The return of Incandescent light bulbs?

Often these discoveries never amount to much because no one can figure out how to mass produce them at a reasonable price. We will just have to wait and see.
 
The guy who literally invented the LED (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Holonyak) has his office and lab right down the street from where I work. He often uses the gym at our high school to stay in shape. His position -- and his patent portfolio certainly demonstrates that he knows what he's talking about -- is that there's nothing in theory to keep LEDs from reaching virtually 100% efficiency, many times what they are capable of now. My bet is that they'll continue to improve and stay several steps ahead of advanced incandescents or any kind of discharge lamp that intrinsically depends on being hot to operate.

- Greg
 
Efficiency aside, I've always preferred that quality of incandescent hard light over all others.
 
I've shot with CFL softboxes and "mini hmi" Coolights for years. Recently I purchased a set of 4 "Arri lookalike" 300 and 600 tungsten fresnels. Despite the extra heat and power draw, I find them to be worth it. They seem to mesh with the FS7 white balance wise and give me a beautiful image, never having a green spike.
 
This is a wildly, hugely exciting prospect. If they can get the efficiencies up, and can bring them to market, and can start to produce the sorts of niche lamps that we need for film and tv fixtures - this could get extremely exciting.

Imagine taking a little 650w Fresnel, replacing the globe, and all of a sudden having the output of a 5k? Or replacing the bulb in a 2kw blonde and suddenly having the output of a 20kw source?! All of which would be simply plug and play into your existing fixtures, and work perfectly on conventional dimmers.

With that kind of added efficiency, you could skip the electrical complexity of HMI ballasts and have enough output that gelling things down to daylight balance wasn't a big issue anymore.

Imagine being able to get the output of a 2kw spotlight, from a little Dedolight that you could hide in any old nook or cranny?

The possibilities are extremely exciting - and you'd stop having to worry about all of the awkwardness and colour complications of the discontinuous spectrums you get from HMI, Fluoros and LEDs.

Very cool stuff (assuming it comes to something).
 
Grug,
I love your post. You are truly excited about cinematography and lighting. This paragraph isn't specifically about tungsten light (which, as others have said, I also prefer), but it is in praise of 'painting with light.' Some today believe that simply turning on a large fill light and blasting the whole scene up to proper exposure is the challenge. But, in reality, the cinematographer is the smartest guy on the set. A good cinematographer knows a good deal about all of the physical sciences: physics, chemistry, optics, mathematics, electrical engineering (actually, his gaffer on this point) and more. Grug, your comments on Dedolights reminds me of NOT lighting the whole set and the great use of point lighting and negative space and allowing actors to walk in and out of light. When I produced at the ad agency, I would always hang around the camera (while others were at craft services) and always ask questions of the D.P. I was fortunate enough to have hired and worked with some of the best: Caleb Deschanel, Haskel Wexler, John Toll, Jordon Cronenweth, Hiro Narita and more (the sons of Gordon Willis and Conrad Hall). For the most part, the folks that call themselves "directors" are a dime a dozen. (Spielberg: a traffic cop, in my opinion, with a lot of money and who is often smart enough to get out of everyone's way and let the actors, et. al., do their work - although he is truly gifted at seeing what the audiences will pay money to watch). In my book, the cinematographers are the magicians. Loved your excitement, Grug.
 
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