Low budget on-location portable "HID" light

This is a headlight (high beam) module from an Audi. It was damaged in an accident and I removed the high voltage module (the box at lower left) and the lamp module, (right) and hooked it up to a computer backup-battery from a UPS. I got the battery at a swap meet for $2.00 and the light from an auto body shop.

It draws about 4 amps (48 watts) from the battery, which means that theoretically, for this battery, which is a 12 amps for an hour battery (12 ah), it will run for about three hours.  By actual test with the battery shown above, it only ran the light for about one hour, because the light is designed to turn off automatically if the voltage gets too low. Also, this was a used battery from a UPS and it may not be fully capable like a new one would be. Or, the fact that it goes off at 12 volts may be a design feature to save battery power on a car in case the lights get left on.

This light runs very cool compared to a simple tungsten light, and is very efficient comparatively, because it produces several times the amount of light compared to tungsten. That means I've got perhaps a 150 watt light that draws only 50 watts! Perfect for guerrilla video shoots!

AND the light is WHITE. Not exactly daylight, but very much cooler in color temperature than a tungsten light. Look at the second image, the daylight in the window behind me  looks nearly the same as the HID light in the china ball.

I now have three of these lights, all for free from an auto body shop that does a lot of high-end cars and simply gave them to me from wrecked cars! It looks like the high price of insurance is good for something besides making insurance companies rich and the rest of us poor!

Check the image with the china ball...a nice, soft, even light is possible using this method.  This means that somewhere out in the woods on a night shoot, without an expensive fixture or power generator, using these kinds of lights, I can put a nice, even fill  light over a scene without a generator or having to string power to the location. Just bring along a couple of twelve volt car batteries. Very nice!

Of course these lights, if you buy them for the car brand-new, will cost you maybe a thousand dollars each, with the power module and the lamp, fixture etc. But go find an automotive junk yard and get a damaged one that no one wants! Although I did hear from one young guy trying to upgrade his older Mercedes that he paid two hundred dollars apiece for the complete assemblies, aftermarket, that is. So prices are coming down on this kind of thing.

As far as that goes, you can also use the current fashion of lights on most cars, the new halogen bulbs which are also very white but not as white as this one. Solution: white balance to the light. Of course they will get yellower as the battery runs down.