scored some flo's!!!

Freya Black · April 12, 2006

Yesterday I was coming home and walked past a skip outside a large clothing retail store.

I glanced inside in the vain hope that I might see some old Fluorescent fixtures, and there at the top of the skip I could see what looked like fluorescent tubes. I made a beeline for the skip as fast as I could and started to pull them out. It turned out they were not Fluorescent tubes at all but strange fluorescent fixtures, with tubes inside and a uk 13 amp U.K plug on the end.

They are made by this company:

http://www.encapsulite.co.uk/

A label on the outside says that they are HF T8 55Watts

I have about 4 that are taller than me! I guess they must be about 6 foot tubes or something?

They all seem to work except one that sounds like a rain stick so I didn't bother trying to test it! ;)

I also have 2 smaller ones that are about half that height and both of which seem to work.

They seem to have been gelled with some bizzare candy pink gel although the light changes colour across the tube from green to pink with bits of yellow when you actually turn it on, so maybe the gels are of more than one colour.

I'm very happy to have found such a score as you might imagine. The skip was preety depressing as there was enough in it to build a whole movie set I reckon. There must have been about £1000 of stuff in the skip at a guess which was probably all new only a short time ago.

Anyway I digress. I would obviously like to use these lights in my film and video work. Originally I was looking for some lights with which to build something like a kinoflo. I'm not sure whether that would be practical in this case altough I'm open to ideas.

Either way I'd be interested in ideas in which they could be used on their own. Obviously most of them are preety large (boy did I get worried looks from the bus driver). I'm thinking I could use them as practicals as a part of some kind of set design or perhaps I could use them as they are, complete with weird colour gels somehow, that might be weird. Lastly the film subway by Luc Besson springs to mind too. ;)

What else could I do with them?

Also how could I go about using them at a more standard colour temp. I've been reading through the archive and someone recommends a 1/8 minus green gel to remove the green spike. Are there easily available tubes I can use? I'd be happy to find a compromise between price and utility and availability. Specifically that if I can get cheap tubes I am prepared to compromise on colour temp.

If theres anything else you can tell me that would also be great. I think HF means it is a high frequency ballast but I'm not sure what T8 means exactly???

love

Freya

Chris Keth · April 12, 2006

I think T8 should be the diameter of the tubes, in eighths of an inch.

Dimitrios Koukas · April 12, 2006

Have you ever heard of the Nesys lightsysteme GMH?

BBC and RtL have allready installed many of them.

I am their dealler for Greece.

DMX controllable fluorescent fixtures! Great lights.

As for the lights that you allready have, use a three colour colourmeter to see what colour balancing they require.Usually they will need some minus or plus green gels.

Dimitrios Koukas

Phil Rhodes · April 12, 2006

Hi,

"HF" almost certainly means "high frequency", so you may find they're flicker-free on film.

Phil

Hal Smith · April 12, 2006

Have you got a digital still camera? Shoot some photos and post them. Do they have a pair of 5 pin XLR connectors, one male, one female, on them? If so, then they are probably are a DMX fixture. If so - the Motion Picture Gods have certainly smiled on you!

Freya Black · April 12, 2006

I think this is the exact model that I have. It's certainly looks like these anyway:

http://www.encapsulite.co.uk/prod6b.html

Have you got a digital still camera? Shoot some photos and post them. Do they have a pair of 5 pin XLR connectors, one male, one female, on them? If so, then they are probably are a DMX fixture. If so - the Motion Picture Gods have certainly smiled on you!

I'm afraid they most definitely are not! They are just some fixtures that were used in a shop display I expect. All the same I am still happy. DMX fixtures would probably have been a pain as I don't have a DMX controller!

There are some pictures of the fixtures I have on the link I posted. They look a bit like flo tubes from a distance as the fixture is also tubular. It's like an extra skin for the tubes.

I should probably also point out that I am not a proffesional film maker. I work in the field of experimental film and video and so I don't have access to a colour temperature meter etc. However I have a video camera that you can set to daylight or tungsten, so I may compare them with that. Sorry for not mentioning that before, but it was already quite a long posting. :)

I am interested in trying to get the best out of the fixtures that I can but obviously cost will be an issue. Otherwise I could just stick kino tubes in there! ;)

Any ideas are welcome however.

love

Freya

Edited April 12, 2006 by Freya

Freya Black · April 12, 2006

Hi,

"HF" almost certainly means "high frequency", so you may find they're flicker-free on film.

Phil

Hiya Phil!

I'm looking around at the cost of tubes, and I'm shocked at the vast differences in price. At first I thought it might be prohibitive to buy daylight tubes, but now I've found a supplier at a little over £5 per tube. However I seem to have found fairly ordinary tubes ranging in price from £0.89 to about £7! I'm wondering if you know of any u.k. supplier that might beat my £5 price for daylight tubes?

Also can you tell me where in the u.k. I might get a 1/8 minus green gel from?

If you know of more than one supplier please let me know.

love

Freya

Phil Rhodes · April 12, 2006

Hi,

http://www.bltdirect.com stock more or less anything that's currently manufactured with the aim of it eventually producing light. They have tubes in all colour temperatures, and coloured ones in blue or green suitable for doing chromakey work. Tend to have an annoying minimum order though.

The cheap ones are probably single-phosphor tubes which have quite poor colour temperature. The more expensive ones are probably better, especially if you want tungsten balanced. High CRI tungsten tubes are more difficult to make because the red phosphor has a more narrowband emission than the blue one.

Phil

Freya Black · April 12, 2006

Hi,

http://www.bltdirect.com stock more or less anything that's currently manufactured with the aim of it eventually producing light. They have tubes in all colour temperatures, and coloured ones in blue or green suitable for doing chromakey work. Tend to have an annoying minimum order though.

The cheap ones are probably single-phosphor tubes which have quite poor colour temperature. The more expensive ones are probably better, especially if you want tungsten balanced. High CRI tungsten tubes are more difficult to make because the red phosphor has a more narrowband emission than the blue one.

Phil

I'm leaning towards daylight balanced tubes anyway but I didn't know that about tungsten flo's. That's interesting. I've never seen tungsten ones available. I'll have a look arount the BLT and see if I can find some.

I was looking at these:

http://www.thelightbulbshop.co.uk/product/...ilux+Deluxe.htm

The daylight ones at the bottom. They are the £5 ones I mentioned.

Also these:

http://www.firstlightdirect.com/scp/Fluore...cent_Tubes.html

They are the same as the tubes in there already but daylight temp. It's a shame the shop didn't take up the daylight option seeing as it was the same price but there we are. Maybe I should nip in the shop and complain. ;)

All these sites give very little in the way of specs. I'd like to know the CRI and exact colour temperature etc.

love

Freya

Edited April 12, 2006 by Freya

Freya Black · April 12, 2006

Have you ever heard of the Nesys lightsysteme GMH?
BBC and RtL have allready installed many of them.

I am their dealler for Greece.

DMX controllable fluorescent fixtures! Great lights.

As for the lights that you allready have, use a three colour colourmeter to see what colour balancing they require.Usually they will need some minus or plus green gels.

Dimitrios Koukas

Thanks Dimitrios,

I'll keep an eye out for them but I don't tend to move in those circles. ;)

Interested to hear you say I might need a plus green gel. Are some flouros lacking in green then? I always thought they tended to verge on being extra green and that was why you needed the minus green gel?

Thanks also to you Christopher for explaining the T8.

love

Freya

Edited April 12, 2006 by Freya