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Types of Constant Light

Lesson 2 from: Lighting with Constant Light

Mark Wallace

Types of Constant Light

Lesson 2 from: Lighting with Constant Light

Mark Wallace

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Lesson Info

2. Types of Constant Light

Mark explains the different types of constant light, commonly used lighting fixtures, and explains the differences between Tungsten and LED lights.
Next Lesson: Types of LED Light

Lesson Info

Types of Constant Light

it's time to dive in and talk about the two different types of constant light. And so I've set up a really groovy uh demo back here. And so we're gonna put a big red line right down the center of the screen. And on this side of the red line we have what is called tungsten light. So these are what we have been using for decades, maybe centuries, a long, long time tungsten light. This is the light that you probably know and I've used maybe with the film school. It's very they're called Hot lights a lot of times. And then on the other side uh did not get hit by the red line, awesome. We have on this side, LED lights. These are the new and improved and modern technology. Led lights are really just awesome. I love them. So what we're gonna do, go back over here, we're going to compare the differences between tungsten with LED lights and we're going to talk about why you might choose one over the other. So what we're going to do is we're gonna get rid of our red line and then we have a very ...

special guest today and it is Vanna Teresa. Please bring out our light modifiers. Thank you very very much. I'm Pat ST mark, I guess. So what we're going to be doing is I want to first talk about the things that these two different systems share. So what do they have in common. One of the things they have in common are the light modifiers that they use and sort of how you control some of those things. So both of these guys tungsten lights and LED lights have uh soft boxes that can be used. So this is a parabolic soft box. We're gonna talk a lot about light modifiers and what that means to have a parabolic soft box. But both of these guys have soft boxes, you'll see that way back here, we have this giant soft box that's on this guy, we have a smaller soft box is the same as that. But even over here on tungsten, we have a square soft box. So soft boxes are um have been around for a long time. You get those with both systems. We also have these guys, these are very, very groovy. These are reflectors. There are hard reflectors there, they can increase the light output considerably. And so we'll be talking about those. So we have those on tungsten and led lights. And then also you'll see something that is very common in constant light. And that is this guy right here, that is a Fresnel lens with these little flappy things, Those are called barn doors and they sort of control where the light goes. We have a session all about all these different modifiers coming up, but those are consistent between the two systems but where they start to change considerably is in heat and power consumption and how you can adjust everything. So let's go back in time just a little bit and talk about what a tungsten light is and so I have this little tungsten light here, this is what's inside a normal tungsten light, you can see there's a little piece of metal inside there and it's got two little prongs for electricity to go through that. So what happens is electricity goes in their heats, this little guy up, it shines and it is a piece of metal and so that burns very, very bright. And so that's what tungsten light is. So what we're gonna do is talk about the differences between what that means compared to what one of these guys is. So, if I take one of these guys, let's see if I can bring this really, really close, I'll try it. Sorry, I didn't plan ahead to show you this. Well there it goes, okay, so we have this guy right here, there we go. And we can look on the front of this. There we go, there. Yeah, there we go. Okay, so that is what an LED light looks like. We're gonna talk a little bit about exactly the different patterns and all the different things, but you don't have a piece of metal lighting up, You have a light emitting diode and hundreds of them, sometimes thousands of them. So it's very, very different. So what does that mean? Well, what that means is for tungsten light things get really, really hot. That's the very first consideration. So these guys over here are so hot when you turn them on. So if I turn one of these guys on very, very bright, um, it will heat up to hundreds of degrees. And so when that does that to work with this actually to wear gloves because if you don't, you can toast your hands and so you have to wear sort of oven mitts to work on these. What that also means is because it takes so much electricity to power. These guys, these are smaller ones, these are 650s, but you have 1000 watt, 2000 watts, 10, 20,000 watt lights and you have to have lots of electricity. And so the power consumption of those is very, very high. And so your electricity bill is going to go up a lot of studios. As a matter of fact, if you're using tungsten light, they'll ask you, are you shooting stills, are you shooting video? And if you say video, they're assuming that you're using tungsten light, they'll charge you more because the electricity costs more as opposed to these guys over here. Their power consumption is very low. And so your electricity bill is not gonna go skyrocketing super high. Like it will, with our uh, our tungsten lights over there. The other thing that is different is these lights over here, these guys want to get this guy here and put it back on the stand. These guys over here, what you can do is you can change the color temperature of those. So if you want to be at 3200 kelvin or 5600 kelvin or somewhere in between need to balance that light with LED lights, you can change color temperatures with tungsten lights. If you want to change color temperatures or do color correction, you have to use this. This is a piece of gel and so this is a CTB color correction, color temperature blue. And so if I want daylight, I've got to put a blue gel on that. If I want daylight and then LED I just dial it in and it's no problem at all. The other thing that we can do with our LED lights that we can't do with our tongues and lights special effects. So if you want a cop car to show up, you wanna look like somebody's watching Tv or there's a bad light bulb or there's a thunderstorm, you can tell these guys to do all that kind of stuff and it's really cool. So if you're a video maker, uh filmmaker, these guys will give you all kinds of special effects that you can do with tungsten, but you have to manually turn them on and off and do some things. And so it's not quite the same. And then also we're gonna bring Vanna Teresa back because she has a really cool thing here. This is, thank you so much. This is a positive, this is an LED light and it is a RGB which red, green, blue and you can change this guy to be all kinds of different colors. And so with LED lights you can do a mixture of red, green and blue to create all kinds of different colors. Instead of having to use gels all the time. It's really, really awesome. So those are the two different types of light and what we're going to be doing for the most part in this class is we are going to be sticking with LED lights, they are the latest greatest, the most modern technology. And if you're looking to get into constant light, that's probably what you're going to be looking at these days. It's sort of the thing that most people use because the power consumption is much lower. And also if you happen to have these little lights, these little bulbs here, they burn out. So you have to replace these. If you have one that goes out and here we go and you don't have one on hand then your light is just dead. And so those can also, if you have them heated up and you drop a light it'll break. So they're sort of fragile when they're when they're toasty. So there's differences but we're gonna be using LED lights, I think they're far superior because they have lower power consumption. You can change the color, you can change the white balance, all kinds of awesome stuff. So because we're sticking with LED lights, we are going to dive in in the next section to talk about the different types of LED lights. Why would you use Paavo tube or one of these small little forces here or a big guy? What's the difference? Well, let's talk about that next.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Tether Tools Pro Kit Discount
Tether Tools Starter Kit Discount
NanLite_WALLACE5.pdf

Ratings and Reviews

user-182390
 

Great course very informative and a pleasure to watch love the way you teach so easy to understand and follow through. learned a lot about continuous lighting ty

Alessandro Zugno
 

This is a very useful class for who want to start shooting video or photo with constant light. Creative Live should make more class on videography.

Student Work

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