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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

HMI... Any cheap alternatives?

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Eddie

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Does anybody outthere have any eperience with using 5000K "grow lights" or something similar to this one. especially for lifting the shadows in an interview setting . Since build 16 it seems that shooting iso 800 is gonna be more than acceptabel... especially when scaling to SD for finishing.
It would be good to know the cheap workarounds. Especially since redone offers the option of adjusting the white balance afterwords. This means that a certain variance in the colortemperature from one bulb to the other is no longer the end of the world, as long as you got enough of that blue light comming. And since I would rather not cough up 6k for this one, it would be great to grab one of these "dope-growing" garden bulbs instead.
Any advice is much appreciated
 
The CRI is rather low. I really wouldn't use anything lower than high 80s.

We've built some fixtures based around 5000K compact fluorescents that we used for a shoot on Friday for the first time with good results. I'll probably put together a post on them sometime this week.
 
Daylight doesn't have to be expensive. Cool white flo tubes, photo flood bulbs, and LEDs at 6k degrees get you blue.

If you can tie in, Par 36 FAY lights are great. The old standby, the 9 light mini brute with daylight bulbs has tons of punch, enough to use for fill out side (within reason, it's not a 6k hmi).

All of these have there drawback, the main being short life span on photo floods and Fays.

Nick
 
Flouresent lights are a good alternative to HMI. Problem with low price flourescent light are their ballasts. Cheap ballasts are 60 HZ. That's HZ as in Hertz. This frequency is too low to avoid flicker at off frame rates. Appropriate flourescent lights for motion picture work have a ballast frequency of 50 to 60 KHZ. That's KHZ, as in thousand hertz. These lights typically cost about $1,200 for a 6 tube (55w each tube unit). Not cheap.
 
What we are talking about here are two things. you guys are all talking about soft light. One of the main reasons you use HMIs is for punch. You put big lights outside windows, and make the sun, or you use them outside for edges, fill or to fake the sun when it is in and out of clouds.

There ain't nothing except for xenons, and carbon arcs, that is going to fit the bill in that capacity. You can get close with Maxis and Dinos but you are sucking major amps.

Nick
 
no, but if you are shooting B&W then you can just use incandescent lights, not daylights.
 
Gary Stone said:
What about these?
Click to expand...

What do you think you're going to do with that? :huh:

I personally have never used them, but check out the HMIs from Cool Lights. They're pretty inexpensive as far as studio lighting goes and look to be OK, seem to get pretty decent reviews. I have actually been looking at getting some of their fluorescents, maybe an HMI or two.

But when it comes down to it, lights are expensive and it's hard to stock the kinds of lights you will need for all shooting situations. The best way to handle lights is to rent them, IMO. Unless you continuously find that you use certain lights over and over again, then look at buying those.
 
The Alzo lights are okay, but fairly limited. They used to sell a "B&B kit," which was a bulb that you stick into a regular practical table lamp and then you plug that fixture into the ballast. A neat gag, but I think they may have run into some safety considerations from people not knowing and plugging things in improperly (could blow up a bulb I imagine -- yikes).

These days the prices on LED fixtures have dropped so much that I don't see the point with this as much. But it still doesn't take the place of an HMI in the sense that we're all generally used to.
 
cfls

cfls

I do not know if the ballast is 60hz or not (and interoduces flicker problems). But, daylight cfls are pretty cheap to try:

http://www.buylighting.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=SP85-50-MED&click=27999

http://www.buylighting.com/105-Watt-Compact-Fluorescent-5000K-Full-Spectrum-p/fe-iiib-105w-50k.htm

The problem with HMIs is a narrow color band that spikes the greens real high. In black and white it might be okay, but if the light isn't even on the red, green and blue, you may see noise on some channels that you didn't expect.

This webpage claims that since 2003 cfls operate at much higher frequency, without flicker:

"No 60 Hertz flickering. Electronic ballasts now operate at around 20-60 kHz (20,000 - 60,000 Hertz). This means no more headaches/eye strain!"
http://members.shaw.ca/wiggie/Compact_Flourescent_Lights.html

Ooops, almost forgot this 200W version which looks awesome, with 23,000 lumens:

http://www.greenelectricalsupply.com/200-watt-compact-fluorescent-retrofit-bulb.aspx
 
From what I understand, the alzos are okay but the "800w" one is really 140w or something so the output isn't as impressive as it seems.

A few years ago, I tried a 400w growth light for video (dvx100) and it actually worked pretty well for the scene I used it for (pure luck; it just happened to be the same color as daylight bouncing off grass, which was the key through a window). But it's noisy and the green spike is awful. I would not use one ever again.

I have had very good luck with 23w fluorescent bulbs and you can get much more powerful ones, too. But they have a color temperature that is a bit bluer than a normal (slightly greenish) HMI. But they're pretty soft and you need a lot to get decent power. Kinoflos, of course, are excellent.

I had great luck with 500w photofloods, but they are hard to control. Their 4800K light is a bit warmer than daylight but looks beautiful.

If you're willing to get "creative," you can buy one of these:
http://www.lumenlab.com/estore/product.php?productid=16180&cat=252&page=1
I bought one and put it on a 2k fresnel casing. This took a lot of work, but it works great! It's not too reliable, though, is the one big problem. But it's flicker free and we got a fair amount of use out of it. The light takes longer to warm up than a traditional HMI and looks quite a bit more purple until it does, but it settles down around 6500K with very good color rendering. (I think it claims a CRI of 90?) I used this with the red and it didn't flicker, but you'd need a CTO1/4 or something in most cases. I wouldn't recommend it, especially since the fresnel route is a lot of work, although if you put it on a big china globe or something it could be a great efficient, powerful soft source. But it's probably pretty dangerous...

My best advice is to take the plunge and buy the real thing. If you can afford a $25,000 camera, you should be able to afford a used 1.2kw HMI. My luck with ebay HMIs is bad, though, so maybe check out a grip shop and try it out with your camera?
 
Any fluorescent fixture with an electronic ballast won't flicker or hum. Magnetic ballasts cause the problems.

And I know that he's looking for an HMI replacement, but he did mention filling in shadows, so it sounds like the application isn't necessarily for a hard source.

So, if interested, I bought some high bay warehouse fixtures from this place:

http://www.fullspectrumsolutions.com/commercial_lighting_fixtures_35_ctg.htm

Painted the housing black, added a baby plate, works great. Really not that heavy. Used one one a C-stand with no sandbag in a pinch and it was very stable. Bulbs are 96+ CRI and 5900K, so a little cool, and you can specify shatterproof bulbs for a few bucks more per bulb. You can get fully dimmable ballasts, too, for an extra $125 plus the cost of the dimming switch.

A 4 light fixture is nearly as bright as the 8 light Kino-flo Image 80/85. T5 bulbs are just brighter and more efficient than the T12 or T8s used in most current motion picture specific lighting units.

I used them the other day with some $8 home depot shop lights with cheap 90+ CRI full spectrum T12s also from Home Depot, which are also great by the way; flicker free electronic ballasts. But there was so little green that it made the other high CRI bulbs that had never looked green to me before look green.

Anyway, sorry for the long winded post. But they're worth a try for $170, in my opinion. Good luck.
 
i have used the below light bulbs they pretty much suck. bad CRI

mail4joeg said:
I do not know if the ballast is 60hz or not (and interoduces flicker problems). But, daylight cfls are pretty cheap to try:

http://www.buylighting.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=SP85-50-MED&click=27999

http://www.buylighting.com/105-Watt-Compact-Fluorescent-5000K-Full-Spectrum-p/fe-iiib-105w-50k.htm

The problem with HMIs is a narrow color band that spikes the greens real high. In black and white it might be okay, but if the light isn't even on the red, green and blue, you may see noise on some channels that you didn't expect.

This webpage claims that since 2003 cfls operate at much higher frequency, without flicker:

"No 60 Hertz flickering. Electronic ballasts now operate at around 20-60 kHz (20,000 - 60,000 Hertz). This means no more headaches/eye strain!"
http://members.shaw.ca/wiggie/Compact_Flourescent_Lights.html

Ooops, almost forgot this 200W version which looks awesome, with 23,000 lumens:

http://www.greenelectricalsupply.com/200-watt-compact-fluorescent-retrofit-bulb.aspx
Click to expand...
 
well, here's a question...

well, here's a question...

"i have used the below light bulbs they pretty much suck. bad CRI"

Did you use them on the Red One / raw images?

Were you able to correct later?

PS

What is the minimum CRI suitable for filming? (90?)

PPS

"Cool Lights" is claiming that ">87" is "high." And they're selling 87 and 88 cri lights as suitable for filming.

Is there a study / comparison of how these various CRI's look on the Red One?
 
I searched the alzo website for a cri rating. One page showed:

"Daylight" color temperature 5300K, CRI = 85"

Not great. Some CFL bulbs above were 82 and were rated as "sucked" by one member.

BlueMax has them in the cri 94-96 range.

This 200W fluorescent has a 90 cri, from cool lights:
http://www.coollights.biz/cl20056-cool-lights-200w-5600k-high-softbox-bulb-p-83.html

Still looking for the best / price solution.
 
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