DSLR video and room lighting

[shutterdown]

I've often run into inadequate lighting when using DSLR video recordings (using a 7DII, or 70D, or even a 6D). Mostly family gatherings in a living room. The room may contain a few table lamps, perhaps a floor lamp, but nothing that puts out enough light. The result is as you'd expect. The lighting is insufficient. ISO 6400 is usually not enough. This is especially troublesome during the evening, when ONLY the interior lights are the source. Outside light is gone.

So, I need to add lighting in these situations. I can put some light stands in each corner of the room most of the time. With an 8 or 9 foot ceiling, I could push light into the room. Most of the rooms have white ceilings, but walls can be darker colors.

It doesn't have to be a fancy set up. I don't know much about how effective LED lights are.

Questions arise. How bright should the light be? Should I use standard incandescent bulbs? LED bulbs? Halogen? Should I shoot the light downward? Maybe something as simple as a clamp light?

Any help would be much appreciated.

[jrw]

Starting with the assumption that you are not wanting to turn these events into productions one way to do this is to put lights into the corners, aim them upwards at the ceiling, and just let it bounce and spill around the room. This is a variant on the 'naked bulb' method employed by event and commercial photographers to fill a room with light. LED lights can be powerful when they are the high output version, most of the panel types are not that intense a light source. Do check for the specified outputs of the lights for comparison. More important than the type of bulb you buy is being able to match the colour temperature of the existing light sources. If mixed bulb types are present in the room replace the ones that don't match unless you want to use the different colours for artistic purposes. It is also possible to change out existing low wattage bulbs for ones with more output. Halogen lights usually are not used for general indoor lighting as they produce a LOT of heat.

[Sean Setters]

I recently needed lights for a video project and I purchased these. Their build quality is pretty good, they light up a decently-sized room quite well and feature variable color. The negative reviews for the lights have focus on them not being as color consistent as they should.