lighting What lights do you have in your arsenal?

Hello everyone,
I'm curious to hear what types of lights you all have in stock for your film shoots. I'm new to professional film lighting equipment and all I've used to light in the past is some cheap 200w lights from Home Depot. I'm trying to budget out how much it would cost for a nice and versatile light kit of both florescent and tungsten lights. Any suggestions? And what do you guys use for a normal production?
 
Typically rent. An Arri kit with a 1K, two 650s, and a 350 goes for about $75 a day. This can be augmented with flourescents or smaller tungsten fixtures (DIY stuff). It's just enough for a "small" film, lighting a reasonable sized space without doing anything too crazy.
 
Typically rent. An Arri kit with a 1K, two 650s, and a 350 goes for about $75 a day. This can be augmented with flourescents or smaller tungsten fixtures (DIY stuff). It's just enough for a "small" film, lighting a reasonable sized space without doing anything too crazy.

Hey thanks for the suggestion. I had looked at an Arri kit similar to this but I got this warning message that said it was built for european use only? If i understand correctly, this mean that the plug is different than the US's. Did you encounter this problem and have to buy an adapter or is this message I got from BHphtovideo.com wrong?
 
I rent from a local rental house. They have Arri kits stacked to the ceiling, they are standard US electrics. Don't know about the ones from B&H.

Buying an Arri kit, even used is pretty pricey (couple grand) so it would depend on your long range plans whether you rent ot buy, but those lights are "enough" for a basic setup in not too big a space.
 
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I own some Smith and Victor 500W lights, some Craftsman Work lights and some ACDelco Clamp lights... 5, 6 and 5 respectively. A bunch of bounce cards and flags, dimmers, gels and c-47s... when I can, I use a Lowell DP 1k and some ARRI 650W from our school.
 
At this point most of what I own is more for lighting gags or practicals than anything else. I have a few lamp base sockets on cords as well as porcelain bases I screwed onto chunks of plywood. I've also recently found a local source for old-school AG-1, Press 25, and 22/22B flash bulbs. Got a few of those left from a shoot along with the wiring bits I used to get them to flash. Add to that a few handfuls of various Xmas lights, a halogen 250, standard dome clamp light (for the 22B flashbulbs) and some other odds and ends.

Just found some awesome 200w tungsten globes (Feit Electric, I think) for very cheap at Orchard. Love the light they give out. Going to do some test shots where I try the old "Single clear bulb exposure" challenge. These work great on the cheap-ish Ikea 300w dimmers that they have in their lighting department.

Also got an assortment of gels from various projects, a couple home-made bounce boards, etc.

Really only just beginning to acquire lighting stuff, I've been concentrating on the freelance AC side of life for a while but hope to pick up more DoP side projects in 2011. Even then there's pretty good access to g/e gear through folks I know, so anything I buy probably going to be supplemental unless the gigs I pull change and I need my own small kit all the time.

What I'd love to check out is this kit:

http://www.filmtools.com/rosco-litepad-quick-kit-29024000bkit.html

Realistically the "gaffer's" kit (12 lamps) is probably a better deal, but costs more. I've only seen the smaller versions, but the light is clean and oh-so-pretty. Punchy, but still soft and not quite directional, but not quite not directional either. Neat little critters.
 
hi

here is a list of my gear

4 x blondie
5 x redhead .......2x umbrella bounce kits
1x arri 800 with soft box
2 x 750 fresnel
2 x 650 fresnell
1 x 650 mini pro ac or battery
4 x 150 dedo kit....... ac or battery
2 x 2foot 4 bank coollight (diva tubes)
1 x 2 foot 6 bank flouro (diva tubes)
2 x coollight led 600 led........ ac or battery
2 x 500w flouro soft light
4 x china lantern various sizes + c stand mounting kits
2 x 10 amp dimmers
4 x 4x4 poly boards soft silver + white
2 x mse road rags
2 x 4x4 floppys
2 x colapsable reflectors
2 x 4x4 diff frames
1 x 3m x 4m green screen
c stands, light stands, cutters, super clamps, magic arms, pole-cat
suspended roof mounting kit, various size blacks(up to 14 square metres) and whites,
rolls of ctb, cto, nd.3, nd.6 and diff
also lots of odds and ends for mounting and cutting lights
and a fire extinguisher...........


cheers
ian
 
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