Xenon lights?

[Ron Michaels]

Anyone ever use them? Any pro's or cons? Ballast? Power?
thanks again everyone, lots of help on here!
Ron

 

[Ulf Krentz]

No personal experience in film lighting. Xenon lights are DC lamps and have a very small point source of light. That´s why they are commonly used in combination with optical systems. They are under high pressure and caution must be taken serious. Being powered from a high current DC source they are very flicker free and used for high speed filming. If my mind serves me well Ridley Scott used Xenons in Blade Runner extensively. Hope this helps a bit... Cheers.

 

[B Kanegson]

Long time since I was an electrician, so I don't know if these lights are still commonly used or have been superseded by newer technology.

Xenons are a very bright narrow source/ beam, like a source 4 on steroids. The larger sizes are relatively heavy and energy hungry. They are also sensitive to vibration when transported. A typical use would be to bounce into a mirror to send a hard shaft of light, e.g. to simulate sun, downward into a set. They do not like to point down much past 45 degrees because of internal heat. They come in several sizes; a larger size is 7K. Smaller sized, e.g. 2k, can have internal ballasts as I recall, but larger ones have heavy separate ballasts. They are somewhat focusable, with an electrically activated narrow/ wide switch on the lamp body. However, as the beam widens, a hole begins to develop in the center of the beam, making it very uneven. The focal point of the light is a little away from the face, so they can be gelled directly on the lamp, but at any distance from the lamp heat shield is required. The beam is hot. On the movie "Drop Zone" Wesley Snipes often had a 7K on him while standing next to Gary Busy and I once saw the back of his jacket begin to smoke with the lamp at least 40 feet away. On the final episode of the "Earth To The Moon" mini series, shot in the Spruce Goose hangar, a large number of Xenons (maybe in the 30's) were focused on a stainless steel hemisphere to simulate the sun as seen from the moon. The hemisphere had to be filled with liquid nitrogen to keep the steel from melting.

As mentioned above, the lamps are under high pressure, and therefore bulb changes can be hazardous; a face mask and flak type jacket were required to do bulb change.

For a time, these lamps were trendy in music videos.

 

[Michael Tiemann]

[...]On the final episode of the "Earth To The Moon" mini series, shot in the Spruce Goose hangar, a large number of Xenons (maybe in the 30's) were focused on a stainless steel hemisphere to simulate the sun as seen from the moon. The hemisphere had to be filled with liquid nitrogen to keep the steel from melting.

I have to call BS on that. The vaporization of water (1) provides tremendous cooling effect, and (2) is well below the melting point of steel. Indeed, the enthalpy of vaporization of Nitrogen is 2.7928 whereas water is nearly 1000x higher, at 2257 kJ / kg.

 

[B Kanegson]

My bad. It was water cooled.

https://www.theasc.com/magazine/apr98/moon/pg1.htm

 

[Sabovic Adis]

What? Xenons?! Hipster sacrilege, ef that! :nads:


Real lightmen only use this:

I know cos I did this for years:

:rofl:


:sifone:

 

[Ron Michaels]

Crazy! Great info, thanks again for the input guys!