You Can Light All Your Videos Using This $25 Light from Wal-Mart!

Apr 25

Great lighting doesn’t have to cost a fortune. I shot a video and used about $25 in lighting!

Production lighting can easily run hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. And it’s not that those companies are just trying to mark up what you can get on the shelf - there are legitimate benefits to that level of lighting. But when it comes to pulling off basic lighting on a budget, you can get 90% of the way there by spending little to no money! Last week we discussed different ways to light with the lights you already own, but I wanted to walk through a practical setup and demonstrate an affordable lighting setup. If you didn’t catch last weeks’ video, check it out here.

First, the gear. For this lighting rig, I picked up everything at Walmart, but it’s readily from your local hardware store as well as Amazon. I’ve linked to similar gear in the description of this video. To replicate the setups, you’re going to need:

A 300 Watt clamp light
300 Watt bulb (daylight or tungsten)

You’ll also need some stands, but you can get creative with how to rig these things up.

When looking at clamp lights, you want to make sure you get one that can handle a higher wattage bulb. It’s better to have more headroom in your lighting than something that will burn up with a stronger bulb. While LED bulbs do take less watts to actually run at brighter levels, I always like to play it safe. Besides, it was literally a $1.50 difference between the two clamp lights. The lamp I bought is a ceramic mount, so it can handle higher heat levels.

What kind of bulb do you want to get? You can either get a daylight or tungsten bulb. If you’re going to film primarily with natural light, you’d want to go with a daylight bulb (5000-5600k), or if you’re going to mix it with the normal “orange” bulbs you see in a house at night, you’d want a tungsten bulb (2700-3200k.) Remember that you want your lighting sources to match in most instances, so it’s important to take that into consideration as you pick a bulb. For the bulbs, I picked up 300 watt LED bulbs.

One thing to keep in mind is that even though you can get dimmable LED bulbs, you want to be careful doing this. When you dim a LED bulb, especially cheaper bulbs, they tend to flicker when used in combination with a camera. It’s not a guarantee that they’ll do this, but you’ll want to run some tests using a dimmer with your setup. If you do find that your 300 watt bulb is flickering when you dim it, but still need a dimmer light, it may be worth picking up a 200 watt bulb as well so you can swap them out to get different lighting levels.

So how can you use this light? It’ll work the same way as the lights we discussed last week. You can bounce it and diffuse it in order to get some flattering light on your subject. To give an example, let’s look at this light bounced. This is actually the way I set up my lighting for last week’s video.

As I mentioned, we’re going to look at two separate lighting setups you can achieve with this light. First up, let’s look at bouncing the light!

Bouncing Light

This is the easiest to show off - it’s the way I normally light my Youtube videos. I have the benefit of having angled ceilings in my office, so I typically will set up my light at about 45 degrees from the spot I’m sitting. I then point it away from me, towards the wall and ceiling, and then let the light bounce off of that area to light my face. This also gives the added benefit of giving a nice soft light on my background as well, since the light falloff is pretty smooth as it comes back to my desk.

If you don’t have an angled wall like this, you can pick up a posterboard or beadboard at your local store and use that to bounce the light back on your face. If you’re cringing at the cheapness of using beadboard like that, take heart in knowing that the same tool is used on the set of many a hollywood film. It’s cheap, light, easy to rig, and bounces light beautifully. Just don’t break it, otherwise you’ll be cleaning your floor for the next three years. Next up, let’s look at diffusing the light!

More Expensive Lighting

Earlier I mentioned that there ARE in fact benefits to going with higher end lighting. The biggest benefits are in the quality of the lighting. Lighting created for a film set tends to have a better color rating, which basically means that the color of the bulb is going to be closer in light quality to the advertised light temperature. For instance, a light that isn’t highly rated, such as an off the shelf LED bulb, may have a slight green hue to it that creates a color cast in your shot. Or, a cheaper LED bulb may flicker on camera, since it wasn’t created with the shutter speed of a camera in mind. How much does that matter? The flicker can be a big deal, but the lighting color cast most likely won’t be noticed by the mass majority of your audience. If you’re filming for Hollywood or a business, you want the highest quality of lighting you can get your hands on. If you’re filming for your supporters and sharing stories, it’s not always worth the additional investment.

If you are looking for some budget film lighting, I reccomended the Aputure Amaran series of lights - either the 60d or the 200d. If you want to film in tungsten, check out the x version of these lights. The lights have a great look to them and won’t break the bank.

Conclusion

What creative lengths have you gone to light your videos? Share your stories in the comments, and make sure to like and subscribe to follow along for more great smartphone filmmaking content! And remember, it’s not about the gear, it’s the story that matters!

You Can Light All Your Videos Using This $25 Light from Wal-Mart!

Bouncing Light

More Expensive Lighting

Conclusion

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