Is tungsten for me?

Q

Qzar

Active member
I find myself at a crossroads in my filmmaking development. As a student, I feel I have reached the point where my main focus is to develop a good image both in composition and in lighting. However as a student, the budget is not as ample as my ambitions. I have spent a lot of time reviewing the options, weighing the alternatives and the tried and tested standards, and I feel that I have come up with a very interesting question. Why should I use tungsten?

I have spent a lot of time watching the filmmaking that I do as well as that which is done by other students and people on forums like this and I have found that a lot of it is done in mixed lighting situations. The last movie I made was shot on locations that required lighting but involved large amounts of daylight. In these situations I find tungsten lights to be incredibly limited. While I have looked into using gels I have found that geling lights is very difficult and inefficient and geling windows is not financially viable. What I need is something with far more versitility.

In come the fluorescents. I have begun to love fluorescent fixtures, especially those using CFL bulbs. They are powerful, efficient, cool, and most of all very versatile. I am able to use the same fixture with daylight corrected bulbs or 3200K corrected depending on the situation and get very good results. They seem nice, but what is the trade off?

As a low budget filmmaker I don't have the money to drop on professional equipment (frankly its not even an option). DIY is my mantra. Options on creating DIY CFL fixtures seem much more accessible than tungsten. But yet with all these advantages I still feel like I'm doing something wrong. Tungsten fixtures have been used for decades to create many of the films I consider my inspiration. Am I looking at tungsten wrong? I can see how it can be useful for lighting scenes were artificial light is dominant but are they versatile enough to make it easy to light daylight scenes as well without it becoming a hassle? Am I looking at the entire thing wrong? Is tungsten for me?
 
try using fluorescents to light from a distance, or try ot throw a beam of light like a fresnels.

There is reason to your madness. in fact, there is no madness at all. Daylight is, in most every way, more practical than tunsten.

CTO only cuts a stop, CTB cuts 2. Daylight bulbs are moe efficient, tungstens heat up the house and blow circuits.

But you pay for the daylight, big time. HMI and kino. Fantastic, but costly.

tungsten is still great however. Its as simple as gelling your windows wit ha CTO to match tungsten lighting. Much less epxensive than buying lighting fixtures. And then whenever you are outside, just cary a few reflectors and use them to bounce light around.

Its really up to you, but ask yourself what kind of stuff youll be shooting.
 
Fluorescent lights are great but as PaPa says, cannot make a slash or throw that beam any distance. For most us, fluoros are an accessory, not the only lights in our kits. I own twenty two tungsten intruments and four fluorescent lights. I do use the fluoros occasionally for daylight interiors. Realize that for daylight exteriors, fluoros are close to useless, they don't have enough output. You can use them as fill sometimes but to really work outdoors, you need HMIs.

Also, many of us dislike how fluoros render skin tones, I do. Tungsten lights are much more flattering to talent in most cases. I really like fluoros but they are only good for doing certain things and are nowhere as versatile as tungstens.

Best,

Dan
 
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If you hate gelling the windows to balance the daylight to your tungsten lights, why not just gel your tungsten lights instead... save on gel, haha.

I like tungsten lights when I need something with a little power behind it. If I'm going for a soft fill or an even background light, then I think that a simple kinoflo does a great job.

Regardless of what we all say, it doesn't really matter which lights you use. As long as you get the image you want and send the message you intend, you've done your job and nobody can criticize your choice in lights.
 
You can find people that both like and dislike fluorescent. You should try some out to see how you like it. Start with some inexpensive self-ballasted CFLs and go from there. We have tons of people on this site that use our fixtures every day and like the effect so its a personal preference.
 
SeanEmer said:
If you hate gelling the windows to balance the daylight to your tungsten lights, why not just gel your tungsten lights instead... save on gel, haha.

I like tungsten lights when I need something with a little power behind it. If I'm going for a soft fill or an even background light, then I think that a simple kinoflo does a great job.

Regardless of what we all say, it doesn't really matter which lights you use. As long as you get the image you want and send the message you intend, you've done your job and nobody can criticize your choice in lights.
Click to expand...

the point of gelling your windows instead of your lights is because with a tungsten source, im sure you know that a CTB gel will cut a 1k light to a 250watter.. Which really sucks big time. So unless your shooting in a studio where high wattaged lights are in abundance, lemme tel you, it doesnt work well in a house or on location. Your strongest light becomes next to nothing.
 
If you're a DIY kind of guy then there are ways around the tungsten demands through worklights or cheap industry options... but the argument is like asking why you have a particular socket in the box... and the answer depends on whether or not you have nut that size to move.

Lights are tools... you can always try your best to modify your script for what you have. I'm all about working with what is available... and that's a wide-open statement. The more I have available the happier I am... even Dan up there who has 26 lights probably has times where he wishes he had something else in the kit.

Start with whatever you like best and it won't be long before you'll want something else to go with it. Start with tungsten and eventually you'll want some flos... start with flos and eventually you'll want some tungsten.

Flos generally equal soft and flattering light... and they're a cheap way to replicate DIFFUSE daylight.

Tungsten is the cheapest way to create HARD shadows... which equals DRAMA.

That said... I'm not a big fan of tungsten either... so if you got it bad for daylight flos then start there.

There are never too many lights in the kit.
 
In my own experience a half CTB gel matches most (or at least my own) tungsten lights to daylight enough to be believable on camera. Yes, I do lose some light in the process, but moving the light closer by a few feet can almost always solve that. Or better yet, adding a second light can help too.

Everyone lights differently though, so both ways of gelling could (and do) work great.
 
It also depends what you're shooting. My feature, shooting this spring, draws it's lighting inspiration almost entirely from Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels.

It's sourcy puddles of light mixed with shadow. Try that with Fluoros.

They do have their place though, but you'll never get sourcy light from a fluoro.
 
Another very interesting tungsten alternative which I'll be exploring as soon as they arrive shortly, is to use something like the relatively inexpensive Cool Lights 150w CDM fresnel. It's basically an HMI hard light with 3000K and 5400K options, and puts out about the same amount of light as a 650w tungsten fresnel with much less heat and longer bulb life.

I'm going to use these along with some daylight balanced flo banks to have a flexible interior lighting kit with both hard and soft options. If I need to do any color matching, I can then either swap bulbs or gel down, which loses less light than gelling up.

Also, if you're on a small budget, this looked like an interesting kit using CFL's:

http://www.interfitphotographic.com/Lighitng/Product Pages/Super Cool-lite 5.php

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ...T117_Super_Cool_lite_5_Two.html#goto_itemInfo
 
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