Video Lights

Dan7312

I'm looking to go inexpensive, ahhhh cheap, to get some lights to try out some video stuff with my Canon 7D. I tried some things with just ordinary tunsten lights in our living room and that's not too hard to fix up, but it doesn't make enough light. I was able to get "good enough" results by just eyeballing the Kelvin temp in the live view on the camera and then using the Premiere auto color/white/contrast effect.

A lot of places have $15-$20 500W halogen work lights. Would color from these light be too hard to deal with?

TIA

ziggy53

As long as the tungsten-halogen lights are the only source of light, or at least the very dominant source (so you avoid mixed color temperatures/white balance), it's not too bad using them in a large space. They are terribly hot to use in small spaces for any length of time.

I still use a pair of Lowel Tota-lights for industrial stuff.
http://www.lowel.com/tota/

They mix just fine with the tungsten-halogen work lights. The work lights are less costly, but they aren't designed to work with lighting stands and modifiers.

BTW, halogen bulbs will color shift over time (slightly), as well as lose brightness. You can use most dSLRs to determine the white balance very accurately by just shooting a RAW frame with AWB and a white target and then opening the RAW file in Photoshop/ACR, noting the camera's color temperature rating in ACR.

kdog

Call me crazy, but I just picked up a Husky 180 LED rechargeable work-light for $60 at home depot for a video project I did last night. Link: http://www.homedepot.com/buy/lighting-fans/work-lights/husky/180-led-portable-worklight-52195.html

Looks like this.



The project came out adequately, and it seems like a great little gadget to play with. And of course it doubles as a rechargeable work light! No clue as to it's color qualities, but it seems like a good candidate for the color balance method that Ziggy mentioned above.

Dan7312

Thanks Ziggy, kdog. I also just found this guide on the B&H site:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/indepth/photography/buying-guides/hdslr-video-lighting.htm

Which, interestingly enough, doesn't talk about halogen lights even though B&H carries the Lowel lights Ziggy mentioned.

I think I'm going to make one more try with our house lighting by moving every tungsten light we have into the room I'm using to make the video. That won't be a permanent solution but at least I it will let me see if what I'm trying to do has any merit.

I just didn't want to dump a lot of money on an experiment that might not work out. If what I end up does work out then I'll look into "real" continous lighting.

Dan7312

I do a variation on this. I adjust the K temp whitebalance setting so that the live view looks about right in terms of color. Of course it's just a rough approximation and the whitebalance just comes though as metadata, but LR uses "as shot" metadata when it displays raws, so I don't have to do a whitebalance adjustment before to get rid of the orange cast when I just want to peruse the images.

For video I'm not sure what the 7D captures. I've got the camera set to RAW, but I don't know if that affects video captures. In Premiere you can adjust the WB as you can in photoshop, including auto adjust. So I use the approx K technique in case the video capture doesn't have the same latitude that a raw image capture does.

ziggy53 wrote: »

You can use most dSLRs to determine the white balance very accurately by just shooting a RAW frame with AWB and a white target and then opening the RAW file in Photoshop/ACR, noting the camera's color temperature rating in ACR.

angevin1

Dan7312 wrote: »

I'm looking to go inexpensive, ahhhh cheap, to get some lights to try out some video stuff with my Canon 7D. I tried some things with just ordinary tunsten lights in our living room and that's not too hard to fix up, but it doesn't make enough light. I was able to get "good enough" results by just eyeballing the Kelvin temp in the live view on the camera and then using the Premiere auto color/white/contrast effect.

A lot of places have $15-$20 500W halogen work lights. Would color from these light be too hard to deal with?

TIA

If I am needing critical WB; ie: skin tones, I shoot one still bring it into LR3 and see what the WB is, and then go to camera and set it in K. of course use what you want, but sometimes I just shoot tethered in LR3 because I can adjust my camera settings right then and there via LR3.

I don't think color from those lights would be too hard to deal with, the bigger deal is balance of differing colors as you know and has been suggested. personally I would think the larger deal is then taking those lights and shaping the throw.

angevin1

Dan7312 wrote: »

For video I'm not sure what the 7D captures.

It captures whatever WB you have set.

Dan7312

When you say capture do you mean it catpures the WB as metadata like a raw image, or like jpeg where the camera processes the input and you lose the latitude to make adjustments after the fact?

angevin1 wrote: »

It captures whatever WB you have set.

angevin1

Dan7312 wrote: »

When you say capture do you mean it catpures the WB as metadata like a raw image, or like jpeg where the camera processes the input and you lose the latitude to make adjustments after the fact?

jpeg unfortunately!

Dan7312

The 7D video stuff I'm looking at doing is incredibly mundane. As long as the color balance isn't bizzare it should be ok. They are really just intros for the course videos I make. Actually the thing that is most important to me is that text from examples comes out dead clear even on Youtube or Smugmug, like near the end of this test video I made to see how I could put things together.

http://youtu.be/e_xarRH7U3Q

BTW the course videos I make are not "real" videos, I don't capture them with a camera, there are an animated sequence of screen captures that we host on our own servers, not Youtube.

angevin1 wrote: »

If I am needing critical WB; ie: skin tones, I shoot one still bring it into LR3 and see what the WB is, and then go to camera and set it in K. of course use what you want, but sometimes I just shoot tethered in LR3 because I can adjust my camera settings right then and there via LR3.

I don't think color from those lights would be too hard to deal with, the bigger deal is balance of differing colors as you know and has been suggested. personally I would think the larger deal is then taking those lights and shaping the throw.

Dan7312

Thanks, I was afraid of that too. So I should make sure the WB is at least in the ballpark before I start shooting the video.

angevin1 wrote: »

jpeg unfortunately!

angevin1

Dan7312 wrote: »

So I should make sure the WB is at least in the ballpark before I start shooting the video.

YES! And for me, since I most often deal with skin tones, I like to judge in LR3 so that I can adjust WB before I shoot the video portion. For instance my lights are supposed to be 5600 balanced, but I find they actually are most close to 5k. I like to adjust my WB to usually about 4600-4800 depending on just how much warmer I want things. on some of my video work ( link in sig) I often will shoot balanced at 4800 then use a layer or two of that same video to color-adjust.

I also use a custom color profile to shoot with. All it is really is a very flat, un-sharp and low-contrasted shooting profile to capture video on. Allowing for I think more recognizable latitude to adjust to in Post.
It is CineStyle: http://www.technicolor.com/en/hi/cinema/filmmaking/digital-printer-lights/cinestyle

I have SA Aperture/Color Finesse-3 in my After Effects 5.5. It has what you would expect: A vector scope, waveforms for RGB, GBR, YRGB,YCbCr, LUMA as well as Rosco Gels, Filters and Film Stocks too. And the controls, it has sliders or curves, or wheels whatever you prefer. Yet I rarely use the presets or filters unless coloring a layer to then go back and lighten up opacity against another layer of the same video.

I know I went on and on, but really for me the day is a good one when I got the WB right where I wanted it.

angevin1

Dan7312 wrote: »

The 7D video stuff I'm looking at doing is incredibly mundane. As long as the color balance isn't bizzare it should be ok. They are really just intros for the course videos I make. Actually the thing that is most important to me is that text from examples comes out dead clear even on Youtube or Smugmug, like near the end of this test video I made to see how I could put things together.

http://youtu.be/e_xarRH7U3Q

BTW the course videos I make are not "real" videos, I don't capture them with a camera, there are an animated sequence of screen captures that we host on our own servers, not Youtube.

WB looks fine on that and on this S**t Monitor too! Are you talking about the Blue BG with White text? It reads fine to me!

Also meant to mention that the lighting looks fine. It is effective, doesn't distract, and I think those are the right points to be made!

Is that your SmugMug?

Dan7312

Thanks for the details!

angevin1 wrote: »

YES! And for me, since I most often deal with skin tones, I like to judge in LR3 so that I can adjust WB before I shoot the video portion. For instance my lights are supposed .

Dan7312

Thanks for taking the time to look.

Yeah the text on the blue inset screen. What I've found it that if you pick the wrong size for the video, because Youtube and smugmug re-encode and compress, things like text get fuzzy. My regular videos are 1024x768 and those get fuzzed up a bit on smugmug. That video was rendered as 1920x1080, H.264, 30 (29.97) fps which of the ones I've tried seem to work the best.

Yup, that's my smugmug :-)

angevin1 wrote: »

WB looks fine on that and on this S**t Monitor too! Are you talking about the Blue BG with White text? It reads fine to me!

Also meant to mention that the lighting looks fine. It is effective, doesn't distract, and I think those are the right points to be made!

Is that your SmugMug?