5100k cool flo lights

[black gun forge]

hi guys,
a friend recommended i use 5100k cool flo bulbs for low budget digital film, i havent had any experience with these (im only a newbie ) but they seem in expensive!! only problem i see is that you seem to need a lot of them to get a reasonable amount of light. not having used them i dont know the pros and cons of these,
can anyone enlighten me? (no pun intended!!)
what are your thoughts on these?
should i use them as my main lighting system?
or just get a bunch of the bulbs and stick them in the practicals??

 

[Zensteve]

You can get CFLs really cheap at your local Home Depot, in a variety of colour temps.

Cheap, long-lasting, almost no heat, uses little power, harder to blow fuses with 'em - there's lots to like about 'em.

only problem i see is that you seem to need a lot of them to get a reasonable amount of light

If you're replacing a single 1K light - then yes, you would need more than a single 100W equiv. That's why you see kits being sold with multiple bulbs.

 

[Will Vincent]

I wouldn't use them as a main lighting system, but rather a part of a lighting system.

The problem with fluorescent lights is that they are always soft light, so it's like if you were using hard light sources (fresnel studio lighting, or halogen work lights) and always using a softbox, or indirectly lighting with them by bouncing off a wall.

While this is ok, and will get the job done some of the time, in cases where you want to create shadows, like projecting a pattern on the background with a cookie, and that sort of thing, you won't really be able to do it with a soft light source like a fluorescent.

So I would suggest a combination of hard light sources, and several fluorescent lights. There's no need to go the kino-flo style route, with several long tubes in a fixture, it's much more affordable to get some clamp on scoop light fixtures, and a bunch of cfl bulbs in various wattages and color temperatures.

Lighting gels are also pretty inexpensive, and you may find it more cost effective to just get regular color temperature cfl's and use some correction gels to bring 'em into sync with the color temp of your other lights.

There are some CFL bulbs available that put out a surprising amount of light, with just a single bulb..

And speaking in a strictly technical sense, CFL's actually put out much more light per watt than halogen/tungsten fixtures as they are much more efficient at converting the power to light. A 55watt CFL bulb will emit roughly the same amount of light as a 600-750watt tungsten or halogen bulb. Again, the difference between the two being that the CFL is always going to produce soft light (light that will wrap around your subject and cast less hard-edged shadows) while the halogen or tungsten light will produce a hard light.

Neither is better than the other, they each have their own uses, and it's important to have access to both hard and soft light so you're covered for all the various lighting scenarios you will encounter.