The Compact Light Kit

This week I traveled to New Orleans on standby, so my family and could only take so much luggage and we couldn't check anything. I needed some lights to shoot a mini-doc that we are working on, but couldn't ship my entire plastic tote that I usually keep everything in. I decided to ship a priority mail box with just the essentials.

A large, flat rate, Priority Mail box is 12" x 12" x 5 1/2". You can ship it for $15 which is a lot better than the original $50 I was looking at to ship bare lighting stuff as well as homemade light stands. It also provided quite a challenge to jam as much stuff into that tiny box as possible. Here's what ended up making the trip via the postal system:

- 3 clamp light fixtures
- 75w halogen spotlight
- homemade dimmer
- 3 clamp light reflectors
- gaffer's tape
- 250w work light
- 2 large spring clamps
- 2 small spring clamps
- small tripod head
- dry erase pen and eraser
- 10' TRS to XLR cable
- 15' XLR cable
- ratcheting PVC cutters
- clothespins
- shotgun mic windscreen
- small tripod legs
- 3 6' light duty extension cords
- various outlet adapters

You may notice the lack of bulbs or light stands. The plan was to build some stands (hence the PVC cutters) and buy some cheap bulbs (the halogen isn't all that cheap, so I had to bring that). I ended up doing those exact things...