Soft box and Compact Fluorescent Lights for Video
One of the first things I wanted/needed to do when I first started down the route of videography was to do some corporate interviews. This obviously meant that besides buying a good HD video camera (I bought the Canon XH-A1 prosumer HD Video camera) I needed a lot of other paraphernalia such as tripod, microphone and lights.
Lights for Corporate style Interviews
This post focuses on lights required to shoot corporate style interviews. Of course like with everything else one doesn’t just arrive at the answer in the first go and so it took me a few iterations to get it right. During these iterations there was a lot of frustration, time spent and money wasted. So I hope those reading this article and benefit from my experience and get it right the first time. First I bought one of those light kits you see touted by most video/photo light stores (Lowell for example). The kits sounded like they had everything I would need. As it turns out I didn’t know I needed a soft box to make my interviewee look good, especially since most corporate types are not in their teens and so the kit I bought was one that did not include a soft box. I didn’t know I needed one and secondly, those kits cost more than twice that of the one I bought.
So I went back to doing more research. Unfortunately, the more research I did, the more confusing it became and the more costly the whole affair of buying the right lights was turning out to be. And eventually you read about people saying they just went out and bought work lights from Home Depot and got the job done or they built their own soft box using compact fluorescent lights (CFL). Now this may be a solution for what you’re trying to do, but it wasn’t for me and once again, I only found out after having spent the time, money and effort.
Now I’m quite handy provided I have all the tools (which I don’t) and so after buying work lights from Home Depot only to find that they’re only good to light up the background and stuff at best (I’ll explain this in the next section) I started down the route of making my own soft box using CFLs.
Soft Light versus Soft box
During all of this and in speaking with various people I found that people use soft light and soft box interchangeably. Without boring you with light theory, let me just tell you they are not the same! A florescent tube or bulb could be considered a soft light or a work light from home depot with it’s glass sand blasted to give it the diffused look might be considered a soft light, they are NOT a soft box. What you really need is a broad source (of light) and not a point source and a florescent tube/bulb or a work light is a point source. A point source produces hard or stark shadows while a broad source produces nice soft shadows. Further a broad source produces a nice “wrap around” light in that even though your key light is on one side of the subject because the light it broad it tends to wrap around to the other side. Depending on the placement of lights and the look you’re after, you may not need a fill light (or bounce card) when using a broad source of light. So If you want your subjects to look good (soft shadows and fewer wrinkles) on camera you need a broad source of light that is also a soft light. In other words you need is a large soft box.
Researching Compact Fluorescent Lights
The first thing I knew I should do is do some research on CFLs since these bulbs have a (bad) reputation and I wanted to see if it was even possible to get a good light in terms of quality of light using CFL for video. Ask anyone of any forum and you’ll almost always be told not to bother since a CFL that produces good quality light does not exist or can’t match up to incandescent or halogen lights the pros use.
Building your own Soft Box Versus Buying
Before I go into the how to choose your CFL bit I should point out that another aspect of building your own versus buying readymade began to stare me in the face. How do I mount the light? How do I control the height, pan, tilt etc? I quickly realized that building the light (head) itself was the simple part, but getting it to mount and being able to control the height and pan and tilt angles was actually going to be harder. It would mean that I’d have to buy the light stands and somehow rig my light heads to fit on these stands and somehow also control the pan and tilt angles effectively. Last but not least, did I really want to go to a client for an interview shoot using stuff that looks homemade and cheap? No way!
So I decided that I was going to buy a softbox (or two) that used CFLs) rather than trying to make my own. However, I needed to continue with my research on CFLs so that I could understand what the makers of these lights were saying and if needed, I could use other CFL bulbs in their lights.
CFLs and Quality of Light
So let me explain what quality of light means as it pertains to videography and photography. The best source of quality light is our sun. This is so because the light it gives out out covers the whole visible spectrum of light almost evenly. Simply put, when you see things in sunlight you see everything in their natural color and no one color appears more pronounced than the other. At least for human beings sunlight is the standard or point of reference and all other light is measure against it. This quality of light is also measured as Color Rendering Index or CRI. Light bulbs are given a CRI rating between 0-100. An “ideal” incandescent or halogen bulb is considered to have a CRI of 100. So now our point of reference shifts to these kinds of bulbs (also known as blackbody emitters) . So given that incandescent and halogen bulbs have the best quality of light (CRI) it would be pretty hard for a CFL to match a CRI of 100. And here is where all hell breaks loose because of the stigma attached to CFL and florescent tubes. Older florescent lights have 3 major issues.
- A very low CRI
- On video and Photos they would produce a greenish tinge. This is because the light these tubes produce has a spike in the green frequency and so things look kind of green. These lights also have dips in other light frequencies and so other colors don’t show up as well.
- You’d see a flicker in your video due to the shutter speed of your video and the fact that these tube kind of flicker. Something you notice when you look at them.
Now CFLs are a newer technology and so some or all of these issues can be fixed, however the bulbs you typically purchase at Home Depot are NOT the answer (at least not at the time of writing this article). The CRI rating of these bulbs is typically 82. That’s not so good for what we intend to use them for. Some manufacturers call their bulbs “Full Spectrum”. I assume this means close to a CRI of 100 but I’ve never been able to find the CRI rating on the packaging and so I assume this is marketing hype in most cases.
92 CRI CFLs
After doing some searching, I eventually came across NaturalLighting.com. They have a vast array of bulbs and they clearly indicate the CRI and other specs on their bulbs. The ones I bought are These
Steve Kaeser Cool Flo Light Kit
I bought my soft boxes from Steve Kaeser. Specifically, I bought this kit. The kit consist of 2 32x32 inch soft boxes with stands, light heads and bulbs. The bulbs that came with the lights are a bit larger than the regular bulbs including the bulbs I bought, but they fit in the same sized bulb holder (U.S house hold). Their specifications are:
- 150W light output/42W power consumption
- 2800 lumens
- 5100K
- CRI - don't know
Here is a frame grab from a test shot I did with these lights
