are tungsten lights becoming obsolete?

Liam Hall said:
It's not silly. Domestic incandescent bulbs have been banned for general sale in many countries and it's only a matter of time before the energy inefficient industrial bulbs are banned too.
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First, nothing is sillier that the use of the word 'Silly' in a forum of adults.
Next. Yes Tungstens are horribly inefficient and a huge burden on electric grids due to their former popularity even in mid summer indoors.
However, if they are used judiciously and with care to not simply leave them on for long durations during set ups, they are a great source of spectral illuminations that have no peer.
I use them a lot for large scale illuminations, lighting over greater distances and for bounce. I also use HIDs and LEDs and lately....
Mix them up based on functionality, distance from subject and draw. If the budget and location breaker box permits, I plug my lights in– if not, out come the battery powered LED and HID.
It's all good ;)
 
On a rental level it is easy to track the use of lights. People are moving away from tungsten in droves. We rent daylight sources on an almost 3.5 to 1 ratio to tungsten.
 
I have very rarely ordered a lighting package that doesn't have any tungsten in it; it would have to be very specific such as all day-exterior. My typical package is roughly 3-1 tungsten to daylight (I don't include Kinos in those figures because I order with both 32 and 55's, so they zero out in the equation). There's usually some LED in there such as 1x1 Litepanels and my Zylights, but a lot of the specialty LED fixtures are still hard to find and lumen for lumen more expensive, and I have to justify every dollar in the package.

When the day comes that I can order a package that costs the same and has the equivalent flexibility, output and color purity of all of my base tungsten package (multiples of: pepper, 300, tweenie, baby, BJ, Junior, 1 and 2K open face, pars, Source 4's, Dedo etc) in a more efficient technology, I'll be happy to make the move. I don't consider daylight-only packages to be flexible enough--very often location work requires dovetail with existing practicals such as ceiling flo's and changing them all out is not the solution for smaller jobs--but I like units that have variable color temp.

As far as studios mandating alternative technologies, that day is indeed approaching. One of my friends is shooting a single-camera network comedy and the network itself insisted on LED units for the permanent sets.
 
The domestic lamp scam was mainly hype - politicians inferring end of the world scenarios. Industry is an area I suspect they may keep out of because if they start to look at individual user equipment that uses too much electricity - and let's face it, consumption is what drove the domestic scene - nobody cared about quality at all. So motor repair firms aren't replacing perfectly good welding kit with more modern energy efficient kit until the old ones break. Nobody cares about old HVAC kit cooling workplaces, and worse of all - computers everywhere left on 24/7. Business pays for their use and it's always higher than domestic consumption. Most converts away from tungsten never even see a change in their bills, do they? It's just marketing hyperbole - not a genuine quest for saving the planet at all!

I somehow doubt that anybody can be bothered to interfere with non-domestic lamps, too few people using them to make it worth the cost of legislation or persuasion.
 
Speaking of domestic lamp scams... One of the biggest scams I can think of on the consumer end of lighting, is designing lamps which purposefully fail in a given number of hours of use. Which has carried over from tungsten to fluorescent light manufacturing. What a wasteful way to make money.

The longest lasting light bulb by the way has been burning 110 years.
 
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I have facility clients who have paid off the investment in switching from tungsten to alternative technologies in under two years. There were some tax credits, but for the most part they were able to reduce electric draw and most importantly (for financial impact) reduce air conditioning power draw. Claim it a scam all you wish but the numbers prove otherwise as qualified accountants have proven.
 
Well, I have been using an arri locaster for some weeks now (sometimes as part of a bigger kit, and sometimes on its own). Yes, it isn't a hmi... it is what it is, a perfect led source (color is perfect) for close up, both working as fill, or as a key in some situations where setting up any other light is quite difficult due to weight or space limitations. I can't be more pleased with the wonders of battery operated lights mainly for one man band situations or even in crammed spaces (ie: bathrooms... where we used it many times during a short film shot). Will it replace a hmi, hell no! would I use it over a hmi in some situations hell yeah!

its is a bit ironic, but in the last commercial I took part in (as an electrician), we only used one tungsten unit and it was to replicate outdoor streetlights.... and in the last 3 medium budget commercials I have worked in, all we used were Kinos and HMIs (and my arri locaster for some shots where no power was available).

I guess led technology will be evolving to a much powerful and useful technology, but color rendition is there if you investigate and buy the correct lamps (and I'm not saying that you have to buy the most expensive ones). Many leds look like crap, but some others don't.

A rental company owner I know, explained to me that they have 100+ litepanel/tecpro felloni 1x1 units and they are out nearly all the time....
 
ilauzirika said:
I can't be more pleased with the wonders of battery operated lights mainly for one man band situations or even in crammed spaces (ie: bathrooms... where we used it many times during a short film shot). Will it replace a hmi, hell no! would I use it over a hmi in some situations hell yeah!
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+1
BTW. I run my HID lights off of 12 battery packs. Albeit, 35W and 50W HID but still. And many ran 50W tungstens in Lowel Omni's for run-n-gun.

I ran a quick and sloppy test yesterday night. Tungsten, vs LED vs LED+HID and I was surprised at how much better I liked the tungsten.
One thing ought to be underscored. If you have ambient light sources in your scene, as is common on location or on sets, your 'other' problem is balancing outputs.
You'd be amazed how much light reaches the lens form a table lamp that is in the background. So you either have to moderate the output from the ambient lights or your supplementals have to have the output to moderate and balance the ambients.
Because of the sheer lumens per watts that come of tungsten, they allow you to hold detail in a table lamp that's in the picture. Many LED's and Florescent kit lights are too weak and that results in a bulb changes or the addition of dimmers to your scene lights.
I'll post my sloppy comparo later.
 
Having used tungsten illumination over the past years and accepting the fact that they either have to be run on AC to be of any use in the brightness department,( of course there are the DC powered low brightness ones that consume exactly their wattage rating in power) they are generally considered to be power hogs of inneficiency and often compared to a heat radiator that gives off a little light. The technology there is ancient but for the color purist, they are regarded as the standard yardstick of color rendering superiority over flos and leds. At least this is my opinion. Untill the LEP ( led emitting plasma) comes to be mainstream, the LED is the only player that has high efficiency ( lumens per watt) that cam pump out well over 6X the brightness of the tungsten counterpart for the SAME power consumed. This is a huge advantage in terms of portability in remote locations as well as cutting the umbilical cord of AC power. The led emitters themselves are presently good, as a matter of fact very good indeed. They come in many varieties of color temperatures from 2700K to 8500K and can be orderd in high CRI's ( if that makes any perceived difference). I have prototyped and helped design a few high powered compact led units that have the equivalent of a 200W 3200K tungsten yet consuming only 40 watts. The unit uses only 4 leds in the 3200K bin with 4 TIR optics ( 40 degree beam) . The leds are the most recent high power units out there, and incidentally they will be replaced very soon with the newer ones that are 20% more efficient. Most led panels still use the older multi tiny leds in them that are not only inneficient( as compared to the power class ones) but have that off color cast and are spotty as well. To correct for the blue and to offset the narrowish beam, 2 filters must be used( CTO and diffuser) that will put them in the low brightness region of marginal illumination. Leds got a bad name because of these design flaws from their inception. The thinking of make them cheap, make them affordable and make millions of them can only benefit the bottom line of profit to the middlemen. Funny that one will spend over 10K in a camera , slider, lens etc. and put less than a hundred bucks on a led light. I have seen it with my own eyes.
 
The trouble is that these financial incentives really do NOT add up yet. A properly performing, nearly as bright LED Fresnel is between five and ten times the cost of the tungsten version, and even at today's price tariffs, the older types are balance sheet positive, based on the write off period. You can produce figures to show LED is better if you are just about to replace your HVAC system - but you also need to keep in mind that the latest versions of LED TV style lights come with a replaceable light engine, so you can get a better one when they are available - and as LED technology is changing so fast, your huge investment could actually have a very low effective life expectancy. On top of this it will be impossible to buy another in two years time that will match the old one. Something easy to do with tungsten. I'm not suggesting it's a scam, but it's emergent technology still, and buying a lot of it could be financially foolish. I just had a quick add up. I am burning around 100KW at this moment, and with everything on at the average UK price it costs me £14 an hour. To swap out all the tungsten with similar LED would be an investment of over a quarter of a million pounds! The sums just don't work - how many years to recoup at £14 an hour?
 
Another approach to the subject is why we use the things we use.... for a long time and many generations the types of light that have signified the "reality" that they lived in was or is to some degree tungsten.

Tungsten has been a natural choice because we grew up with it.

But the next generation will grow up in other types of light. CFL quickly becomming the ugly norm in households, or LED even... So will they prefer using those types of light even though we might deem them inferior still compared to daylight and tungsten?
 
progress seems to mean poorer quality light, and that is just a bit sad. However, there are still theatre and tv lighting that is over 50 years old in current use, because it's still good. There will be tungsten around for as long as we wish to keep buying them. In the UK, tungsten only vanished from domestic outlets, the specialist lamp suppliers have plenty of stock and people like philips are still making them, so let's worry later.
 
I think about this sort of thing all the time, as the orange glow of sodium vapor streetlights give way to the antiseptic blue blast of LED's. That will start to change the look of night exteriors at some point soon, whether shot under existing units or recreated/augmented versions of same. It's not the worst thing in the world but it's not exactly thrilling.
 
i'm also a big fan of the warm yellowish tungsten glow, As someone above stated they do have a sexy look about them. I did leds on a x-mas tree this year, and it was horrible to look at, nothing but a cold lifeless look to it, I will be going back to the old style lights next year, even if they cost a few more cents to run.
 
Agreed, LED's are great in a tight spot, and for corporate work....but the tungsten look is so much nicer. Though I hope everyone keeps buying LEDs so I can get some bargain bin Arri and Moles!
 
last year I added two KinoFlo Divas and two Cool Light 600 LED as well as three Arri 650's to my kit. The LED 600 gets a ton of use because I can use an AB battery and shoot anywhere. I'm surprised how versatile it is outside in the shade it gives a little pop or on cloudy days I will set two up and they work very well. Shot a promo for a show where no power was available and the LED 600 saved the day.
The Divas replaced my Chimera boxes and the Arri 650 are for those times when I need to get the lights back out of the shot or for lighting a green screen/BG.
For me Tungsten has lost about 50% of its use but I dont see it leaving the production van just yet.
 
That sounds like a great reason to use the LEDs. I often have to bounce light outside if I'm in a pinch with no juice. I would like to have an LED for that purpose.

Interior daylight, I have to CTB tungsten light for kickers, eye light or, or hair light. If I 1/2 ctb them they keep a little warmth which is nice. My only other daylight is an old 575 HMI and I find, because of the old style magnetic ballast, that I just leave it behind. Some sort of daylight or daylight/tungsten led for that stuff would be great. They're a little pricey though.

I added a couple of Divas and I just freakin' love them. I can swap from tungsten to daylight in a snap, literally... well 4 snaps ;)
 
I love Divas too. Great interview/talent on-cam lights. Dimming them is so great to mold the light source. Huge time saver and people just look good on camera. I wish I had them years ago. The kit is heavy thats the one down side. Almost wish I had two cases.

For a couple spots I just finished I had a grip walking with me while filling the talents face with a Cool Light 600 LED w/AB battery. We shot at a trolly station that was all in the shade and it worked great.
 
As far as I know, the CRI of quartz lighting is 100. That's a lot higher than what you get from most of the other more popular lighting options currently, so there's a LOT to be said for good old fashioned tungsten lighting.

As for the "efficiency" of CFL, check the comments of this video for some enlightening stuff:


I expect sooner than later, LED technology to surpass that of fluorescent, which is probably a good thing.
 
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Chris Santucci said:
As far as I know, the CRI of quartz lighting is 100. That's a lot higher than what you get from most of the other more popular lighting options currently, so there's a LOT to be said for good old fashioned tungsten lighting.

As for the "efficiency" of CFL, check the comments of this video for some enlightening stuff:




I expect sooner than later, LED technology to excede that of fluorescent, which is probably a good thing.
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Yeah, LED is probably the future. As for CFLs I am not a big fan at all. The CRI issues and the green spike are of course an issue, but I have had bad experiences with the reliability of CFLs on low budget shoots. I have had several bulbs break off in my hand when unscrewing them but worse, I have have had a high rate of failure with them. On a couple of projects I have done, where I have used CFLs I have had way too many bulbs just stop working over the course of the shoot. I a reticent to use them anymore. I just don't think that many of them, even supposedly high quality, high CRI bulbs, are up to the rigors of a film shoot. With their relatively high cost compared to tungsten bulb, I just don't think that CFLs are worth it.
 
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