Replacing fluorescent tubes - any advice?

[Ville Pakarinen]

Hello, everyone! Feeling excited about my first cinematography job and registering on this forum.

We have a scene in a warehouse where I plan to replace the existing tubes with tungsten tubes. Now, I'm puzzled: are film tubes technically equivalent to regular household tubes, or are there some additional considerations to the wattage?

Thank you!

-Ville

[Ville Pakarinen]

Is there a possibility of flicker when I'm shooting 24fps with 50Hz mains frequency?

[Aapo Lettinen]

Is there a possibility of flicker when I'm shooting 24fps with 50Hz mains frequency?

if shooting with 172.8 degree shutter you'll be fine ( 1/50 exposure)

[Aapo Lettinen]

although some 50hz fluorescent setups can create flicker with some cameras even with 1/50 exposure. there's more possibility for this if some of the fluorescents are in different phase legs or you have "1/50" exposure which is actually NOT one 50th of a second (for example my 5D2 with Magic lantern has only 1/47 instead of 1/50 :blink: )

[David Mullen ASC]

For a big tube switch-out to tungsten you'd generally use something like Optima 32's in the same pin configuration and wattage.

[Ville Pakarinen]

Why Optima 32's? Is it a safer option than Kino Flo tubes when used in this manner without a ballast? It says here that the CRI is only 82: http://www.naturallighting.com/cart/store.php?crn=597

[David Mullen ASC]

Yes Optima 32's still have a bit of green in them but it can be corrected out. You can try Kino 32's, I've just had them sometimes overload an older ballast, plus they are thicker around because of the plastic sleeve. And I don't think they come in both T8 and T12 pin configuration (correction: I see that they now make T8 versions.) Truth is that it's mainly a price issue, Optima 32's are cheaper so when there are a lot of tubes to switch out, I usually have to go that way.

[Ville Pakarinen]

Truth is that it's mainly a price issue, Optima 32's are cheaper so when there are a lot of tubes to switch out, I usually have to go that way.

That's what I suspected. We only have a couple of tubes in the ceiling and a local rental house rents fluorescent tubes for only a couple of euros. I'll ask them about the pin configurations. Thanks!

[Phil Rhodes]

I've been looking around for some reasonable T8 tungsten-balanced tubes for a while; nobody seems to sell the Optima 32 outside the USA. If anyone's got any suggestions, I'm all ears.

 

In fact, does the company even exist anymore? duro-test.com is effectively empty.

 

Edit: Here's the skinny. Duro-test, the people who made Optima 32 tubes, went out of business in 2000, so presumably anything still in existence is at least fourteen years old. Some of the staff are now involved in the manufacture and sale of the movie-tone range, so it looks like that's the replacement. Cheap they aren't - in fact, from a quick survey of the site, you might as well buy Kinos.

 

P

[Ville Pakarinen]

I'm actually not sure I'm going for tungsten because there might be windows in the warehouse. Are daylight tubes more available? EDIT: I mean in different pin configurations

Edited August 25, 2014 by Ville Pakarinen

[Phil Rhodes]

I think so, yes.

[David Mullen ASC]

Yes, here in the U.S. we use Chroma 50's generally if there are a lot of tubes to replace, again, as Phil pointed out, there may be newer versions of daylight tubes besides Kino 55's. Chroma 50's are a bit greener and warmer than Kino 55's.

[Phil Rhodes]

I've had pretty good results with the Philips stuff. The full descripion, reading from the end of this box that I have here, is "Master TL-D 90 Graphica 36W/950". 5500K seems to be widely considered "American daylight" and were slightly harder than average to obtain. Ask for daylight in the UK and you'll get 6500K, which is of course very cold and blue.

 

There is not really a tungsten equivalent, at least not with such good colour performance. The 3500K in the same range is only about 85.

[Ville Pakarinen]

I've had pretty good results with the Philips stuff. The full descripion, reading from the end of this box that I have here, is "Master TL-D 90 Graphica 36W/950". 5500K seems to be widely considered "American daylight" and were slightly harder than average to obtain. Ask for daylight in the UK and you'll get 6500K, which is of course very cold and blue.

Well, UK is cloudier.

[Matthew Parnell]

Phillips make a TLD-950 which are a daylight balanced high cri tube that perform very well, and match well to Kinos.

They market them under the Graphica, Master or De Luxe names, and are designed for use in colour critical applications.

 

They also do a TLD-930, which performs well as a tungsten balanced tube.

 

Because Kino tubes are designed to be over driven (by all rights they are a 40w tube, with the chemistry designed to produce ideal performance when driven via a kino ballast to 75w) They tend not to play well in domestic fittings, both in terms of lamp performance, and at times working at all.

[Matthew Parnell]

Phil,

You should check out the TLD 965s. 6500k, CRI of 93.

 

The TLD930s are 3000k with a CRI of 91.

[Ville Pakarinen]

How pricey are those Phillips tubes?

[Phil Rhodes]

I paid UK£5.92 each, plus tax, which is only slightly more expensive than the basic stuff.

[Mark Kenfield]

I also opted for the Phillips TLD-950s for swapping out tubes on a feature I shot last year... I wish this thread had existed back then - I had a devil of a time uncovering their existence back then (let alone sourcing them!)

 

They're a lot cheaper than Kinos, and I didn't have any real issues with green spikes. I keep some in the cupboard now for similar situations.

[John E Clark]

From looking into this, the US 'version' may be the Philips F32 T8/TL950. The specs indicate a CRI of 98, Color Temp 5000K, and 2000 Lumen output.