My Minimalist Travel Lighting Kit | Featuring The NEW Zhiyun Molus X60

📖 - *JUST LAUNCHED*

Learn the art of cinematic interviews, as well as get personalized interview setup feedback from me!

—
As a doc and commercial filmmaker, I am on the road quite a bit. I also often do jobs that are very small crew, sometimes just myself or one other person.

So I need a minimal travel lighting kit that allows me to get great looking interviews and light simple scenes but still fits into a backpack and a checked bag or two. While I’m always honing that kit, I am currently loving the tiny Zhiyun Molus X100 and the brand new Molus X60.

Zhiyun was nice enough to send me a couple of Molus X60s to try out and they were the perfect complement to the X100 I’ve owned for the past year.

-
MY MINIMALIST LIGHTING KIT:

GRIP:

LIGHT STANDS

--
Gear I Use

-
**Note: the Zhiyun and Amazon links above are affiliate links. If you want any of the items in this video and use these links, I'll get a small commission - it helps support the channel and much appreciated. Thanks!

[markbone]

I'm here to compliment your thumbnail. It's gorgeous. the YouTube one. your real life thumbnails are also visually appealing

[leoquesto]

I appreciate that you mentioned the battery issue with the Molus fixtures, seemingly the universally acknowledged flaw. I like the idea of these punchy little guys so much and want Zhiyun to succeed with rectifying the battery issue. Re the vid, it’s really enjoyable to see other folks’ approach on going light. My light version still includes Litemats, or at least a hard 1x1’ and array of 6x6’ rags, lol, so I’m finding your forays inspiring. I’d like to grab a couple of the Moluses to skip and bounce around. Thanks!

[DiodeFilms]

I've been thinking about this myself today and this video popped up, handy! One thing I was thinking of trying out is just packing bounce/silk/neg fabric with eyelets, and a length of cord. If you can find somewhere in the room to tie the cord to (or tie to one of those clamps), you could feasibly string up a pretty large bounce or silk with no stands at all, and that set up would take up even less bag space than the reflectors.

It's not good for every location, but I gaffed some scenes in a building with a suspended ceiling the other month, and I ended up clamping a load of neg directly to the frame, and It would have been even easier if the fabric had eyelets and I had some cord.

[AllenRReid]

Loving all of the companies coming out with nice, portable affordable lights. Competition between the companies is good for the consumer. Thanks for sharing.

[nye-horisonter]

New subscriber from AOD call yesterday! I travel a lot and seeing those Zhiyun lights could be a game changer. Thanks so much!

[DANAMIONLINE]

The beauty of lights like this is not deliberating on but instead bringing a light. It's so tiny that it's a no-brainer.

I entertained this exact kit when I considered the Zhiyn lights for travel setups. However, I ended up buying lights from iFootage. They are still small but a little bigger.

Have you seen the Halo diffuser from Manfrotto?

[JonEichler-ulmx]

would love to see some of your final footage with this setup

[kevinlong]

My battery grip died recently as well (turned off and wouldn’t charge again). Went through the warranty process and the company that organised the replacement mentioned Zhiyun have changed their battery with a modified board so there shouldn’t be any more issues. From now on I’m taking a back up usb-c power bank.

[colinrowe]

Thanks for this. I spend ~30% of my time on the road shooting, picking up a couple of items mentioned that will help me when on site (and my back to get there). Enjoy the videos and approach you are taking. Nice work.

[geminicreativeagency]

Great and timely video. I wish you had posted some footage of your interviews with these lights, I want to see how they actually look when used by a pro.

[drewbdarby]

Thanks for putting this together - I’m traveling all the time and trying to update my lighting kit, so this is extremely helpful

[MattSpaugh]

Good stuff. I use a 33" umbrella with a diffusion cover as my "minimalist" key and a 5-1 to bounce fill. It never occurred to me to just use a pair of 5-1s... duh.

[BoostFutbol]

Hey there! I've done work for your brother Kyle (he's one of my fave people in the biz) and texted him to let him know this showed up on my recommended page. Thumbnail got me. Great video! Been interested un the Zhyiun lights for awhile now and you answered some questions.

[wiezyckifamily]

Love these little Zhiyun lights too! I also shoot Canon C70 and R5C and travel a bit. What checked bags are you using to accommodate the taller stands and parabolic type softboxes? I've been using a regular Samsonite suitcase along with clothing but it's not quite tall enough for 30-35" long items like a softbox.

[stilgoin]

This was awesome 👏🏽 information… can you give us more information about the holly land lab mic ?

[Snider-Films]

Great tips, Curren. Thank you! If you have any tips on shooting two-camera interviews by yourself, I'd love to hear em. I'm traveling with an FX6, FX3 and drone for storytelling and quite often am traveling / filming solo. BTW, I was born in Huntington, W. Va.

[JakubChlouba]

Great little doc kit man! Was just looking into some low footprint lights and these might be perfect :)

[KongLor]

Great video! What case do you use to carry all of your lighting gear? Thanks

[artemyurin]

Hi) This is a very good video. Thank you. You got to the point. I'm just looking for a compact solution for my future equipment.

[MrPfifeDawg]

Which 3 in one reflector would you recommend? Thank you!🙏🏾