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What are you using as practicals nowaday?


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Hi There,

I'm trying to build a kit of practicals to use in our productions. I was wondering what kind of bulbs are you using nowadays? 

Are the current LED bulbs any good or are you still using Halogen tungsten bulbs? 

I found the Filament LED by Quasar, but I guess there are more cheaper (home depot bulbs with slider dimmers) solutions right? 

Any tips are welcome?

All the best,

Marijn

 

 

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I carry a big bag of assorted halogen bulbs, from 5w-70w, that generally get paired with dimmers.

I’ve got some daylight balanced LED bulbs as well, but have yet to actually put them into a scene.

I’d be intrigued to try the Philips Hue LED bulbs, but haven’t got around to it yet.

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One significant problem is that a lot of modern lights, particularly ceiling installations and desk lamps, are not rated for a power level at which halogen is particularly useful.

Bear in mind that Kino make compact fluorescents which use their high colour quality technology, though they're considerably bulkier than either halogen or LED which may affect fit it a lot of situations.

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It certainly happens, but not often in my experience. Generally, we’re working at such low light levels in interiors (with 800 ISO being a sort of de-facto sensitivity). That 9 times out of 10 I’m having to dim prac lamps down. Often significantly. 

I was really sweet on the idea of the kino bulbs for a while, but they’re just too big in too many fixtures.

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I still carry a lot of incandescent with me, 50 - 150w bulbs of various colors and types. I have a bunch of cheap chinese balls and lots of edison receptacles. I find MOST places still have standard edison sockets or florescent. I find it tricky to deal with fluorescents because the sockets can break easily and I've been blamed may times for destroying sockets and I'm tired of the blame game. So I generally pretend the fluorescents don't exist  and light with my own stuff, unless I'm given express permission to change them without consequence, in which I'll go out and buy new bulbs. 

If I'm working with ceiling tiles, I will rig chinese balls to the ceiling and run a dimmer based lighting rig. Takes no time to setup and can easily hang with little hooks or even tape, without damaging anything. I generally use the same trick for most of my indoor lighting to compensate for the lack of fluorescents. 

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