Interview lighting kit

[Cornershot]

I have a friend that's selling off a bunch of his equipment and he'd cut me a deal on a set of Kino's. Since I'm setting up a kit to do video interviews with my 60D, I was thinking of picking up a 4 bank panel for key and a 2 bank for fill with an LED light as a hair light. But he'd sell me 3 Kino 2 bank lights for the same price. Would the latter setup be more flexible? Seems like I could use two of the 2 bank lights (one over the other) like a 4 foot light to get more even waist up coverage when the interview subject is sitting. Or use the third 2 bank as a rim light when the shot is tighter. Or would a more conventional 4 bank/2 bank set up still work best? Thanks for any advice.

 

[leGreve]

Atleast don't go mixed system... LEDs don't mix well with other types of light, and you wont get a decent LED for easy money. Not even ARRIs L7 series is completely perfect.

Go full Kino... Depending where you live, you might want to look at FloLight or CoolLights instead of Kino Flo. If you then want the Kino Flo quality of light, just buy their lamps and put them in cheaper fixtures.

 

[RunAndGun]

My typical single subject sit-down set-up is a Diva 400 as key and a Barfly 200 for hair.

 

[Cornershot]

Thanks for the replies. All the lights he's offering are Kinos so it would be a matched set. I've only been using the LED as a hair light and it seems okay. I have a minus green gel on it and it's fairly well matched. I definitely wouldn't use an LED with a flo for key and fill.

I'm just wondering if three Kino 200's would be more flexible than a single Diva 400 and a 200. I've seen the Cool lights and like them, a bargain really, but I'm getting a great deal on the Kino's. What do you think? I'd prefer the 4x4 but it's big and expensive.

 

[leGreve]

Well if you go for the 400 and 200, you could just buy a cheap used ARRI 300 or 150w fresnel... the 150w is often used as a hairlight because you can boom it in or hang it from something with a superclamp since it's so light.

Look up Guy Holt and his indepth article on LEDs and why they aren't so hot (yet)... it's really interesting and very good knowledge to keep in the back of you mind.

Also worth taking into account, is that before they make LEDs perform good, they will be sidewinded by Plasma lights...

 

[Cornershot]

LeGreve, you're a mind reader. My friend had mentioned that he has a couple of Arri 300s as well. The only thing I worried about with those is how much light you lose to gel them to daylight or to scrim them, if you want to soften the light, and having to pack them after done since they get so hot. I think I might even have a few left over sheets of 1/2 CTB. The LED I have is battery operated so easy to set up. The only time I'd think of getting more LEDs is for a field kit. I have one of those 312 LED lights and I figured two or three more of them would probably be a quick run and gun type kit.