Key light - what power for 5m square room?

[Ben Edgar]

Hi,

I have a room in an old factory that is approximately 5m x 5m. The room is quite tall (I will have to check, >5m I think) and has a large sky light up above. I intend to use this room to shoot music performances. The look I am going for is realistic / cinematic rather than lots of coloured gels and effects. 

I have around £500 UK to buy a key light at the moment. I've done quite a bit of research online but it's not that clear to me what power I need to be aiming for to suitably light around 4 people across the diagonal of the room at a decent ISO.

I think a lot of stats given for LED lights are distracting where their output is recorded at 1 meter. This looks good in the marketing videos when the light is right up near the person being shot, but I find it hard to tell if the light will be so good when it's made it's way 3 meters or so to the drummer.

With regards to colour, the simplest option for me would be to shoot in daylight so that any light that leaks through from the sky light won't create a conflict. There would be an option to black out the sky light, but that itself could be a challenge due to height and accessibility, and so I'm thinking it may be better to work with the room rather than against it. 

What I'm looking to find out is...

- what power light should I be looking for?

- should I look for LED or a Tungsten with gel?

- are there any lights in my price bracket that you would recommend?

- is there anything else to consider e.g. compatibility with standard add-ons

Thanks

Ben

 

[AJ Young]

Are you looking to purchase or rent a light?

Based on your description, an HMI would actually work better. They're not cheap to buy, but cheap to rent! You could get a 575w or 1200w (hell, maybe even an M18) for less than £500 via renting.

I take it you'll want soft light, so you can shoot the HMI either through or bounce on an 8'x8' frame of diffusion/bounce. Keep it far away from your subjects and the inverse square law will more than cover them. The key light should imply a large window off camera and will match your natural skylight well.

I'm not sure any LED can match the output of an HMI for the budget you're looking for, especially if you're looking to buy and what you're hoping it can do.

If your dead set on an LED, but you can rent, then a Sky Panel will do a good job. It won't match the intensity of an HMI, but it's pretty bright.

[Brian Drysdale]

In the UK you can run a 2.5k HMI without any problems.

[Satsuki Murashige]

Hi Ben, 

Can you post a photo of the space you’ll be shooting in? And also a reference photo of what you would like the final image to look like? Otherwise, it’s all just a poke in the dark.

Best way is to upload to a hosting site like Flickr or Imgur and post a link. Otherwise, the file size limitations on this site are a bit restrictive.

500£ is not much of a budget if you’re looking to buy, rather than rent. Especially if you are going for a ‘natural light’ look, which usually means powerful large soft sources. But it might be possible if you get creative and don’t mind seeing the lights in the shot.

[Phil Connolly]

As others have said the big soft source might be expensive to do and you also don't have that much space to rig it.

It your situation maybe a more DIY approach would work - especially if you go for a night time look. You could get a few practical "lamps" e.g desk lamps, ikea uplighters, things with lamp shades.. These will allow you to create pools of light and hotspots that give texture to the image. 

Then either a couple of small LED's or tungstens could be used for Ke. If money is tight a 500W halogen worklight from B and Q bounced on poly would do the job.

E,g this vide works nicely - because there are quite a few practical lights in the studio giving it some texture:

Looks like they just had a couple of small LED's to augment the available light.

On a low budget it's easier to do dark and contrasty then bright, soft and sunny. That way in a small space you don't need huge lights if you don't mind a high contrast look.

The biggest light in the below video was a 650w tungsten fresnel - back lighting to double bass.

Actually more than enough light, probably too much