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Street lghting at night


xenocide4114

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Hi all, im in need of some advice. I am trying to light a night scene for a street. I was thinking of using one Hmi with some full ctb on it to imitate moon light. I have a very limited budget, very limited. so i was wondering if there is a certain kind of Hmi that can cast pretty far and broad that i can still actuallty pick up an fstop. any suggestion. please help!!!!!

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An HMI without any blue gel is already pretty blue on tungsten-balanced stock. Most people add a 1/2 CTO to take out some of the blueness.

 

As for the strength of the HMI, it depends on how you are powering it. If you are limited to a 20-amp household outlet, it can't be any bigger than a 1200-watt HMI PAR. That might light the front of one house or half an alleyway or one side of a short alleyway. If you're stuck using a 1200-watt HMI, I'd forget about gelling it and get all the light you can out of it.

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Is this for film, video, etc? If it's film, what format and stock?

 

I just wrapped a shoot where we had a night rain scene; limited budget, so our biggest sources were some 1200 HMI pars; we had them up on parallels and I was shocked at how much they lit the scene; I was shooting wide open, but was able to even diff the units down with some 250 and 1/2 CTO. You'd be amazed at what a few par cans will do for you; only 1000 watts; they're also very cheap to rent.

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i plan on shooting on kodak 7218 tungsten. as for power, i really dont have an issue with power since im shooting on a back lot and can get to some serious power. so 1k hmi pars should be good, hmm i shall look that up. thx so far, more suggestions the better!!!

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If you have serious power, then you don't have to limit yourself to a 1200-watt HMI -- you can use 2.5K, 4K, 6K, etc. You could put an 18K HMI on a condor crane at the end of the street, etc.

 

I'd look into something like a 4K HMI PAR then...

 

It really depends on the distance of the light and the spread you need. You should look up the photometric data on these lights to figure out what you need. A 4K HMI may be too weak or too bright depending on what you are doing with it.

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It really depends on the distance of the light and the spread you need.  You should look up the photometric data on these lights to figure out what you need.  A 4K HMI may be too weak or too bright depending on what you are doing with it.

Speaking form recent experience, a 6K HMI fresnel is an awesome light for night exteriors with 500T film. You'll be able to back it way off and light a large portion of the frame at an adequate stop with that one light (the fresnel gives a nice even spread over a larger area than a par, at the expense of a little bit of output).

 

But like David says, you need to figure out what you need for your particular setup. You may be better off with several smaller lights like 4K's and 2.5's instead of one big light, to hit different areas of your frame.

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