Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • 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 :)

UV Lighting

It depends what the application is and what type of UV light you want to capture. UV-A which is essentially the same as blacklight has the longest wavelength of the UV spectrum and the most amount of visible light than UV-B or C. UV-B is the type used for forensics and is near invisible.

You can simulate the look of UV with something like Lee 181 gel.

Depends what you want to do really.
 
It's a music video and we want to switch from regular lighting to uv/blacklight at one point in the song to reveal stuff painted (in luminescent paint) onto the set. So ideally whatever will produce the strongest glow from the paint/white objects.

I take it the gel would not light the paint in the same way as a dedicated uv lamp?

My local lighting place has 'UV guns' (which I think might be similar to the 'long throw' on that site, Dylan), so that might be the best way to go.

Thanks for your help,

Piers
 
The UV guns are designed for stage and are long throw. If its accessible and suits your needs then at least they are true UV lights rather than coloured incandescents. As a warning though they should only be used for distances of over 10ft and most of them are not dimmable.
 
Bear in mind that white objects do not glow by virtue of being white. They glow by virtue of the presence of specific chemicals known as OBAs, or optical brightening agents, which work by shifting the wavelength of reflected light down the electromagnetic spectrum from ultraviolet to violet. Lots of white objects don't have these chemicals in them (as do many non-white objects), so be certain to check each object for the look you are going for before setting out to film.

Stephen
 
Hey Piers,

What you'll need are Mercury Vapor UV lamps. These are sometimes used in theater. They are far more effective in terms of strong output compared to fluorescent lamps or bulbs. It has also the advantage of not radiating any other visible light so, when switched on, revealing the objects with the right characteristics, like luminescent paint. All the rest won't be influenced unless they have OBA's (optical brightening agents) in them (like Stephen said).
 
Mercury Vapour Lamps are excellent although not as efficient as Metal Halide lamps. They are technically colour correction bulbs as they have a coating of phosphor on the inner side of the bulb to add red to the emitted spectrum. They do a very good job though.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top