My Build-It-Yourself HOME DEPOT VIDEO Lights...(Pics)
 

In follow-up to Halycon's thread I decided to build a set of lights as cheap as possible. Here are my lights...total cost appx: $35 each -- these are the poor-man's choice based off these: http://www.adorama.com/SASLF6.html which retail for $170 each plus shipping. They are by no means the same but definently cheap. I'll post a follow-up after we shoot a few scenes with them this weekend.

http://www.sincitycoeds.com/light1.jpg
http://www.sincitycoeds.com/light2.jpg
http://www.sincitycoeds.com/light3.jpg
http://www.sincitycoeds.com/light4.jpg
http://www.sincitycoeds.com/light5.jpg
http://www.sincitycoeds.com/light6.jpg
http://www.sincitycoeds.com/light7.jpg

A piece of sheet metal, sheet metal duct box, (4) screw-in sockets, and (4) 100W high output bulbs that draw 23 watts, 1600 lumens (on sale now in 4 packs for $9.99). Then add your diffusion sheet of choice.

Looks very cool. Thanks for sharing.

looks like you can grow some serious cycles with that kind of hardware :thumbsup

I think models may giggle if they saw that and people were trying to act all professional and stuff.

I'll post a pic of them mounted shortly. They are going in our studio room, not floor mounts. :winkwink:

lighting is just physics. the main difference between "pro" lighting gear and homemade home depot stuff is the pro lighting gear allows for more manipulation.

humans will look most attractive if you bounce or scrim the light---and there are ways to do this inexpensively also.

but the truth is once you've spent a few weekends playing around constructing homemade hardware store stuff you will find that the time, money, and energy expended would be better utilized by going to ebay and making deals on pro gear.

ebay pro lighting can be found for 20-50% of new pricing and there's LOTS to choose from---pros are always trading up and dumping old equipment.

Ok somewhat more out of sight then, thats cool.

true. it is the best way to brand yourself as an amateur.

http://www.sincitycoeds.com/light7.jpg


ok, set the girl on that couch, take a snap with that light, and now get a surfer to buy a membership. :helpme

Nice but, looks like your going to get electrocuted, I see bare wires.

haha...already did that once today :)

hmm...

I assume you're shooting digital? I dont know if it matters, but if you were shooting film, you'd need a special filter... otherwise the lighting from flourescent fixtures has a slight green tint to it.

hey if you could put some gold foil inside the reflector housing, that would really bring out the model's skin tones.

Nice post...

Doesn't Pro Lighting gear also have a certian frequency of light that is hard to obtain from household fixtures?

To me, making that looks like a fun project and time better spent elsewhere. But then again, I'm the guy that chooses the fastest cup of coffee and not the cheapest.

that looks cool

lmao i think you may want to secure that wiring a bit unless you are interested in killing yourself or burning your house down.

he did say add your diffusion sheet--- lets see how the pictures come out

They look great if you look on line you can get full spectrum flo bulbs for that. As far as models laughing if your paying them they don't care. I used my ghetto flos twice going to Tampa and they look cheesy. I shot pro porn stars and pro models not one said a thing about how they looked .They did mention how comfortable the shoot was because it wasn't a sauna like it is when you shoot with hot lights.

well for digital you can batch process for white balance. in an earlier age (film era) expensive HMI hot lights put out a very white light (5000-5600 kelvin) so you could shoot daylight film in the studio, but this is unnecessay now.

as another poster said you well get a greenish look if your try to shoot under flourescent light with your camera set on auto.

the basic problem for amateur shooters is this---it is the balancing of correct color temperature and the mixture of color temps of different light sources which makes tweaking white balance very difficult unless you're using reference white balance charts...and as bulbs age they give off different color temps (usually getting warmer WB as they age) so this needs to be watched carefully.

folks don't understand that when shooting skin WB is VERY important for pleasing images and i will even go so far as to say it WILL effect ones income if you are in the business of getting signups.

so a basic understanding of WB really is necessary before you begin doing batch correcting (green is opposite magenta, yellow is opposite blue, etc).

pros will NEVER let an incorrectly balanced image see the light of day. period.

green girls usually do not sell so well.

this thread gave me overgrow.com flashbacks

gonna try this mounting first...

http://www.sincitycoeds.com/l1.jpg
http://www.sincitycoeds.com/l3.jpg

(and no, these will not be the only light source.)

nice walls.

I just found these online. Gonna get a set before next summer for sure. Sooooo tired of the hotlights raising the temperature by 5° every 20 minutes. Plus gonna dump 3200° all together and just go with daylight balanced so all the light (daylight, strobes, flash, video) all pretty much match.

http://www.flolight.com/

Since you are using flourescent light instead of halogens or quartz... you will need to make sure your white balance is set to use flourescent lighting... otherwise you will end up with some pretty 'green' scenes...

Unless you're James T. Kirk and you are into Orion women...

yeah... but i said that already