$24 for two light boxes and stands. The light boxes hold 5 bulbs each, with their own switches, so you can control with some level of precision the amount of light coming out of each box. I’ll let you know if it completely sucks when I get it. If you don’t hear a review on it, it’s because they burned down my house.
I just bought it too rofl , i already have a set of fresnels lamps I can use this with (i dont really have a need for the bulbs) but this was a decent deal.
I’m a little suspicious of the price. According to the full description, it comes with 10 45w flourescent bulbs. If that’s true, then $24 for the bulbs alone would be way cheaper than I’ve seen them.
my super cheap lighting kit came today. Here’s first impression review. I’ve only spent a small amount of time with it, so my opinion may change over time. Here are the first things I noticed:
Pros
It comes with everything it claimed it would. 10 bulbs, 2 stands and light boxes. Everything worked.
It works exactly like I would have expected.
The quality and sturdiness of it was no worse than stuff I have paid more for. It was as good as I could have expected it to be.
The separate switches are handy for controlling the light output.
Cons:
The lights have a slight pink hue to them compared to sunlight. After having these on and looking at them for a few minutes, natural sunlight looks like it has a green tint to it. But, it’s close enough to a sunlight color that it can blend without looking too bad.
The boxes are a pain to setup. Maybe it’s typical for all soft boxes, but they are significantly more work to set up than simple umbrellas. If I’m going to be using these often, I’m either going to have to find a permanent solution so I’m not taking them down and setting them up all the time.
Heat. They are fluorescent bulbs, so they aren’t terribly hot, but when you have 5 of them in a small enclosed space like that, I would imagine it’s worth making sure that nothing goes crazy.
Also, the lights aren’t terribly bright. This could be a pro or a con, depending on what you want, but even with all 5 bulbs on, it’s not super bright. It’s definitely a lighting kit that is designed for small->medium sized rooms.
On second thought, It’s entirely possible that the green tint of the sunlight is due to the fact that I’m surrounded by green trees in all directions looking out my window.
One thing I’ve done in the past that is super cheap but works ok for soft lighting is paper lanterns. You don’t have a ton of control, but if you put a super bright sunlight fluorescent light in one of those, you can get nice soft light for very little money. The light bulb will probably cost more than the lantern.
For the price you paid, I’m guessing that the bulbs are not of the highest quality and may not showing the color temperature that was advertised.
My wife is a professional photographer and a few years back we decided to try the bulb/softbox method and soon found out just how much light is required for even close shots using a wide open aperture.
She still uses them in certain situations, but strobes always seem to deliver better results.
Unfortunately, a constant light source is required for video.
Having experimented a lot with the Sony HDR, I’ve decided I just can’t get what I want in low/artificial light.
It’s video performance just isn’t great, doesn’t give you control over many settings and the super wide view is a bit of a pain and has a bit of a fish eye effect. So it is being sold!
Anyway, I’ve gathered up the cash for a decent DSLR or other good camera.
We are looking at a Nikon D3300 or similar. Any opinions on this camera or alternatives in the same price range (300-400 EUR)?
That’s the same camera I use for video. I think it works great for video. It has most of the manual settings you will need. Just make sure you disable auto ISO when filming in manual mode so that it doesn’t adjust itself to lighting changes.
One downside to it is that you can’t really autofocus very well while filming. That’s not a huge deal because you really shouldn’t be using autofocus while filming anyway, but for casual home video stuff, it is a little bit of a pain.
That’s a nice camera (we’re a Canon family, but I have used one) and should work well.
Get a good prime lens probably in the 35-50 mm range. A good prime lens is much cheaper than a zoom type, especially if you’re looking for a good low light lens (f 1.4 or f 2.8)
I also use Power Director - it works great once you get your head around it. Lots of good functions
I have used other software, Including Vegas, which I abandoned when the software decided to just show black video randomly. Complete crap.
People are probably studying all their options and watching it to bookmark it. Or they have one they want to sell and want to see how long it takes to sell at that price point. I’m sure there are plenty more reasons as well.
I use Final Cut Pro X because I am on a Mac and it was just the easiest for me to integrate with Logic Pro. I like the fact that it will automatically sync multiple angles and the mixed audio without me doing anything.
I had two of them, they were a bitch to sync together. I told the company that they had a problem with the interface protocol. They assured me at first it would work, I sent back a video of the issue with the tech notes from their own website saying it did not work before they admitted the issue!! it was never fixed. So if you need more than 16 channels, you are going to have an issue. I ended up getting a pair of JoeCo Blackbox 24 channel boxes. I had one issue with getting it up and running. I sent an email on Sunday morning that I could not get them to work. Within 2 hours I got a phone call, from Joe Bull, the CEO of the company, to help walk me through the process. Hows that for service? BTW he lives in England so not a cheap call.
Well, I only had one so didn’t have such problems.
The A/D conversion on the thing was very nice, but it was a mistake to buy it. Mostly because in the end, I didn’t need 16 channels, nor did I need the recording facilities.
Finally sold it, was harder than I though since it has been discontinued! In hindsight, not surprising since it was confusing what market they were really aiming for.
If they had removed the recording facilities and the ‘portability’ (it had a very rugged box with a soft rubber front…yet at the same time was in an overly large and heavy 19" rack case…) and put more work into the driver & latency they could have had an incredibly competitive 16 channel AD/DA.
