Lighting Scare...

N

Nobody356

Well-known member
I'm preparing to shoot my feature in less than a month and am working on setting everything up to go smoothly. Tonight I decided to get out my camera and just go through a few lighting setups and tests to work on getting the look I'm going for. I have lights that I've used for a while and some lights that I just bought the other day. First thing I did was plug in my camera(didn't wanna waste batterry!!) then plugged in flouro 1....everything is good light looks awesome...now as I got to plug in flouro 2 all of a sudden all of the lights go out. I go to check the circuit breaker and everything looks fine....I did about everything I could with the circuit breaker(I'm definately not an electrician) and nothin could fix it so now my basement power is out and I can't do my test :( . Its wierd though because when I bought the lights i immediately tested them and both ran at the same time with no problems. Anyone have any Idea of what could have happened? or had anything like this happen to them?

Also are there any considerations i should have when using lots of lights and lots of electricity?

Lots of fun anyways...probably calling an electrician tomorrow or monday
 
Very strange. Two fluoro fixtures on house circuit are unlikely to overload the circuit. Fluoros don't draw that much power. A Kino Flo Diva 400 only draws about 2 amps. A Kino 4 foot 4-bank draws like 5 amps, so you could still run 3 of them and your DVX and not overload a typical 20 amp circuit. What else was running off of the same circuit? You may need to run a stinger from a relatively unloaded circuit to run your lights. Maybe you have a cheap fixture that shorted out. Did the breaker trip? It's not clear from yout post.
 
thanks for the reply...no breaker didnt trip... as I said before I dont know so much about electrical stuff but I didn't think that the 2 flouros and the cam would be too much. I did have them both running from an extension wheel(extension cord with 4 plugs at the end) but the overhead lights also went out. I think the cheap fixture idea might be true, I might go check that out now...thanks again...and whats a stinger?
 
1. If lights and plugs went out in one section ofthe house, a breaker did indeed blow, or else a fuse. Be sure that you have checked ALL the fuse panels in the house. Sometimes in older homes, a second panel has been added by a weekend handyman for basement or garage wiring.

2. Some types of breaker require you to turn it to OFF before you can reset it to ON. It sort of "floats" between off and on. You cannot tell it has been tripped by a visual inspection, so you need to physically turn the breaker for the basement OFF, and then turn it on again to be sure.

HTH
 
Maybe all of your light bulbs burned out at the exact same moment, and ironically at the exact moment that you plugged that 3rd light in.....
 
A word of advice that's saved me much trouble: if you're working with a small crew and running on household service, get the lights up ASAP. Let them run while you're setting up everything else to see if you've overloaded anything.

I've seen houses with 100 amp service wired with 80% of the outlets on one circuit.

Also, get yourself a bunch of these: http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/Displayitem.taf?itemnumber=32907, and keep them in your gear. Check every outlet before you use it - if a fault is indicated, don't use it! They're also handy as a visual check to make sure an outlet has power.

Joe
 
Electrician came and it turns out I blew another breaker that was hidden in the ceiling which nobody in my family knew about...go figure

Thanks for all the replies though
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top