Article: Future growing dim for incandescent bulbs

[Greg Boston]

Drifting into different countries, their governments, what they are or aren't doing for the environment, isn't going to work at DVINFO. Talking about the different lights available, their benefits or disadvantages for video is fine.

Thanks for your understanding,

-gb-

[Bill Busby]

Originally Posted by Mike Teutsch

I picked up a new camera light at NAB that is really neat! I'll post a review on it in time, but I think it will come in handy. It uses 48 LED's and puts out the equivalent of 50 watts and runs for 15 to 20 hours on three AA batteries.

Mike, looking forward to the review. Just curious... what's the make & model?

Bill

[Liam Hall]

Originally Posted by Greg Boston

Drifting into different countries, their governments, what they are or aren't doing for the environment, isn't going to work at DVINFO. Talking about the different lights available, their benefits or disadvantages for video is fine.

Thanks for your understanding,

-gb-

So, let me get this right. We're allowed to discuss incandescent bulbs, but not why they're being banned around the world?
And, we're not allowed to discuss environmentally sound ways of disposing of CFLs or share knowledge about good environmental practice in relation to lighting.

Could you clarify, I'm confused.

Kind regards,

Liam.

[Mike Teutsch]

Although I believe that the conversation is fairly valid, we are drifting off of the topic of this post and not talking directly about lighting equipment. So I'll respect Greg's wish and drop the recycling part.

So, how about those LED's. Why are they so expensive? And, I'll try to post a picture and info on that LED light today if I have time.

Mike

[Boyd Ostroff]

Liam, Greg deleted a post which had nothing to do with lighting or responsible disposal of lamps. It was a wisecrack about about American society which which I would have deleted myself.

This discussion is indeed drifting off topic. Recycling and waste disposal is of course an important issue today, but DVinfo is the wrong place to discuss it. Talking about disposal of light bulbs is fine, but discussion of problems with your town's cardboard pickups and supermarket shopping bags isn't.

Hope this helps resolve your confusion.

[Liam Hall]

Originally Posted by Boyd Ostroff

Liam, Greg deleted a post which had nothing to do with lighting or responsible disposal of lamps. It was a wisecrack about about American society which which I would have deleted myself.

This discussion is indeed drifting off topic. Recycling and waste disposal is of course an important issue today, but DVinfo is the wrong place to discuss it. Talking about disposal of light bulbs is fine, but discussion of problems with your town's cardboard pickups and supermarket shopping bags isn't.

Hope this helps resolve your confusion.

Copy that, understood. Back to the topic of the original post...

I just want to know whether I need to sell all my incandescent fresnels whilst they're still woth something or indeed, whether, as a responsible citizen I should be using them at all.

Liam.

[Greg Boston]

Originally Posted by Liam Hall

So, let me get this right. We're allowed to discuss incandescent bulbs, but not why they're being banned around the world?
And, we're not allowed to discuss environmentally sound ways of disposing of CFLs or share knowledge about good environmental practice in relation to lighting.

Could you clarify, I'm confused.

Liam,

I know Boyd already answered this, but I want to explain a bit more. DVINFO has a strong policy of 'neutrality'. There are other places on the internet where polarizing topics of discussion turn into all out flame wars and personal attacks. With that in mind, we as moderators look at any topic that might spiral into a heated discussion of for and against posts and take a fairly aggressive approach to stopping things before they can get started.

Chris also wants threads to stay on topic and for each post to have a positive contribution to the discussion at hand. His terminology is 'high signal, low noise'.

We do run a fairly tight ship and that has a direct benefit to everyone who comes here looking for relevant information. No wading through personal rants, politics, platform wars, etc. to find what you're looking for.

Best regards,

Greg Boston

[Chris Hurd]

Originally Posted by Liam Hall

...we're not allowed to discuss environmentally sound ways of disposing of CFLs or share knowledge about good environmental practice in relation to lighting?

As the primary arbiter of DV Info Net policy, allow me to help.

There's nothing wrong with discussing environmentally sound ways of disposing of CFLs, or sharing knowledge about good environmental practice in relation to lighting.

What is inappropriate, is when those discussions drift into political areas of what is right or wrong for the environment in general. For example, the topic of "why incandescent bulbs are being banned around the world." It's not a subject of debate here. I guess it could be a subject of report, from a practical perspective relating to videography, but it's not a subject for debate. There are two reasons for this.

First reason is, while incandescent bulbs are indeed being banned around the world for environmental reasons, those who oppose the notion are NOT going to change that fact by posting on a message board. The only thing that posting on a message board accomplishes for these people, is to vent their ire and frustration about this particular legislation. And you know what, I don't want that on my site. I don't want my name or my brand associated with that kind of political content. Let these people post their anti-government or anti-environment rants on their *own* message board, or blog, or whatever. I'm a firm believer in freedom of speech -- I wish some of these people would exercise their freedom of speech, instead of disrespecting mine.

Second reason is related to the first, but it's on a much broader scale. While those who oppose the notion of incandescent bulbs being banned around the world for environmental reasons can't change this fact by posting on my boards, neither can they change the minds of those who support the notion. Therefore such debates are pointless unless the purpose is to specifically disrupt the fabric of the community here.

In other words, to put it simply, stubborn people must realize that they cannot change the minds of other stubborn people. The only thing is stubborn person (i.e., a person of "strong political convictions" whether they're left or right) can accomplish here, is to drive others away from this site with their blow-hard political rhetoric. And I certainly don't want that to happen. Therefore we don't debate political issues here, as they accomplish *nothing* but the breakdown of an online community.

Those who have been following this thread will note that the moderators took a comment out of public view which criticized Americans. I want to make it clear that it's not the "American-ness" of the comment that was offensive. It's the generalization itself that was offensive, no matter which nationality it referred to. There are folks from countries all over the world that gather here on a regular basis, so let's please try to remain friendly, polite, courteous and respectful to *everyone,* no matter where they come from... but especially those from weak, struggling, poorly developed third-world nations such as Canada.

Hope this helps,

[Richard Andrewski]

Originally Posted by Liam Hall

Copy that, understood. Back to the topic of the original post...

I just want to know whether I need to sell all my incandescent fresnels whilst they're still woth something or indeed, whether, as a responsible citizen I should be using them at all.

Liam.

Liam sell them all right now while you still can! ;-) But seriously, how often are you using hard light now for the stuff you're doing? If you're doing interviews and narrative type stuff, soft light for key/fill and hard light for background definitely makes a lot of sense.

Right now for soft light it's fluorescent and collections of LEDs on a panel or some such configuration.

For energy efficient hard light (such as cookie use and other kinds of background lighting) it's some kind of instrument from the metal halide family. Eventually when the super high wattage LEDs of 50w and higher come down in price then you'll have a really interesting portable solution there too. Metal halide is still a bit hot though as well as the high wattage LED.

It seems when we get to the subject of hard light of any kind then the heat comes up again. We're generating more lumens per watt with metal halide so its more efficient in that respect but we're still needing a bit more air conditioning to displace the heat so while its better than tungsten it's still far from ideal.

I don't see any truly "cool" point light technology on the horizon right now with what's known about, but maybe one will be discovered.

[Liam Hall]

Originally Posted by Chris Hurd

please try to remain friendly, polite, courteous and respectful to *everyone,* no matter where they come from... but especially those from weak, struggling, poorly developed third-world nations such as Canada.

Chris, Greg, Boyd, message received, loud and clear. Having missed the offending posting, I was worried the humor police may have taken over but given your comment above, I'm considerably cheered and I completely concur with your policy on this matter.

Now that we've cleared all that up, can we get back on topic?

Richard,
I use hard lights on virtually every shoot I do. Nearly always in combination with soft lights. Though, I've just finished shooting a job that took us all around the UK and to that third-world nation, Canada (Chris's comment, not mine). As I was directing and shooting we took just one fluorescent fixture (your Coollight CL-455) and a couple of large California Sunbounce reflectors. Footage looks knockout (my editors comment, not mine). BTW, the CL-455 stood up to a severe pounding - nearly two thousand miles by road, nine hotels and five plane journeys.

I've got about a dozen Arri fresnels of various shapes and sizes. If they get banned in the near future are metal halide fixtures going to do the job?

Cheers,

Liam.

[Marcus Marchesseault]

"I've got about a dozen Arri fresnels of various shapes and sizes. If they get banned in the near future are metal halide fixtures going to do the job?"

Nobody is going to ban tungsten video fixtures in the near future. The only thing that is likely to get banned is the SALE of new tungsten household (in the U.S. known as medium "Edison") bulbs. Tungsten video lights, especially those used intermittently like location lights, have a negligible impact on the world's energy use. A few billion tungsten household bulbs DO make a big impact. Fortunately, there is a fairly easy replacement available in CFLs so we can all start to migrate. I suspect many people will make the switch before any legislation can be implemented anyway.

The metal halide are essentially just what is known as HMI lights today. Think of it this way: How would you like the price of $8,000 HMI lights to fall below $1000? It sounds much more appealing that way, doesn't it? Once a few more kinks are worked out of metal halide, they will replace tungsten naturally without legislation. Check out Richard's coollights site to see how to do it yourself.

[Richard Andrewski]

Originally Posted by Liam Hall

I've got about a dozen Arri fresnels of various shapes and sizes. If they get banned in the near future are metal halide fixtures going to do the job?

I have a feeling that video production would be grandfathered for a while. What other industry do you know of that has such a huge investment in fixtures? Yes, warehouses and grocery stores, malls, etc. all have lots of fixtures but they don't cost the kind of money that a video/film light does. Also, if you want to try your hand at DIY, you'll be able to convert your fresnels with a bit of work when you get ready to. You probably saw my article on the subject.

Anyway, yes, I think metal halide will be looked to as a replacement for tungsten in many cases. In addition, we'll probably be getting more and more choices in the future that will lead to higher CRI's and color temperatures that we like--namely 5600K and even 3200K. It's interesting that the 3200K has been available in metal halide for some time but the CRI is pretty low. I think this will change too. All a company (like Cool Lights for instance) has to do is make a fairly large order and you can specify exactly what you want--including lifetime, color temp and CRI.

I guess the standard in HMI has been daylight for so long that no one really ever decided to offer a 3200K choice there. It just means another bunch of bulbs to stock and there probably wasn't much enthusiasm about that.

[Richard Andrewski]

Originally Posted by Marcus Marchesseault

The metal halide are essentially just what is known as HMI lights today. Think of it this way: How would you like the price of $8,000 HMI lights to fall below $1000? It sounds much more appealing that way, doesn't it? Once a few more kinks are worked out of metal halide, they will replace tungsten naturally without legislation. Check out Richard's coollights site to see how to do it yourself.

This is exactly where we're at. I would already have them ready if it weren't for the fact that a 1200w metal halide takes a bit more attention to build a fixture for than the lower wattage ones. We've got a 575w solution we can offer now. On a 1200w, the ballast is more of a monster and the fixture has to be a bit "beefier."

I doubt I'll offer a fixture larger than 1200w in the near future though because I think most of my customers are operating off household/office type current and once you get to the next logical size up (2500w) then it starts to get more of a challenge to find reliable power for it that won't blow a breaker. Once we get these out though and get some experience with them and user feedback we'll see what else would be interesting to offer.

[Mark OConnell]

"We've got a 575w solution we can offer now."

Details please!

[Marcus Marchesseault]

How many lumens on that 575W? What would make a good backlight for an interview with the CL-455 as a soft key? Would the 575W be overkill? I'm guessing that a CL-455, a hard light as a backlight, and a reflector bouncing a bit of the key and backlight would make a nice portable interview kit. With it all being daylight balanced, it could all be used to fight the sun in a backlit outdoor setup.