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I am new into video production. I am a maker, I do a lot of electronic projects and write the step by step guides about it in several places of internet. From now I would like to make video about my projects.

My problem is my lab is in a low light condition even in day time, there is no enough light in the room. The video always look dull and noisy grain in the videos that I take. I have two 32w cfl lab laying around and I used it but the video not perfect.

My gear is a Canon EOS t3i(600D) along with a 55-135mm lens and a 50mm prime lens. Here is a similar YouTube video that I would like to produce. Similar video.

I am a student so I don't have a big budget. I have some led strips(15meters), 2x 32w cfl and 200w led flood light in my lab, may be can I make them useful for this? Or please help me to setup a good video light to take good quality videos.

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  • Welcome! Can you share samples of your video that had lighting issues? Can you sketch a floor plan of your production space? How do you want to mount the lights: stands, pipe, permanently directly to the ceiling, or some other way? How high is your ceiling?
    – Michael Liebman
    Jan 2, 2019 at 0:04

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LED's especially strip LED strands may give you flicker problems, especially if your shutter isn't locked to the same Hz of the AC the LEDs are running off of.

Best bet, cheap shop lights from a Home Depot type store. Buy tungsten oldschool bulbs, highest wattage the lamps support, and bounce the light off of sheets of foam core board.

This will give you nice white soft light provided you white balance to 4300K.

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  • As a source for this gear, I'd try a farm or tractor supply store. They have these old school lamps mostly used as a heat source for infant livestock. They often come with large steel reflector cans. I've used them before, and aside from the unbearable heat they give off, they fill lighting like any pro kit every time.
    – user3643
    Jan 3, 2019 at 23:36
  • I'd second the tungsten suggestion, not just because of flicker but also because cheap LEDs have horrible colour spectrums.. Just doing a white balance won't fix it: while cheap LEDs might look white to the naked eye, their emissions spectrum is full of spikes and valleys, meaning that your subjects will end up looking sunburnt, jaundiced or zombified.
    – stib
    Jan 4, 2019 at 10:48
  • Agree with stib. Unless you're paying for high quality led units- color, or the CRI, which is a measurment of how much of the "actual" spectrum of white light that the diode emits will be far from optimal. Even the major manufacturers like ARRI have had issues with production runs of their new lamps. The LEDs simply dont emit the entire spectrum which the camera will see- and so will you, on monitor or playback. Tungsten truly is the way to go. Its super cheap, emits perfect high quality light, no flicker issues, full spectrum. The key is just to bounce the light, off a wall, a board, etc.
    – McFlySoHigh
    Jan 4, 2019 at 13:02

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