sounds like a class project to me,,gorilla film making, they may as well geta taste of it now

Patrick,
perhaps if you gave us a clue as to which part you failed at we'd be better able to help.

Bob.

Yes, worked fine. Had to modify for local materials. What went wrong?

I have an old bathroom 6-light strip that I'm going to get the dremel out to hack into to come up with something similar, maybe more sturdy.

I'd like to know what went wrong also.

One thing that's hard to source locally are ES lamp bases, the standard BC ones just don't do it for me.
Try Ikea, they stock a pendant cord for around $5 that has an ES socket on one end that'll mount through a suitable sized hole in a piece of 3mm MDF. You end up with the wires coming out the back unlike Victors but that shouldn't be an issue. You could then just put standard mains plugs on the other end of the cords and plug all the lamps into a power board.

Bob.

Just a slew of things from incorrect measurements to splicing the electric cables. Cant do it as a class project because it doesnt meet the districts safety code for this particular course (not Ind. Arts.) Ill probably give it another try but I just hate wasting money trying to do something right the first time around.

Patrick - where are you (geographically)?

Ft. Myers, FL

Combined with the Vasst DVD this is useful

http://www.victormilt.com/id54.html

HTH,

KOnrad

Hey Vic, on your site you mention that you're looking for a source for an automatic wire stripper. Back in the day I got them from allelectronics.com, but I don't see any on there now. You can, however, get them from Parts Express.

http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?&DID=7&Partnumber=360-627

this is one example and they have a few other automatic models as well.

Thanks David -
posted that link this AM.
Good find.
v

Speaking of automatic wire strippers -- Radio Shack sells one of my favorites (I've had mine for ~20 years)

Automatic Wire Strippers

Jim

Vic,

What color temp for the curly bulbs? I am inclined to go daylight 5100 to 5500 range or whatever. If we were to go with only one temp in the beginning would it be more all -purpose to go with the daylight or is it better for skin tones to have something in the 27 to 3200 range?

Seems very difficult to find daylight temperature dimmable curly bulbs. So, I guess then you just unscrew a couple of the bulbs to go from 6 to 4 etc.. to approximate the same idea -- yes?

Been dying to try building the nano lights but have been putting it off-- this new simpler method may be a little more doable for me (using the plugin sockets instead of wiring the bakelite things)

Since watching your video with my kids we constantly remark about lighting we see in movies we watch, or in real life situations -- totally geeking out -- my wife rolls her eyes

Thanks again for all the inspiration

TomE

Vic,

I have the same question as TomE. I followed the link to www.bulbs.com on your website. The only dimmable CF bulbs I found were 2700K. Would the non dimmable 5000K CF bulbs be better?

Thanks,

Konrad

I'm not Victor but perhaps you'll permit me to give my views on this.

Given the choice go with daylight, that's what the biggest light in the solar system is, pretty hard fighting it.

From my experience get a tungsten source in a daylight shot and it looks OK, if it's a practical light it can look quite pleasant. The opposite can look horrible. We accept the orange (relatively) glow of tungsten lights, it's nice and warm. Getting streaks of blue (relatively) light from the sun into the shot, well I think it looks very bad. Getting shadows of mixed color accross talents faces etc is a plain mess and I've yet to find an effective way to fix the problem in post.
Of course if you're woking in a location that already has a lot of tungsten lighting then adding a daylight source into the mix is also not a good idea. But CF lamps are cheap, if you can get them keep both in the kit. The "tungsten" ones are normally labelled "warm white" and the daylight ones, "cool white".

Bob.

Bob I agree but I had a specific reason for asking because Vic suggests using the dimmable bulbs. That does not make sense given their 2700K rating which is why I asked. Maybe when Vic created the directions there was a 5000K dimmable bulb, inquiring minds want to know.

The homemade Kino style lights are looking real good as you can use a pro grade Osram Studio bulb rated at 5600K with a quality ballast and save a huge amount of money.

Yes Konrad you hit it on the head. The video and even Vic's list on his site had a few things missing that I guess was left up to our imagination.(although he is still refining it based on his link to the wirestrippers) I have found that Filmtools.com had a lot of stuff on his list including some jury-rigged dimmers --which look like the kind of thing that you are not likely to find ready to go from Home depot but could hobble together from Home depot parts. I have not found the plug-in sockets at Home Depot but I never bother to ask anyone when I go there (they are always in the other aisle on a forklift it seems) I wonder if it is because they are not really up to todays code? -- maybe just not a lot of demand other than people like us who have seen Vic's video. I think the dimmable aspect of the nano-light seemed to be the real final selling feature so it would be nice to hear if others have found daylight CF's that are dimmable and not over-budget.

TomE

TomE

Made many light using Osram tubes. I'm very lucky in that the local Osram people don't mind dealing with a mad scientist.
My current lighting project is a china ball that uses a 150W HMI lamp inside a 'ball' from Ikea. I gave up on the traditional rice paper chinese lantern, something about FIRE put paid to that idea. The Ikea light fitting is looking very promising, actually the Ikea things is a light seat but it makes for a good hanging light and the mouth is wide enough to just squeeze the HMI lamp and socket through, should come in under USD 300, that's pretty cheap for the amount of light but sorry not dimmable.

I'll try to post some How Tos once I get time to finish this thing off. Trying to take a photo of it on is a real problem :)

Bob.

Well, for reasons unknown to me, a lot of things changed since I shot the movie almost two and half years ago.
First, I've had a LOT of experience with the nanolight - acutally the very one that we built right there on-screen. That little sucker can really take a beating.
Anyway, I personally stopped using the dimmable bulbs, because I simply haven't been able to find any. So yes, I regularly vary intesity by adding or unscrewing bulbs.
RE: color temperature - most of the bulbs that I've seen (and they last so long, I've only bought new ones when the old ones break) are either 2700k to 3000k or 5000k. That pretty much corresponds to tungsten and daylight.
My own rigs are bulbed with tungsten because I don't think you can get enough light out of ANY small (under 5k watts) light to work outside. Since the nature of my style actively utilizes found light sources, I opted for 3000k bulbs. They are much closer to regular tungston.
Farss, I'm nervous about hanging bare HMI bulbs in any sort of situation. They are HOT. Try my multibulb rig with the little curly's and you will be in love. And five of those curly's will throw twice as much light as your HMI rig without the attendant heat.


v

The nano lights are phenominal! I modified it and made four 7". Funny when my clients all laughed at them when I first built them thinking that they would catch fire two months ago. Now the clients realize that they are awesome and appreciate the HEAT that they do NOT emit. I used studio lights at the beginning and the talent became hot within minutes, when I turned the ac off for NC. Now the talent demands the nanos. Thank you Victor! A couple of times I have had company grab one of the little 7" and you can see the 'light' go off in their heads.No pun intended.

look at what I used in lieu of the bacolight fixtures, Get a smaller hole saw, carefully unscrew the little clasp, and bam.

Victor,
I'm NOT hanging bare HMIs, trust me, I might be a mad scientist but I'm not a lunatic!
The lamps are going inside a large housing, fully encased apart from some vent holes in the top.
For the record, HMI lamps produce no more (possibly even less) than fluro lights per watt of usable light. Because the lamp is way smaller then the surface gets way hotter, 300 degC for the ones I'm using. If the lamp was to explode then the glass is hot enough to melt / burn something. 300deg C is unlikely to ignite anything but I'm taking no changes.

HMI lamps do need to treated with respect, they're an intensely bright source, looking straight into them I can guarantee will give you at the very least a headache. Also the high powered ones produce UV that's dangerous. The ones I'm using have inbuilt UV filters hence not an issue.

I've already built two China Balls fitted with 50W CF lamps and they're great. But they're fragile. That's the point of this experiment, to build something more robust and with more light.

See If I can post a picture or two.

Bob.