Need advice on home depot bulbs for practicals?

A

astigmatic

Well-known member
I'm in a bind, I have a shoot coming up with a bunch of desk lamps in the scene. What's a good bulb I can get from home depot to use for the practicals. I can gel if necessary.

thanks.
 
I often find dimmers more useful than any particular type of bulbs (with so many LEDs now I certainly prefer incandescent 25-40W). But it also depends on a particular fixture/lamp where the bulb is used.
 
Note: This trick doesn't work on halogen bulbs or any other light source that gets super hot, but it's fine for an old-fashioned edison-style tungsten lightbulb.

Get a wax candle, the kind that has a wisp of smoke coming off the top. That smoke is full of nice, dirty carbon. If you burn it a few inches under a lightbulb then the carbon will deposit on the surface of the bulb. Do this enough and you can significantly reduce the light coming through in the direction you wish. It takes a few minutes and a bunch of practice to get what you want, but it's a great way to get the light on your subject while dimming the output enough in the direction towards camera to keep it from clipping in an ugly way.

This is a cheap and easy thing to test beforehand, and how many times do you get to tell a Producer that you need a minute because you "have to go smoke a bulb"?
 
A can of Streaks 'n Tips is the usual go-to for knocking down bulbs to camera. Along similar lines, Arid Extra Dry works great for dulling down highlights in shiny surfaces (my key grip prefers that to dulling spray).

We usually use 25 watt bulbs and put them on dimmers, unless they are intended to illuminate the scene and/or the blown-out look a hot bulb is desirable.
 
I carry a whole bunch of bulbs for practicals, from 5w up to 100w. Combined with dimmers they allow me to control the apparent warmth and intensity of the prac lamps (sometimes you wants a warm, dimmed down light, other times you want a clean white light - having low wattage globes allows you to have that without having clipped highlights in your practicals).
 
Tungsten practicals, whether 15w or 100w are around 2,700k color temp. Using a dimmer makes them even redder. If by "proper" temps, you mean 3200k, you won't get that unless you drop at least a double booster blue in front of them or white balance to them.
I like a 1/2 85 (CTO) on the "color correct 3200" key light to warm skin tones in scenes that are supposed to look "sourced" from practicals in a room.
Ken
 
CharlesPapert said:
A can of Streaks 'n Tips is the usual go-to for knocking down bulbs to camera. Along similar lines, Arid Extra Dry works great for dulling down highlights in shiny surfaces (my key grip prefers that to dulling spray).

We usually use 25 watt bulbs and put them on dimmers, unless they are intended to illuminate the scene and/or the blown-out look a hot bulb is desirable.
Click to expand...
I find bulb-smoking to be more precise than Streaks 'n Tips. But I do use both as the situations calls.
 
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