I tried my best but could not figure out what to say.
What are you shooting and for what? On what format?
What is the kind of end result you looking at?
How many crew members? Will you have someone who can hold reflectors, lights or you will have to fix all on stands yourself?
How many lights do you want to use and what power supply do you have?
Thanks!
It's just me. I will be shooting personal projects. No crew, low budget. I'm just starting out with video, but I have a lot of experience with stills. I will be shooting with a 5D3.
I plan to shoot random different stuff. For the end result, I will probably go for a variety of looks. Flexibility is good. I'd like to have some sort of 3-light setup:rim/spot, key, fill/ambient. Everything will be on stands. I will mostly be shooting in small rooms and tight spaces. Power supply for indoors will be AC wall power. For outside, I will assume a battery does the trick (I don't need to light up the Eiffel Tower :-).
I'm not necessarily looking for a magic/complete answer. I'm just looking for whatever advice you've got: which bulbs to use for what, where to go DIY, where not to skimp, etc.
My target budget is $300-400. I'm trying to keep my costs low so I can get a decent slider.
Well, after a few shoots of my cooking show I'm doing (mostly to learn shooting and editing)...I've found a few things out.
1. Make sure all your lighting, practical (in place lighting) and your external lights are ALL the same temp. I replaced all the track lighting in my kitchen...and found at Lowe's / Home Depot...those particular lights were best priced at about 2700K. I then made sure to by my CFLs at the same 2700K color temp.
I bought cheap clamp lights, and some flash light stands...and use those as my external lights (key light, fill light...etc).
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0055PKS98/ref=oh_details_o07_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003Y2ILB6/ref=oh_details_o06_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1This seems to work quite well.
I also found on amazon.com, some pretty cheap 22" or so reflectors, that when you take off the covers...are nice white diffusers. I bought some clamps and I put these in front of my clamp worklights to soften the light in a DIY lightbox fashion.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003Y2GTG0/ref=oh_details_o05_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1I recently bought something from amazon, that is a kit that has 3 softboxes with 3x CFL sockets inside (I've not looked at the temp of the bulbs sent yet)...and a rack and a large green screen.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0054K9ZFM/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1I've not had time to unpack and look into that yet....but I will incorporate that into my mix of goodies.
But anyway, that first thing....and this works wherever you film at indoors...if possible, switch out ALL practical light fixtures to bulbs of the same color temp as your external lights, that will save you a TON of grief in post processing.
Get lights same temp...just pick one....set your white balance to them and shoot....
I bought this to help with setting custom light balance, put it on the lens, shoot from the point of view of the talent to be filmed back at the lighting...and set custom WB to that:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002GFOSU/ref=oh_details_o00_s01_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1Hope that helps.
cayenne
ps. To see the problems with mixed lighting even after a TON of PP trying to grade it...my last video I did:
CWI: Chicken & Andouille Sausage GumboI'm currently editing my latest one, using Marvels Cinestyle...and found that it was best if I exposed to meter, then set to underexpose by about 2 steps...this stuff looks great in post so far...and should be the best imaged video I've done to date...what I'm editing now as opposed to the link above, has all lights same color temp and it makes a
world of difference.