Nitraphot/Photoflood

[nokia2010]

I'm opening a subject about a thing that is very hard to find in Romania. Nitaphot/Photoflood bulbs. Well, I did found some, but 500 Watts per an apartament is way beyond to powreful. I know there where 250 Watts or less power. Projectors are hared to find.
But did any of you used such bulbs, and id so, with what results?

 

[AgX]

They were the standard form of lighting long time for many photographers, especially for portrait work.
There was not much behind them, other that they were quite powerfull by wattage and run at over-voltage to different degree, resulting in higher colour temperature and extreme reduced life expectency. The were available in omnidirectional form to be used in a reflector, or with built-in reflector to be used on their own. They werfe expensive (compared to household lamps) and thus often used in special circuits that allowed them to be run at undervoltage to soare them during light-fall checking and were ony run a nominal voltage for metering or actual taking.

Otherwise they were plain incandescant lamps.

Floodlights typically designate halogen tubes.

In case you refer with "too strong for an appartment" to the electrical circuit:
You must got something wrong.
A typical toaster today has 1000W, a hairdryer up to 2000W. If 500W would be too much for an installation than many classic electrical devices already would have done so before. Or with other words having a light bulb on and making a tea with even a plain, old-style dip-in heater would be at the verge.

But yes, a complicated still lightng outfit could stress an circuit, but more so a Super-8 cine lighting with 3 floodlights already as at the verge of nets over here.

 

[nokia2010]

No sir, I wasn't talking about the power that is taken from the electric network. I managed to "swallow" event 6000 Watts without problems. I was about the light that gets into peoples' eyes. One 500 Watts light bulb 3 meters away... too much.
Getting one reflector with a screen in front of it (for milder light) is pretty hard to find. Did you ever seen such things in Germany?

 

[AgX]

Well, 6000W is a lot...
In german households you had a maximum of either 2200W or 3500W.

There were photo lamps of 200, 250 and 500W. Even 150W. Furthermore all models had a frosted bulb, so even in direct lighting you never had to look at the glowing filament itself. In contrast to to halogen bulbs and tubes.
There were various luminairs, but no textile softboxes. But umbrellas. Mounting a reflector lamp backwards facing into a metalized or even white umbrella spread the light over a very large area and thus yielded a rather low luminance.

And nobody forced you to choose the dedicated high-wattage photolamps. You could use the much cheaper and locally obtainable household lamps instead. These had lower colour temperature, but you could correct this for colour film by a camera filter, or later at the printing stage.

 

[AgX]

And if you had a variac with some upwards transforming you even could skip photo lamps alltogether. Or rather one lamp as the load these transfomers could take typically was rather low.

 

[nokia2010]

There where some extra wiring installed. In Germany is harder, becuase most people are renting, not owning theyr houses.
Umbrelass can be fine, but they are harder to use. So I do preffer somthing like image 220: https://archive.org/details/PracticaFotografic/page/n191/mode/2up
Yes, variac may be a solution in case you don't find 150 Watts bulbs.

In English they are photoflood. I modified the title.

Probably I will get a Halogen one.

 

[AgX]

In Germany is harder, becuase most people are renting, not owning theyr houses.

I question this statement. If you got proof, please send me a PM. Yes, in Germany the quota of people who own the space they are living in is rather low, below 50%. But this quota contains both, flats and houses. For houses I assume the quota much higher, but strange enough could not find any statistic on this matter.

 

[AgX]

Yes, variac may be a solution in case you don't find 150 Watts bulbs.

You misundersood what I said.
I did not advise a variac to dim a lamp of any kind. Moreover, for this much cheaper and smaller solutions are available. And were applied.

My advice instead was directed at colour temperature.

 

[nokia2010]

What solutions?
For the bousing in Germany... that was I heared about renting. Probably I got some wrong information.

 

[lantau]

I bought a 250W Nitraphot lamp made by Dr. Fischer from Foto Brenner in Weiden, Germany. It is a standard, frosted household bulb of the kind we used to use everywhere, just with a hot filament.