Work Light Hacking



A common source of inexpensive light (other than the sun) are these hardware store work lights. These blasters of illumination come in a pairs of 500w beasties (a 250w version is also available) that sit together on a metal stand. You can easily find them, and they are pretty popular across the web for lighting a microbudget set. I don't think they work for all applications (nothing does), but are very good for specific things. In the above video I share that purpose, as well as some simple tweaks that make these lamps more versatile and practical.

UPDATE! Please read the follow-up post: Be Safe! Work Light Screen. It's very important.

Comments

Unknown said…
Thanks Scott. I like your modification suggestion(s). Never even considered buying the work lights in the past, but your mod looks great. I'll use 'em to light my greenscreen too. As per your suggestions, I'll use my soft-boxes to light the talent.
Think it will be OK to paint mine black with some high temp. paint?
Should work.
Outstanding. Tom B.
Kelvin Kao said…
I have some work lights and besides the fact that they are a little harsh for key or fill lights, the other thing is that the ones I own can only tilt up, not down. So yeah, that sort of forced me to bounce it off the ceiling anyway.
Darius H said…
Thank you for the mod suggestion. I found the link to your page on DSLR Film Noob you guys do great research.
Jason Anderson said…
I'd like to see how you did the cord mod to make it shorter too...modding electrical wiring always makes me wonder aboutbsafetynof the mod