circular neon lamp. Useable ?

S

senne

Active member
Hi there !

first of all i want to let you know that i don't know anything about lighting and even less about electricity.
With that said i want to show you what i found at my grandma's place.

http://www.eas-y.de/scripts/upk/upk...301)&et_cid=4&et_lid=4&et_sub=preisroboter.de

this is a circular lamp which has a diameter of aproximately 17-20cm. It fits right around the lens of my HVX. I was thinking that this could be usefull for lighting macro shots or shots where you get close to the object and the camera or your body casts shadows.
So happy as i was, i went to the local store where my grandma had bought this lamp and asked if this was an easy setup. The person at the shop showed me some additional things that were necessary ( like a starter and a ballast ) and also told me that i needed to connect it to the electricity net ( 220V here in belgium ). And powering it by battery wasn't an option.

I know that there are some people on here that are very smart when it comes to this matter. Anyone got some advice ? Also concerning how to mount it to the camera or a rig .

Thanks !

senne
 
From looking at the specs, it has a temperature of 4100K, which is the same as a overhead fluorescent light. You want to avoid that type of lighting for film or video at all cost. You can gel it to the correct color temperature you need, but you'll still have flickering issues.
 
Even if it did work, you really don't want to light a scene that way anyway. You need to light from an angle to the camera. Have a look around this area of the board and you'll learn a lot about 3-point lighting. That's a great way to start and you can get a good lighting setup from that. :)
 
yes i know about the three point lighting, but i was thinking more of macroshots or a shot from someone standing against a wall en the cameraman really closeby. All shots where a regular lighting setup would cause shadows on the subject. You see it also in macro or portret photography with a circular flash.i've seen this lighting methode several times. But i guess it was with a lot more expensive equipment.
thanks for keeping me from buying bad gear.

s
 
It can be used. Test ahead of time for flicker, and remember you might want to gel that light or the others to match. I have one I bought for $5 from a thrift store and I use it on CUs all the time.

You should also call it the "grandma light".
 
i think i saw a thread about that....http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=87860
It's called a ring light. The proffesionnal ones cost an arm and a leg. that one is about 15 000 usd
Kinoflo makes a batterypowered one that cost around 700$usd for a basic kit. The name is kamio.

I have not used any of the above, so other people with actual experiance with this kind of light could chime in.

My girlf is a singer in indonesia, we were just fooling around making a clip for fun. She kept saying she was not satisfied of her face shots. She was talking about a big round lamp that they used when making her clips before. After some research i found out she was talking about this kind of ring light.
I was looking into making one myself....

After some digging i found this on ebay
I was thinking to try and power it with something like this
Anyhow i need to do some more reading and research.....if i ever end up putting it up together i will probably make a post about it.

-Pierre
 
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