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I was at a trade show where someone was showing me a dedo light and made the mistake of showing me the projector attachment. I was very excited by the gobos and spent ages with the few they have coming up with new trippy effects. I definitely decided I wanted one of these but then later when I looked into it the cost was very scary. Hundreds and hundreds of pounds for the lighting fixture and then the projector attachement too.

 

I started looking around at alternatives in the theatrical world and that was when I stumbled across the

Ikea Isbrytare lights and managed to snag 5 at £7.50 each! So I am now very happy! Obviously these aren't proper lighting fixtures being more like mutated birdie lights and while I am waiting for them to get here I'm also aware that they are only 50W MR16 lights so aren't going to be super powerful. I'm hoping to modify size M gobos to work with them.

 

So I'm wondering if anyone has any gobo tips or has used gobos a fair bit. I realise they are often more of a theatrical thing but I'd love to hear anything anyone has to say about them.

 

Freya

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The cheap way to do it would be to use a fresnel and some black wrap over the barn doors. Cut the black wrap with a knife to create the desired effect. Works best when the fixture is fairly close to the wall.

 

Dedos are expensive but totally worth it. Source4 Lekos are not too expensive and will do the same thing on a larger scale.

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The Ikea lights are a really interesting idea. Good score. You can find a whole universe in a tiny little thing.

 

+ 1 on Satsuki-san. If you put the custom gobo on a frame and fiddle with its axial position in front of a fresnel. You can keep away from the heat.

 

Sounds like you are momentarily interested in hard projected "gobos". I'm guessing that you have before now put all sorts of crap in front of a fresnel to modify the light. That process is, for me, still the most interesting. Anything can be a "gobo". Rip, shape, perforate some black builder paper. Spun glass is very cool, can be very subtle. Have you tried ripping holes in a small frame of spun glass?

 

Then add some small pieces of wierd colored gel?

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The Ikea lights are a really interesting idea. Good score. You can find a whole universe in a tiny little thing.

 

+ 1 on Satsuki-san. If you put the custom gobo on a frame and fiddle with its axial position in front of a fresnel. You can keep away from the heat.

 

Sounds like you are momentarily interested in hard projected "gobos". I'm guessing that you have before now put all sorts of crap in front of a fresnel to modify the light. That process is, for me, still the most interesting. Anything can be a "gobo". Rip, shape, perforate some black builder paper. Spun glass is very cool, can be very subtle. Have you tried ripping holes in a small frame of spun glass?

 

Then add some small pieces of wierd colored gel?

 

It's rare I get to use fresnal lights. More worklights and tungsten bulbs and flo's and similar. I recently picked up some red heads which is a big jump forward for me! It tends to be improvised stuff but I'm very excited by my new ikea lights.

 

You mean spun glass diffusion? I have a feeling I have some of that so I will definitely give it a go!

Thanks for the tip. I can see how that might really be interesting!

 

I'm going to play with some pie plates too and see what I can make.

 

Speaking of coloured gel, I would love to play with the rosco colorizers but they are uber expensive and I'm thinking just not practical for that reason. Taping bits of gel together is something I sometimes do which is fine on leds and flo's but on hotter lights I imagine the tape will melt. The colorizers are made from dichroic glass so are heat resistant. Any suggestions in this area?

 

I might try experimenting with scrap glass if need be.

 

Freya

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Dedos are expensive but totally worth it. Source4 Lekos are not too expensive and will do the same thing on a larger scale.

 

Good tip on the source 4's! Thanks. I've been looking into them and they might be better than dedos for me as I could use standard B size gobos and maybe even gobo rotators.

 

Freya

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What do you think their strengths are?

They're optically very efficient, because the lamp is sunk deeply back in a reflector that gathers a large proportion of the light and pushes it in the desired direction. The arrangement is effectively identical to PARs built for movie lighting, which are much more efficient than fresnels. Source Four-type lights are also made, principally, out of three monolithic aluminium castings, so they don't tick and click as they warm up or cool down. This construction technique means they're pretty tough. They're also cheap, and they're available in ceramic metal halide and (some value of) HMI for even greater efficiency. With the combination of increased efficiency in both the light source and the optical assembly, a 150W CMH PAR feels at least as powerful as a 650W tungsten fresnel, for something you can run from an inverter on a 12V car battery.

The downside is that there is, generally, no zoom function as there is on a fresnel. PARs with variable beam angle have been made using two lenses that rotate against one another, but they're uncommon, expensive, and don't offer the same range as a fresnel. Mostly they have interchangeable lenses, although the stage ones are a bit fiddlier to change than movie types (and some types rely on the lenses for UV safety, so they can't be changed hot, and they're often not hot start).

The birdie gobo projectors I'd just google. I've seen them for £20. They're not brilliant - they leak light everywhere and they're limited to the power of the birdie. But they work.

I've always wanted to make a birdie that uses one of those 35- or 50-watt xenon metal halide lamps. The colour isn't great, but they'd be very powerful. The problem is that I'm not sure what the situation is with UV safety on those, and the cost of having it tested in a laboratory is hundreds.

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It's rare I get to use fresnal lights. ..... I recently picked up some red heads .....

You mean spun glass diffusion?......

Taping bits of gel together is something I sometimes do which is fine on leds and flo's but on hotter lights I imagine the tape will melt. ......

 

 

Yes, spun glass diffusion. Similar, perhaps identical material is used when building fibreglass things like boats. If you visit a small fibreglass supply shop you will probably get some samples cheap.

 

If you can use a fresnel.....If your custom "gobo" is taped, pegged, clipped or stapled onto a small frame held on a gobo arm on a C stand you can fiddle with the axial position in front of the fresnel and keep away from the heat. Then you can play with anything. Party gell from the grocery store?

 

There must be some old fresnels and C stands that you can buy or borrow over there.

 

Did you check the internal wiring on the redheads you got? Remove the bulb, remove the screws holding the reflector. If the wiring inside looks baked and the insulation feels brittle then it needs freshening up. Best done by an electrician or someone who has done it before. Takes about 5 minutes.

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There must be some old fresnels and C stands that you can buy or borrow over there.

 

Well I just bought the mankiest old fresnel light ever. It's a 650w thing from the 60's and looks like it was thrown down a light of stairs and then left in the garden since the 60's too.

 

Thankfully I got some black BBQ paint in a sale a few weeks ago, now the summer season is over and I'm good with wiring stuff.

In fact when I was studying art I would trade my electrical skills with people who were able to cut stuff in a straight line. Worked out great!

 

It's a stage fixture tho, as is all the best lighting stuff here as we have a great theatre scene it would appear!

 

C-stands. I think I only ever saw one in real life once here in the UK maybe twice. Once on the truck for Rock 'n Rolla, and I think I might have seen one once on a BBC TV commercial. Memory might be wrong on the latter tho. Never ever saw one on any of the student films I worked on and generally they are as rare as hens teeth in the UK.

 

Thus I end up clipping flags to chairs, microphone stands and whatever else I can think of!

I've never seen second hand c-stands for sale. :(

 

Freya

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C stands are, as Freya said, rare and expensive in the UK. No shoot ever has enough - or even any. I know lots of people in LA who own half a dozen, picked up at garage sales for $50 a pop, with the coloured identification paint splashes of several defunct rental houses. That never happens here.

 

In utter desperation, I just personally bought some Chinese stands, but I got combo stands on the basis that they're more universally applicable.

 

P

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I think it's partly the lack of a film industry here but also we have this tradition of bouncing a 2K off a ceiling or blasting a huge HMI through a window and saying "hey we are lit!". Back in the DV days I remember film school lecturers saying you didn't need to bother with lighting anymore now that the video cameras were more sensitive.

 

So we have a different kind of tradition here which to be fair probably fits in better with the kind of production we have here for the most part.

 

Some productions do use c-stands of course but it's a subset of the amount of UK production to start with.

 

You are probably starting to see why I was so excited by the cheap IKEA lights now! ;)

 

Freya

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I think every school drama studio contains about a dozen of those. There's nothing wrong with them.

 

They are, as I recall, primarily aluminium, so they shouldn't rust. Disassemble, get it shotblasted and respray.

 

The crafty metal halide conversion might work quite well.

 

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The following describes procedures involving radiation and electrical hazards, and assumes competence.

 

 

 

Tell me about the crafty metal halide conversion!

 

Well, you go out and buy a bulb, a ballast and a holder, do any required engineering to fit them all together, wire it up and apply power. Lots of photons come out.

 

Compared to what ETC charge for a genuine Source Four HID, it's a pretty spanking good deal. Put the ballast in a (ventilated) box on the yoke with suitable mains connector, indicator light, fuse, and a switch. Mark it FreyaLite CDM-150 and charge rental for it.

 

You can do similar things with profiles (ellipsoidals, Americans) and project gobos with those. In fact, they tend to work even better, due to the small size of the arc source.

 

Notes:

 

- No hot restart

- Really ought to use 5KV rated heatproof wiring to go from the ballast to the holder.

- Make sure it all fits. As I recall, Minuettes take a GY9.5 lamp. 150CDMs are G12 and by the looks of it quite a bit larger. There is a 150W HTI in GY9.5 which might fit better. Beware UV.

- Flicker free up to lots of frames per second

- Cool Lights make a compatible G12 6000K quartz metal halide bulb that should match HMI

- 250W options also exist, albeit at considerably higher cost. More than that tends to be physically too large.

- 575W MSR (basically HMI) bulbs are a similar size, but flicker-free electronic ballasts are expensive.

- Careful about UV, and about sheer light intensity.

 

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So power consumption goes down 500w but light output increases dramatically?

 

I should imagine it'll be about as bright. I tend to assume 4:1. Obviously, if you want daylight, you will be doing far, far better.

 

 

 

Wouldn't the fixture be already screened for UV when sealed or do I need to add a filter for that?

 

There will have been no specific intent to make it UV safe because tungsten lamps emit comparatively little UV. So, I'm not sure, and you should be careful.

 

I am almost sure that the 150W CMH stuff has a UV cut filter on the exterior tube. Certainly my PARs don't give people sunburn.

 

I am almost sure that the 150W HTI and 575W MSR/CSR etc don't have UV filters and are hazardous if not shielded.

 

I have been told, but don't know for sure, that borosilicate glass lenses are an adequate UV filter. Some source four PAR lenses are borosilicate, some aren't, and it is difficult to tell them apart. I don't know what you have.

 

UV filter gels are probably not an adequate safety filter - they're designed to keep UV skylight off paintings in art galleries, not to perform critical safety filtration.

 

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Actually I was wondering about these:

 

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/UG5-Equivalent-UV-Band-Pass-Glass-Filter-50mm-Diameter-x-3mm-BPF-UG5E-5003-/111743722567?hash=item1a0471e447

 

I stumbled across dichronic glass in 50mm diameter which is exciting as it should be the right size for the ikea fixtures and then I found the UV stuff but wasn't sure what it could be useful for and I'm not sure if it blocks UV or lets only UV through!

 

Freya

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Actually I was wondering about these:

 

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/UG5-Equivalent-UV-Band-Pass-Glass-Filter-50mm-Diameter-x-3mm-BPF-UG5E-5003-/111743722567?hash=item1a0471e447

 

I stumbled across dichronic glass in 50mm diameter which is exciting as it should be the right size for the ikea fixtures and then I found the UV stuff but wasn't sure what it could be useful for and I'm not sure if it blocks UV or lets only UV through!

 

Freya

 

Are you sure you want a dichroic filter? It a tiny fixture, do you realize how much output you;ll be loosing?

 

https://www.rosco.com/filters/permacolor.cfm

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