{"id":3066,"date":"2009-06-15T13:24:59","date_gmt":"2009-06-15T18:24:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.videoproductiontips.com\/?p=3066"},"modified":"2023-09-21T04:55:14","modified_gmt":"2023-09-21T09:55:14","slug":"lighting-for-video-compact-fluorescent-lights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.videoproductiontips.com\/lighting-for-video-compact-fluorescent-lights\/","title":{"rendered":"Compact Fluorescent Lights for Video Production"},"content":{"rendered":"
If you want to use lighting fixtures sold specifically for video making, you have lots of choices with styles, shapes, and uses.<\/p>\n
When it comes to what type of BULB the fixture uses, you have these four choices.<\/p>\n
Each type of bulb (a bulb is often called a lamp<\/strong> <\/em>in TV production) has pros and cons.\u00a0 Here is an article describing compact fluorescent lights.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Compact Fluorescent lights<\/a> (compact flo as they are nicknamed) became popular as the new “green” way to light your home beginning in the 90s.\u00a0 They were meant to replace incandescent bulbs.<\/a>\u00a0 As they became popular in homes, the style was adapted for use in TV and video production.\u00a0 Tungsten halogen<\/a> had been the TV and video production standard for years, but that was quickly changing. You’ll find compact fluorescent bulbs almost everywhere now. \u00a0Their actual “greenness” has been debated, but they have many features beyond supposedly being environmentally friendly.<\/p>\n Easy to recognize by their unique swirled design, compact flo bulbs have several distinct advantages over traditional tungsten halogen video lights.\u00a0 Tungsten get HOTTER than a firecracker.\u00a0 You can easily burn your fingers on them.\u00a0 I even burned a hole in the wall once when I bounced the light just a little too close.\u00a0 Oops.<\/p>\n Compact Fluorescent lights, on the other hand, do not get so hot.\u00a0 \u00a0Sitting under tungsten halogen lights can be dreadfully uncomfortable.\u00a0 They heat up the entire room FAST.\u00a0 That leads to having to crank up the air conditioner, which you really can’t do while shooting video for audio reasons.\u00a0 \u00a0 (Most are noisy, professional crews often turn them off to get better sound, and everyone just roasts.\u00a0 No fun!)<\/p>\n Because compact flo stay so cool, I have even used plain old printer paper as diffusion paper. \u00a0You can not do that with a tungsten halogen light since you would probably start a fire.<\/strong> HMI lights are also very hot.\u00a0 LED are cool.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Compact flo lights use significantly less electricity than tungsten, but more than LED.\u00a0 \u00a0Compact fluorescent light bulbs crank out an amazing amount of light for the wattage used compared to most other kinds of light bulbs, except for LED, which barely use a trickle of electricity.<\/p>\n The light given off by compact fluorescent is nice, soft and diffused because the glass of the bulbs is painted white.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em> Every compact flo light bulb I have ever seen is already diffused for you by the addition of white paint to the inside of the glass, like the ones in the pictures on this page.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n That does not mean you never need to add supplemental diffusion, but right out of the box you have some nice diffusion.\u00a0 The picture of the high school green screen studio above is one I took where I taught.\u00a0 The large lights you see were compact flo.\u00a0 The soft box<\/a> was designed to fit the fixture, and it had white cloth diffusion, as all soft boxes<\/a> do.<\/p>\n I found the multiple bulbs these lights held to be top-heavy, so the stands tended to tip over easily, so were a bit of a hazard around students. .\u00a0 If they hit our concrete floor, the bulbs would shatter, which of course was a huge mess.\u00a0 The bulbs sold for use in TV fixtures were always more expensive than similar bulbs sold for home use.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Larger fixtures will hold up to four bulbs.<\/p>\n All-in-all, I think compact fluorescent lights are a nice addition to the world of video production equipment.\u00a0 I bet that guy whose wall I burned a hole in would agree.\u00a0 But to be totally honest, I have grown to prefer LED lights, which are generally much smaller and stay even cooler to the touch.<\/p>\n Thanks for reading Video Production Tips<\/em><\/p>\n Lorraine Grula<\/p>\n FOOD FOR THOUGHT<\/strong><\/p>\n ALL 3 ARE TRUE.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you are thinking about getting some lights to add to your video production equipment, you might want to consider getting compact fluorescent. They use less electricity and generate much less heat. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10021,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2731,78],"tags":[734,737,733,2171,3013],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.videoproductiontips.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/compact-flo-light-3-bulbs.jpg?fit=500%2C500&ssl=1","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.videoproductiontips.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3066"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.videoproductiontips.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.videoproductiontips.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.videoproductiontips.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.videoproductiontips.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3066"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.videoproductiontips.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3066\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19350,"href":"https:\/\/www.videoproductiontips.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3066\/revisions\/19350"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.videoproductiontips.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.videoproductiontips.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.videoproductiontips.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.videoproductiontips.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n