a very practical question

[chrisbehnen]

Roger, or others,

When you are bulbing up practicals to have higher output, what are some ways you actually achieve this? are you using high wattage e26 base lamps (I have found some online up too 300w? are you making little adapters to go from e26 to say an arri fresnel globe (I can’t find anything like this online)? or using multiple e26 lamps?

I would love a variety of ideas as I am going into a shoot soon where I will be needing to add output to a bunch of practicals.

Chris

Topic

[dmullenasc]

If you are talking about regular screw-base Edison socket practicals, there are tungsten bulbs as high as 500W (photofloods) but once you get above 100W you probably should be switching the socket to a porcelain base for safety reasons.

With 500T stock or ISO 800 digital cameras, it is rare to need to go higher than 100W in a practical lamp.  The only time I put a 500W photoflood in a practical lamp was when I was shooting on 40 ASA Kodachrome Super-8!

[andy989]

I agree, you don’t need bulbs that high in practicals these days. If it’s an in shot practical such as a desk lamp, I usually use a screw in controllable LED, like the astera globes or Aputure bulbs. You can get the warmer colour without having to have a 500w on a dimmer

[Author]

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