Mixing arri redheads and home depot work lights
- Thread starter richblend
- Start date
AndrewGentle
Well-known member
You can buy bulbs for halogen lights which have the same colour temperature (3200 Kelvin) as cinema tungsten lighting.
Assuming you live in 120 V land: http://www.filmtools.com/fdf5012quarh.html
Assuming you live in 120 V land: http://www.filmtools.com/fdf5012quarh.html
giacomino
Active member
Hi Andrew.. Thanks for the info. I was just on a Music Video shoot and they used about a dozen mini home depots lights as a runner....I thought wow!!! It looked so good and now I know why... they swapped out the bulbs with the ones you posted from Film Tools... Thanks for the post.
paulears
Veteran
There is a big difference between lighting and illumination. Mostly to do with the 'quality' of light. The popular home depot style floods do what they are designed to do - make it bright enough to work. Point one at a plain wall and look what it does. Many have grills on the front in case the lamp explodes (which they do, scarily!). The grills show up on the wall as dark lines. The beam has pretty obvious edges, and the brightness isn't that even. Look through the camera to see this better. Proper lighting has control. You might get barn doors to control the edges, so you can have light where you want, but screen it from parts you don't - or even stop it pointing into the lens. Most have the ability to alter the beam angle. You can have flood, or wind it down to a more narrow and intense beam. They have the ability to accept gels, for changes of colour. You can also use scrims - which are mesh devices to cut down brightness - or in redhead types even half-scrims which let you dim half the beam while allowing the other half to be brighter. Pro lights come with fittings to attach to pro stands and supports.
I've ignored colour - because lamps are sold in all sorts of types. No reason why a daylight or tungsten colour temperature lamp can't be stuck in a cheap worklight. The critical thing is having all your lights the same.
People use domestic consumer camcorders and full professional ones. You just choose the most appropriate kit for the job and your budget. A pop video could be lit with worklights, if that's the 'look' you want. If you wanted a moody looking, contrasty effect for a ballad, then worklights would perhaps not do the job, a few Fresnels being more useful for creating mood!
I've ignored colour - because lamps are sold in all sorts of types. No reason why a daylight or tungsten colour temperature lamp can't be stuck in a cheap worklight. The critical thing is having all your lights the same.
People use domestic consumer camcorders and full professional ones. You just choose the most appropriate kit for the job and your budget. A pop video could be lit with worklights, if that's the 'look' you want. If you wanted a moody looking, contrasty effect for a ballad, then worklights would perhaps not do the job, a few Fresnels being more useful for creating mood!
AndrewGentle
Well-known member
When I've been working with Halogen worklights recently I've twisted a piece of fence wire so that it loops over the front of the lamp at the top and hung a piece of baking paper over the wire to diffuse the light. It's a far from ideal solution but the price is right and it improves the light a lot, smooths out the brightness and makes the grill invisible.
I think it would be difficult to get a halogen filament to produce light in the 5600 K daylight range. Best off with gels if you want to get that kind of light out of a worklight.
David W. Richardson
Chapelgrove Films
I don't mean to be picky, but the grilles aren't there in case the lamp explodes. If the lamp exploded, the grille would do very little to keep the flying shards of glass from going everywhere. Rather, the grille is there to keep the errant object -- flying or otherwise -- from striking the bulb and breaking it.
Paul Hudson
Vacuum Tube Member
IMO the work lights are fine as long as they are used as a bounce source or through a large (4X4) diffusion source. I also agree that you will want the lamps from filmtools.