Philips Hue Bulbs for Filmmaking?

[Eric Haase]

Yes you probably have to use 1/100th, 1/50th, or 1/25th to avoid flicker. As for the green, they are RGB, so can't you just pick a color that is less green?

hmm not really- let's say you're trying to get like 2700K or 3200K- you can't really dial out the green and keep the color temp. It would be great if they had a plus/minus green slider. I heard they opened up the Hue with an SDK for third party so maybe someone will provide a better interface/app. As it is now, you can't really just dial it out effectively.

eric

 

[Noah Yuan-Vogel]

hmm not really- let's say you're trying to get like 2700K or 3200K- you can't really dial out the green and keep the color temp. It would be great if they had a plus/minus green slider. I heard they opened up the Hue with an SDK for third party so maybe someone will provide a better interface/app. As it is now, you can't really just dial it out effectively.

eric

Maybe look at the bulbs I linked on ebay, they have a remote that allows you to manually set the R, G, and B emitters to whatever level you want, just click the down button on the green control and the green is gone. Sounds like hue just isnt calibrated properly or whatever system they used to read and calibrate their bulbs to reproduce colors from their app may not be as sensitive to narrow spectrum green as your camera is.

Not sure I'd trust an app from an iphone to be color accurate and for it to match the RGB LEDs output that precisely. The bulb probably has unbalanced emitters and phone screens are not exactly color calibrated or even necessarily balanced to an appropriate white balance.

Kinda seems like a manually controllable RGB light source could be quite appropriate for our RGB filtered cameras.

 

[Charles Papert]

I used the HUE bulbs for a project recently where we replaced the recessed lighting with the bulbs to create a color wash. Couldn't have been easier to setup and get working, and the six bulbs provided plenty of level. Unfortunately, I did see flickering if I dimmed the bulbs at all (23.98, 180 degree shutter) which was a deal-breaker.

As far as dialing out the green, my experience with RGB LED's is that if the output spectrum has gaps, you can never quite get to a healthy tungsten-esque color. These types of bulbs are far better suited for color washes than to replace legacy neutral lighting for faces.

 

[Elsie N]

Although this is a flood, I think as someone suggested, placing a Fresnel in front should help to concentrate the light.

I bought one to test it out and will probably get a few more when needed. Mounted it onto a Black and Decker worklight stand. This model plugs in where some of the others being sold have to be wired.

Also bought a couple of strings that do the same color change and use the exact same remote. I'm actually using one of those strings as lighting in the room I'm in now. Using the white light at the moment but I sometimes put in on the various flash settings just for whimsy.'-)

 

[Joachim Hoge]

I used 4 Hues on a TVC recently. The location was a cabin in the mountains and I used it in most of the practicals. It was great to be able to dim each light quickly ( I didn't notice any flicker, but was shooting 25P so that might be it.)
they worked great for this particular job.
My wife was a bit upset that our livingroom lighting was back to "normal" while I was on location though ;-)

 

[Mike Lawrence]

I purchased a set of Hue's the first chance I had because I felt the possibilities were endless. The wifi thing was annoying, but I would deal with it if they produced what I needed. However, at 23.976 I could not find a reasonable shutter to shoot at without banding. 23.98 @ 180 degrees shutter is about 80% of my work, so these bulbs are useless to me, so sad.

i am curious if anyone has tried the LIFX bulbs?