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  • Joined: December 28, 2008

Topic: Lamps and bulbs - help needed

What lamps and bulbs do you guys use?

I've been using some lamps with these annoying 50w spiral bulbs in them that have produced flicker from day one. Basically, these lamps are terrible for animation and I'm not shelling out £52 to replace bulbs that may not even work anyway. I'd like to know what lights, lamps and bulbs everyone uses so I can make my mind up about what to replace mine with. I've literally tried to remove light flicker every other way - covered my windows with felt, adjusting brightness in After Effects, standing on the other side of the room when taking each frame - and it's just not working, so I need to have a complete lighting overhaul. The flicker is just getting ridiculous.

I've been looking at these but at the moment I don't know enough about them to risk spending the money.

Any help would be much appreciated. From behind the scenes pictures/videos it looks like a lot of brickfilmers just use household lamps, and yet get little to no flicker. I need to understand this, it's driving me insane.

http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/ZoefDeHaas/stuff/sig1.png
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jampot's Website

  • Location: Roermond, the Netherlands
  • Joined: September 25, 2013

Re: Lamps and bulbs - help needed

Two Ikea Kvart desk lamps, at least, i recently got a second one and i've only used one before.

http://www.ikea.com/nl/nl/images/products/kvart-bureaulamp__0093813_PE231404_S4.JPG

Not sure what bulb i use, but it's an ovallish coney bulb. I don't know a lot about bulbs, really. My dad put them in for me.

Also, CrazyEd has the same lamp. Not really important but still somewhat noteworthy.

Last edited by WoutStopmotion (June 1, 2014 (11:07am))

signature
  • Location: Earth Prime
  • Joined: December 28, 2008

Re: Lamps and bulbs - help needed

Do you get any light flicker from them? Also, is there any chance you could ask your dad what bulbs are in it?

http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/ZoefDeHaas/stuff/sig1.png
"Nothing goes down 'less I'm involved. No nuggets. No onion rings. No nothin'. A cheeseburger gets sold in the park, I want in! You got fat while we starved on the streets...now it's my turn!" -Harley Morenstein

jampot's Website

  • Location: Roermond, the Netherlands
  • Joined: September 25, 2013

Re: Lamps and bulbs - help needed

I don't really have any light flicker, and if i did, it was mostly because of my webcam or my camera itself.

Also, super cool lamp bulb picture umgumgumumgugmgumgugm

http://i57.tinypic.com/2u89j52.jpg

signature
  • Location: United States
  • Joined: June 21, 2011

Re: Lamps and bulbs - help needed

I got a box full of lamps at a yard sale that are apparently these.
And then got one at Wal-Mart similar to this but without the springs.

As for bulbs, I use these in the big lamp, and the 40w version in the white lamps.
(Don't ask why, it's just whatever I grabbed first.)

I know some brickfilmers use expensive LEDs and love them, but I've never bothered to look into 'em.

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Pritchard Studios's Website

  • Location: watching brickfilms
  • Joined: May 7, 2012

Re: Lamps and bulbs - help needed

I use these lamps (http://www.target.com/p/room-essentials … medium_1_1)

And ottlite bulbs (http://www.amazon.com/OttLite-15ED12R-E … lite+bulbs)

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END films's Website

  • Location: Australia
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Re: Lamps and bulbs - help needed

On one lamp I use, I get wavey lines on the live camera feed if I place it too close to the camera.  Is there a technical term for that?  Is that flicker or noise or something different?  My software can cancel 50htz and 60htz flicker (apparently) but these settings seem to make no differnce on this particular lamp.

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  • Location: Earth Prime
  • Joined: December 28, 2008

Re: Lamps and bulbs - help needed

END films wrote:

I use these lamps (http://www.target.com/p/room-essentials … medium_1_1)

And ottlite bulbs (http://www.amazon.com/OttLite-15ED12R-E … lite+bulbs)

Do you get much flicker from those?

togfox wrote:

On one lamp I use, I get wavey lines on the live camera feed if I place it too close to the camera.  Is there a technical term for that?  Is that flicker or noise or something different?  My software can cancel 50htz and 60htz flicker (apparently) but these settings seem to make no differnce on this particular lamp.

Wavy lines? Do you mean mouse teeth, or some other kind of distortion?

http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/ZoefDeHaas/stuff/sig1.png
"Nothing goes down 'less I'm involved. No nuggets. No onion rings. No nothin'. A cheeseburger gets sold in the park, I want in! You got fat while we starved on the streets...now it's my turn!" -Harley Morenstein

jampot's Website

  • Location: Roermond, the Netherlands
  • Joined: September 25, 2013

Re: Lamps and bulbs - help needed

I had that just a few hours ago, changing gain and exposure seemed to help though.

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  • Location: youtube.com/VideobyKB
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Re: Lamps and bulbs - help needed

Two Ikea Tertial lamps; one with the 400 lumen LED bulb, and the other with a 600 lumen bulb. Both are very versatile, with their hinges, and provide nice bright lights. The lamp shade makes it very easy to strap a piece of paper over it to disperse the light, and it also has nice ventilation at the top of the shade. That said, they still get warm, so you want to have a fan handy if you don't like the heat. They don't get unbearably hot, but don't try use them for an entire night without a cooling source. Safety first.
http://www.ikea.com/au/en/images/products/tertial-work-lamp__40088_PE079702_S4.JPG

Ikea does a range of the LED globes that fit this light. The lease brightest is 200 lumen, and it goes right the way up to the new 1,000 lumen model. Plenty bright, and they all fit.

The lamp only costs £8.50 each, and the globes between £4-£10, depending on brightness. Relatively cheap setup.

Most of the time I don't get light flicker, but I find that when I do, it's usually because I set my Nikon to A mode instead of M mode.

Last edited by Kieren Barnett (June 2, 2014 (03:28am))

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Re: Lamps and bulbs - help needed

My older son broke my lamp recently (as if losing my files wasn't enough trouble) and I bought a $10 lamp at target.  I used the same bulb from the old lamp but it works better!!!!!

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  • Joined: February 25, 2011

Re: Lamps and bulbs - help needed

I use the same lamp that Kieren posted, and I love it. It's definitely the best out of my selection of lamps (two from Target, one from a garage sale that's like the Ikea one but much older and doesn't work that well, and the one from Ikea).

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Re: Lamps and bulbs - help needed

jampot wrote:
END films wrote:

I use these lamps (http://www.target.com/p/room-essentials … medium_1_1)

And ottlite bulbs (http://www.amazon.com/OttLite-15ED12R-E … lite+bulbs)

Do you get much flicker from those?

togfox wrote:

On one lamp I use, I get wavey lines on the live camera feed if I place it too close to the camera.  Is there a technical term for that?  Is that flicker or noise or something different?  My software can cancel 50htz and 60htz flicker (apparently) but these settings seem to make no differnce on this particular lamp.

Wavy lines? Do you mean mouse teeth, or some other kind of distortion?

I don't get any that I can tell (but like all cfls they need a short amount of time to get to full brightness).

By wavy lines do you mean dark lines that scroll up or down your image? This happens a lot with webcams and the tutorial in my signature shows how to remove that. mini/smile

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