Lights for Videography

[Scott Sievertsen]

Looking for some suggestions on quality light sources for doing some video work in caves. Any suggestions/discussion would be welcome.

[rcoomer]

Our grotto helped a local TV station (12) do a show on caves to go along with the release of Amazing Caves. We used halogen spotlights with diffusing filters and battery packs in belt slings. I think we had maybe 3 or 4 lights and twice as many batteries. They did a really nice job.

[Scott Sievertsen]

Interesting. What kinda battery life did you get? We are looking at needing a decent battery life and the potential to recharge for as much light as possible... The diffusion filters also sound interesting, where'd you get them?

Thanks for the response rcoomer.

[rcoomer]

I believe we got about 20-30 minutes of light from each battery.

The diffusion filters were improvised from coffee filters attached to the front of the lens.

Each night after the shoot, Gary would charge each of his batteries so we could use them the next day.

The video was Mysteries of the Cavern and I believe it won a news emmy. It was shown at the 2001 NSS convention.

[WYOCAVER]

If you go to organizations, sections, and to the bottom to the NSS Video Section, there is an article on building cheap video lights. You can get rechargeable gel cells from a local battery supply or try a local hospital for ones they swap out of equipment, but are still good.

[paraone]

If you go to organizations, sections, and to the bottom to the NSS Video Section, there is an article on building cheap video lights. You can get rechargeable gel cells from a local battery supply or try a local hospital for ones they swap out of equipment, but are still good.

Is that section still active? It doesn't seem to have been modified in the last few years, and I tried to email the treasurer regarding joining and the email bounced. I wanted to join that group because I plan on starting a series of documentaries in my area.

[brettrj]

Here's a link...

http://speleonet.typepad.com/speleonet/ ... s_hip.html

... to some video clips I shot in Hipple Cave, Bedford County, Pennsylvania.

If you want to throw the most light with the least wattage you need to get some HID lights. In these clips I'm using your garden variety (pun intended), 12 volt outdoor, halogen landscape lights. They don't last as long or throw as much light as the HIDs but they are significantly cheaper.

Brett

[NZcaver]

Back when I had some enthusiasm for dragging my video camera through caves once in a while, I came up with a lighting system that seemed to work OK at short to medium range. Sorry I don't have any photos of it, but here's a description if anyone is interested:

I used a Sony Handycam sealed in it's Sony Sportpack waterproof housing, to which I mounted a battery, lamp and switch. I bought a pair of small, egg-shaped 12 volt driving lights from Wal-Mart for about $15 (I used one, and kept the other as a spare). They use the yellow-tint halogen bulb with built-in reflector - about 20 watts, I think. You can also get clear replacement bulbs for them. The bulb throws a nice, flat, round beam - the only downside is that it's slightly tighter than the camera's lens, giving dark corners to your image when zoomed all the way out.

I screwed the light to the tripod mounting bracket on the bottom of the camera housing using a short stainless steel bolt. I wired in a toggle switch, and glued it to the small spotlight mounting bracket. The battery I used was a 12 volt, 1.2 Ampere-hour Sealed Lead Acid - I'm guessing it was about 4 x 2.5 x 1.5 inches. I made a little harness for it, which was attached to the hand-strap on the side of the camera housing. That put the small-but-heavy battery at the perfect balance point when using the camera hand-held.

The battery life lasted a whole 20 minutes or so, but of course I always carried a spare or two. The lamp gave pretty good light, and the whole setup was fairly compact and robust. Who knows - I might even get motivated to try some more of this foolishness one day...

[Todd]

I've used those "million candle power" spotlights with diffusers on them and they wotrked pretty well for small and medium sized passage. My diffusers were made from the clear plastic diffusion sheets that are normally used for flourescent ceiling fixtures. I found that the random "pebbled" ones gave a smoother diffusion than the square patterened ones. They still tended to make the beam more oval shaped than round, but this worked well in tighter slot passages where I didn't need as much light on the walls close to me, but wanted to get a little more further down the passsage to light the person in front of me.
The downside of these lights is that they're big and bulky, and you either need to modfiy them for an external battery, or take them apart with a screwdriver if you want more than 20 minutes or so of light from them.
The lights described in the video section article sound like a much better solution and I'll probably try something along those lines the next time I try cave video, but the diffued spotlights are a good cheap expirament if you want to try something out.
I think I found a few on sale for $10-$15... I bought several just for the extra batteries, since I couldn't find the same sized battery by its self for less than $30!