Halogen work light from Home Depot

PaPa said:
i found some on bhphotovideo.com

the price ranges from 8 bucks to 20

some of them say they are color corrected to 3200 k, and the others say nothing. Are they not close to 3200 k?
Click to expand...

Lamps are usually balanced for a certain temp. Usually higher temp types live a brighter but shorter life.

The ones that say nothing are probably 3000K types. B&H usually puts the temp spec. These lamps will be slightly redder, which you may or may not color correct.

If you white balance your camera with all lights one, the color correction will probably be an average of them all.

My new lights have tungsten balanced lamps in them, and compard to my work lights, my camera doesnt notice a differenec, if anything, maybe 100 degrees at most. but it doesnt change the picture enough. So is it risky to just go with worklight lamps in controlled light fixtures?
Click to expand...

You may use whatever you like and usually get away with it. But you must learn to see what you are getting and go for the effect, instead of being surprised by it.

Your camera is quite likely noticing it, but your LCD screen is probably too small or not too sensitive to show the color differences. They ARE there.

But it may be the case that those tungsten balanced lamps are not really 3200, and that's why there's little difference with the work lights.

Just a question: can you describe the lamps on those work lights? Only very old light units may still use tungsten lamps, the big ones. All others migrated to quartz types.
 
I've got eight of these light in my garage that we use for music videos & such. Wouldn't pull them out for a broadcast job, but they work well if you work around their limitations. Here's a music video we did, using the lights as a ring of stage lights around a band:

http://www.mikeorourke.com/pilla.html


-Vic Rattlehead
 
jbednarski said:
If you're selling your barn door setup I'd be up for a pair. If not, can you post a detailed procedure on making them? Thanks!
Click to expand...

Ahh look up about 3 posts above yours!
 
Well, I'm going to be shooting a couple of scenes out of a short film in my apartment using those very Home Depot lights.

If I remember to do so, I'll get some screen grabs and write out what I did to see how it looks (raw, of course, but still).

I'll check in tomorrow night/Friday morning.
 
If you use a reflector or bounce them off of a white wall there is hardly any difference between a 20 bucks halogen work-light and a few hundred bucks Arri halogen PAR. The color temperature of the Arri halogen is usually as much off as that from the cheap light.

In my opinion you can make a fantastic interview key and/or fill with a 20 bucks halogen lamp and a 10 cents styrofoam "reflector" (available in hardware stores as insulation material). To reduce spill you can use black aluminum foil (I get it in a household store for 2 bucks).
You see I love cheap lighting but of course a decent PAR or fresnel lamp with barn doors is much easier to handle especially for spotlights and when you aim for a low-key environment where you can't have any spill. You just need barn doors in that case and the direct light from a fresnel is much cleaner.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top