Color Temperature and "work lights"

[magicdavek]

This is a bit of a continuation of discussion on two threads called "The difference in Photofloods & Practicals?" and "Excellent/Versitile Low Budget Light Kit!" elsewhere on this site. We've gotten on some tangents that seem important, which leads me to a question that others may want answered too. It is of a practical nature and shouldn't be buried deep in another thread.

My questions are:
1) what is the color temperature of those inexpensive Home Depot type halogen work lights?
2) which gels (and gel strength, i.e., 1/4 or 1/2 etc.) would I need to a) get the daylight temperature and b) get the indoors/at night incadescent bulb look?

By the way, on those other threads, I've become convinced that the worklights are the best alternative for me (at least for now), so I'll be pursuing that approach shortly - these questions are therefore important to me. And to those who are contibuting their expertise on those threads (as where as elsewhere), THANKS!!

[Neil Rowe]

the worklights can vary in color temp, pending the type of bulb, and even the wattage of the light. im not sure as to an average temp at the moment, but i do have som documentation somwhere at home.. the type of gels to daylight balance, will of course depend on the temp of the lights you have.

[magicdavek]

Why is life so complicated?

[Neil Rowe]

the AVERAGE color temp seems to be about 3000k for about any of the halogen worklights

heres a little chart i found:
http://photoweb.net/pw_tech/halogen.pdf
or here is the whole rundown on the topic:
http://photoweb.net/pw_tech/colortemp.pdf

hope this helps.. im not a big filter user, so someone whos got the goods on what filter would do could probably give you a better idea for that .. i would guess around a 1/2 cto blue for daylight, but that could be way off.. when someone in the know posts, well see how close i am (if close at all)

[Neil Rowe]

agreed, thats why i dont have a huge filter assortment, cause i do all the color correction on post, and just shoot clean with the 56k preset(in either daylight or under 56k flouros) or just do a white balance.. in the end its all the same.. having the lights at a constant temp only lets you not white balance, and just use the preset, but in a case of filtering and all, its not going to be prefectly 56k or 32k balanced,, so youll probably want to do a white balance anyway.

[magicdavek]

Thanks for the links. I downloaded them (plus another at that site), but can't read them yet - I'm putting together a new bunk bed for the kids. I'll check them out.

[Zoomforce]

white balancing to make warm lights cool is great, untill you want to mix lighting or create moonlight.

[Barry_Green]

They're supposed to make a version of that light that mounts on a stand, and is sold specifically as a "worklight". Never found it in any local store though.

[Barry_Green]

I've seen that light, been tempted to pick it up as well. I don't know how their "fluorex" technology works, but they're basically claiming twice the light output per watt as other fluorescents. They admit it's a 65w lamp, but then they say it's equivalent to 500 watts of light output. Most fluorescents that I'm familiar with claim about a 4x efficiency improvement.

There's some guy on ebay selling those same lights, claiming they're "better than Arri", which is insane. He's listing them at like $45 each. I don't know if he has the "worklight" version, with the stand etc., or the "security light" version, which sounds like the one you're talking about.

[Rush]

I have had some issues shooting with common fluorescents because of the spiking in the colors :-/ and the phase changes due to the shutter at 60i being faster/identical than the frequency of the lights. I have noticed similar phase problems when I shot 24p at 1/48 shutter speed with battery-operated fluorescent lights. I thought that's what made kino's so useful, that they work at such a high frequency with consistent color, that it doesn't matter what shutter speed you use... Kino's being too expensive just for little old me to buy, I am interested in alternatives until I have the bucks to spend on high-quality fluoro's. Can someone provide more info please.