Buying some bulbs

[Joe Cage]

Hello,

I am looking to buy some light bulbs (in europe) to change the color to warmer scenes on practical lights, but also to maybe create a deakings ring light.
So looking for some:
- sodium vapour bulbs (I guess there are around 2700 colour temperature)
- but also thungsten bulbs (I guess there are around 3200 kelvin?)

Any recommendations? (Like brands? things to look out ofr?) Most lights are now LED these days, is it worth getting the LED version? Or are incandescent lights better somehow? (if you still can get these in europe)

Thanks!

 

[Matt W.]

Sodium vapor lights emit only two wavelengths and both are deep orange. "Color temperature" as it's normally discussed implies a black body emitter (a roughly bell curve around a wavelength) and while that's not really what you get with fluorescents and LEDs, which have an incomplete spectrum, it's especially not the case with sodium vapor.

You can use a sodium vapor light to fill practical sodium vapor lights or something, just that it's probably not what you're after. It's not a very traditionally pretty light, it's like a deep sickly orange industrial wash. You also need a ballast to drive them so would be difficult to wire and you might run into out of phase issues with your shutter.

I prefer the rendering of incandescent lights to LEDs and CFLs, most incandescents are 2700K or 2900K or so. Photofloods closer to 3200K but it burns the filament faster. If you can run your practicals and ring light off a variac, just dim them down and that will do the trick, it will warm them up as they dim. Go with incandescent, looks best. Good LED isn't so bad though imo, purists will disagree.