Lighting in London

Matt Workman · June 11, 2008

Hey,

I have a few videos coming up in London and I've never worked with lighting equipment that is 240v.

Do you still work with 15/20 AMP circuits?

Does that mean you can hold a 4000w on one 20amp?

Does anything change when working with Tungsten Lamps? Kinos? HMIs?

Thanks,

Matt

PS: I'll probably re-orient myself once I hit the rental houses

Phil Rhodes · June 11, 2008

Domestic mains supplies with 13A per connector are on ring mains theoretically supplying 32A per ring, with usually several rings per dwelling, particularly with one solely for the kitchen. This should be the case in any reasonably recent house or apartment but it won't be that hard to find exceptions.

Industrial premises, including sound stages, will differ, but generally use Ceeform connectors where blue is single phase and red is three phase in 16, 32, 63 or 128 amp capacities. Presence of a connector rated to a given capacity probably doesn't indicate that capacity is actually available. Bigger stuff than that will be on camloks but you will presumably hire a local electrician before you go anywhere near that sort of thing.

This does create the happy circumstance whereby a household circuit should be able to supply 3120W and you certainly can run 2.5KW HMIs or a redhead-blonde combination in people's houses without problems. Electric kettles and space heaters are usually 3KW here so circuits are built to stand it.

Flicker on discharge lighting, including fluorescents and HMIs where they use iron ballasts, and local TVs, will be at 50Hz. I don't know what the safe shutter angles for 24 or 23.976fps are.

P