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Thinking of buying some lighting


Martin Kittappa

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I've been thinking about purchasing a small lighting kit- maybe an Arri kit, or/and some LED light panels- just a basic interview package. The plan being that if I'm hired as sound mixer on small ENG shoots I can offer these as extra equipment for rent. 

 

On these two man jobs I often end up helping the camera op set up lights anyway.  I think could be useful especially to producers who fly in from out of town to do a few quick interviews and fly out right afterwards. I could offer a basic lighting package saving them from bringing heavy lights on the plane, or having to figure out getting lights from a local rental house. It might even save local producers time picking up lights the day before a shoot. I wouldn't want to get into anything complicated that would require a full G and E package. 

 

Even simple lighting is pretty expensive though, so before I decide to go down that path I thought I would ask if anyone else here has bought into purchasing lighting and has this been a worthwhile investment, or do you find that most of the time they end up sitting at home not making any money? 

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I would think you would have to be quite the salesman to convince the producers to rent your lighting gear over the gear that the DP wants to use.  Unless you are in cahoots with a DP that is willing to support you in this, I believe the gear would sit in your garage a lot.  I guess you could test the waters of your idea by making an arrangement with a lighting house to split any rental of gear that you booked.  That way you aren't out any money if the idea fails. 

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Alternatively, I've been doing more and more corporate dslr shoots with kiddies using only a camera, with no lighting kit. The possibility of getting an IV lighting kit together for extra rental income is a thought I also have had. What is holding me back is whether I would make a return on that investment...

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Buying a small lighting kit can be worth it since it will never go bad. I have some friends that own a rental house so I always offer to rent to them things that are hard to travel with like C-stands, sand bags large bounce cards. I then charge them to pick it up and deliver it plus i get mileage for every mile of my drive since I am now transporting production equipment. My friends at the rental house usually mark up the gear alittle bit and give me 10% or so. Its a win win for everyone the get rental production saves money and I make money. I will only do this for small interview kits or just support stuff once they want too much stuff I tell them to hire a van from the rental house with a grip/ 

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I run my own little one-man-band production company. Over the years I have slowly built up my own production equipment inventory that I also rent out occasionally. The rental price for lights is usually quite low and only some of the lights I have bought have paid for themselves. I bought two LED panels from Cool Lights with softboxes. In retrospect, I wish I had purchased V-mount battery adapters for them too. I also got a 150 Watt ceramic discharge fixture from Cool Lights and although it has a much better light output and casts hard shadows, it is not as mobile and easy to carry around as the led panels.

 

For mobile fresnel style lights I got a 3 light Dedolight Explorer kit in a backpack and I can't speak highly enough of them. They are expensive, but well worth it... durable, compact, ergonomic and the replacement lamps are cheap.

 

The thing with LED lights is that although they are light and handy, the shadow they cast is often "multi-point" or matrix-like and therefore they work better with diffusion in front of the light. Also, their color rendition index is lower than on other types of lights and many more experienced DPs dislike them for this attribute alone.

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I've got an older basic Lowell light kit that some dslr amateur users rent pretty frequently, just enough to keep me from selling it. But I've found that most of the crews that come in to town have already arranged lights from someone else before they call to book me (cause lighting is more important than sound I guess?) or they bring their own. But usually it's kino's and LED's.

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I've got a rather complete 4 head Lowel Rifa kit, with hard edge fixtures, ellipsoidals, gels, stingers, and support that I got for a project. The fact is that now that the project is over, my wife uses them far more for her photography than I do. Keeping it as an available rental item hasn't worked out for me. I basically keep it for her.

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So in other words, where we typically enjoy about 50 days to pay back gear investments, lighting gear would pay out from 1.5 to 0.25% per day.  Doesn't sound like the most appropriate allocation of our money, if your sound kit isn't fully fleshed out.  I am an enthusiast photographer / videographer, but I am very sensitive about bringing my own cameras on set.  Even though I could shoot GoPro style in-water footage, I make it a point to never encroach upon camera department type activities.  How would you feel if the camera guy brought out his own Zoom recorder and basically told the director that he could get sound for this next shot using his Zoom and didn't need the mixer to setup his equipment?  I know that we can all be enthusiastic about collaborating and doing some inter-department type activities, but one should turn up the sensitivity dial a bit when reaching outside of sound department to make sure your being kosher politically and also that your being a good fellow crew-member.

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I don't think any soundie who owns lights is likely to encroach on camera or lighting department. It's more about having the lights available if needed, and handing over control of them to the DP.  It would be a little like the shows where production owns the sound gear and have hired me to come in and operate. They don't tell me how to do my job or try to do it for me, but they want me to use their gear because they own it and makes more sense than paying rental to me. 

 

On more than one occasion I've had my Canon 7D in the car and have had the opportunity to pull it out because the show was wishing they had one more camera to set up. In such situations I just handed it over the camera department and forgot about it until they called wrap and I've added its rental value to my invoice.

 

On the lights though- For me the jury is still out at this point, but I'm beginning to think that the return on investment might not really be worth it.

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There are those times when I've been on set and the DP has said, "I wish I had this". Then you're the hero if you've got it sitting in the car. Of course, that will be an add :) at that point it's not like they're going to scoff at paying full rental price.

Happened last week, I just happened to have the exact set of filters they needed. The client was happy to pay.

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" I've been thinking about purchasing a small lighting kit- maybe an Arri kit, "

It might make you more popular with the CL types...

You are in LAX, so I'd just say no.

As a soundie, you don't want to compete with the camera department sources (be it DP's or rental houses), for economic and ethical reasons.

or do you want to become a rental house, and compete with them..??

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If you are in a small market into which prod co.s fly to do short jobs, it could work out for you--they are likely to bring their shooter with them and also likely to tell them that they can't bring anything as baggage-overagey as lighting.  If you are in even a moderately sized market then the local lighting rental thing is probably already covered, and the prod co will have found them online before they get around to calling the soundie.   

 

philp

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I took a great class from Doug Jensen with Vortex media at Abelcine in NYC this past summer on LED lighting and specifically small lighting packs . He has a great DVD or download training video at his sight: http://www.warmcards.com/DVD_LEDDVD.html Basically to address the issue of shadowing with LED lights the key, pun intended, is to use a soft fresnel LED for the key light and panels for side and fill lights. Check it out before you buy.

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I stumbled upon this chart by accident while researching the new LEP (light emitting plasma) light sources. According to it, it's 150 rental days to pay back a small litepanel led fixture.

 

attachicon.giflight_payback_chart.png

 

Found this at http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/outreach/BBC_LEL_Guidelines.pdf

 

WHOA - -  this document and chart was produced by the BBC to use with / VS vendors, correct ?

 

For example, an Arri Kit, with normal market rates, pays for itself in 30 - 40 days.  

150 days  is pure nonsense, even for a newer full-featured LED panel.   5k / 150 days =  33.33 / day !!!!!!!

 

Dedo Kits often rent for as much as a basic EFP Sound package (250) which is a ridiculously tilted rate given the comparisons of investment ..... 

 

The only benchmark is to properly assess your market - DO NOT be the low-ball d-bag in this arena.  It could hurt you.

Check with your local rental houses / options, and match them at least.  

 

MF

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WHOA - -  this document and chart was produced by the BBC to use with / VS vendors, correct ?

 

For example, an Arri Kit, with normal market rates, pays for itself in 30 - 40 days.  

150 days  is pure nonsense, even for a newer full-featured LED panel.   5k / 150 days =  33.33 / day !!!!!!!

 

Dedo Kits often rent for as much as a basic EFP Sound package (250) which is a ridiculously tilted rate given the comparisons of investment ..... 

 

The only benchmark is to properly assess your market - DO NOT be the low-ball d-bag in this arena.  It could hurt you.

Check with your local rental houses / options, and match them at least.  

 

MF

 

Yes, it's by BBC. They have factored in electricity and replacement bulbs as well. The rental costs on which the chart is based must have been calculated on long-term and wholesale rental prices. A continuous 3 month rental is going to be cheaper than the price for 12 individual non-continuous rental weeks.

 

Also, I think it's important to note that, as a rental service provider, one may have many other expenses besides the capital investment on the equipment itself. You may have to do credit checks, pay for equipment insurance, pay for repairs and spare parts, advertise, print out invoices and spend your precious work hours on other office tasks such as negotiating with customers on schedules and exact equipment requirements.

 

On my local rental market here in Helsinki the undiscounted daily rate for a single Dedolight fixture without a stand is 7-12 euros per unit. I guess they are a little bit cheaper to purchase in Europe. The local market has been polarized into a multitude of small one-man-band operators that cater the reality tv and web video producers and a handful of big houses renting to the high-end clientele such as feature films and big budget tv commercials.

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I am a freelance lighting cameraman as well as a location sound mixer. There are times when a DP flies in, hires me as a sound guy, and rents my lighting and grip gear. It's definitely some good extra money in my pocket. I also shoot quite a bit, and I usually get the rental of my light kit on my shooting days as well, unless all the gear is provided. My c-stands and lights have paid for themselves many times over, but that's just my world. My main markets are corporate, TV commercials, documentary, reality and every once in a while news or newsmagazine style shows, where it is mostly on location and more of a smaller ENG/EFP type crew. If I am shooting or doing sound in the studio, the lights are usually already set up or rented there, and all I bring is my camera or sound gear. Bigger film style shoots are much more compartmentalized, and bring in entire grip trucks, etc. 

 

I think that you have to assess your market. If you do decide to invest in lighting, you can't go wrong with an Arri kit and a softbox. My personal kit has two Lowel DP lights, two sofboxes, 2 Lowel Pro lights, a dimmer, and a 650 watt Fersnel, plus gobos, c-stands, etc. I also have a couple of small 200 watt HMI's, plus two 1x1 LED light panels that are bi-colored and can do tungsten/daylight. I have gold mount brackets on the backs of the LED's and I can run them off of brick batteries, they are awesome, and allow you to move quickly, great for reality type shoots or on the fly documentary interview setups.

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Also, I think it's important to note that, as a rental service provider, one may have many other expenses besides the capital investment on the equipment itself. You may have to do credit checks, pay for equipment insurance, pay for repairs and spare parts, advertise, print out invoices and spend your precious work hours on other office tasks such as negotiating with customers on schedules and exact equipment requirements.

 

 

You raise some great points but I think this is beyond what I had in mind, in that I have no desire to become a full service rental house, and don't intend to be working as a gaffer.  If I decide to purchase any kind of lighting it will only be enough for simple ENG type interviews.  I already insure and maintain my equipment, and I already charge a rental for my sound gear, so a basic lighting package would be just an add on to what I do already. 

 

As for negotiating equipment requirements, it would simply be: I have x and y lights available, possibly a couple of C stands and some basic flags. If you need anything other than that, then you'll have to go to a full service rental house, or deal with a dedicated lighting guy. 

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My production company has a good bit of lighting and camera gear, however, as a sound mixer, I only rarely provide rentals beyond the sound department. Yes, it does happen, but not enough that I'd want to carry any lighting inventory just for that eventuality.

So, my thinking is, if this is lighting gear that will serve you in other ways besides rental, then it might be worth owning. If it's just for rental, I doubt that you'd find it a worthwhile investment. Along with the purchase price you've got to figure in maintenance, storage, insurance, proper contracts, prepping the gear prior to sending it out, and checking the gear again when it returns.

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