Lighting and such on a tight, tight budget.

[southernamateur2001]

I am looking for ways to find lights for a MiniDV film I want to do. I heard you can use regular lamps with the right bulbs. Is this true? Help?!?

Also I was wondering where could I find something that would help me steady my camera better? Or can I make something at home?

 

[Lazlo]

For really cheap lights, I highly recommend work lights. They're crude, but effective. They're hard to control, but give you a lot of light. Practicals work okay, but generally are impractical with lower end miniDV camcorders since they don't produce enough light. The end result is an extremely noisy image since most of these lower end camcorders compensate for little light by boosting the gain (dB), which let's you see, but at great cost to image quality.
Practicals in conjunction with worklights would be the cheapest solution. For a higher end cheapness, you could look into lowel, and smith-victor lighting systems both of which are much better than worklights, though more expensive. And if you want to go crazy, you can look at Dedolights, which are quite expensive.

Also, you can use household bulbs, there's no rule that says you can't, just remember than they don't put a lot of light out. In terms of color temperature, just remember to white balance! (adjust you camcorder for shooting under tungsten light)

As for what you can use to steady your camera better. Well, there's tripods, which you can find for as little as around $15-20. Tripods will do wonders for camera steadiness. Now, if you're talking about steadiness when you're moving the camera (like a dolly), that's a little more complicated. For that, If your camera by chance as a handle on the top, use it. Or make one. That steadies the camera quite a bit. Or you can try supporting the camera from the bottom. Basically, almost anything is better than putting your hand in through that sort of slip thing that's attached to the camera unless you're doing heavy duty documentary work.
After you get beyond these basics in camera steadiness, prices rise drastically. I know someone who built their own Steadicam system, which works really well. You can use a wheelchair, which works really well. Or, you can invest in a $200 Steadicam system... Which is about as cheap as they come...... And I don't know how well they work, although from footage I've seen they look pretty good.

Hope this helped! Good luck!

 

[Joseph Boyd]

Work lights are great, but unwieldy and hard to control. I like to use Halogen light bulbs in house hold lights, you can get them in up to 200 watt that fit standard sockets at Home Depot (remember they get hot), also I have a 30" China ball with a three way switch and a halogen that goes up to 150 watts.
The halogens in lamps work great when you're lighting in small areas, such as an apartment or bedroom where you don't have the room needed to run construction lights.

 

[timely]

The work lights have worked pretty well for us, and they are cheap. Also, back to the public access cable t.v. stations. You can check out light kits there if you are a member and take a class on how to use them. If you need to soften the light from the work lights, you can hang a white sheet in front of them. The other thing you can do is point the lights at the ceiling or at a white wall so that it reflects back and isn't too harsh.

 

[Matuso]

If you want to be crafty, take some lamps, take the shades off, and make tinfoil light directors, making a cup around one half of the bulb so most of the light goes in one direction. Then, get one or more layers of wax paper and stick it to some two-by-fours to make a screen that diffuses the light. This actually worked pretty well for us. It looks stupid (I mean really stupid) but it works.

As for smoothness when moving a camera, find a furniture dolly and tie a tripod to it. Again, it looks stupid, but I'll be damned if it doesn't work. Something like this: http://www.taylorrental.com/images/products/dolly.jpg

Make sure the dolly has air tires, because that will minimize the jolts when you go over anything, like a carpet-to-linoleum bump, or a crack in cement. I found it helped to let some of the air out of the tires, as well. The dolly/tripod/camera combination isn't that heavy and the tires will be able to hold up while being squishy.

 

[element80]

Practicals work okay, but generally are impractical...

Yeah, I don't really have anything useful to say, I just found that humerous.

 

[Lazlo]

I'm sorry, I should have been clearer. I didn't mean that one is never allowed to use practicals, just that it is generally impractical to entirely light a set with a lamp or candle. It can work, it's just difficult. Of course on a larger scale, the whole situation becomes practical when you can put in higher wattage lights into lamps, and have the means to such higher budget luxouries. Anyways, sorry for the confusion.

 

[element80]

Oh, no, I totally understood what you meant, and I wasn't disagreeing with you. I just thought it was a funny word choice, using "impracticle" when referring to "practicles". Sorry, I'm random like that.