I've got ten great ideas on why you should use tungsten lights on set.
But we're only gonna talk about four of them.
That one, and that one, and that one.
Oh and that one over there.
I like that one too.
So let's get started and see what we can do.
MUSIC
We have a free business coaching class on September 28th at 5pm.
You don't have to drive anywhere.
You don't have to put your suit on.
Come in your jammies and turn on the computer.
We're gonna teach you the daily routine for success.
It's gonna help you grow your business.
That one all.
So join us on September 28th at 5pm.
Just go to theslantedlens.com and sign up today.
Don't miss out.
You're gonna love this call.
MUSIC
So here's four reasons why tungsten lights are still really valuable when you're on set.
And then a great review and look at this new light by Aputure called the 120T.
Fabulous tungsten light.
So the trend for a long time has been switching everything to LED daylight lights.
That's fabulous.
They're great matching with window light and daylight.
But there are a lot of great reasons to use tungsten lights on set.
I always like to have a set of tungsten lights with me.
And let me tell you why.
The number one reason to keep tungsten lights available when you're shooting on set is because
you want to balance them to the practicals in the room.
What are practicals?It's all the light bulbs in the lamps.
In the stove.
In the hallway.
In the sconces.
Those are all the practical lights.
A lot of those are going to be tungsten balanced.
It's just easier to light that way.
You'll walk into a room you'll say, "Wow this looks pretty good."
Then you turn all the practicals off and you go, "Wow.
We got a lot of work to do here."
Well there's no reason to do that to yourself.
Turn those practicals on, use them as a fill light, kind of a soft fill, a little lower
in your exposure, then bring in your tungsten lights and kick in your highlight and your
rim, and you're ready to move ahead and it looks fabulous.
So I use them all the time because I'm balancing the practicals that are in the room.
Number two.
I like to shoot daytime and make it look like night.
So I'll set my daylight balance on tungsten, which makes all of the sunlight blue.
And then I bring in my tungsten lights for my key and my rims.
And it gives me just a nice look.
I have clean light with my tungstens.
I don't have to put gels and all kinds of things to make that work I've just got a high
powered light that's gonna go in and do it's job.
But you get that blue light from the ambient that's overhead with the sunlight.
So it's a great way to cross the color to make daytime look like nighttime.
Number three.
Stages still have a lot of tungsten lights installed in the grids.
Yesterday we shot on a set and we had great lighting on the background, but it was all
tungsten light.
We could turn on one, two, three or four or five or six lights in these big China type
balls.
There's no reason to fight that.
No reason to try to gel that.
We're just simply going to turn those on, set our color balance to tungsten.
We punch in nice highlights with our tungsten lights.
We had this nice 120T for a nice highlight so we could use a 2k or a source four to give
us some rim.
And just is a great look.
We roll and it looks fabulous.
We don't have to find the lights from the ceiling already.
Number four, I absolutely love this look.
When I'm shooting at magic hour, towards dusk, and it's looking really beautiful outside,
I will set my color balance to daylight and then I want the warmth of the tungsten lights.
The tungsten lights of the house.
The tungsten lights of the Christmas lights.
Well then of course I'm gonna punch in a highlight.
A key light on my talent is tungsten light as well.
And it makes them feel comfortable in that setting.
Makes it feel like the house is lighting them.
If you put a blue light on they're going, where's that coming from?
Doesn't feel consistent.
But that nice warm tungsten light makes them look like they're a part of the house and
makes it look very natural.
They can be walking down the street and you see this warm light come on them.
Like a street light is passing.
A car is going by.
Using those warm light it's in that kind of nice time of day.
Feels very comfortable.
Feels right to the viewer as they look at the subject matter.
So there's four great reasons why tungsten lights are still very valuable on set.
So now let's take a look at a new tungsten light that Aputure has.
It's called the 120T.
What I love about this light and the reason we're reviewing it is that a, it's a single
LED light source.
I love that because we just have the single LED in the front which gives us one pin point
light source.
Not multiple shadows, not multiple cross.
You know it's just one light source in the eye.
One light source on set.
Becomes a single light source.
Which is fabulous.
It's also a Bowens mount.
And what that means is a Bowens mount is that I can put reflectors on it.
I can put grids in the reflectors if I just want small pools of light which is fabulous.
I use that on set just this last week and it was wonderful.
I love working with grids.
I can also put softboxes on them with a speedring.
That Bowens mount, which is fabulous.
It modifies more like strobes always modify for me.
And I'm used to working that way.
It just gives me all those options in that Bowens mount.
Let's talk about how this light is set up.
It's got a cable out the back that runs into a ballast.
That ballast you can hang on the stand.
They've got a nice strap for it so it hangs on the stand, gives the stand a little bit
of weight so it won't fall over.
Which I like that.
Now all of our controls on here.
We can dial our light up or down here.
We can turn the light on and off here.
We also, which is nice, out of the bottom of this goes an AC cord if we want to plug
it into the wall.
Or if we want to plug it into an Anton Bower battery I've got a plate on this for Anton
Bower.
They also have them for V-mount.
So you can do your battery on the back, which gives you the ability to run this on a battery
as well.
Which is fabulous.
You can't use these lights on location without having a battery on them.
And they built that right into the, uh, ballast.
So you have all that there.
It's equipped right from the beginning.
So now for my six foot test.
First I get my meter six feet away, I turn all the lights off from the room so it's just
this light.
And then I take a meter reading.
'Course I'm not doing that right now because all these lights are on.
But on my meter reading when I did that I got 4.09.
Or basically 5.6.
At 640 ISO.
The reason I chose 640 for ISO is people are all over the map with ISO.
People are shooting up to 3200.
S-log is natively 3200 for the Sony.
C-log.
I mean it's just--.
People are using ISOs across the map.
I didn't want to do 100 because that's jut too low.
A lot of people are gonna push it up from there.
I though 640 was a nice place in the middle to be able to test all the lights.
And so it gives a nice kind of middle ground for everything.
Every light I test is gonna be 640 ISO, 6 feet away, and I'll give you a meter reading.
And that'll give you an idea of what this light does.
And that way there's a constant when we're reviewing the different lights.
That's a powerful light.
That's a great light to work with on set.
It is tungsten based but there are some great uses for tungsten lights as I explained at
the beginning of the lesson.
You might add a fifth.
And that is if you have a bunch of tungsten lights it's just nice to buy another.
Kind of moves your package forward.
One of the reasons that this is so valuable and a lot of the products from Aputure fall
into this category is that it's very reasonable priced.
It's $600 or around $600.
Comes with the head, the ballast and the plate so you can put your batteries on it.
It's just up and ready to go.
That's a great price point for a good single LED tungsten light.
Fabulous price point.
There are others out there that are more expensive but you know what, you can pay twice or three
times this and you won't necessarily get any more power.
You might get a softer light, you might get a different use for the light.
But this one holds its own.
For the price point it's really a fabulous light.
So to wrap this up.
This light is very similar to a North Star light that I loved.
It was made by Photoflex.
It was a stop brighter but it was almost twice the cost.
So this is a great light.
The ability to modify it, which I absolutely love.
The ability that you can AC or your batteries is fabulous.
And last of all, it's powerful enough to use on set.
It'll mix in with your 1k and your 2k and your Source Fours.
It's a light that is meant to be on set and compete in that world.
So this becomes a great light at a price point that makes sense.
It's portable, modifiable, and it's got a battery to go with it.
So check it out on B&H or Amazon and just keep those cameras rollin, keep on clickin'.
Trisha Zemp made a stop motion out of The Slanted Lens logo.
She's gonna teach you how to do this and much, much more if you go to TheSlantedLens.com/StopMotion.
Buy the download, it'll teach you everything you need to know about stop motion.
MUSIC
Don't forget to subscribe to The Slanted Lens.
Like us on Facebook.
Tell your mother about us.
Tell your mother's mother about us.