Still life with indoor floods?

ang · Jan 12, 2005

For still life's indoors (daytime or nightime) and using 75-100W household flood lights, will adding a 80A and an 82A filter help deliver proper exposure using daylight film?

ksmattfish · Jan 12, 2005

Proper exposure? Do you mean correct color (daylight color)?. Those filters are designed to be used with "photo floods", which are high power versions of a household tungsten bulb, and have a higher color temp. You will still get some orange cast using those filters with household tungsten bulbs.

Photo flood bulbs aren't super expensive compared to other photographic lighting equipment, but they are usually 250 or 500 watt, so you need a heavy duty lamp to hold them. There are a variety of bulbs; each one goes with a specific filter.

Edit: I think they make halogen versions now too.

Hertz van Rental · Jan 12, 2005

Normal light bulbs are around 2760 - 2960K (around MV350)
Photofloods are around 3400K (MV 294)
This converts to:
For Daylight film, Photofloods need a Wratten 80B.
For Daylight film with normal lightbulbs you will need a filter with a value of at least -150 Mireds. That means you need to use an 80B with an 82C as a starting point and do some test shots.

ang · Jan 12, 2005

I'm assuming that "Photo Floods" are not the same as "Flood Lights" that you can pick up at Home Depot.

Do "Photo Floods" need specific fixtures?

ksmattfish · Jan 13, 2005

ang said:
I'm assuming that "Photo Floods" are not the same as "Flood Lights" that you can pick up at Home Depot.

Do "Photo Floods" need specific fixtures?

They are not "flood lights". You'll probably have to get them from a photography source. The tungsten photo floods I've used were about $7 a piece, and looked pretty much like regular household bulbs, although some were bigger, and some are blue. They would screw right into a regular srew-in fixture, but they are 250 and 500 watts, so they'll burn up anything normal. A 500 watt bulb puts out enough heat to get a tan! The photo stores around here carry 500watt clamp fixtures that look like shop lights for about $30. Maybe you could find the same thing at a hardware store?