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I'm shooting a music video inside a restaurant with drop ceiling (location) and would like to create practical overhead lighting (like this) to give us more freedom with our framing. In the example above -- it looks like they popped out tiles where they needed light, laid out a large cut of diffusion across several tiles and placed individual fluorescent tubes (astera, quasar or kino?) on each rectangle. What do you think? Can anyone provide any helpful ideas on how to achieve lighting like this on a modest budget? The restaurant also has several 3-bank T12 fluorescent fixtures already installed. I'd like to replace these fixtures with T12 kino tubes but the location is pretty dated and I'm worried about flickering because of old ballasts. How can I tell if the ballast will produce a flicker? I looked around the fixture and didn't find any specs printed on the side.

When searching images with/about Italian cinematographer Tonino Delli Colli, i came across this image from "Once Upon a Time in the West" (1968): I can't help it, but the lighting instrument behind the camera looks like a led "thing"! :) That era - i don't think so. Maybe some fluorescents?

If you've ever wanted to build your own Kino type lights, you know that one of the most difficult challenges is finding the right hardware for mounting the fixture to stands or other industry standard hardware. I'm including a link for some components that I have available that can solve that problem. This hardware can be used to build a fluorescent, LED or other lighting fixture that needs a detachable swivel mount, and the mating plate that is permanently attached to the fixture. Please follow this link and see if this is what you've been looking for to build your own lights. http://www.ebay.com/itm/112379559596?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649 Please feel free to contact me with questions about these parts, or any other fixture building topics.

Good day, For a low budget short I will have many day exterior scenes (in moving and parked car and on the street) where I initially thought using only scrims, reflectors and negative fill, because I was afraid adding light would slow us down too much. But we are in winter and being in the mountains the weather (and light) can change very dramaticaly in very little time so I thought that if I took only one single but very powerful artificial source it could not slow us down so much and would up the results noteably. I figure a 6 or 8K would fit every shot (as I can always bring down it's power, but I obviously cannot raise the light of a smaller source) and we would not have to rent more fixtures. (less fixtures, fewer people to physically manage the light, fewer generators, smaller truck, faster shooting) Let's suppose physical space is not a matter: if I need the light it "lower" I could simply move the source further away before it hits the 8x8 diffusion. But: Is there something I miss? Is this (less fixtures ... faster shooting) a "valid formula" without overly compromising the result? (We will shoot on SRIII, Super16, Vision3 200T) Thank you in advance for any advice or shared experiences!