A long read, but maybe very usefull for some people here:

http://www.studio1productions.com/Articles/FL-Lights.htm

"Creating a Low Cost
Fluorescent Lighting System"

Its about Fluorescent light, not green looking, but daylight etc, even big budget movies use them.

You all know that iam looking/found worklights,
but the get very hot and filters can melt, Fluorescent light is not getting hot, so you can place filters against it, also, a 25watt Fluorescent light is the same ass a 100 watt normal light bulb (i meen the same lux, more light, for less power)

So why does not everyone work whit Fluorescent lighting? you can buy different colors (kelvin), (including daylight), the dont get hot, so you can use filters (save) and there not expensive...

Frankly, i cannot think of any reason why people even want worklights
(i want them too, but why? after reading this, iam not sure that worklights are a good investment)

I hope you have a good read!
(p.s. its not my website or something, two weeks ago i did not even know what lux and kelvin was...)

Jerry

I do and always will love my Home Depot light kit. Only if you're able to pry it from my kung fu grip will you convince me to trade it in for something else.

i'll give that a read. doesn't fluorescent flicker (really fast) though?

quote:

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Originally posted by JW:
I do and always will love my Home Depot light kit. Only if you're able to pry it from my kung fu grip will you convince me to trade it in for something else.

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"i do" ehm... what do you do?

i only realy use fluoro's when it is called for in a scene or when blue or green screening, here are my reasons:

a) cheap fluros have flicker problems, and Kino Flos(the standard hardcore fluros) arent cheap at all!!!

b) fluros are a naturally soft light, meaning you have less control over how soft you want your light to be, whereas with tungsten, and HMI you have a very Hard light... it is 100 times cheaper and easier to soften a hard light that it is to harden a soft light.

The gels you're using for the light shouldn't be melting. I'm shooting something right now, and i've left the 1000W tungsten light on for five hours with the gel clipped to the barn doors, and the worst that happens is that they're warm when i take them off. That's what gels are supposed to do (I think it's only when you get up to 5K lights that you have to put the gels on a grid away from the lens of the light fixture)


Flourescents are awesome. But you can't get a hard light out of them, and you can't get a high stop out of them if you're shooting a wide shot where the lights have to be away from your subject. They also don't look like houselights, so if you're trying to simulate a lamp lighting at actors face, it's better to get a hard strong light, and bring it down to a comfortable level, because a flourescent just won't look like a lamp. (BUT flourescents are really good for bringing up the room ambient light, to make it look like the lamp is lighting a lot more than it really is)

Anway, think about it like this: flourescents are just a tool to get an effect that you want, but they can only do so much. If flourescents were the best for every situation, then why are the best D.P.'s in Hollywood still shooting with Fresnel lights and par cans? Because different lights are for different jobs.

in agree with RFranco. You should be using diffent lights for different applications. This is why other than a small lighting kit, i dont own any lights, i just rent them, in the long run its cheaper than having a million dollars of different types of lights, and it allows you to do much more because you can get the lights you need to achieve certain effects rather than being tied down to what you own.