Common household lamps to use with 80A filter

[mark_peters]

I want to inexpensively experiment with portrait photography and

intend to use an 80A filter with color daylight film. At this point,

I'm primarily interested in learning about the effect of different

light placements.

 

What common sort of "hardware store" bulb would come closest to the

3200k color temperature I'll need? I've read that household

incandescent lamps run about 2700k. Does anyone have experience with

indoor PAR flood lamps or halogen bulbs or something else that would

work better?

[__hank_boneroneo1]

Never done it, but if I were to start tinkering with hot light setups I'd start with 'cold' flourescents - the 5000K daylight ones. Cheap, safe, low power requirement, and cool up close. A four pack of screw-ins is like $12 on a blister card at a home center.

[garry edwards]

Mark,

 

The colour temperature of normal household lamps can vary quite a bit and you would need to measure them to arrive at a true figure. As far as I know none come anywhere near 3200k and so cannot be filtered adequately with an 80A. In any case, you would struggle to get an acceptably-short exposure time, especially when using filters to correct the colour.

 

Halogen security lights are generally around 3200k and should be OK for your purpose used with an 80A - or, as you are mainly interested in experimenting with lighting setups you could use a fast B&W film instead and not worry too much about low light output, and not at all about colour temperature.

 

Hope this helps

[mike dixon]

The GE Reveal bulbs are close to 3200 K. I've used them with tungsten slide film and no filter--the colors were slightly warm, but not too unnatural-looking. I think the strongest ones are only 150 watts, so you'll need several if you're using slower film with a filter.

[stephen hazelton]

Get a couple of table lamps, pop regular 100 w bulbs in them, take a few shots and see.

 

The ones I've done, seemed to have adequate color correction with 80A. Maybe I'm just not discriminating enough.

 

I was thinking that regular household lights were 3200, photo floodlamps were 3400 or so. Maybe I'm remembering wrong.

[steve_hovland]

Larger household lamps are around 2900K. Halogen lamps and PAR's are 3000-3100. I don't worry about those 100-200K differences most of the time, particularly when passing images through the digital realm.

 

Film is important too. You will be using longer exposures, and films like Kodachrome don't tolerate that very well. As I recall, Kodachrome starts to shift after 1/8 second. Provia will go more than 100 seconds without color shift or reciprocity failure.

[peter_colavito]

try using 211, 212, or 213 photofloods. They are 75w, 150w, ans 250w

respectively.