Q for McQ

Hey Mike,   as you might have read I got a new video camera. Panasonic HC-X920 if you want to look at the specs.
 
It has loads of manual functions (though the auto settings work very well) and I'm slowly learning how to get good shots with it.
My question is about video lights...
 
What should I get? I don't want to spend to much but I don't want some cheap ****e that looks good but drains the batteries in ten minutes without being able to light anything further than 18" away...  you get the idea.
 
Any recommendations?  Are LED video lights any good?
 
 
I tried doing camera tracking on my computer last night but I struggled with motion blur on the footage due to the long exposure times for indoor lighting.  It's rendering a test while I'm at work...  (I set the render quality way to high for a first test but I didn't have the heart to stop it half way through after it had been rendering all night )

craigb

Karyn
I don't want to spend to much but I don't want some cheap ****e that looks good but drains the batteries in ten minutes without being able to light anything further than 18" away...  you get the idea.

Not sure how cheap s-p-i-c-e looks, good or otherwise Karyn!

Oregano?

Damn!!!   Stupid ****e forum!!!
 
 

tmi
 
fixed

mike_mccue
...
 We have used Florescent lights for a long while but I personally think the quality of the light they offer is not so good. The are great power savers, and relatively light weight for logistics, but they are bulky and moving them around can be more cumbersome than moving heavier tungsten lights.
...

 
Unless I am mistaken, fluorescent is not a full spectrum type of light, as most regular lighting can be. Using gels (for example) on these is very frustrating to get full color, as opposed to the others in lekos or fresnels, and other lighting lamps for sets.
 
Did I say this right?
 
And normally, both lekos and fresnels are not used for specific and detailed lighting. These are better used for "area lighting" (at least in theater -- they usually do stage areas), but the lekos (ellipsoidal, by the way) can be focused a bit to get the arch larger or smaller and thus go for the actor's face/body, instead of a whole spot on the stage. The better actors, always work these spots mercilessly and are better because of it, but this is really hard to teach in an acting class!

Hi,
 
Sorry Karyn and McQ. Hope this is not too far off for you and helps see a perspective.
 

craigb
FWIW - They have so-called full spectrum flourescent bulbs and most lights are not full-spectrum (be they incandescent, halogen, flourescent or LED).

For a stage situation, you can see how the same gel, would be different on all of these kinds of lamps, and that makes it really difficult to use the more advanced and newer lighting materials these days. Most theaters still stick to the leckos and the fresnels, and in many ways they are easier. I already knew that I could set this leko up at 1/2 on the slider and I had a circle on a specific area that was 6 feet wide, if I knew the distances to the main poles, for example. That made it easier to know and learn to visualize the lighting for a production. Same for a fresnel, more or less, though the area would be slightly bigger. Let's say that the lekos were used more for "detail" and actor moments than the general "area lighting that is sat by fresnels mostly.
 
Here is also a problem with video, where the lighting, generally, is all white, and color does not do well, because it gets washed out by the rest of the lighting. Film uses a lot of gels and colors to assimilate a lot of things, but mainly to help create an ambience. TV still lacks ambience and then some, mostly because too much of it is done indoors on a closed set, and the quality suffers.
 
In the shows I designed for the stage, I had to be the prima donna, and my sets always had 12 areas, instead of 9 and this gave me more options in color and moments, and this was what I was known for as a director ... lights and sound! Because of it, since I didn't like doing living room theater, I ended up doing all the far out and off kilter stuff, which is my favorite. I can always work with "abstract" a lot better than when I'm told what it supposedly is! For this reason, I found difficult to light Edward Albee, or Tennessee Williams, but I had no issues with Peter Handke or Michel de Ghelderode (I did "Escuriel" by him), and Escuriel's set was a platform with a chair on it, and the mood and atmosphere was terrific and even my directing professor said that I bested the original he had seen of this play in Paris by a mile, in simple, pure design and flow. I was not afraid to use light and color, and knew how to adjust and change at the right moments.
 
For the two films I did, it was all ambient lighting, because I wanted to see how well I could use it, and the result was excellent, and even the professor (was from USC) said it was phenomenally designed and I never showed a single moment where the lighting did not fit, or appeared to be incorrect, which he felt was a sign that I knew what I was doing within a conceptual level. I will say OK, but there was more instinct in that than otherwise, and while I could say that it might have been accidental I got the "right shots", in the end, I shot what I wanted and needed except two parts ... I drove over a bump and I had the camera on and filming and it went all around and I continued doing that for 30 more seconds or so, and used it during an "accident" in the film, and the other was later during a "murmur" kind of thing, where I had images of my mom's house library and other things, that created a stream of consciousness that was quite strong, and the professor felt that it was like ... you are seeing the last images as you ... during an accident or otherwise.
 
Lighting for me, with a camera, is about the FEELING, because I can adjust the shot to the voice and the face, to make sure that i can grab the correct feel for the words or the movement. This is nto something that is easily taught for stage in directing, as it is so intuitive a matter, but it was always important for me, and is the major clue in all my film reviews, and how directors do this differently.
 
Too bad I never found a rock band. I would have made Pink Floyd look like crap. I wanted to use film way before "The Wall" and had already tried it with one piece, as a tribute to the vampire play (Carmilla) by the "ETC La Mamma" group. Next to these, only the National Theater of the Deaf was magnificently directed and designed with lights and places in the stage with minimal sets. But too many bands were not interested in lighting, and Nektar's Light Theater, while nice, was half a waste that had nothing to do with their work and lyrics, which I found sad. It, instead, burned out the band.
 
In general, the rest of conventional theater I tend to not enjoy, and some of those musicals, have the greatest array of lights mis-used and I saw a big name play that came through here and it was the worst stage design I have ever seen in my life! Cheap, and then some! Even Las Vegas does it better, though some of the folks that do it, are, by far, some of the best in the business!

Hi,
 

Karyn ...
I thought it would be a simple answer, "Yeah, get one of these...  they're cheapish but perform well and the batteries last.." but I fully understand your answers and why you didn't just say "Buy this one"
 ...

 
Maybe it's my nature, but I would recommend learning what the camera can handle on the low end and on the high end, BEFORE you spend on anything. Since it is video, you don't really lose film, like we did in the old days, and allows you a chance to learn what it can do or not do, and makes the big difference in the end, for your ability to use it and how, and what choice of moments and shots, you end up using, which will then become more and more important for you. Sometimes you even end up pre-designing the whole thing on the basis of a set of shots that you plan on getting.
 
In the end, this is more "educational" (so I think, anyway!) for the use of the camera, FROM A DIRECTING PERSPECTIVE, by the way, not necessarily from a camera person perspective (there is a difference at times), which tends to define the work some folks do. In film, both of these are different (see "Visions of Light" -- it teaches you more about "lighting" than we can imagine!), but in TV work these are totally obliterated, and as is the case in cheap video work, like the adult industry and some of the stuff that shows up at Robert Redford's soiree's (!!!), the quality and continuity is usually ridiculous, to the point of making the whole thing boring and totally stupid and cheap.
 
For me, be it TV or Film, in the end, the camera is ME. PERIOD. And sometimes it might be how I even interpret things, and would love to see done. But all my life I have gone for things that were always the best in the visual department, and I caught most of them (missed Misha, though!), but all in all, when it comes to rock music, and most staging, almost none of it ever showed the band better than it really was. I thought the closest to it was Pink Floyd in the 1971/1972 days when they were doing AHM and Echoes, and the lighting was simple, and effective and neat, but not wasteful as most rock band lighting is. Or in 1999, when I was talking to Sean Ahearn (Progressive Music Festival) and the folks filming it were idiots. So one of the kids has Daevid Allen (Gong) playing  to the camera and the girl walks away from it to something else. Total lack of appreciation for the detail of the beauty and the acting in the music. Or in the end, Christian Vander (Magma) having tears in his eyes as his group got a standing ovation that lasted more than 10 minutes. Only took more than 30 years for his band to come to America!
 
This is my greatest fear. Having a camera in hand, and ... I see nothing! I am blind. And my right eye (the camera eye) has already had 3 surgeries, and is only 80%.
 
So far, though, this has been OK, and I am pretty sure I will get back into it, and you are encouraging me by doing so. Now you can see how the little bit I had come up with for the Coffee House Band first song, was so valuable and important to me, even if it was a compliment to Hipgnosis. The fact that it was shot down and never thought of or considered, was so hurtful to my inner view, and so typical of any rock band I have wanted to play with ... that it was just one more disappointment in the midst of the ocean of everything else for me. I would have gone broke to film that. Just like I spent a fortune on helping my old roomate do Space Pirate Radio (paid for T-shirts and Album) and then the artist here in Vancouver, WA.
 
Thanks

Karyn
... 
It would be nice to have a few of these, but I'm not trying to set up a home film studio.  I'll prolly get something like this or several of the cheaper ones that I can stick around at random without worrying about how much they cost..

The lights are not as "important", btw, as the position of your reflectors. This was the case in regular photography that we had here for the 9 years I was there. You move that reflector up a foot and the fstop just changed 1.5 steps, and such, all of it depending on what you wanted from the light. So you meter it directly and sideways to consider the difference. And adjust.
 
Of these, the more "learning" is on the lights, and I would rather play with the reflectors, but that is more "advanced" lighting than otherwise. The light on top, is probably the easier of the two, but still tricky. There is more flexibility with the other setup, but you would have to change shots and perspective more, and that's harder.
 
BTW, I keep thinking, that a cheap light meter might be good, too, since you might get an idea of how far forward or backwards you can move with that light and what adjustment the camera can handle before the shot begins to break down. But this might be the still photographer in me, more than the camera/film person. I got really comfortable making those adjustments with my trusty AE-1.

cclarry
The S-P-I-C-E must flow...

Paul Moadib

http://youtu.be/21w60AU8NzA