Whether you're shooting your kid in the park or that hot SobeGirl right there on your couch, digital video is all about controlling light- the light that you have and the light that you've gotta get. Not only does your light source evoke mood and indicate the pacing of your story or shot, it also indicates the degree of professionalism with which you've approached your subject. No one will take you- or your work seriously if your lighting looks like it was plotted by a clever 12-year-old with a couple of flashlights and a mirror. And lighting amateur adult video shoots has to be done on the fly. Nobody there is ready to do the scene again (they are amateurs after all) so you only get one shot with these first time on video virgins.

While the advent of user-friendly technology has created an industry-wide emphasis on easy maintenance, value for money, and mobility in lighting equipment (so that it is conceivable that your 12 year-old might be running a porn site from your basement ) the bottom-line issue remains: which light source is best for my needs ? If you have the money then check out the latest advances in professional fluorescent lighting. If you are on a budget than the Lowel Tota-ligth with its scorching Tungsten bulb cannot be beat.

When I started SobeGirl my first Lowel lights were the Tota-lights because they fold up to a small shape. I have used Lowel Tota-lights outside in rugged environments on the go. To say the least- they travel well. I have not lost a Lowel tota-light due to mechanical failure in over 10 years. Do Tungsten lights work with high-end imaging devices ? One major camera manufacturer says no, but I have used Lowel DP and Lowel Tota-lights in all kinds of situations and the results were fine.

The Lowel Tota-light / Techie Stuff Power supply : 240v 800W Weight: 595g Light output : 365-480 Lux @ 3m Colour temp: 3200K Lowel's Tota light ( around $160 retail at 800-Video-911 ) is compact, versatile, and will take a beating or two ( don't try that at home). One of the most popular models, the broad throw Tota-light, is a favorite with both still photographers and videographers. It adapts bulbs from 300 to 750 watts and can be used with its umbrella or gel-frame, and diffusion as a back-light, fill, or soft-key. It has adjustable refelctors, enabling you to get smooth background light or can be tilted skywards to up your ambient (or base) light levels.

That sounds swell- but there's another, equally valid argument for those cheesy 70's throwbacks that have suddenly come back into fashion (no, not gap-toothed, peroxide blondes) - fluorescents. While photographers tend to use strobe lights or tungsten lights, most digital cameras necessitate continuous illumination- and that means strobes and flashs are flaccid, useless, turn-offs. Tungstens, which give 28 lumens per watt, the highest light output of any incandescent light for the amount of power consumed, have been the industry standard since Larry Flynt's Hey Dey, but fluorescents have risen to the forefront of late in response to the digital home video boom.

Those ne'er-to-do-well fluorescents also sidestep one of the more "respectable" tungsten's drawbacks- scorching, blacken-your-fingers, melt your ice cream heat. Remember the cool, scary- blue-ish lighting of the early Halloween films ? Those were fluorescents- a bit realer-than-real, spooky, and definitely visually arresting. Lighting has come a long way from Jamie Lee Curtis first blood-curdling scream on celluloid- now Fluorescents are set, according to some industry analysts, to become the Next Big Thing.

I always avoided florescent lighting but the new high-frequency fluorescent lights are actually one of the better kinds of light for professional level digital photography at the high end. For example the SRGB Videossence lights (can be) mixed and matched with the Lowel DP tungsten lamps to obtain the high light intensity required by the last generation of digital scanning back systems

CNN, ABC,CBS, NBC, Universal Studios, and Walt Disney all regularly use flourescents for their unquestionably professional video and live productions. Why ?- it's not cause their strapped for cash, that's for sure. Fluorescents Don't Produce heat. Only 25% of a Tungsten's incandescent light spectrem is visible light, the rest is heat. Fluorescents are 95% light, with a mere 5% heat. The reason, the glowing phsophor crystals that are a flourescents light source produce a nominal amount of heat. Hence a 160 watt flourescent light will produce the SAME amount of light as a 1600 watt incandescent bulb. Flourescents go the distance. About 10,000 hours worth. You could film 8 hours a day, five days a week and still not change your bulb for five years. Flourescents make ya purdy. Flourescents give a softer lighting effect- shadows are minimized and require less fill lights than a regular incandescent lighting plot. Flourescents are cheap and easy.

Excellent systems from Videssence (compatable with the Lowel DP Tungstens if you MUST) run between $14 to $22 each. Flourescents WON'T however work as a spotlight, unless you buy the soft spots from Videssence.Videssence also makes a range of portable fluorescent lighting systems made specifically for the Great Outdoors (these kits will include sleeves or tubes to correct the fluorescent to 3200K). Also check out the Lowel Caselitetm which, like the Toat-light, is rugged and compact, and though definitely a bit pricey (call Lowel at 18003343426 for current pricing), it's well worth the money, for the design alone. It folds smartly into itself, leaving you nothing to carry but a lightweight case about the size of a violin. It is capable of 120/230v operation and can use Daylight (5000) or Tungsten (3000) corrected compact tubes.

The following are a few rules of thumb for calculating your lighting needs: To calculate battery capacity A 5 amp per hour rated 12 volt lead type battery 5 amp-hour / 2= 2.5 amp-hour x 12 volts = 30 watt-hour To calculate burn time of a light source: 200 watt bulb in a 24 volt-4.5 amp hour device 108 watt - hours / 200 watts = .54 hours x 60 minutes per hour = 32.4 minutes burn time

Good luck with your next video shoot. Remember to take advantage of SobeGirl’s rendering services. Just give us a tape and we will return to you CDs with both broadband and narrowband clips and hundreds of JPEGs for a lot less than you could do it yourself.