Lighting Your Video: Back to the Hardware Store? (page 2)

Here's the bottom line, I think: if you're not for profit and you're mainly in a studio, save money everywhere possible by building everything you can and buying cheap what you can't. If you're working at serious professional production, I would spend the money for professional lights, stands, cases, and light accessories (not to mention several C-stands). As for cables, water weights, and similar accessories, consider buying outside the pro shops.

And if you're a serious amateur who wants more control over your lighting, get one professional spotlight and stand (with a lens, please), two, two-headed halogen work lights for bounce fill, and a couple of clip-up work lights holding halogen PAR (Parabolic Aluminized Reflector) lamps for chores like rim lighting and splashing backgrounds.

(Yet another TIP already: keep both spot- and flood-type PAR lamps around, so you can choose your light beam spread.) That one spot alone will give you a degree of flexibility and control you've almost certainly never had before.

Good lighting!

Contributing Editor Jim Stinson's book Video: Digital Communication and Production is out in a 2nd revised edition.

Make sure you take extension cords, one for each light. You want twelve-gage wire, heavy-duty three-prong plugs, and safety colors. (TIP: I use orange, lemon, and lime colored cables to quickly tell which line goes to which light.) Install an in-line switch maybe ten feet back from the female plug.

A. Check the amp rating on the switch- it needs to be the same amperage as your cord.

B. Remove a section of the outer casing on the cord, just shy of the length of the switch, being careful not to cut the three inner wires. Cut the hot wire, usually black, and attach it to the contacts. Loop the neutral, usually white, and the ground, usually green or bare, under the switch (uncut).

C. Reattach the protective case.

If you're good at electrical wiring (and that includes safe!) you can make in-line dimmer boxes and other accessories that are indistinguishable from Hollywood's finest. Why? Because pro juicers often make this stuff themselves, just the way you do.

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