Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Over Heated: Continuous Light bulb distortion

    Tonight while in the studio we had a continuous light on. Some times we use it as a back light for the back drops or as a side light. We have not really used it for much shooting. In fact, it has only really been used about 3 times to light a back drop. However, tonight it was on to do a little light set up. I was thinking of trying some portraits with an idea I had in mind. After sitting and talking with a friend for a few minutes, the light started to make a faint hum. Seconds later the light went out. After walking over and flicking the switch a few times, scratching my head twice, I pulled the front of the light around towards the light in the hall. That is when I noticed this:

DSC_0624DSC_0628DSC_0629DSC_0625

The rating on the bulb says 500Watts  4800 K, which means Kelvin, the unit of measurement of temperature. I will not go into to much detail about the Kelvin Scale at the moment. I am going to save that for later when I update Lenshare. As well as an article about Color Temperature, which is coming very soon.

Tomorrow I will be contacting the manufacturer of the light bulb as well as the light manufacturer. This could have been a very dangerous situation for both us as well as the building.  As someone who has photographed a few fires in Holyoke. Where our studio is located. I would not want to photograph our own studio, my friends building burning.

I will also be writing an article about a fire that I photographed two days prior to Christmas and then again on Christmas eve. Here are a few photos from that blaze, as featured on MassLive.com’s Gallery You can read the full story here.

Keep an eye out for the new Lenshare.com 2010 is going to be bringing about some magnificent changes.

3 comments:

VanDog said...

That's one way to get the scoop on a big fire. Burn down your own studio. LOL...

Update us as to what the manufacturer says.

ProShotphoto.com said...

I started shooting using these bulbs as my only source of lighting. I sometimes had a bar bulb in a reflector pointed at a my human subject.

Until one of them blew up at an opportune time (when i was testing with no one around)

The glass blew all over the place as far away at 15 feet. They were hot enough to ruin the carpet by melting the fiber.

I never pointed them at another human being. Changed to florescent daylight balanced bulbs with a lot less light and a lot less light BUT little heat and NO danger.

Jeffrey Byrnes said...

I am very thankful and fortunate we did not have it blow while using it around anyone. We used it to back light a nice blue wall on a location shoot we did. It was the first time it was ever used for anything really pertaining to actual shooting. I do not plan on using these types of lights as a source to light my subjects. Our new studio strobes will be in this coming week. Thank you for sharing your story. I am glad to hear that I was not the only one who had a problem with them. It sounds like your situation was pretty intense. I couldnt imagine how intense that must have been to have happen. I thought my situation was a little dangerous. Yours was far worse.

Thank you for your comment.