- Hey guys it's dave here from creative path films
and today you're going to learn about how to set up, operate and maintain tungsten lights.
Tungsten lights are an absolute staple in the filmmaking world but it occurred to me with this
trend towards much cooler led fixtures a lot of shooters that are coming through may never have
had the opportunity to work with and to learn the quirks of tungsten lights and i would hate
for people to rock up and set blow a globe and not know what to do well that ends today today
i'm going to teach you how to set up and maintain different tungsten lighting fixtures. First let's
have a look at how to change a tungsten globe now the first thing you want to be aware of is that
tungsten lights run at extremely high temperatures and the globe can reach temperatures in excess of
500 degrees celsius so when you blow a globe the first thing that you want to do is allow
that globe time to cool down so that it's safe to handle. Now this next point is really important
because these globes run so hot you don't want to actually touch the surface of the globe this is
because the oils from your fingers can actually leave a residue on the surface of the globe
and this can heat up and create hot spots the same goes for any excess dirt or debris these hot spots
can actually swell up cause the bulb to fail or even explode if you do happen to touch the globe
accidentally it's not the end of the world you can clean it with isopropyl alcohol or methylated
spirits all right let me show you how to replace a globe in two very common tungsten fixtures
here we have the Arrilite 800 or redhead as it's commonly nicknamed and over here we have the Arri
650 fresnel all right let's start with the 800 all right so when you start with one of these globes
the first thing that you want to do is you want to remove the barn doors here on the top of the light
we have a little screw that we're just going to undo and then there's a little latch that we're
just going to pivot to the side and remove the bar doors now that we've done that we have this
safety mesh that we need to remove as well to access the globe now the purpose of this is in
case you do have the unfortunate situation where a bulb does explode then this is there to protect
your talent so you don't want bits of molten hot glass blasting out the front of this light
so that's why they have this cage here to protect you from that so you'll need a screwdriver
and there's just two screws here that we need to undo okay once you've done that the mesh simply
slides out of the way and now we have access to the bulb compartment because you can't touch the
globes itself it's super important to use either a set of gloves or a lint-free cloth of some kind
now assuming that this bulb is hot you simply grab the bulb itself pull it to one side
and it just removes like so. So now we're going to get our new bulb which we're going to unbox
and put into the light fixture as you can see these globes come very well packaged you've got a
nice amount of foam surrounding the globe and you can actually use this if you don't have a set of
gloves or a cloth to hang onto the globe so very carefully unroll that get rid of the instructions
which we don't need there's our new globe there ready to go what you want to do is you want to
take this pin here and you want to align it with this electrical pin on the inside of the lamp
so these are slightly spring-loaded so when you take the globe push it in and then just slide the
other pin into place and there you go that's how you install a new globe on an Arri 800 all right
now let's have a look at how you can change the globe on an Arri 650 now this one is a lot easier
to get into all you need to do is press on the side of the housing and lift open the compartment
and now you have direct access to the bulb so what you can do is you just reach in and these can be
a little bit stiff and then you can just remove the bulb like so all right so now we're going to
unbox a new one and put in our replacement globe as you'll see here on the inside of the globe they
don't actually have that foam covering so you will need a glove or a cloth to be able to change these
ones now you can reach in and touch this ceramic part of the bulb this is fine to touch with your
spare hands it's the glass that you want to avoid so when you go to touch the glass that's when you
want to be wearing a glove or have some kind of lint-free cloth so what you'll notice is that this
bulb has two pins and they're different sizes so you have a small pin and a large pin and you just
need to line that up with the slots in your light fixture all right let's put it into the light
so there you have it that's how you change the globe on an Arri 650 or 650+
Okay so now let's talk about handling as you can imagine a tungsten filament globe is very
fragile and very susceptible to vibration and this is compounded when the light is
on and at a high operating temperature so what this means is if you're going to be
panning tilting lifting up lowering or physically moving the light you're much more likely to blow a
globe if you do those things while the light is turned on than if you turn the light off first
so it's always a good rule of thumb to turn the light off make your adjustments particularly if
it's a big move like you're physically moving the light and then turn the light back on again that
way your globes will last much longer so as we discussed these lights get incredibly hot and just
the housing can get up to 200 degrees and that's why it's really important to have a set of these
leather gloves and this is to protect you from getting burnt and it will allow you
to safely make adjustments to the light move the barn doors
gel the light do things like that when it's at a high temperature proper leather gloves like this
are recommended but if you're in a pinch and you need to get something quickly
leather gardening gloves can do the job they just don't take as high heat as gloves like this
All right now let's talk about light control tungsten lights can be very, very flexible
when it comes to how you can control the light coming out of them and most of these lights come
already out of the box with a flood and spot control so you can adjust that to adjust your
beam angle and how it works is it physically moves the bulb further back or further forward in the
housing giving you a wider or narrower beam angle they also come with a set of barn doors
which allow you to cut or control your light even further you can also use an electrical dimmer to
control the output of the light as well one thing to be aware of when dimming tungsten lights is
because you're lowering the physical temperature of the globe you're also lowering the color
temperature as well so the light will get warmer and more orange the further down you dim the globe
now you can't just use any old household dimmer this one here can handle up to a thousand watts
as these lights are 800 watts and these lights are 650 watts so they draw a lot of power
the next way you can control tungsten lights is with these guys and these are called scrims and
they come in a variety of different grades and styles so i've got two sizes here this one is a
larger one this is for the Arri 800 and this is the smaller one which is for the 650s your red
scrims designate a two-stop light reduction and your green scrims are a one-stop light reduction
and then you also have these scrims here which are you know half and half scrims so this allows
you to cut light or reduce light on a particular part of your shots you can put this into the light
rotate it and decide where you want the light to be full power and where you want it to be one stop
or two stops darker so these scrims go directly into the barn doors of your light. They've got
a latch here on the side which you just unscrew move that to the side and then you can slot these
directly into the barn doors and close up the latch again and you can actually stack multiple
scrims into the one set of barn doors. And it's the same thing over here on the 650 as well
they have a latch that you just lift up push to the side and slot the scrims in.
Another way that you can control tungsten lights is with gels you can use gels like
a an ND or neutral density gel to help reduce the output of the light or you can use gels like
diffusion to help soften the light and give you more of that nice classical beauty look
but what if you want to mix your tungsten lights with daylight fixtures such as LEDs or HMIs well
that's where color correction gels comes into play the color correction gels that you use to
convert tungsten lights to daylight is called CTB or color temperature blue and it comes in a number
of different grades our first CTB gel is this one and this is our full CTB or the code is Lee 201
and that converts your 3200 degrees kelvin to 5600 degrees kelvin with a one and two thirds of a stop
light loss next is Lee 202 or our one-half CTB gel and this one will get you roughly in the middle
at a 3200 degrees kelvin to 4300 degrees kelvin conversion with a one stop of light loss our next
CTB gel is this one here which is our Lee 203 or our one-quarter CTB strength and this will convert
our 3200 degrees to 3600 degrees so it only cools it off a little bit for two thirds of a stop of
light loss you can also get Lee 218 which is one eighth strength CTB and i don't have one of those
here with me today but it will give you a very subtle effect it will give you a 3200 kelvin
to 3400 kelvin conversion so only very slight for a one third of a stop light loss if you're
a little bit confused by all of these different kelvin values then it might be a good idea to go
check out this video right here to learn more one tip when gelling lights is to always keep
your barn doors outstretched never gel lights with your barn doors wide open like this
if you have your barn doors wide open then what you're doing is instead of having your gel here
quite a distance away from the main source of heat the globe you'll be moving that gel
much much closer and then you have a much bigger chance of either discoloring the gel by slightly
melting the center of it or setting the whole thing on fire which i've seen happen
and is never fun one last thing when it comes to gelling lights is when people
gel these barn doors for the first time often what i see them do is they'll do this which is just
jam the pegs onto the front of the barn doors like so but this is creating a similar issue
to what i just described it's curving the gel inwards and moving it closer to the globe so
it's more likely to discolor so the best way that I found to do it is actually to peg it
from the back and i'll turn this around so that you can see so fold the gel under
and peg it like so and that way the gel is nice and far away from the globe so you're less likely
to get any discoloration like that one more thing to point out is that these barn doors do in fact
come with gel clips but they're really tough and they get very very hot when the lights on
and i've found that more often than not they just rip your gels so i prefer to use these just your
regular c47 wooden pegs one final note is to only use gels from reputable companies and there's only
two that i'm aware of and they are Lee filters and Rosco filters and they produce gels that are
designed for high heat lights like this if you use something off brand or you go with a DIY solution
i've seen people try cellophane i've seen people try baking paper as diffusion then if you put it
in front of a light like this that's 500 degrees plus then that's just a recipe for a house fire so
only use the real thing it's absolutely worth the money and you're getting gels that will give you
accurate colors now what if you want to go one step further than just putting diffusion gel
in front of your barn doors what if you want to add something like a softbox or a chimera
well you absolutely can do that with tungsten lights i have a set here in the studio but you
want to make sure that they are designed for hot lights if you grab one that you would put
on an LED fixture that's been designed for low temperatures then that is just a recipe for
destroying your softbox so make sure that you find ones that are designed for hot lights
well there you have it guys i hope you enjoyed this deep dive into tungsten lights if you
learned something today make sure to let me know by giving this video a thumbs up
and if you've got any questions at all let us know down in the comments below if you'd like to
see more videos like this on more gear make sure to hit subscribe we put out videos every single
week and if you'd like to learn how to use your lighting fixtures that you already have check out
our film lighting techniques playlist thanks for watching guys and we'll see you in the next video
All right, METHO!
So we can very easily well there you have it guys i hope you enjoy deep dive that nobody
asked for if you're a bit confused by all these kelvin values then why not go and check out this
screw you