Lighting in many ways we take for granted, however there is more to it than meets the eye, no pun intended. I am referring to the various different types of lighting used in industry, in particular the video industry where different conditions require different solutions.
Lighting types vary, for example, tungsten, fluorescent, daylight and led. These are used in studios, theatres, outdoors and lighting sets for special effects for cameramen and suchlike.
The question is what type to use / when?
Different sources have advantages or disadvantages over others. Tungsten generates a lot of heat and tends to go yellow as it gets older. This means you have to compensate by using a filter on your camera or a tungsten balanced film.
Daylight bulbs tend to give a far whiter light than ordinary incandescent light bulbs. The colour of a light is measured using a scale in degrees Kelvin (K) Standard light bulbs typically have a fairly yellow light with a colour temperature of around 2700K whereas Daylight bulbs a bluer light and a temperature of around 6-6500K.
Daylight bulbs are therefore preferred when there is an absence of natural light, artists, printers and graphic designers, for example, find them ideal.
Fluorescent lights give out more light for a given amount of power and can give out a range of colours. It is considered that fluorescent lights give the most cost effective and efficient form of studio and location lighting. They maintain their colour temperature with lamp life of up to 10,000 hours.
I mentioned LED, these are low power and high light output units, LED stands for Light Emitting Diode, and now latterly OLED’s , the O standing for Organic, these can also be used for colour mixing via the DMX control and ,time will tell ,but are likely to be the preferred source in the future.
So when it comes to choosing your light it depends on what environment you need it for. A Cameraman’s lighting kit could contain 2 or 3 heads with tripods and lights which output 200w, 300w, 800w or 1000w. Do you need a dimmer system to control your lights? These can be equally useful in a studio or on location; they help to create the right amount of lighting and also to extend the lamp life. These tend to be DMX controls, this stands for Digital Multiplex as mentioned earlier.
What about a carrying case, practicality needs to be considered, do you need a hard case or soft case , maybe one that could stand regular airfreight, so a metal flight case?
There are other accessories a cameraman may need, like a
video monitor or
lighting softboxes, for example. Softboxes are covers which convert a portable light into soft lights for almost shadowless illumination. The highly reflective silver interior produces a brilliant light, they have removable panels allowing you to modify the degree of diffusion and can give a cool soft light, free of glare and therefore be positioned very close to a subject.
This is just a very brief overview of a very broad subject but I hope you find it useful.
