How often do you use dimmers?

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sonofaresiii

Well-known member
I'm wondering if it's just me... but I picked up some 600-watt dimmers about a year ago and they are easily my most-used accessory. They help me control the light so much, I really can't understand why they're not at the top of the list for every indie cinematographer. It's nearly a requirement for all my lights to be plugged in to one... and I regularly rent the 1k dimmers if I need the bigger lights.

So my question is... what am I doing wrong, that I'm getting so much use out of dimmers? (or is this pretty much standard practice?) Do most of you use lots of silks and/or other diffusion? Or is it more commonplace to just carry a wide-enough range of lights to be able to set it up and go? Seems much easier to me to get ahold of a few 500-watt lights than carry a bunch of different ones around.
 
Dimmers are very helpful when I do very slight adjustments to my output. Unless I want to warm my lights up, I usually use the scrims that come with the lights. I use silks and diffusion to make the quality of light different. Never as an alternative to changing intensity. There isn't a right or wrong amount to use dimmers. If you like the color temp changes, then you can certainly use them more liberally than others.
 
I work with a corporate video client often who works exactly the opposite. . .dimmers on almost everything (except key lights, generally). We find the color temp change is not severe enough to be an issue. If it is, it probably means you''re using the wrong light and had to dim it down too much.
 
It was pretty standard practice to run studio lighting at 70% and colour balance to that. It allowed you to increase to full, or pull back to 50% with insignificant impact on the colour change. So I certainly use dimmers for brightness control, and Fresnels and dimmers always seem to produce nice light - especially if you want the scene to look like night, with artificial looking light. The lower colour temperature when the dimmer gets down to 40% or less is very difficult to achieve with gel.
 
This may be a question for gaffers as opposed to camera dudes.... As a low budget/guerrilla guy, I have some dimmers, but use them sparingly in mostly specialty situations when I have to lower the intensity of a light. With a thing I am working on now, I am testing using dimmers on the practicals in the scenes we are setting up, and it looks good, but I would not say that I use dimmers a lot. However, I have some friends that are gaffers, that work on much larger productions, and they ***** to no end about NOT having every lamp on a dimmer, or how lame the dimmer system they are using. I guess it kind of depends on the level you are working at.
 
I love having a few dimmers in my kit. It gives me a ton of flexibility and I like the warmth they can provide.
 
I used to be anti-dimmers, but recently I've been working on a lot of smaller indie productions, and when there is limited crew (sometimes just me and maybe one other guy) and limited time then they can really be a time saver. The color shift is sometimes something to worry about, but a lot of times I find I like the look for the project.
 
thanks for the info guys, good replies. does make me feel better about my use of dimmers.

and after thinking on it for a while, i wonder if it isn't at least partly due to me constantly shooting in manhattan apartments, where the space available to move lights is often... oh, a foot or two. so instead of trying to figure out how we can get the light farther away from the subject through some complex macguyver-rigged system or camera sheats... i just take it down on the dimmer a little.
 
I switched to LED's that have built in dimmers - however - you have to hollywood them down - they dont have remotes at the moment.
I love dimmers on Tungestens - you can even build your own - but I find they work best if you want to do a in-camera dimming , most of the time it doesnt take long to stop down the light and adjust it to give it the warmer feeling you might be looking for.

Also color correction is so powerfully prevelant - most people forget onset controls and light shaping. Rock on dimmers!
 
David W. Jones said:
I have a bag full of Harbor Freight router controllers I keep on the truck.
Click to expand...
Me too. I'm a gaffer and use dimmers a lot for all the reasons given. The Harbor Freight jobs are good, and cheap and heavy enough for 1Ks. One problem they have is that they don't dim down all the way. For that I use well-made DIY 600W jobs for smaller lamps and a Magic Gadgets 2K dimmer (at a few hundred bucks) for bigger ones.

Yes, if you dim a lamp way down it gets warmer. When you don't want a color shift you use wire scrims, of course, but I don't have a full set for all my fixtures so I have a nice collection of various strength ND gels instead. They work great and I highly recommend them.
 
I have at least 4 dimmers with me all the time. If I have a small crew, I will put every light on a dimmer to make small adjustments. Generally, I like my practicals to be a touch warmer than my key, so I have those on dimmers as well (on top of replacing the bulbs with 60-watt or less). I find the warming effect never to be a downside, as I can use a combination of dimming and gels to get the look I want.

Also, I hear "squeezers" and "dimmers" out here all the time, but all the people who know squeezer know what a dimmer is, but not everyone who knows what a dimmer is knows what a squeezer is, so I often call them "dimmers," unless I'm working with a gaffer who prefers "squeezer."
 
Anyone have links to dimmers they like? I googled the Harbor Freights, but I'm not sure if I'm finding the right ones.
 
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