How to Make CHEAP Lights Look 100x More Cinematic

[@RicanStudio]

A couple things to note: The CRI of these lights is by definition 100. They are black body emitters and have all colors in their spectrum unlike LEDS. Colors, skin, etc will look perfect if the white balance is set. You can buy a $15 PWM dimmer at home depot used for routers, etc and dim them that way. You can also buy cooler color bulbs. I know all this because while I am American, I started photography and videography in Tunisia, where things aren't available or were just too expensive at the time. Biggest issue with them by far is the heat, but outside or in cold climates there aren't any technical downsides, except maybe power draw... they are lightweight, cheap, and ones I bought had a hole in the bracket that allowed them to be mounted with 3/8 16 threaded pin and a nut.

[@CartyCantDance]

This is what the people need to hear

[@sbozinovic]

Also, I'm sure that there are work lights on a stand that are available... I used them a couple of times before the led era. Otherwise, sachtler reporter sets 300w and 650w, openface, variable focus... 4x4 and bigger frames with diff filters. Styrofoam boards for bounce. And a LOT of CTB gels...

[@LucForsyth]

For sure there are better lights available, just picked the worst ones for fun! Great times there too!

[@LucForsyth]

Great tips man, thanks for sharing! And if anyone wants to do this, dimmers would be highly recommended! We just did it the dumbest way to see

[@sbozinovic]

@@LucForsyth those were the workhorses in the days before LEDs... I wouldn't recommend them! to anyone now. Too many burnt fingers and filters... As for the cheapest... I did use a pair of the work lights that came on the stand. As for the full spectrum of the tungsteen, I have a friend, oldtimer who still swears by them and uses them whenever he can. Those arri's are indestructible, btw. But they do have some special, natural feel to them.

[@Jordifonsek]

As a Mexican young filmmaker without a budget, we learn to solve all those types of issues with the stuff we have, I've made several interviews with not "professional" lighting, because sadly in Mexico, that gear is too expensive. Great video!!

[@LucForsyth]

Órale bro! That's where the real learning happens

[@microminstrel]

I loved the ‘huge dilemma’ feigned part of the video. ‘We have to figure out SOME kind of way to get this light up *higher…” lol. Like, ever heard of a chair? Or a table? Or a light stand and a clamp that’s literally IN the shot next to me. 😂

[@AnthonyZucca]

Honestly my favorite part of this video is just watching you two shoot each other. I'd love to see more videos where I can watch you operating the camera, and seeing the footage PIP. Thank you for all the work!!

[@sopot9]

Well, you bought the best lamp you can get there in terms of color accuracy - incandescent one. When pared with smartly places diffusion, it's no surprise you get nice result

[@zwheels654]

I'm glad that I learned how to use gels before RGBWW lights got popular. You really can make anything work if you know how to gel your lights.

[@clarkbarrow6750]

I think the experiment was fantastic and Hank was an absolute sport about it. He seemed to be enjoying the whole process. This shows that a person with deep knowledge about their profession can make things work even when they aren’t designed for the project. Well done!

[@jaimykim6417]

6:45 I wish you had corrected the camera for 3200k just as a demo so we could see the difference between that and cooling the light

[@tomguder]

I often just use the sun as the only light in my arbour piano studio - the constant change of the lighting situation is something I learned to love. Thank you Luc - I love you channel because your tell from experience an not only about gear.

[@JonEnge]

I did a bunch of work on an early film of mine with work lights because it's all we could afford. I wrote it as a film noir because I knew the color would be all over the place with a bunch of these things. My biggest takeaways from the tests I did was, "Use modifiers!" Bouncing them made a world of difference! I even bought foam core in different colors to modify the extremely yellow lights which... didn't work great, but it was in B&W. It's so cool to see you doing it with some really nice gear, too! Thanks for this video, love it!

[@robertharker]

Odd that you are surprised to find that quartz halogen lights are very warm both in color temperature and fixture temperature. Have you never used incandescent lights before? Rather than a $1,000 book light kit, how about a shower curtain and a white sheet and two Neewer backdrop support systems for a total cost of $100 or so. Yes it does have stands with tripod legs but at a tenth of the cost seems like a reasonable trade off. BTW, Home Depot has a two work light system on a tripod stand for $50US.

[@TDCIYB77]

Without the latent fire hazard and the inability to dimm the lights it would be a pretty cool hack for some ultra low budget indie film making starter kit. But a nice experiment in any case, and a great demonstration of how important modifiers are!

[@Doddsy]

Yep I used to do exactly this when I started! I Even found some LED work lights which were way too cold in colour. Used to film small local concerts and music videos with 2 x hot warm work lights and 2x cool LED work lights and contrast them for some interesting shots. Even hanging them from stuff high up to change the angle. Love janky filmmaking.

[@Sgyozo]

Proper film halogen fixtures have also became pretty cheap, i've got some for myself on ebay. 800W redhead for 2 EUR, another pair of 800W with stands and bag for 30 EUR, also a 2K fresnel for 80, a 5K Sachtler for 35 (got two spare globes too, 10 EUR each) I just love them. The light quality is unbeatable, but of course the heat, power consumption, color temperature change when dimmed is a downside. I have some LED's too, they are nice, will buy some more daylight ones. IMO bicolor is kinda dumb, i mean a 300W is actually 150W tungsten and 150W daylight so it's 300W at 4200 or so. Usable when all lights are the same. Outdoors i'd need more daylight, and in studio with mixed fixures i can gel down the daylight LED and get about 150W of tungsten temp light.

[@itsapinecone7280]

bicolor is nice for the ease of use, but you are right, not the brightest. thats when just getting daylight leds and adding color temperature gels is good when you need the brightness

[@SomeWeirdCat]

If you think clamping gels to a hot light is a wild concept you should talk to more grips. I'm barely a professional and i have wild stories of the things I've done and seen others do to rig things up for a scene. C47s on the barn doors of a mickey mole was pretty much the only way to actually use a gel on the low budget films I worked on when i started. You've pretty much just recreated 2015 grip department in 2024

[@TJA86]

I wish you'd done this comparing to a tungsten balanced LED instead of daylight. Glad to see you got good results anyway though. The amazing thing about incandescent bulbs is that they all put out the same color and have perfect CRI, so you can always just add more without having to worry about matching brands and varying color shifts, like you would with LEDs. Also, a cheap dimmer would have probably worked great on the warm back light - it also would have warmed it up even more, which sounds like what you were hoping for.

[@johnwoods9380]

That is a brave question to ask

[@johnnyc.5979]

Funny how the price of those Home Depot lights changed throughout the video...

[@mileswilson6204]

One thing that the heat of old lamps does as well is affect the performance of an actor. I've heard some of my talent talk about "feeling" when they are lit well. I believe it has to do with feeling the heat of the light on their skin in familiar ways, contributing to the way they perform. I personally love LED for the convenience of low power, high output, portable systems. But there are some things that we might not even know we are losing

[@johnclay7644]

good topic informative content Thanks Luc.

[@GabrielCarusetta]

Love this idea!

[@VideoVo-Tech]

This was fun! Took me back to the days before LEDs where we all used those silver can lights with the biggest tungsten bulbs we could find... I don't miss those days 🤣 Honestly LEDs are great but I think the biggest thing is being able to adapt to the Bowens mount and softboxes. I don't miss overpriced Chimeras or having to box in every single 4x4 diffusion setup with floppies. Thanks for taking us all back to where we started!

[@AlexUlleri]

You're putting Leslieville on the map! 😀 That's my local Homedepot.

[@voizeguy]

11:50 that smile got me. Soo cute.

[@thundering1]

I have an Arri 650w quartz halogen light, a handful of 250w and 150w quartz halogen units - all collecting dust. Can't bring myself to get rid of them, but can't imagine using them anytime soon - yeah, they heat up any room FAST. I bought 5 clip-on 100w halogen lights from a hardware store a good 15yrs ago for a gig where we had to throw light around a larger area just to raise the ambient and rake a few walls, and they matched perfectly. I think they were $10 each, and ended up using them a handful of times for accents here and there. I do NOT miss the heat they generated, though.

[@NaorFilms]

Great Video!

[@manmadewilderness]

As a G&E person, you did make me cringe w/ your stack of stools. It's not only the lights that are an issue for this low end tech. While an admirable and fun experiment, the ability to rig the tools securely and safely is one of the reasons all the professional gear adds up. As you mentioned, trying to position these kinds of lights on anything other than a stack of stools becomes a chore. If you've got unlimited time and patience it can be done - but still in a limited manner. The special tools we use help with reliability, repeatability, and time constraints.

[@who2999]

Man that's a blast from the past. The first two features I dp'd we used 1k watt harbor freight worklights as our primary sources. I probably still have a dozen of them around my house. The ones we used came with a stand which would have solved one of your big problems, and yep we constantly had to add gels and diffusion to make them match/get rid of artifacting. Older Tungsten base work lights are going to work better for this than more modern LED lights since cheap LED's won't give you nearly as wide of a color spectrum and while you might get your white looking good in camera you could be screwing yourself later in the color grade. A good rule of thumb is to test cheap lights ahead of time and check footage you're shooting through the histogram, if you're seeing limited spikes of color that average out to white and not a steady stream of color when shooting white chances are you're shooting a very limited spectrum. A cheap lighting alternative I've leaned on personally instead of worklights is to buy old pre LED cinema lights (or take them off the hands of people throwing them away because they swapped to LED's) and then get full spectrum led bulbs to put in them. You'll usually get a much higher light output for the wattage of the fixture than what the light was originally designed for and you'll have all your pro features like mounting points and barn doors.

[@LucForsyth]

That's amazing! I can't imagine going back to that in the age of LED, but obviously it was the standard and we all got used to it...time moves fast!

[@TommyJonesProductions]

I bought a pair of similar work lights about a decade ago and used them once then threw them out. I didn't have access to filters and modifiers, though.

[@CavalieriTom]

Great content, as usual. Congrat's! Cheers from Brazil.

[@itsryanwilkes]

Haha fun video Luc!! Glad you didn't burn the place down.

[@ahdam82]

I like the premise of this video. I’m a woodworker recently transitioning into content creation. And I have a ton of LED shop lights some which are battery powered others are as much as 18,000 lumens you got me wondering how this would work with some diffusion?!

[@JackPerejuan]

What a trip seeing Gerrard Square Home Depot! I hope you hit up Tropical Joe's in the food court. Best Jerk Chicken & Rice in town!

[@FLVXVLF]

Hanks camera has a dead Pixel!

[@RebeccaLang-v2s]

Sometimes i use old slide projectors as a light source i have a few just laying around you can get them used realy cheap (in germany at least) and the have an integrated glas gel

[@davidp158]

Would you use these work lights to pump light through a window and diffusion from outdoors? I'm thinking they would be plenty bright, but of course need gels. Also, being outside you wouldn't have the heat issues to deal with.

[@darkphotographer]

was using halogen work lights for music video about 10 years a go , but am using new work lights or garden/garage with led 50-100w for 20euro , that work quite well , just need to find one with good colour the daylight are bit green , and difficult to correct , so if you get bit warm tone just add blue jell or fix it in post , and i also got some rgb like that , the good thing is they don t get that hot , and most are waterproof you can also scew them in you ligthstands if you have a 5mm bolt with imperial thred

[@LucForsyth]

nice one, thanks for sharing!

[@darkphotographer]

ye and for the most part you can get a 5.6 at 400 iso 2m away , with diffusion or bonce on wall , 2,8 at 400 iso with a 50-100w led is bit lower than 500w halogen the make also some convention bulb in led for throws halogen box at 5-10euro , also good cheap light are celling led panels they use in office get a 60x60cm for 10-20eu , you got nice softbox style light , (yee i live in Europe that's why i use euro and meters) @@LucForsyth

[@DanilloCabrera]

If you don't want to spend 999 dollars in the Westcott Cine Book Light Kit, just use two big collapsible reflectors, one with the white reflection part and the other with the diffuser, it should do the job

[@sbozinovic]

Ah, this reminds me of the time when we carried 300w and 600w sachtler reporter sets... and a LOT of diff and ctb filters. 😁

[@LucForsyth]

oh boy, sounds like a mission!

[@SSGrille]

Along with the halogen work lights I would have grabbed a fire extinguisher as well. I have tossed donated halogen studio lights just from the fear of burning the building down.

[@FilmshooterOH]

It's not the tools, it's the craftsperson. As to the heat from those lights, try a Mole Richardson Mighty Mole (2000w tungtsen) . That's a heater.

[@LucForsyth]

haha, fair enough!

[@a77mighty666]

great video thank you. p.s i think Hanks camera has a dead pixel, had me worrying about my new monitor until the video went back to main film camera

[@tomguder]

does your FX3 has a dead pixel at the right/center side of the picture?

[@KrishnenduKes]

How did you catch that?

[@tomguder]

@KrishnenduKes 'watched on my 2560*1440 27" screen with an eye-screen distance of 50 cm with my reading-glasses on.

[@robcompton6099]

@@tomguder I watched on my 4K 32" screen with an eye-screen distance of 70cm with my reading glasses on, and missed that. I wasn't wearing socks though, so I guess that explains it! 😁

[@theowlfromduolingo7982]

I really appreciate your channel and the effort and thought you put in your videos. (I know this sounds like a bot commenting)

[@WhySteve]

Really not bad man. I mean, I'd rather use a work light through a shower curtain than an aputure 300d blasting into somebody's face. And this is a solid demonstration!

[@jahosaphat]

Classic film lights were high everything; heat, voltage, and amps.

[@simonrabeder1599]

The problem is dimming. Dimming hot lights makes them warmer. Also color balance. Obviously optical characteristics. The light itself is actually if higher quality from a true halogen bulb.

[@arun_kumar0]

14:36... the light on you have that signature green shade on you, which a low CRI light would have, but the next shot you took from a different camera doesn't show that green tint on you... does camera also play a vital role in balancing CRI reading??? and can you also do a video with commercial led batten/bulb and show the result??... commercial grade led usually have low CRI (

[@Blohme_official]

I appreciate this.

[@LucForsyth]

I appreciate you!

[@alutzlft]

Luc how heavy is your rig?

[@rezaVfx]

Awesome! Can you please link that Gel? Thx. You know I am always afraid of the low CRI of these lights that's why I went for nanlite or whatever but you know it's expensive

[@TJA86]

any real incandescent bulb is always going to be CRI 100. that's the beauty of working with old lights. cheap LED's, on the other hand...

[@MichaelDaviesMusic]

These are $27 USD each, here in the U.S.

[@StravaigingMTB]

As someone who learned lighting with old redhead tungsten lights. I mean, if you're not tripping domestic circuits are you even trying?

[@EricLefebvrePhotography]

TAKE THE LEGS OFF AND USE THE U BRACKET TO MOUNT IT TO A LIGHT STAND!!! AAAARGH! LOL. I used to use worklights, still have some in my lighting cabinet, that I haad modded with umbrella mounts under to more easily mount them to stands. Something else I;ve done RECENTLY is I picked up some LED workshop light tubes. The CRI is only 85 but they don't flicker and they are great for lighting my green screen and they cost like 60$ for a pack of 6, 4 foot tubes.

[@vladbox1]

How about Flickering?

[@tkdarton]

G-Square!

[@fritzroysmith8526]

Every KZbinr is doing something about lighting. It would be nice to see something on the paperwork. Examples of treatments, Communication with clients to get them to come on board, treatments, shoot ideas, shot selection etc. No more light videos!!!

[@Dustinmrr.mp4]

Thats why I suck at Filmmaking 😂 I have zero feeling for lighting, color etc. 😂 For example at 13:29 for me this just looks like normal lighting from a ceiling light.

[@SCINEMACREW]

why not setup the 300d outside to replicate the natural light?

[@vividstudio4651]

Beware of flicker/refresh rate of the light.

[@robertharker]

Incandescent lights by definition do not have a refresh or flicker rate. They heat up a tungsten metal element. Ahh, the innocence of youth...

[@vividstudio4651]

@@robertharker The cheap workshop lights I used were 40 buck LED's from Bunnings (Australian big box budget hardware chain). Nearly every shot was half on and half off. I'm nearly 60. Ahh the wrongness of presumption…

[@wolfcryo]

@@vividstudio4651 As you said you bought LEDs, not Incandescent.

[@robertharker]

@@vividstudio4651 How silly of me to think you were talking about the lights used in the video. My clairvoyance skills seem to not be up to snuff.

[@davidausterberry3297]

Indeed, pro video lights have high frequency dimmers to avoid flicker.

[@JeremyBotz]

I'm not even searching for my promo code

[@altnetid]

🤣 Welcome to the world of film making pre LEDs. Sooo much time waiting for redheads and blondes to cool down. Sooo many burns.

[@VisionsVideography]

lots of those cheap shop lights come with tall stands

[@tptrsn]

This was a fun one! And what is the BTS camera? It has a nice look to it.

[@LucForsyth]

Thanks! It's a sony fx3

[@laserlotz]

Fx3

[@tptrsn]

@@LucForsyth Thank you!

[@tptrsn]

@@laserlotz Thank you!

[@Peder_Holte]

why did you not buy a LED worklight?

[@theoriginalvegandad6824]

Maybe a couple of $32 adjustable LED lights will work better than the $16 halogen lights. 😉

[@EVERLAST223]

Hey will these CHEAP work light work???? [Using a $1000+ light modifier] LOL. Would of been nice to try budget light modifiers to match the look, not just a cheap light.

[@newfoundmass]

That home depot is so tiny looking haha

[@FrankGlencairn]

What did you expect? Worklights are pretty much the same as a blond or red head.

[@justoneperson]

That most definitely is not Vancouver.

[@LucForsyth]

nope!

[@BackdoorBarnyard]

Halogen lights are great.. Until you melt your $400 sheet of thin plastic cloth.

[@AndreiPascu]

Craziest part about this is he's canadian

[@thevisionscompany]

could of got better results just using a shower curtain, maybe 2 to diffuse correctly lol

[@digitalcos]

Ah, I see, so you don't know how to simply white balance a camera for anything other than daylight. Noted.

[@Hayilemikael-k3r]

Hi My name is hayilmikael I am from in Ethiopia.I have a passion for movies. I write a movie. But I am not working due to lack of access. The ideas I write are also mythological. I would appreciate it if you could help me. It is possible to establish production with small equipment in my country. Thank you.

[@AndersBakfeldt]

Someone just beat me at 200

[@BoomixDe]

People need to be carefull with DIY lighting. Cheap construction lights get HOT AF, and DIY people use bed sheets for light diffusion.

[@chrisw443]

Look, Luc... Thats too much heavy stuff for documentary work bud. I like having everything I need on me all day. Like physically on me. Tungsten lights will be a perfect CRI everytime. Do not do this. Find an LED work light that isnt bad. You will burn the place down or hurt yourself.

[@digitalcos]

"It's a pretty dumb idea, because why would anybody do that?" Because they don't have "thousands and thousands of dollars" to spend on gear, but still care about getting good results. What an ignorant thing to say. I find it amusing that you'd go out of your way to buy work lights without stands, when it would only cost a fraction more to buy the ones with stands that are right there on the same shelves at the store. A halogen bulb is a halogen bulb, whether it's in a work light or any of the hundreds of video production instruments that have been sold over the years. Same high CRI values no matter the fixture. Even a cursory understanding of how white balance works negates much of the issues you encountered. Sorry, I come from an old school, DIY background, and I found most of this video silly at best, insulting at worst.

[@5857521ManitobaInc]

Why go with that janky stacking set up when you could've just use a manfrotto superclamp and put it on a light stand?