Test results - 400 Mogul HID

Michael Carter

Michael Carter

Veteran
OK... here's the scoop.

400 watt mogul base Metal Halide lamp. Thirty-five bucks. Add an electronic ballast for another hundred-plus (actually found a used one on eBay for $45 - and found the same bulb on eBay for about $26).

Test setup:

Stuck it in a mogul softbox fixture (without the softbox), with a sheet of 1-stop diffusion in front of it, about 6 feet from the test charts. So, somewhat like a china setup, but not very efficient.

Since I was gelling, I "windowed" off the diffusion with black foamcore to avoid any un-corrected spill. So, a fairly inefficient use of the light, but good for testing the color.

The ballast has several settings - the 250 setting is for a lower wattage bulb, not for dimming. There's also a 400 "high output" setting - web searches said it "warms up" the color a bit (it does, but not much boost, maybe 1/4 stop).

Tested it by shooting RAW stills, Nikon DSLR, daylight preset - the bulbs is claimed to be 6500k, 90+ CRI - I'd say that's accurate.
The R/G/B numbers were taken by eyedropper tool on the left gray card chip. You want evenly balanced numbers - the gray box below the chip is photoshop generated RGB for visual comparison.

400 watt setting:
hid-400.jpg
After playing with gels, 3/4 CTO got this the closest (and takes the light down about 1/3 stop) - adding 1/4 minus green got a little pink, but looking at the numbers a 1/8 minus green might help. No crazy green spike though. Green and blue about even, just a couple points shy in the red channel.

With the HO setting, you get a little more balanced, using 3/4 CTO:
hid-ho.jpg

OUTPUT:
Yeah, it's bright as hell. My tests with gels, diffusion and blocking off a lot of light got me F4, 1/60th, 400iso.
Here's a comparison with a 1000 watt tungsten mogul, same position, fixture, diffusion, and gels (and without gels). This sucker is a full stop brighter than a 1000k tungsten on the HO setting - that's about a 2000 watt tungsten equivalent:

hid-meters.jpg

BALLAST:

Dead quiet. No high frequency noise from ballast or bulb. No fan. It does get warm, but not crazy-hot.

FLICKER:

None up to 1/3200th of a second. Yep, I said 1/3200th (didn't test any higher). (None at 1/60th, either).
THIS IS A DIFFERENT BALLAST THAN LINKED TO IN THE EARLIER THREADS - this is the current Lumatek 400, about $115 new. Several on eBay used.

For me, less than $80 or so makes it interesting... smith-victor makes a mogul softbox, but I could see making some sort of bag-light for this (or just getting a lanternlock, which take mogul lamps). If this was your key and you manually balanced to it, any other daylight sources (flo's, HMIs, Alzo, or window light) would have a warmer look, equivalent to about 3/4 CTO... something to keep in mind.

Anyway, it's a bright little mofo!


I can't say if this is the most accurate way to test, but it's served me well in the past.
 
Yep, the Lumatek ballast is what I used. The bulb in the link isn't a bad price, but their minimum shipping is like $15; I googled terms like "400 watt 6500k 90 CRI" and found the bulb I used on eBay for less $$.

Everything I've found researching this tells me mogul HID bulbs have an outer envelope of UV glass; the packaging for this bulb says "don't use if the outer envelope is cracked or damaged" regarding UV.

I haven't used this on set yet, I'll test it on people before long... I'll either get a lanternlock or figure out some kind of DIY bag light... I'm liking the idea of a square bag light that could use skirts, and also make a skirt with a front face of fabric egg crate. Bag light & softbox in one, I could use this or Alzo bulbs in it depending on my needs.

I am curious to see this on skin, and test it with maybe 1/8 minus green or a light CTS... or bounce off unbleached muslin.

Other options for mogul bulbs: Here's one of the Smith-Victor high-heat mogul softboxes - main issue would be gelling it; I know Chimera makes special-order front fabrics with CTO or CTB sewn in, one could do something similar I suppose. The Photoflex Starlight system is more $$ but more pro, lots of accessories. Of course with these units you can also use 500 and 1000w tungsten moguls - and the big-ass mogul-based spiral flo's, some of those kick out a lot of lumens.

To use this as an open-faced light for bounce, the only thing I can think of is using a small softbox without the front diffusion, like this small octodome starlite setup. This bulb would even stick out of my 11" speedotron reflector. Here's B&H photo's Starlite stuff - fairly pricey, but being Photoflex, any softboxes, etc you buy can be used on all sorts of stuff with the right speed ring, it's more of an investment kind of purchase. But I have photoflex soft boxes that are pushing 20 years and work like new, it's good stuff.
 
I built the same thing into a 2k fresnel about six years ago. Exactly same ballast and lamp. It's not that reliable (doesn't always strike reliably) but we used it on a no-budget feature when we didn't have an HMI rented. It is very blue, almost purple, but doesn't flicker, which is cool.

Needless to say I haven't really considered using it since, but it's cute! And it is, effectively, a $200 HMI, though IMO it does need CTO, agreed.

What we forget is you can rent an M18 for $150 a day (or a 575w for $50+ a day) and most grip houses do three or ten day months. I also recently bought an old 1.2k Arri HMI for $700 (mag ballast fresnel), so the economics work better spending a bit more, imo, or ideally having the production spend as much as they can afford to get the right lights.
 
David W. Jones said:
Bulbs for plants useually pass infrared radiation which will burn the pupils. Be careful using on people.
Click to expand...

Generally, every lightbulb you've ever stood under passes infrared (IR) radiation in varying degrees - you feel it as heat. A tungsten globe converts almost all of its energy to IR, only about 5% to light.

UV (ultra violet) radiation is a worry with HID, HMI, etc. Scroll up a few posts for info regarding UV with HID mogul bulbs.


@ policar - Impressed you crammed one of these into a fresnel - it must have been a monster. When I white balance this setup to 6500k, it's just about perfect - it's got a lot of blue at 5200 but nothing remotely purple, so not sure if it's the same globe (I got mine from eBay, not from one of the hydro sellers). Maybe 1/8 minus green or light straw to shoot 6500 from what I've seen so far.

Yeah, I'm with you on rentals (though I have no interest in a mag ballast HMI right now...) But I've been looking for a no-rental china or pancake type daylight fixture with 1k+ output - plenty of my gigs don't have any rental needs (I seem to have acquired an assload of lighting and grip over the years) and I'll be thrilled to remove one more errand & expense from a shoot day.

I've been getting a lot of social media gigs - Facebook videos for national brands, etc., and those are really tightly budgeted. I've had two shoots recently at restaurants where something around 6500k would have been the bomb to get a good match with the outdoors through huge windows. If this thing continues to strike properly and burn for hours, I'll get a 2nd setup and be a happy camper.

I do really want a 1.2k HMI par though... don't imagine that's a DIY project.
 
It was an old 2k studio fresnel, 10" lens maybe. Nice light, maybe I shouldn't have butchered it. It still works! Spots and floods fine, too.

The mogul base is standard in pancake lights (and lantern lock chinese lanterns) so that could work if reliability doesn't concern you. Actually a cute idea if you can cover up how strange it looks... I have a few older mogul base fixtures from soft boxes, now I'm considering repurposing one of them...

Kinoflo fat men are a nice option, too, and on the REALLY low end a few BCA photofloods ( http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/808082-REG/Ushio_1000046_BCA_Incandescent_Photoflood_Lamp.html ) do the trick. They're brighter than they look! The high powered CFLs always seem way too green to me.

I'm ashamed to admit it, but these aren't bad:

http://www.amazon.com/Fancier-Studi...iewpoints=1&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending

They really, really aren't. Bright, punchy, okay light quality with some weak diffusion over them and punchy enough to work as backlights without diff. Can work with V mount batteries or block batteries. They should be terrible, but aren't.
 
I've got a potential stills gig - space program hardware! - that would require LEDs in some very tight spaces, I'll keep those in mind.

The photofloods - tried 'em years ago, I'm just at a point where blued-up tungsten feels like such a waste of amps. I'm a big fan of the Alzo bulb-ballast, mine have been champs for years now. They're the truest daylight of anything I have. The chinese biax stuff has been terrific for me two - a quad kicks out a lot of light. I've had some greenscreen gigs where the screen had dual biaxes and I had everything but the kitchen sink behind diffusion - 4-bank kinos, Alzos, spirals, etc., so the 400 mogul seems promising.

I'll be surprised if reliability's an issue for this mogul thing - the lumatek ballasts seem like workhorses from the research I've done. I almost bought some Starlite gear a few years ago, but I haven't used or wanted a softbox for a motion gig in years - I get a lot of use out of chinas with the Alzos or tungsten though.
 
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