flourescent lights
 

anyone using flourescence? i have been hearing good things about these color corrected lighting systems.
and if so, how flexible are they? interior? exterior? hard lighting?
thanks.

Excuse my ignorance, but wouldn't you get a strobe problem with fluorescents?

If you are forced to use this type of lighting, consider Heliopan's 2 types of filters to correct the lighting.

here in Europe you get high-frequency fluorescents; I believe they light up at 100Hz rather than the usual 50Hz. You probably have them in the US too. I haven't tried them but I am curious now and will shoot some tests at the office tomorrow...

Kai.

High-output, color balanced flourescent lighting is an excellent soft/medium lighting source for video work either in a studio or in the field. They run far, far cooler than incandescent lighting, they use far less power, can be gel-ed for color correction if necessary and the lamps last tens of thousands of hours. I use a Lowel Caselight 4, a portable 4-lamp flourescent fixture, frequently for interview or small-scene work. The primary limitation of such lighting is that it cannot be focused the way that incandescent lighting can.

As for the flicker if you are shooting NTSC in Europe you will get it and if you are shooting PAL in north america you will get it. Otherwise if in north america with ntsc or europe with pal there should not be a flicker.

Yup. That's why I never use my PAL cams in artifical 60 cycle lighting. Outdoors it's fine.

I do recommend those fluorescent filters, though. Heliopan makes good ones.

i visited a lighting supply here in PHX. and he said their pretty good and he's getting more requests. he thinks that's where the industry is headed.

Kinoflo
 

I know we used KINOFLO in Hollywood for years as a lighting source. Different sizes, etc. Real nice stuff. Not cheap, but pro-gear. Worth a look.

David

The KinoFlo gear is great, but as was stated it aint cheap. I've used their mini-flo kit and have had good results.

http://www.kinoflo.com/

PS- have not experienced any flicker yet.

I built my own double lamp high output 55w per lamp T5's 48" long using a very high quality ballast at 3000 color.

My tests so far are they blend seamlessly with my tungsten lights, are an excellent source of soft light, very low power consumption, and what a pleasure, no heat. As for the buzz and flicker these are also non existant but you have to use top of the line components. Lamps are available in many colors for all your shooting needs and as mentioned gells are also available

We fabricated our own brackets and attached them to high quality bogen light stands. The cost was about $180 per fixture and the stand was about $100. In comparison the cheapest commercial fixture we found went for $400 and was only 2 foot in length.

To finish it off we just added a tent (like a softbox) with attachable gells. I highly recomend flourescents. We use them on location and then to light up our green screen at the studio.

Cheers

"Excuse my ignorance, but wouldn't you get a strobe problem with fluorescents?"

T8 electronic ballasts are spec'd at better than 65KHZ. The new T8 is high voltage and high frequency (at the ballast output)

I beleive the T5 is used more now for photo optic applications than the T8. It's supposed to put out as much as 10% more light. That was just what I discovered in my research before building ours. We get absolutely no flickering or strobing whatsoever.

T5 is cheaper and operates at about 45KHZ, a lower frequency but you'd never detect any flicker at that frequency anyway. T8 is a heavier duty and higher frequency product that I work with on a daily basis. I was just using the frequency of that electronic ballast as an example and to satisfy any question of flicker. The human eye can tell a 50 HZ AC light from a 60HZ. At 45 or 65K it's flicker free and it high enough that the interference factor is practically nil. Neither is spec'd specifically for production lighting.

What ever is cheaper and will do the job is the best.

Try this link
 

Here is a good writeup on using fluorescents:

http://www.studio1productions.com/Ar.../FL-Lights.htm