What lighting do you use ?

[Soumendra Jena]

I normally use halogen white lights reflected onto the top ceiling.

What do you guys use or how do you do ?

[Dave Partington]

The problem with bouncing off the ceiling is causing racoon eyes where there is a shadow under the forehead within the eye sockets :( But it can work if everything is at the right sort of angle.

We us a mixture of lights, but the most portable we have are the Comer 1800s.

[Adrian Tan]

During reception (and sometimes during prep, especially on ring shots) -- two Switronix Torchbolts mounted on stands. They're brilliant, literally, but the batteries have messed me around (supplied charger has broken on me; battery life at full strength is about an hour). Better to work out some external battery solution if you buy this.

Positioning: during speeches: I try to have one adding sidelight or three-quarters backlight, and the other doing keylight. During first waltz: similar set up, but also shooting into the backlight light for flare. It's a cliche, and everyone does it, but still looks beautiful... I occasionally gel these blue.

I never bounce the light... but then the ceilings are too high in most of the venues I work with anyway.

I also carry a basic eBay Hong Kong dimmable LED (which creates a yucky greenish colour... but I'm too broke to replace it at the moment), and a rotolight (which isn't dimmable or very powerful, but fits around an on-camera microphone if I want both at once). On-camera lighting washes everything out in a deer-in-the-headlights sort of way, but I think there's lots of situations where it's unavoidable. What if you're in the middle of the crowd getting dance shots; or what if you're following the couple from farewell circle out into the blackness of the night for departure shot.

Rob Adams uses Arri 650W fresnels, by the way. I've very tempted to do the same -- the light from fresnels is better then LED in terms of eveness across the spectrum. But: (a) I'm suspicious of using any hot lights at receptions; I feel the likelihood of someone getting burnt or the light breaking is quite high; stands have fallen over for me before; (b) I'm reluctant to add that much bulk to the crap I carry around; (c) I don't really want to mess around with carrying extra globes and fuses, and waiting for lights to cool before you pack them up, and carrying gloves to handle them, etc.

[Chris Harding]

Me too!

Ceilings are either not white (found a venue with black ceilings the other day too!!) or way too high over here too. I do like bounced light so I just have (for speeches) 4 x CFL lights in a fitting and squirt that into a silver umbrella and I get really nice even light. I do try and position the light as high as I can as people who have just emerged from the dim and dingy tables area and into your well lit section are already struggling with your lighting that looks over-bright to them.

I dunno, hot lights, drunk guests, huge crowd?? Sounds a bit unsafe unless you can really secure them down well. I would rather cope with a CFL toppling over than a boiling hot Arri onto an unsuspecting guest.

Chris

[Soumendra Jena]

Got a diagram, how you plan your lights ?

I have seen many people saying LED , but I don't know if that can be bright enough for the subjects and the surrounding . Because most of the time , we take shallow DOF videos with rule of the thirds theory with good space around the focused subject .

I guess the best way is 1-2 continuous light source .

Looking for more replies.

[Soumendra Jena]

Originally Posted by Chris Harding

Me too!

Ceilings are either not white (found a venue with black ceilings the other day too!!) or way too high over here too. I do like bounced light so I just have (for speeches) 4 x CFL lights in a fitting and squirt that into a silver umbrella and I get really nice even light. I do try and position the light as high as I can as people who have just emerged from the dim and dingy tables area and into your well lit section are already struggling with your lighting that looks over-bright to them.

I dunno, hot lights, drunk guests, huge crowd?? Sounds a bit unsafe unless you can really secure them down well. I would rather cope with a CFL toppling over than a boiling hot Arri onto an unsuspecting guest.

Chris

Yes I saw some models at BH , large fixtures with 4-5 CFL fitted and with umbrella . What models do you recommend ?

And do you do two light setup with that ?

One main and one fill ?

[Chris Harding]

Hi Soumendra

The easiest is eBay.. they are really cheap and you can usually get heads as simple as a single fitting with a 120w 5500K CFL lamp and an umbrella. Usually that's all you need..My current one has 8 sockets (it used to have 9 but I removed the middle one to make space for the umbrella shaft) ...I seldom use any more than 4 x 55w lamps (the head is switchable) and just use the single fitting and a big umbrella ...the light from CFL's is soft already and after bouncing into an umbrella it's even softer so just a single stand quite high up (or the speakers will complain) with the lights facing away and bouncing into the umbrella at about 45 degrees.

The best way to light the speeches is to simply ask the venue to turn up the house lights!! That way you often don't need any lights at all as long as you tell the couple "it's just for the speeches" ..I always try to ask the staff to lift the ambient lighting anyway because for the person making a speech, coming from almost dark into bright video lights makes them feel blinded...turn up the housae lights 10 minutes before (and put on your video light too) and they get used to the new ambient light plus you have more light to work with!!

Chris

[Eric Coughlin]

I use an Arri 650 for key, and two Lowel Pro 250's for backlight and fill. I also use a Comer 1800 with either a couple Fotodiox Pro LED 312A lights or Z96 LEDs. The LEDs I mainly use for things I need to be more portable for, like if cake cutting is off to the side, a certificate signing, dress shots, etc.

Depending on the venue size and other factors, I'll either have the hot lights on all night or only for the important parts. The higher they are the less noticeable they are, so I put them on 11-13 foot stands and use 6 foot stands for the LEDs. I also use dimmers, as the 650 is often too bright at full power. With that lighting I'm typically able to shoot at about ISO 320 on Canon DSLRs for the reception when shooting around f/1.4-2.0. Sometimes I'm even able to shoot at ISO 160.

The problem I see with raising the venue lights is that the venue's lights are often very evenly spread and flat looking when raised. I prefer the more dramatic look provided by having a few video lights with beams from specific sources.

[Soumendra Jena]

Arri 650 shows 500W tungsten.

I bounce two 1000W tungsten hot lights . Still the pictures get to ISO 1250-1600 for 250 shutter or more.

I use 5D Mark 3, so I dont care going to even 4000-5000 ISO a lot of times , but for video, it has to be a key.

How do you rate fluorescent lighting kits ?

Do they provide as much as light as tungsten ?

[Paul R Johnson]

Flu softlights can be very bright, but the light is very flat, and dull, and boring - exactly what you want as a fill, but for your key, you need shadows, and if you give it six months more, the LED ones may well be affordable and have decent enough colour rendition. We're starting to see Fresnels that look similar to tungsten, and although at the moment, they still don't look quite right, it's moving very fast.

The Chinese are even importing US made LED sources to put in their kit!

[Soumendra Jena]

So, what would you suggest ?

Im looking for a replacement for my 1000W hot lights.

How much W fluro lights would give the same or a bit less amount of light as the 1000W tungsten ?

[Chris Harding]

Spiral CFL lamps are quoted as being 5 times the actual wattage - so a 100W CFL is supposedly equal to a 500W incandesant lamp but no a halogen!! I would put the figure closer to 3 times rather than 5 but it's very hard to tell as CFL's give off a very soft light compared to the very hard halogen lights ...it gives you a much more manageable image too with zero shadows and doesn't blind the guests either.

For speeches even with my old 1/4" chip cameras and slow optics I can light a lectern with 4 x 55W CFL's and get a nice image without blinding the person behind the lectern!! Plus of course they run cold so they is no risk of someone getting scalded or even sunburnt!!

A single 4 XCFL banks 5 metres from a lectern will light a speaker more than adequately and you can keep it nice and high so they don't complain about the light blinding them!!

Chris

[Peter Rush]

For speeches I'll use 2 LED-5080 which are great and will run for ages on NP batteries - however I will always try and get the house lights raised if possible, as more often than not there is barely enough room for me, tripod and my 2 extra cameras, let alone 2 lights on stands!

If I have to use them i use standbags to secure them against kids belting around.

I also have an issue with being a solo shooter, where increasingly speeches are taking place before the meal (I normally use the last 15 minutes of the meal to set up my gear) instead of after it - i'm usually filming right up until the announced entrance of the bride and groom, so have to beg 5 minutes of rushed setup time from the maître-d before the speeches kick off.

[Chris Harding]

Hi Pete

I used a 23 PowerLED bank for a while but I found the light was very hard? I'm back to using CFL's again as I love the soft light they produce.

Yeah, walk in and straight into speeches is a pain!! I prefer them after dinner so I have time to setup...then again cos we get our meals last, you are just about ready to tuck into a juicy steak and the MC announces "Speeches in 5 minutes"

Chris

[Steven Davis]

I use Frezzi dimables on all my cameras. Frezzi stuff is awesome, although it's a few mortgage payments to get a good set. :}