Today's videographer faces a multitude of challenges when it comes to deciding on the best light kit to acquire. How do you determine which light kit is best for you? Do you know the difference between quartz lights, LED (light-emitting diode) and incandescent, even fluorescent and what will each type do for you... or not?

What light kit is best based on your needs and budget? What lighting conditions and challenges do you anticipate facing most often? Do your continuous lighting needs call for Fresnel lights, a soft box or other professional lighting kit? What brands offer a professional lighting kit or models using the lighting technology you most wish to utilize? Let's take a look at the host of options available to you. With the lighting technology offered today you'll find something you can use that fits your budget.

A Video Lighting Kit

From major name brands to lesser-known manufacturers, even hobby or do-it-yourself resource centers or your local hardware store; you have options for acquiring or designing video lighting that addresses the lighting conditions you face for any video production. What you put together becomes your video lighting kit.

Maybe you want to be portable - "have camera and video lighting, will travel". Or your production needs are less run-and-gun, and more controllable. You might be using a set, stage or room requiring more diverse, expansive lighting technology. You then might want to use Fresnel lights, a softbox or three other continuous lighting options. Options, options!

What you put together for your production needs, the video lighting tools you acquire and accumulate as budget permits becomes your video lighting kit. The video lighting you use doesn't have to be branded to be considered a professional lighting kit. You're the professional and your collection of tools for establishing mood, brightening corners or enhancing the scene are your kit.

In fact, should you decide to specialize in video lighting for productions and immerse yourself into lighting technology, you could plan to bulk up on a variety of lighting implements and become a gaffer, creating the lighting rigs needed as defined by a production's director of photography. You just built a kit.

If you have added a few on-camera options, assorted filters for changing temperature, softening or dispersing light, or acquired lamps and bulbs for your rig that allow you a variety of on-camera lighting options - you have a kit. If you have a ditty bag with a range of small stands, AC or DC powered units, sandbags or water bottles for weighing down stands - you have a kit.

Over time the average videographer acquires a variety of portable lighting devices that can be used on- or off-camera to accomplish unique lighting needs. The kit grows because even with portable lights no one type serves every purpose.

Boxes, Floods and Spots

Many event productions preclude using your lighting kit. Theater, dance recitals, even seminar presentations often restrict the amount of lighting devices the videographer is allowed. People from event planners to the DJ will not be happy that you've put up stands with soft box units, intense quartz lights or even a few Fresnel lights from your professional lighting kit. These interfere with their mood light or lights-out setups.

Weddings pose a particularly unique set of challenges with no hard rules regarding or requiring the videographer to use auxiliary lighting. Many video professionals prefer a "less is more" approach to adding lighting units at ceremony or reception. But some additional lighting will nearly always be needed for optimum imaging for video.

Used properly and with regard to the subjects lighted, your on-camera video lighting might be the best light kit for you. You still have choices and decisions to make. If this is your only light and you do mostly weddings, something like an NRG (Neutral Grounding) unit with a 50-watt lamp or a brighter lamp with diffusion filter to disperse the beam might see universal use.

Cool-Lux and Bescor, as well as many other brands, offer multiple-lamp units that can increase or decrease the wattage as you fire them up or turn them off. Many manufacturers provide on-camera units with dimmers, some with gradual or no temperature change going from low to high output.

With a dimmer, you can keep your lights lower or add more light with the more powerful settings. Other options include LED lights that burn cooler and sometimes brighter, that can be dimmed and are softer and less focused. These units, however, still have trouble being effective from more than a few feet. Videographers often place such off-camera lights at a head table or even a podium, throwing light on the couple or the speaker when the house lights have been turned down low.

There are exceptions where softbox lights or stage lights (usually a three-light kit with stands, heads, lamps, floods, spots and barndoors) can be used at receptions and other events. Softbox kits, as the name suggests, provide a broad, pleasant, diffused light source and many lighting conditions call for this application. Even so, more direct continuous lighting may be needed as well, calling for focused spotlights, quartz lights or a few Fresnel lights tossed into the mix.

For all but the most permanent installations using light bars, trusses and racks or stands, speed and efficiency are the determining factor along with the basic lighting requirements of the production. For the run-and-gun event video producer a single, on-camera unit may be all that is ever needed.

For studio and location kits, you'll want more diversity and a wide selection so you can pick the light kit that's best for your needs and to also offset surprises. Again, budget and compromise will always play a role in establishing your professional light kit.