Video lights for 7D housing

Those were halogens fed from the surface. They still use halogens very often according to Mark Thurlow. To think one can now shoot with Epic cameras @ 5k and shrink that package significantly.

I use 2 x Sola600s on a 5d and Sigma 15mm.

For the wide side of the lens you're beating a dead horse trying to fill all that space with light. Unless you have buckets of power, it's not worth it.

The wide angle works by bringing in your peripheral view and using it as a backdrop to your subject. So for instance, you may have a nice video of a Moray on a coral outcrop, but up behind, you have the hull of the boat and the anchor line leading down into the water.

In this case, it's going to be impossible to light the hull of the boat, so you only need to light your subject, the Moray.

In my experience so far Wide angles suck in low vis because a) you lose this peripheral data and b) because as Drew says you get this headlight effect from the particle illumination in the water. This is more a limitation of the lens than the light to be fair.

I have a pair for SOLA600s that I use in the caverns for filming. I can *just* get coverage of the full width of a 1920x1080 screen at a given distance, but there is rounding of the light circles to some degree. This is only noticeable when you have a plain flat foreground like a wall or large rock and I can get away with it when I'm filming people.

All my footage has that - subject illuminated/background natural light - balance, and it works very well. For the situations where I lose the natural light in the peripheral the lit image narrows and is like the effect of a tunnel, but as I said, illuminating the distant peripheral background is going to be nigh on impossible.

As for the light, they're great. I rarely have them on full. The slide switches stick a lot, but they're small, light and super powerful. And I'm still amazed by how many divers go "ooooh!" when I switch the red leds on )

I use 2 x Sola600s on a 5d and Sigma 15mm.

 

 

For the wide side of the lens you're beating a dead horse trying to fill all that space with light. Unless you have buckets of power, it's not worth it.

You don't really need a lot of power...it's how the light is designed to distribute the available Lumen power. 1500-2000 Lumens @ 120 degrees in a smallish (1 kilo) light is no big deal these days with the available LED emitter technology. Two of these cover my 7-14mm super wide lens (Pana GH1) with no light fall-off. The other advantage I've found with using full coverage lights is that I no longer need to take my INON Z240's for still photos...

Here is a link to a Howard Hall video showing behind the scenes footage from his IMAX 3d shoot of great whites.

 

Interesting to see what it takes, but for this thread, it also shows the limitations of video lighting for daytime wide angle. Not sure what he is using, but obviously they are much better and more powerful than the lights were are discussing.

 

 

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Howard replied that "the lights are sealed beam incandescent 650 watt lamps x4".

Here is a link to a Howard Hall video showing behind the scenes footage from his IMAX 3d shoot of great whites.

 

Interesting to see what it takes, but for this thread, it also shows the limitations of video lighting for daytime wide angle. Not sure what he is using, but obviously they are much better and more powerful than the lights were are discussing.

 

 

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LOL That was filmed right here in lovely, shark infested South Australia...

Just to put things into perspective as far as lights are concerned, each of the 650w incandecents is outputing roughly 9000 lumens with a very warm color temp (3200K). This sort or surface powered, potted sealed beam set-up was quite popular in the '70s and '80's...easy to DIY...I used them myself. The advantage for IMAX crews is lots of light and no worries about batteries running out. Also, good CRI. Disadvantage...low color temperature. Use filtration for daylight balance and the light intensity drops considerably.

The best current LED emitters are almost 10X more efficient (Lumens/Watt)...and Daylite color temp (and the CRI is getting better). This allows manufacturers incredible flexibility in terms of design potential when making relatively compact yet powerful (3000 to 5000 Lumen) battery driven video lights for pro-sumers. CREE have just announced a new type of LED which will be available next year...1000 Lumens from a single LED (@ 120 degrees beam angle, 5500K)!

The future for UW video lights is very bright indeed.

CREE have just announced a new type of LED which will be available next year...1000 Lumens from a single LED (@ 120 degrees beam angle, 5500K)!

That's incredible!

I'm stupidly excited about that

Here's the link.

LOL That was filmed right here in lovely, shark infested South Australia...

 

Just to put things into perspective as far as lights are concerned, each of the 650w incandecents is outputing roughly 9000 lumens..

So that's 4 650 watt lamps each putting out 9000 lumens which adds up to 36,000 lumens.

No daytime wide angle with lights shooting for me. It's not just the beam coverage, it's penetrating the water column. I'll stick with my URpro filter and leave the lights for nightime or daytime closeups/macro.

Just to put things into perspective as far as lights are concerned, each of the 650w incandecents is outputing roughly 9000 lumens with a very warm color temp (3200K). This sort or surface powered, potted sealed beam set-up was quite popular in the '70s and '80's...easy to DIY...I used them myself. The advantage for IMAX crews is lots of light and no worries about batteries running out. Also, good CRI. Disadvantage...low color temperature. Use filtration for daylight balance and the light intensity drops considerably.

Not really. A 650W halogen gives about 20k lumens. Given the inefficiencies of lens design etc, it'd still be in the high 15k range per bulb. Remember they are shooting IMAX film stock, plus obviously Howard Hall likes the look of halogen with the film stock.

I'm pretty sure they could use HMI or whatever they wanted.

Not really. A 650W halogen gives about 20k lumens. Given the inefficiencies of lens design etc, it'd still be in the high 15k range per bulb. Remember they are shooting IMAX film stock, plus obviously Howard Hall likes the look of halogen with the film stock.

 

I'm pretty sure they could use HMI or whatever they wanted.

So the new sealed beam PAR 650's are Halogens ...which would give them a luminous efficiency of around 25 Lm per watt ie about 16k Lumens. The older PAR 650's we used in 16mm film days were simply incandecent sealed beams with a low 15 Lm/watt efficiency. I guess even PAR 650 sealed beams have moved up in the world over the years...

But like I said...they have good CRI which works well with film stock.

In the older studio lights, PAR lights can hit 50 lm/w at constant power, albeit for less than 20hr lifespan.

In the older studio lights, PAR lights can hit 50 lm/w at constant power, albeit for less than 20hr lifespan.

Yes...it is proportional to filament temperature. Either determined at the time of manufacture, or by "over-rating" supply voltage by 10 percent to boost efficiency...but this drops the bulb life significantly. The problem is that at too high a temp the "Tungsten-Halogen cycle" breaks down...hence the upper limit for luminous efficiency of such lights.

Captain-Caveman:

I've just got my hands on a production batch of the new XM-L's and am in the process of having them PCB mounted...stay tuned...