The BEST Lighting Kit for Low Budget Cinematography

Here is the best lighting kit for low budget cinematography that I could put together for under £1000.

The brands and specific pieces of equipment mentioned in this video aren't important, they are just to give you an idea of what you can buy at that price point. The prices are also obviously based on UK figures and will differ depending on your location.

All items in this Kit: https://kit.co/danielgrindrod/low-budget-cinematography-kit

Let's take a look at everything you need to put together your first lighting kit, all for under £1000!

This kit is going to include key, fill and hair lights, modifiers, diffusion and other basic grip equipment.

Let's jump into it!

The first thing we'll take a look at is probably going to be the most expensive and that's the key light. I would recommend investing a decent key light first and you can work everything else around that going forward. It doesn't need to be some big expensive Arri Skyypannel or even an Aputure 120D, as long as it's bright enough to get the job done.

As I mentioned at the start, everything added together in this kit is going to be less than £1000, with that in mind, I decided to go for the recently released:

Amaran 100D as my Key light. I chose this because at this price point, not much comes close in terms of power, it's brightness can even compete with the Aputure 120D which is almost 4 times as expensive. While the overall build quality may not be as strong as it's higher-end counterpart, for the price, it's a solid purchase. At this point in time, I would recommend this over the previous low budget favourite the Godox SL 60 or 100.

Moving on to our fill light. I'm calling it a fill light but it can be used for anything you want, it's just a light with less power output than the key. For this, I went with the GVM 800D pannel. It can be bought in a 2 light kit for around £200 if you catch it when it's on sale, which it often is. You could also use one as your key as well if you were trying to save even more money.

While they may not be the brightest light pannels, they are Bi Coloured and have a HSI mode as well, so you can dial in whatever look you need. Pannels like this are great, because not only are they affordable, they are lightweight and ideal for situations where you may not have much room for bigger lights.

The last light we're going to take a look at is small but wonderful Aputure MC. You may have seen me use this before in my videos as I'm a big fan. This is the perfect light to act as a small fill or hair light and works great in tight spaces. There are other small pannels that come in at a similar price point or even cheaper than the MC but personally, I think it's worth the little bit extra. It's surprisingly bright for such a small panel and comes with CCT and HSI modes, to get any look you might need. It works great with Aputure's Sidus link app as well.

With these lights, you will of course need stands!

Proper heavy duty C-Stands can add up and get quite expensive, usually £100 or more each. This would put this kit over budget quite quickly and so I'm going to go for cheaper regular light stands that can still hold a decent amount of weight. You can often find 2-packs like this Neewer kit, eventually, you will need at least 4-6 stands for lights and other things, So you can see how even stands can add up. Just make sure when choosing, that they're made of a solid material and can hold a decent amount of weight without easily falling over.

To go with light stands, you will need sandbags to make sure they're nice and supported. These are pretty self-explanatory and can be bought quite cheaply.

Let's move on to diffusion.

I wanted to have a few options in this kit and my first choice was a large softbox.

As a pricing guide, I went with this 36 inches neewer model, as with everything, there are others at a similar price point, so this is just a guide, do your own research and find out what's right for you. This will turn the Amaran 100d into a nice soft directional source as it comes with a couple of layers of diffusion and a honeycomb grid.

For additional diffusion, I went with a cheap piece of unbleached muslin. You can get loads of this for a very cheap price. It's slightly warmer than if you were diffusion though a standard silk but I quite like it.

I also chose a large 5 in 1 reflector. These are great because not only are they affordable and come in different sizes, as the name suggests they can be used for different things, including acting as a bounce, fill, diffusion and negative fill. I only included 1 for this kit but it's handy to have a couple lying around.

Probably the cheapest things you can add to your kit alongside unbleached muslin are a shower curtain and a black table cloth. A shower curtain is a great affordable option to act as a diffusion and a big black table cloth is perfect to use as a negative fill. You could also use it to block out windows if needed.

To support all of this diffusion gear, you'll need a few things which can be attached to your extra light stands.

Some duck bill clips, these are great for holding reflectors and anything else really

You could also get a reflector arm that comes with two clips.

and last but not least some c47s or clothes pegs basically. These are perfect for hanging materal or clipping gels.

Speaking of Gels, we should just have enough budget left to add some gels to the kit. There are a few sets available that are just party colours but you can aso find some proper CTB or CTO gels out there if you look in the right place, these are often not as expensive as the Rosco gels and do a decent enough job. I haven't done any test to see what the actual difference is but I assume the Rosco gels are more accurate in terms of colour. This is not as important when you are first starting but It's worth mentioning.

This last item may take us slightly over budget but you kind of need somewhere to put all of this gear. Something like the Neewer Equipment Trolley Carry Bag is a great affordable option if you are on a budget and has plenty of room.

I made the mistake of investing in cameras and lenses when I first started and If I was to give any advice to my younger self, it would be to invest in decent lighting equipment instead.

If you're just starting out or even if you've been doing this for some time, don't be put off by this list thinking you need it all to start making videos. Start shooting right away, no matter what equipment you have! this list is just a guide to some of the basic equipment that you might need to build up your own lighting kit over time, you defiantly don't need it all at once!

I'll also say that the brands and specific pieces of equipment mentioned in this video aren't important, they are just to give you an idea of what you can buy at that price point. The prices are also obviously based on UK figures and will differ depending on your location.

I hope you found this video useful. If you'd like to see more on Cinematography and Filmmaking in general, you can subscribe here and also carry on watching now if you want.

I look forward to seeing you next time, take care.