DIY Photography

Your one stop shop for everything photo-video

  • News
  • Inspiration
  • Reviews
  • Tutorials
  • DIY
  • Gear
Search

Submit A Story

Cold Halogen Lights

Mar 16, 2009 by Udi Tirosh Add Comment

  • Share
  • Tweet
  • Flipboard
  • WhatsApp

DIY Halogen to CFL conversionWhen I just started exploring artificial lighting, I had no strobes. I had no light stands and had no nothing. Yea, when I was your age, we use to walk barefoot to school. In January. When it snowed. *cough* *cough* sorry. Something just took over me. 

Anyway, when I just started lighting, I looked for the cheapest light that I can afford. Halogen seemed like a good choice. It was cheap and it could be plugged in even cheap light stands. With some baking paper, it ever provided some diffused light. [Image by fangleman].

There were a few caveats though.

The first and obvious one was that even 500 WATTs of Halogen are not a strong light, which forced me to work with low shutter speeds / High ISO films (yes – it was back in the film days).

This is a problem that could have been easily solved with adding more lights, if it wasn’t for the second issue – those lights were hot. Not white-balance-Kelvin-rating hot (well that too) but centigrade hot. Place a few of these in a room, and you could shot an omelet by simply breaking an egg on a plate.

The third issue is that Halogen is a hot light. And this time I do mean Kelvin-white-balance kind of hot. Back when I was shooting film we had to use special Tungsten balanced films for this, like the Fuji T64 Slide film. This is less of an issue in today’s digital era. However, it is still no fun to balance to hard tungsten, especially if you can not shoot RAW and have to balance JPGs.

This is why I was so happy to see that ukespresso came up with a way to convert Halogen lights into CFL lights. The idea is simple and it’s kinda like the how to get four elephants in a beetle joke:

1. Get a cheapo halogen light

2. Remove the hot-power-happy halogen tube

3. Insert the cold-and-environment-friendly CFL bulb

While this may seem trivial it does have some advantages:

The halogen casing thing has very cheap light stands. Those will work great for outdoor lighting – they are heavy and will not blow away easily.

The halogen casing acts as a light modifier. Kinda similar to a regular flash reflector. This is nice if you can not afford a big gun flash.

CFL is low on power. That means a few things – it is cheaper to operate; it is more environment friendly; and very important it is COLD. You do not have to turn the A/C on when using a few of those. The general math of the thing is that every 1 CFL Watt equals 4-5 tungsten Watts. Those are 3-4 watts that generate heat instead of providing precious light.

Lastly if you are willing to spend a bit more you can get some great continuous lights out of those babies. A quick search found that you can get more than a 100 Watts of CFL, this is like 500 Watts of incandescent light, only daylight balanced. (There are lights of lesser intensity for less $$$. Like the 85 Watts and the 42 Watts).

The image below is a short preview, head on to ukespresso’s Halogen to see the full Halogen to CFL guide, along with detailed explanations.

DIY Halogen to CFL conversion

If you are not sure how cool CFLs are, check out the Spiderlight modifier – yet another reason to go to home depot and buy a bunch of those lights.

Just a quick tip. Some of the high wattage CFLs come with no ballast, and have to be placed in a special casing. Make sure you get one of the CFLs that have ballast.

 

FIND THIS INTERESTING? SHARE IT WITH YOUR FRIENDS!

  • Share
  • Tweet
  • Flipboard
  • WhatsApp

Related posts:

Default ThumbnailDIY Strip Lights And Rim Lights Default ThumbnailGive A Bulb The Hot & Cold Treatment For Interesting Burning Bulb Shots My experience shooting in extreme cold. (well below zero Fahrenheit) Last weekend’s NFL playoff game was so cold that camera batteries started freezing

Filed Under: DIY Tagged With: halogen

Udi Tirosh: from diyphotography.net

About Udi Tirosh

Udi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.

« DIY Photowire Frames
31 Angels (And Spidermen, Sportacuses and Doras) »

Submit A Story

Get our FREE Lighting Book

DIYP lighting book cover

* download requires newsletter signup

Recent Comments

Free Resources

Advanced lighting book

Learn photography

Recent Posts

  • This year’s Nature TTL POTY winner puts global warming right in our faces
  • TTArtisan announces super-low-budget 500mm f/6.3 super telephoto lens
  • NASA reveals five photos of space objects invisible to human eye
  • Tamron’s 17-50mm f/4 Di III VXD lens ships in October
  • Facebook now lets you (legally) have multiple profiles

Udi Tirosh: from diyphotography.netUdi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.

Alex Baker: from diyphotography.netAlex Baker is a portrait and lifestyle driven photographer based in Valencia, Spain. She works on a range of projects from commercial to fine art and has had work featured in publications such as The Daily Mail, Conde Nast Traveller and El Mundo, and has exhibited work across Europe

David Williams: from diyphotography.netDave Williams is an accomplished travel photographer, writer, and best-selling author from the UK. He is also a photography educator and published Aurora expert. Dave has traveled extensively in recent years, capturing stunning images from around the world in a modified van. His work has been featured in various publications and he has worked with notable brands such as Skoda, EE, Boeing, Huawei, Microsoft, BMW, Conde Nast, Electronic Arts, Discovery, BBC, The Guardian, ESPN, NBC, and many others.

John Aldred: from diyphotography.netJohn Aldred is a photographer with over 20 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter - and occasional beta tester - of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.

Dunja Djudjic: from diyphotography.netDunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.

Copyright © DIYPhotography 2006 - 2023 | About | Contact | Advertise | Write for DIYP | Full Disclosure | Privacy Policy