Daylight bulbs-what wattage?

[Tinalera]

Let me stand up: *ahem*

"My name is Tinalera, and I use daylight bulbs"


Now, that out of the way, what's the best wattage for daylight bulbs, or should I get a variety? My first ones I got were 100 watts, but then for a recent scene, my background light was too bright. I use table lamps and daylight bulbs, and I just wonder if there's a "happy medium" wattage, or should I see about getting a range?

 

[Brooksy]

For anything under 150 watts you can probably just use a dimmer on most lights. But you really should have a large variety of lights.

 

[chilipie]

If you're using them in practicals it might make sense to buy some lower wattage bulbs - if they're off-camera (or in practicals where it's practical, if you'll excuse the pun) a bit of ND gel would do the trick.

 

[Tinalera]

Brooksy-Both of these ideas sound good-having dimmer and variety of lights gives me options with dimming different wattages. I hadn't thought of the dimmer, a good idea!

Chilipie-Yea, that was part of my problem in the shot, I only had the higher watt bulb as a practical, so it was a little brighter than I wanted (with no dimmer or gel). A dimmer would have avoided that. Still, the effect I wanted worked pretty well otherwise.

Part of this wonderful interest is you're always learning something new to use the next time!

 

[David.rhsc]

You can also have dimmers of various wattage ratings as well. They pop up on ebay from time to time. I have a 1k dimmer that I got for like 30 bucks a while back.

 

[chilipie]

If by daylight bulbs you mean CFLs you need to check they'll work with a dimmer - a lot of them won't, and the ones that do can be a bit pricier.

 

[Tinalera]

If by daylight bulbs you mean CFLs you need to check they'll work with a dimmer - a lot of them won't, and the ones that do can be a bit pricier.

Thanks for the headsup, I'll check it to see, something to keep in mind.

Maybe Santa can bring me a lighting kit for Christmas...

 

[David.rhsc]

Wait, CFLs? Sorry, I thought we were talking regular incandescent bulbs.

You might want to check out this:

http://www.indietalk.com/showthread.php?t=21947

Regular CFLs give of a weird range of wavelengths that does funny things to color. Apparently these guys are making CFLs closer to what we would expect from a specific color temperature. Have no idea how they actually look though.