You've planned all your shots out to the last detail, everything placed to perfections but something's not quite right. It's the lighting of course.

I think one of the largest expenses outside of camera equipment has to be lighting. I've spent many a rainy day staring dreamy eyed at the Lowel Light catalogue. After taking stock of the contents of my empty pocket I knew there had to be a cheaper way to start, so it was off to Sears. I'm not saying that Sears is lighting central I just had room on my Sears card to go shopping.

A careful search of the closeout section revealed a few boxes of halogen work lights that we're either open box returns or the packaging was less than shelf quality. They came with an adjustable height stand which honestly isn't quite high enough but that's a small price to pay. The stand folds into a nice neat little bundle that the included strap wraps around securing the lights to the folded stand making it compact and really easy to carry around. So for forty bucks I added two light sets to my indie arsenal.

There are two lamps that mount to a cross bar that mounts on top of the stand, the halogen lamps have
an adjustable output wattage. They can either both be used at the same time or you can run only one depending on your lighting needs. The mounts that secure the lamps to the crossbar can be adjusted to almost any angle so that kind of compensates for the lack of height that the stand offers.

The only "structural" modification I had to make was to remove the metal cage that covers the lamps themselves. Which was easily achieved by taking the two screws out of the side of the lamp
and removing the glass pane that covers the bulb so I didn't break it. Then I took my handy Leatherman tool which should be on every set and just clipped the cage that covers the glass on the front of the lamp.

With the cage remove you've got a nice even flow of light coming from the lamps. From this point you can mess around with milk crates or whatever you have handy to get the height to where you need it.

Then with that achieved you can start using your home made lighting accessories, like the big styrofoam square covered with gold foil which will be a topic for a future story when I'm done covering stuff with foil and shower curtains and I have more tips and tricks for sculpting light.


About the Author
Fred Ost is a writer, web designer and aspiring indie movie maker. He is a founder of, and staff writer at the free independent artits community at http://www.scptv.net.
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