150 watt warm white fluorescent

AbracadabraFilms

AbracadabraFilms

Active member
I recently needed to do a series of run and gun indoor interviews that required a soft, even light source on the subject. There was neither the room nor the time for my Arri softbox so I tried out a 150 watt fluorescent medium based screw in bulb into a standard off the shelf clip on parabolic reflector. I clothes pinned a piece of diffuser material over the unit and used two of these set ups to light the subject. I was extremely pleased with the results. The lighting was soft (as expected from fluorescent) and easy to white balance to. I purchased the bulbs from Home Depot. They are $(8.99 each) made by Quick Start Technology for Home Depot. 150 watts of light ( no mention of lumens) puts out the heat of a 42 watt bulb and is warrantied for 7 years. They also work great inside a fabric Chinese lantern from Target . Makes a terrifc soft light source. They are not dimmable put compact enough to move easily. BTW, the diffuser material can be high heat bakery paper from the supermaket bakery isle. To protect the bulbs during transit, I use a cut off ribbed polycarbonate plastic 1 quart Gator Aid container. protects the fragile coil of the fluorescent lamp.
Best, Craig Hollenback
Abracadabra Productions
 
I'm also using the same lamps on my docs where a lighting kit is too big and bulky. Works great. I made a collapsable soft-box for them.
 
Are you sure its 150 watts? that seems awfully high for a compact flo. Ive seen 200 watt flo. grow lights but they were in the $150 range. Just curious.
 
you can get compact flouros that output up to a 300 watt equivilent. a little whil back i posted a bunch of links to 150 watt equivilent forous
 
i assume he means equivilent. all the packagas give the florous actaul wattage and the incadescent equivilent on them. so as he phrases it , its "150 watts of light" in incadescent land.
 
ok makes sense if hes talking equivilent values. I just picked up a 30 watt soft white fluro bulb to mess around with. lets off a slight hum when on but does put out some decent light.
 
Equivalent. Fluorescents put out around 3 times as much light per wattage compared to incandescent.

I use a bunch of 40-watt compact-fluorescents (with screw-base and built-in ballast), and they're brighter than a 100W incandescent, but not as bright as a 150W. Daylight balanced too, so you don't need to gel them.
 
I'm going to put together a tutorial on how to build a collapsable and ultralight reflector/softbox for compact-fluorescents. Takes about half an hour to make, and costs under $10 -- but looks really slick. I'm in the middle of a big shoot, so will probably have it ready after next week.
 
iamloser said:
you can get compact flouros that output up to a 300 watt equivilent. a little whil back i posted a bunch of links to 150 watt equivilent forous
Click to expand...

I'd love to know where these are so I can check them out. Where are these links posted?
 
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