, we were trying to balance up to some daylight so we needed more power. The black fabric was used to block some of the daylight and the white fabric is used to bounce some light back onto the subject.

http://deancapture.com/pics/flolight.jpg

My Cool Lights LED panel is wrapped and sitting under the Christmas tree.

This one came highly recommended:

http://www.coollights.biz/clled1200-...nel-p-142.html

toilet paper works in a pinch too. peel a ply off if it is diffusing the light too much.

I'm wondering how these compare to the Kino Flo diva lite 400. Weight, output, etc. Are they in fact true daylight balanced? I tried some Rosco LED panels which I though were supposed to be daylight balanced but they had a bit of a green hue.

yeah that can be an issue, pick up some minus green gel, but you will lose some stop. I use small HMI's, 200 watt and 400 watt with some kinos and biax...

I travel all over the world with my Kino diva 400 lights. Would love to find something a bit more light weight with similar quality for traveling. I did the minus green gels on the Rosco LEDs. I finally scrapped the idea because you lose too much light that way.

Bingo :thumbsup

A little update.

I heard some people say to use flolights, these are what I have been using for years "daylight balanced bulbs" the problem was that they take up to much space.


I shot a couple scenes this weekend using the new tota lights I bought. I just bounced them off the ceiling and white balanced as always. They worked great. I think I like them more than my flolights which I spent thousands on... The totas used almost no space for travel. only problems are that they get hot fast (within' seconds) making them hard to move around and set up for different angles. . there is no adjustment it's full blast or nothing. and I like daylight bulbs better. overall they light the room more, are easier to use and travel with. I'm not sure if my flolights will get used at all anymore.