DI Space Light, 400 watt HID. Nice!

[Michael Carter]

Found a use for my mogul 6500k grow bulb & ballast. Made a nice space light, 20" square x 32" tall.

Gives me F4, 1/60th at 10 feet or so on my AC130 (sensor is about 300 iso). Frame grab was a corporate shoot, used an Alzo bulb/ballast in a 24" china as fill. They wanted very flat light. Side/back light's a dual biax flo with 1/4 minus green - I wasn't too fond of the harder back light, they loved it.

The 400 bulb needs 1/2 CTO to get it to daylight, that's maybe a 1/3 stop loss?? Really pleased with it, packs flat and I also made a black hood with just the front open and silver fabric lining - seems to add an extra stop out front. making a "box" out of ripstop is sort of a challenge...

Well under $200 bucks for everything.

 

[David G. Smith]

Nice. Thanks Michael.

 

[BrownCowVideo]

Very cool! Nice work.

 

[legrevedotcom]

What did you use for frames to wrap the fabric around?

 

[Michael Carter]

Here's a look inside...

it's a PVC outlet box & 3/4 PVC. There are 2 aluminum bars to clip gels on (one sheet will wrap all the way around), and the HID rated mogul socket is mounted with bolts for a 2" or so standoff.

The metal plate that the socket mounts to is bolted all the way through the box (the regular mounting screws came loose from the heat). There's a 3/8-16 bolt up top - you just screw a female-threaded baby post to it, filmtools has those.

The "bag" just hangs from velcro, a 20" square of 1/2" pvc sits in the bottom to keep it from sagging... and there's a 4" hole in the bottom panel to allow ventilation. The back of the bag overlaps so you just open it to access the bulb/gel.

I made the bag from ripstop and fabric glue. The glue held up for an 8 hour shoot but I'll get someone to sew the seams. I'm generally not a fan of PVC on set, but the tubing's totally hidden in use, so it looks legit. To make the bag, a t-square & fine sharpie are really handy.