im gonna use them for small sized halogen lights

(like the work lights everyoe talks about from home depot)

i would mainly like gels that will give a moonlight look at night..

also what are tungsten (sp?) lights used for and are there any gels that will give the look of tungsten lights?

the look of a light depends on the color temperture of the light. I have two of those painters lights myself and you can usually get them to register as white if you get them close enough to your subject. The reason why people look orangeish or even redish in extreme cases is a result of the fact that an average house hold bulb gives off has an abundence of red light waves. As opposed to daylight which has an abundence of blue. Anyway, you can correct this problem by getting a CTB (color temperature blue) gel and put it over that painters lamp. Make sure you get a thin one though because if it's too thick it will be too blue and cut out too much of the light.

Jon Boal
Magnus Caput Productions

if you camera has a white balance try messing with that to get a moonlight effect, you can really bring out all the blues and make dusk look light night

cool!

were can i buy these gels?

OK! EVERY MOFO here is like, "Wax paper, to difuse light" OK. I HAVE WAX PAPER IN MY KITCHEN LIKE RIGHT NOW...then all you guys are like, "COLORED GELS" Ok, I searched around this site looking for topics/discussion about lighting with COLORED GELS. All I hear is "colored gels this" and "colored gels that" from peeps like Tizzy. Ok. We got it. But WHERE DO YOU GET THEM? WHAT DO THEY LOOK LIKE? WHAT COLORS? TOTALLY CONFUSED.

How do they look? How thick are they? What MATERIAL are they made of?

HELP!

-TacoWagonProductions

is there any websites that sell this stuff or have information about it?

-TacoWagonProductions

WHERE DO YOU GET THEM?
Here is one place i found doing google search - http://shop.store.yahoo.com/cinemasupplies/rosliggel.html

WHAT DO THEY LOOK LIKE? Anyway you want. They are transparent colored sheets that go over the light. You can cut them to fit around the glass.

WHAT COLORS? There are hundreds, any kind you can think of.

HOW THICK ARE THEY? About the thickness of a piece of paper, but a lot more flexable.

WHAT MATERIAL ARE THEY MADE OF? Im not sure but i think its made from fine polymeric materials. Basically its a reallly thin sheet, almost very thin plasticy like.

==============================
Alex Conway
Mind-Trip Films

i love you

-TacoWagonProductions

P.S. You can request a gel swatch book from the companies for free. It's a nice thing to have (eg. backup ND filter, gels for tiny lights, warm balancing).

Rosco Swatch book

kick ass, thanks Joren.

-TacoWagonProductions

here's some stuff to know about gels and lighting:

All your home lights, that glow orange, are considred Tungsten lights. some are warmer, some are cooler, depending on a lot of different factors. the sun is Daylight, which shines blue (except for sunrise/sunset). Flourescent lights shine green. other specialized lights will shine a variation of these three colors.

now imagine having all these lights in your shot. it would be hard to white balance, since white balancing subtracts the dominant color to get true white (white balancing at home usually involves removing all the orange). Sometimes this would look cool, but mostly not.

This is where Color Correction gels come into use.

Color Correction gels add a certain amount of color to the different ligh sources in order to make them the same color.

example: if you are shooting near a window with daylight coming in (blue) but are using tungsten flood lights to bring up the light level, you would use a full CTB (color temperature blue) gel on the tungsten light. this way, when you white balance, the blue will be subtracted from the image to produce white.

on the reverse, you could put a CTO (color temperature orange) on the window to have it match the indoor tungsten light, and then white balance. it depends on the situation.

these are the gels you will be using 80% of the time. the gels come in different amounts (1/8 blue, 1/4 blue, 1/2 blue, blue, dbl blue -- same for orange) to accomadate different intensities of color in the light.

Color Correction gels are different from Color Rendering gels. Color rendering gels are like theatre gels, they color the light a certain color, for dramatic effect, but this is done AFTER the lights have all been balanced to one another.

Diffusion aren't really gels, because they're not made out of the same material. Diffusion materials are special blends of cloth and plastic that change the QUALITY of the light, but not the COLOR.

so let's say you don't like harsh shadows, you would use diffusion to soften the shadows on your actors, but the light would still be color balanced to the other lights. diffusion sheets work much better than wax paper, and are made of various materials to change the light in different ways. to see how the light is affected, you get one of those little books joren mentioned, and just hold up the swatch to a light source to see what it does.

hope that helps.

(p.s.flourescents are a whole 'nother ballpark, either have it be weird and green, or don't use flourescents)


(joren, check your mypop)

so you'd say the only flourecent thats good is that weird green one that seems to show up quite a bit in studentfilms? Why not other colors?

-TacoWagonProductions

quote:

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Originally posted by Kyle Johnson:
so you'd say the only flourecent thats good is that weird green one that seems to show up quite a bit in studentfilms? Why not other colors?

-TacoWagonProductions

---

flourescents will show up green, and the reason they look weird is because they pulse slightly. it has to do with varying intensities as the flourescent lights cycle. that's why it's hard to whitebalance them, the camera keeps seeing different intensities of green and doesn't know which green to subtract. also, if you white balance to flourescent and have daylight or tungsten lights as well, they will look different.

you can't get any other color flourescents besides green. you could use gels to change them, but that's something else.

*this is for film, flourescent in the photography world works a bit different since they shoot single frames.

[This message was edited by RFranco on January 18, 2004 at 10:20 PM.]

Yes, however, when used properly, florescents can be a great filmmaking tool. Most fixtures costing more than 30 bucks don't have flicker problems and you can buy color balanced bulbs to go in any fixture.

In pro studio lighting, the trend is to use florescents now because they throw a lot of light for a little bit of power, they don't give off tons of heat, and they are a naturally diffused light source because they're 48" long. One of the studios I worked at was designed to primarily florecents. (air conditioning wasn't powerful enough to cool 30,000 watts of Tungsten lights without being too loud)

flourescents or kino-flos? my school has kino flows, so we'll hand those up on the cieling and pretend they're flourescent.

Bubba Ho-tep has a really nice shot in the hallway where they do this. they look like flourescents, but really they're tungsten balanced kinos.

Kinoflo is a brand name. 'flo' I think is short for Fluorescent.

But, yes, even kino flo makes a 48" 40watt bulb that can go in any household fixture.
http://shop.store.yahoo.com/cinemasupplies/432kiflotrma.html


That's 25 bucks. You can find cheaper brands for about $8.

ah ja.

just to be clear, kinoflo's are flourescent, but balanced to orange or blue, although they do retain a little green.

also, i think the current for kinos is particular, so you need kino fixtures for the kino tubes. that website says they're for kinoflo fixtures. never tried them in a household fixture. kino flo fixtures have an adapter box you plug them into before plugging them into the house power. do household fixtures have adapters for regular flourescent tubes?

yes, in a studio setting, all flourescent tubes are feasable. unfortunately, the only time i encounter flourescents is in the real world, and i know none of the places we shoot at would let us replace the tubes, not to mention give us the time we would need to switch the tubes in and out.

i wish i could use tons of kinos at once, like those music videos. the light is so even and WHITE.

man, all this talk about lights makes me want to smoke a cigarette.


edit:

went to cinematography.net (great site) and here's what they were discussing over flourescents:

http://www.cinematography.net/FluorescentLamps.htm

http://www.cinematography.net/FluorescentsDaylight.htm

http://www.cinematography.net/florries.htm

[This message was edited by RFranco on January 19, 2004 at 12:14 AM.]

aaah. answered my own question. the adapter kino lights use is to get the lights to flicker at a slower rate so they don't pulse when shooting. putting a kino tube on a regular box will have it cycle at the normal rate. don't know about the amperage though.