Halogen VS floodlights

Does anyone have any experience with Halogen lights VS PhotoFlood light bulbs for portraits? The halogen ones are the kind you buy at Home Depot, they come 500w, 250w & 150W.

Specificly, which type Halogen or PF taker a better picture? The Halogen has a much better life span (1000 hrs) vs PFlood, but are they better quality? If so what kind of wattage would I want?

Any help would be greatly appreaciated.

Joel

You posted a question, and then you wait a few days before you give up. Some people only read here once per day or less.

I've only used one type, so I can't give you a comparison.

If I had to guess, I would guess that photofloods are somewhat more consistent with color temperature.

---Bob Gross---

one thing I know for sure, halogens will get hoooot ! I mean really hot. I think floodlights are better as far as heat goes.

I agree, halogens get hot.

In the winter, I easily heat my unheated garage studio with four 500-watt halogens. In the summer, I would not want to think about it.

---Bob Gross---

Thanks guys for all your relpies. But do you think they (H) take better pictures? I find the photofloods are a bit to "warm" in terms of look of the skin (bordering on yellowish). How could I correct this I wonder. I thought the halogens might have a brighter, more nature look (like the sun) I wonder if 500w would be better for the main and a 250w fill. Any thoughts?

Joel

you can correct it by custom WB (or shooting RAW)

Photo-grade halogen lamps will be less subject to aging (most incandescent lamps will shift toward the red end of the spectrum and suffer a fall-off in intensity as they age) than "normal" photofloods, but should be normalized for the same colour temperature. Off-the-shelf general-use halogens like you referred to will be a crap shoot for temperature matching, especially if you use different wattage lamps. They will, however, like photo-halogens, maintain a steady output better throughout their life. But high-intensity incandescent lighting of either kind will produce a lot of heat you'll have to deal with.

If you really want to check out some cool continuous lighting try HMI lights. this web site has a lot of information on them:

http://sell-it-on-the-net.com …o_2000_cool_lit​e_kits.htm

OceanRider wrote:
Does anyone have any experience with Halogen lights VS PhotoFlood light bulbs for portraits? The halogen ones are the kind you buy at Home Depot, they come 500w, 250w & 150W.

Specificly, which type Halogen or PF taker a better picture? The Halogen has a much better life span (1000 hrs) vs PFlood, but are they better quality? If so what kind of wattage would I want?

Any help would be greatly appreaciated.

Joel

I have used home depot lights, then photo hot lights and now I use studio stobes.
I liked the results from my home depot lights, but they did give a yellow cast to the pictures. This could to some extent be corrected with photoshop, but they worked even better in conjunction with a 550EX flash which tended to give a blue cast by itself. The color results of the two together was very pleasing (at least to me). I never really cared for the photo hot lights I had.

Just my experience,

Those HMI lights look good but I am on a budget. I am really getting frustrated. My tungston's look to "yellowish" or "warm" and once printed, they looked WAY to warm, unacceptably so. I am trying to get a nice portable portrait set up going and cant seem to get anywhere. I have read everything. If Tungsten has been used by pro's what did they use? I got a 20D and it AWBs so that should not be the problem. Should I be using 2X 500w instead of the 250w's? The price is right with Tungsten but that colour!

This is exactly why they invented custom white balance.

Also, you can "fudge" the custom white balance to make it more pink or more blue or anything.

---Bob Gross---

Here is what you need. Spend the $99 and quit worrying about white balance forever. Just get it right before you take the pictures.

http://www.photovision​video.com/target.html

Still trying to understand WB, very confusing.....thanks for the tip.

Joel