Which bulbs for home depot clamp lights?

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ejdge

Well-known member
I bought some 300w home depot clamp lights and was wondering what kind of bulbs I should put in them. Where can I get these bulbs? Also, any ideas for stands/thing I can clamp these onto? I'm trying to keep my budget as low as possible as well. Thanks.
 
My personal recommendation is the home depot N:Vision 3500K or 5500K's in 30w or 40w, whichever seems what you're looking for and to blend in with any other lighting you may have. Try those out first and start experimenting with them and see how you like them.
 
First of all, thanks Cool Lights for the info about home depot having 5500K bulbs, I wasn't aware guess I haven't looked hard enough. Any idea if they have any higher wattage bulbs in 5500K?

Secondly, ejdge, I've had good success if I need more light with GE 250W Incandescent bulbs (3200K) and GE 250W Photoflood (4800K) for something a bit cooler.
 
I use 75 watt equivalent 5500k bulbs from Home Depot in clamp lights for my interview kit, and then a 40 for the backlight. At my Home Depot, they had a 150 watt 3500k one too. That'd be a nice key light.
 
How much range do those bulbs give you? How close do the lights have to be to achieve their intention? Sorry about all the picky questions but I procrastinated, and need to get a workable lighting set up by Sunday :)
 
I've done a lot of small set lighting with these things, with two them easily covering a 10 foot wide by 8 foot deep area. The wattages I listed are the "tungsten equivalent" wattages, so take a 60 watt household lightbulb and put it in one of your lights. It'll be a bit brighter than that. I wouldn't say they're exceptionally bright, but they do the job, at least for me. I'd get one of the bulbs (just one) and try it out to see if it'll work for your purpose though.

EDIT: I actually just re-read, and saw you were looking to incorporate your clamp lights with Halogens. They're usually about 2900k, if I remember correctly, pretty orange, so you might end up going for the "soft white" flouros. Then the "Bright White" ones are 3200k, which also might do, but might be a bit cooler. So, I'd say experiment a bit, and if all else fails, just use household bulbs!
 
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The wattages I listed on the Home Depot N:Visions is actual wattage so a 40w is equivalent of about a 160w regular bulb. the 30w is equivalent of a 120w, etc. I'm not aware of a larger wattage right now than 40w in 5500K. I know they have some Lights of America larger bulbs sometimes but those are usually 6500K when they are "daylight" types. If you need larger wattages then you'll have to go to another supplier like fullspectrumsolutions or one of those. Of course, there are some larger mogul-based solutions too like the famous 200w bulb:

http://www.teksupply.com/webapp/wcs...lbs&breadcrumb_categoryIds=35044|35054&isDoc=

But that won't help you for use with the home depot scoops which are all edison base types.
 
ejdge said:
Sweet thanks. I'll be blending them with 1000W halogen worklights as well.
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Ah! I didn't know that. In that case go for the lowest color temp they have which is probably 2700K to 2900K if you want to blend with your worklights. If they don't have that you'll need the 3500K but that's a big enough difference from the usual 2900K of the worklights that you may see some color temp variances between the two types of lights.
 
Oh, I was referring to the "40w, 60w, 75w" things on the front of the package - you know, the "incandescent equivalent" things.
 
Thanks I did my shoot today and yes the 2700 N:visions were very orange. I was shooting in daylight so it was really noticable. What should I have done? Gone for the 5500s and not mix worklights? I ended up using natural sunlight since it was so orange.
 
Yes, I think now that would have been the best decision. I didn't remember you saying you were mixing daylight in there too. That's really 3 different color temperatures so would end up a bit of a mess. All daylight would be the best I guess.
 
I wish there was a way to inform our new or very inexperienced posters that they know should put all of there info into the first question and not trickle in major changes later on. I don't mean to attack you ejdge, it's just our most experienced people give up there valuable time to try and help all of us, "Sweet, I'll be blending them with 1000 watt Halogens" causes them to go back and re-answer the question. Richard Andrewski has a wealth of information and has the patience of a bomb technition.
Gary
 
Unfortunately--its true. Like I always say "over here eating Chinese food 3 times a day so you guys can have reasonably priced lighting."
 
any one want to post pics of their set ups? i would love to see how all this looks. if you guys dont' mind sharing.
 
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