New setup with hotlights

[joe_dempsey]

After using soft boxes, umbrellas and a dukes mixture of ancient (but great)

White Lightning 10,000s and a bunch of Novatron strobe lighting, always with

satisfactory results,for a long time, I decided to venture off into hot lights.

I bought a couple of Novatron CL04K kits (2 lights each) plus a Photoflex

Starlight Large kit. (got 'em on ebay pretty cheap and all in excellent condition).

 

As an initial experiment I used three novatrons CLO4Ks to light a green screen

background (two to the sides and one overhead) and the Starlight and the other

novatron as main and fill lights. I metered the setup in the subject area at my

normal ISO 100 for my D200 and lo and behold, I was getting around f 4.1 at

1/15th or so.

 

I do occasional executive portraits and leave the camera on the tripod for the

first part of the shoot and remove it for the last few shots, these are the

picks of the litter about 50/50 of the time. AT 1/8th, that's down the tube. The

only obvious answer is to up the ISO, which gets to 1/60 @ f4.1 at 400. which

still won't cut the mustard hand held with any kind of animation in the subject.

 

I set the D200 at 3200K and had nary a problem with color.

 

How have others addressed this issue? What about detail at ISO 400 (my fingers

are trying to type "ASA.") Am I full of baloney to even attempt this? What are

other folks' experience in using hot lights when you are accustomed to strobes.

 

Thanks,

Joe

[ronald_moravec1]

I keep mine glued to the `pod. It is a trade off I accept for being able to see well what will be on the picture.

[joe_dempsey]

Thanks for responding Ronald. Looks like a dose of reality. Reckon moving targets will have to be strobed.

[jesse_starks]

Joe indeed moving targets need strobe unless you can harness the power of the sun! :-) I find continuous lighting to be okay for some other shots. I was looking at the CL-04 for some of video work. How do they integrate with other Novatron accessories?

 

Thanks,

Jesse

[joe_dempsey]

Hey Jesse, thanks for joining this discussion. Strange as it may seem, video was one of the reasons I made this purchase. I recently acquired (again on Ebay) a high-end Sony Handicam with the underlying idea of upgrading my rudimentary at-best editing skills.

 

The CLO4's are a typical Novatron product. My kits came with four 250 watt halogen bulbs, two for each light, but the unit is designed to handle two 500 watt bulbs. Construction is rugged but functional. The mounting hardware is exactly the same as found on Novatron strobes since the middle ages.

 

The kits include protection screens for each light which are a bit flimsy, but since they only exist to dissipate shards of glass in case of a halogen explosion, I suppose they are OK. These screens are definitely not lifting points.

 

 

The umbrella rods touch the outer edge of the protection screen frame, so a bit of grunt and groan is encountered when mounting the umbrellas. The kit umbrellas are the same size that comes with the 240 strobe kit. Over all, the CLO4's are pretty well what I expected.

 

After I fired everything up the first time (four CL04's plus the large Starlite), the breaker for my studio wall circuits tripped after about 15 minutes. I'll probably have to have a separate circuit run if I get serious with this setup.

 

My studio is in my home as well as my office. We have a 2,000 square foot house which now is work station, punctuated by some living areas and some dogs and cats.

 

I have a Novatron 240D, 600D and an older 1600 power pack with an assortment of Novatron heads. Mostly I use the 240 for background and overhead and the 600 for frontal lighting. The 1600 comes out of the box when I need lighting tantamount to a nuclear detonation.

 

Joe

 

Thanks,

Joe

 

http://www.joedempseyphoto.com

[scottconners]

You've discovered one of the major downfalls to continuous lighting for still photography Joe - it takes a LOT of power. Here's a quick way to calculate the power draw of your lights -

 

Power/Volts=Amps This means if you have 1000W running (your CLO4's)on a 115V home circuit, 1000/115=8.6, you're drawing a theoretical 8.6 amps (at 115V - most houses are around that). Adding longer extension cords can increase the draw, as the wire has it's own resistance that turns power into heat as it travels. So if you were running a 500watt starlight with your CLO4's, you'd be drawing a theoretical 13 amps, which should be fine in most houses (15A is a typical branch circuit size). However, if you had other things plugged into that circuit as well, or were running a 1000w starlight, 2000 watts total, you're looking at a 17A draw, which would trip a 15A breaker as it heated up.

 

There are lots of charts out there to help calculate this stuff, or you can make one easily in a spreadsheet - I have one in my toolbox so I don't have to calculate when I'm busy, I can just add up the lights plugged in and get a fast amperage draw estimation.

[joe_dempsey]

Scott:

You are da' man! My house was built in the early 50's before there was a plethora of central air conditioning as opposed to today's urban trends. In the room next to the studio, there is still a 220 plug under one of the windows which I'm certain provided power to a "window shaker" for cooling in our tepid summer months. My guess is that it is on a separate circuit and is probably still hot. I'm going to have an electrician check it out. If that is the case, and the wiring will bear the increased amperage, I won't have to bear the full expense of a complete new circuit. Just some extension wiring to the next room and some hardware in the room and at the box. We'll see. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I'm gonna make a spread sheet.

Thanks again!

Joe

Joe

[jesse_starks]

Joe,

 

I run into a similar problem living in Germany. I have to run my lights on a step-down transformer. I use a 2000 watt device and try not to exceed 80% (1600 watts) of maximum power for extended periods. One major annoyance is that when I turn it on sometimes it trips the breaker. Thanks for the advice on the CL-04s and I'll still keep them in mind.

 

Jesse

[randmcnatt]

We switched over to high-CRI fluorescents. There's a 4:1 power advantage over incandescents, which comes in handy since we shoot in a house built in the '20s.

[joe_dempsey]

Rand:

How does the light compare as in more than, less than, to the hot lights. As I noted in the original post, I lost about three stops or more, depending on ISO between strobes and hot lights for the same number of lights. What is the color temp of the fluorescents?

TNX,

Joe

[ellis_vener_photography]

I also sometimes use high-CRI fluorescents. Mine are from Rololight

 

http://www.rololight.com/softbox/en/view_details.asp?cleStoreItem=-2099188189

 

 

As Rand points out fluorescent lights are generally around 4 times more efficient , watt to watt, than incandescent (meaning a 15 watt fluorescent puts out as much light as a 60 watt incandescent.

 

For digital these are much better than incandescent as the spectrum of them is more balanced (hence the high CRI designation is important) whereas tungste nand Quartz-halogen bulbs are very red/orange biased in spectrum. This also contributes to the greater efficiency (and lower noise characteristics) when using a digital camera: you actually have more light in the green and particularly in the blue channels.

[emre]

Ellis,

 

Isn't the orange bias simply a reflection of the lower color temperature of the tungstens (3200K)? You can simply dial in the appropriate color temperature in your RAW converter (say) unless you need to balance with day light.

[joe_dempsey]

Exactly. The color temp of the hotlights is 3200 K. On the D200, you can dial that into the camera, I was just curious as to what the flourescent temp was. Should be a long way in the other direction.

Joe

[emre]

That's where it gets hairy. Fluos don't really have a color temperature since their spectra is not white. They do have a correlated ("equivalent", so to speak) color temperature, and it changes from tube to tube. Some of them are labeled as "day light" so that means around 5500K (like the one Ellis mentioned). Others are closer to the tungstens. The appeal of fluos is that they enable you to get the most light for the watt of artificial day light.

[jesse_starks]

I use tungsten and quartz light and setting my E-300 to 3200K I get decent color. Shooting in RAW helps too, but this is simply my preference. My daylight balanced "fluos" are rated at 5100K, but I can use custom WB and get decent color.

[scottconners]

Joe - Since you have that 220V circuit, as long as it's still safe to use (an electrician will be able to tell you), you probably have a lot of power ready to be tapped. It should be relatively easy to have that circuit broken into 2 110V circuits for your studio. Even better, often a 220V circuit will be a higher current circuit, offering 20A or even 30A per leg (2 legs).

[joe_dempsey]

Scott:

Thanks for confirming what was floating around in my little pea brain. May-haps it will work.

:0) if it does!

Thanks,

Joe