# Need serious "blue" lighting...



## meltdown211

I tried to use "blue" 100watt floods that I got from Home Dumpster but they did not give the effect I really wanted. I want the house to be washed in "blue" and have looked for 150watts or higher but cant seem to find anything for this. This is the setting I want to accomplish...any ideas on what to use for this look? I had 6 100watt floods on the house but it didnt come close to this color...


























Heres my video (again) and at about 3:40 you can see the blue 100watter's there is 4 of them right there shining on the house (6 total) and you really cant even see any blue at all. I have green in the front to highlight the front of the grave stones but wanted the house to be an errie blue.
[nomedia]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXYLjk_XcxQ[/nomedia]


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## joker

I couldn't tell from the vid are you using spots, floods, or just those colored party bulbs? 

I'm no expert on lighting so take this with a grain of salf. The green on the stones look great, but maybe part of your problem. The pics you posted of the blue is using blue throughout the yard.


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## beelce

LED blue is really nice and blue also the UV LED could add a deeper blue/purple color


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## meltdown211

I am using floods which I thought would "flood" the house with blue light. So you think the green over shadows the blue? It seems that I get little to no blue on the house so I thought MAYBE there are larger wattages of blue floods, 200watt? 300watt? Whatever that guy in my photos is using is what I want. Are LED's brighter or throw more blue light at the house? Never used LEDs before so if those are the way to go ill do it. I actually have less green lights than I do blue in the vid but green seems to be so much more predominant than the blue.


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## joker

I'm not really sure....I just noticed the pic of the effect desired was mostly blue lights. Maybe try setting up a couple blue lights and green lights and see what difference there is with/without the green ones on. That would probably help you find out if the green is washing out the blue or if you just need brighter/more blue lights.


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## Tater1970

Try putting the green flood lights in coffee cans that will turn them into spots instead of flooding your whole graveyard. Also I dont know how close you have the blue ones but you may want to pull them back a little that way it will flood the front of the house.


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## meltdown211

Thanks guys, I appreciate the help! I have those blue floods about 4 feet from the house shooting up. There are 4 together. I think the coffee can idea is good to for directing the green light. I also noticed that in the photos his house is a "lighter" color than my brick and he may be getting alot of reflection off that. I may have to find some brighter lights to get the desired effect. I also had some landscape lighting that I swapped out with blue lights, and that didnt help either (they were on in the video too) I may be stuck with what I have....grrrr


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## dave the dead

Meltdown,keep in mind that many pictures show colors overly saturated because of the exposure time necessary to get night photos.That super-blue house may not be nearly as brightly colored in person...


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## Revenant

Dave raises a major point -- if that's an actual composed shot and not just a snap, chances are they used long exposure and a film geared for it. Think of JohnnyL's haunt pics with those rich, supersaturated, vibrant, knock-you-on-your-ass colors... he carefully sets those shots up and uses long exposure times to get that. Only rarely does simple point-and-click yield a result like the pix above.

And do some research on your bulbs. It may be a matter of the quality of the lamp, not just the wattage. A lot of bulbs have a pretty lame color filter that colors the bulb but not the light so much. And bulbs designed for a certain color may have specific materials used in the elements, gases in the bulb, etc. to tweak the spectrum of the emitted light. You want to look at photography resources to find out what kind of bulbs they use; photographers have different lamps for different qualities of light. When you use an incandescent the light is all colors and you're left with the one that the filter lets through; while LEDs will give you the most saturated pure color because they actually produce a pure color.

I'm sure as hell no expert on the subject but I was on a lighting/color research binge some months back and that's some of the things I found on the subject.


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## halloween71

I bought some 120 watts led the color is amazing.Now I haven't had a chance to try them out since I just got them a month ago but they put my 100 watts to shame.I wish I would have got a picture of the 100 watts but I didn't take one.The picture you show looks led to me.








15 feet from door








turned toward ceiling


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## Terrormaster

Melty you could try floods like I used last year. They're pretty expensive compared to the Home Depot crap but they were awesome. I had two going with all my colors and had to fight to keep them from drowning out the greens and yellows I had going. 150w Par38's dichromium (think thats what it was called, will have to check the boxes at home) coated commercial grade floods - 30 bucks a pop.


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## Bone To Pick

I think Dave's spot-on regarding the exposure. The photos you're referencing are likely long exposures (you can see a few blurred people in one), which is saturating the blue. So chances are their blue probably wasn't that powerful either. Also, is your video an accurate representation of what you see in person? I ask because camcorders tend to throw a green cast into nighttime images as well. If it is, then the green might be overwhelming the blue somewhat. The info above is better than I can offer on specific lights, however you might also consider LED blue lights for your lightning, since your lightning hits looked like they had a warm cast to them which would also take away from the blue you're trying to get on the house. You've got some really cool displays though!!


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## Aquayne

You have to remember how colored floods work. The color on the glass filters out all the other colors coming from the incandescent filiment. Unfortunately there is not much blue in the first place. That is why tungston bulbs look yellow. The correct variable to discuss color is Kelvin. 5000 kelvins is considered to be day light. The higher the K rating the bluer the color. That is why the LED's look so much more blue. The way a LED works produces one wavelength per bulb. The result is a VERY blue beam. An even better measure is in actual wavelenths. In this scale the bigger the number the yellower the light. Blue is 800 or so. BTW we see green more than any color. There does not have to be as much for us to perceive it as more. Mercury vapor is bluesh and with gel it may look even more blue. You may look for the GE or Phillips web sites for more information on speciaty theatrical lights. It may be fluorescent black lights we are seing on the house.


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## deathstaste

*do you have street lights*

If you have street lights near by that could be fading your blue. this is a wonderful site on lighting http://skullandbone.com/tutorial_01.htm


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## Revenant

Aquayne said:


> You have to remember how colored floods work. The color on the glass filters out all the other colors coming from the incandescent filiment. Unfortunately there is not much blue in the first place. That is why tungston bulbs look yellow. The correct variable to discuss color is Kelvin. 500 kelvins is considered to be day light. The higher the K rating the bluer the color. That is why the LED's look so much more blue. The way a LED works produces one wavelength per bulb. The result is a VERY blue beam. An even better measure is in actual wavelenths. In this scale the bigger the number the yellower the light. Blue is 800 or so. BTW we see green more than any color. There does not have to be as much for us to perceive it as more. Mercury vapor is bluesh and with gel it may look even more blue. You may look for the GE or Phillips web sites for more information on speciaty theatrical lights. It may be fluorescent black lights we are seing on the house.


Thank you Wayne for providing figures and explaining concisely (and clearly) that which I was only able to vaguely fumble around.


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## i-Zombie

*How to get that Blue!*

Long photo exposures will give those rich blue colors. The light colored house also reflects all that color and adds to the effect. Super blue lights won't give you the same effect on a red brick home for instance. One possibility I haven't seen suggested yet is to use a Par cans with blue gels. The darker the gel, the brighter the lamp you will need to project the light. The only other possibility for the deep rich blue colors is with LED floods.


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## Jaybo

Remember you are painting with light, so if your background is dark it will tend to soak up your light. This is why I always paint my props a dark color first and then come back with lighter highlights. This way I get the shadows in the crevices of the prop, but the lighter colored details will pop in the light. The Skull and Bone website mentioned earlier is a great reference. You need to be careful with the greens, they can easily overpower your other lights. I would change your greens to tightly focused LEDs, or eliminate them entirely. It's actually very easy to make your own low wattage LED spot lights.


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## Aquayne

Jaybo,

I would LOVE to know how to make an LED flood. Please consider a tutorial. Even one with no pics would be great.


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## fritz42_male

Pro lighting people tend to use white floods with gel filters. You can buy 500W halogen flood worklights quite cheaply and pick up a gel filter sheet from eBay or from a local Audio/Visual store.

Mount the filter away from the bulb so that the heat doesn't melt it. An alternative would be to colour the floodlight's glass with glass paint.

You could probably contact some audio/visual companies and find some who are selling off ex-rental floods to make way for new stock. An example (Australia based) is this firm 
http://shop.ebay.com.au/merchant/matrixproductionsaustralia_W0QQ_nkwZQQ_armrsZ1QQ_fromZ

I picked up a strobe from them for AU$13 - good working order if a little battered but fine for what I want.

However, Aquayne is right about losing intensity because of the way filters work.

A thought on blue LED light sources is that if you could throw in a few high intensity UV LEDs in the array, any white highlights would REALLY show up!

I agree that a tutorial on LED spots would be very nice - I see that one was posted but I just get a generic webpage when I go there.


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## hpropman

what about led floods like the ones on minions web page. He has a lot of new high power lights this year. and the blues from the leds look so much better then the floods from the big box stores. here is a link to his website

http://www.minionsweb.com/osStore/


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## HibLaGrande

I would say wash your house with Tide laundry detergent and then flood the front yard with high intensity black lights. That Would be sooo cool!


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## Richie

halloween71 said:


> I bought some 120 watts led the color is amazing.


Hey Halloween71,

Do you have a link for the 120 watt LED's you purchased and how much they cost? I recently purchased a couple of 60 watt LED spot lights that are outdoor rated. I needed them to illuminate the columns in front of my house for 4th of July. Each spot (a red and a blue) has 108 LED's. The red and blue colors are by far the nices and richest colors I've ever seen. Unfortunately they are very pricey at $50.00 each. They used to cost $65.00, but recently came down slightly in price and why I decided to finally buy them. I believe the actual power used for each bulb is 13 watts. So over time I'll get the money back saving on electricity. Thanks.

Richie


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## meltdown211

I took a look on Minions site and it looks like they only have Red and clear for their larger floods. Terrormaster I would be interested in those 150watt commercial floods if you remember where you got um. I had an electrician add 8 outlets for me out front to run alot of lights and animations out there. I have a few specialized lighting places here so Ill start taking a look to see what they have available. I did talk to the owner of the haunt about how blue his house looked, via email. He said he was using 7 of the "older" blue flood lights, not the newer ones like I have in my video. He could tell (In the video)because of the "honeycomb" look of the flood, which are the cheaper made versions from China. He recommended that I find the older bulbs that were heavier, brighter, and more difficult to find. I know exactly what he is talking about as I have Green bulbs that are older and NOT honeycombed that throw ALOT of green light.


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## halloween71

Richie said:


> Hey Halloween71,
> 
> Do you have a link for the 120 watt LED's you purchased and how much they cost? I recently purchased a couple of 60 watt LED spot lights that are outdoor rated. I needed them to illuminate the columns in front of my house for 4th of July. Each spot (a red and a blue) has 108 LED's. The red and blue colors are by far the nices and richest colors I've ever seen. Unfortunately they are very pricey at $50.00 each. They used to cost $65.00, but recently came down slightly in price and why I decided to finally buy them. I believe the actual power used for each bulb is 13 watts. So over time I'll get the money back saving on electricity. Thanks.
> 
> Richie


Here ya go http://www.theledlightbulbs.com/product/PAR38-120
I really have had great service with this company.
I got free shipping with using the postal service to ship.
I am very thrilled with the product so far.


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## Joiseygal

Wish I could give you some advice on the flood lights, but I am just learning about using them now. I was able to get a good deal at Drug Fair when they went out of business so I hope they do the trick this year for my haunt. Anyway the reason I posted is that you have an awesome display! I really enjoyed watching it.


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## The Watcher

If you want color you need to get the leds. You could rig some color gels on spots. But you really are just wasting your money. I played in bands and have use all kinds of lighting. The price of leds is come way down. You don't have to worry about heat and they draw nothing compared to regular spots. So in the long run you will save money and it doesn't tie up your power. You could even use 36 led landscape bulbs on a 12 volt system. To get the effect you want. Here are some leds on my pond. These are 18 and 36 led lights, 1,5 watt. We just have a cheap camera that dosen't take very good night pictures.


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## stick

The home depot so call Blue flood light has a blue/greenish look to start with that is why you are getting more of a greenish tint. Blue leds will work better and if you have 4 set up i think you could get the color you are looking for.


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## ZombieGreg

If your looking for the punch to make the blue stand out on your entire house you can get either a ETC Par which comes with different lens to make the coverage area as narrow or wide as you want or a Altman Par 64 which can take a 1000w lamp. If you google either of those companies you will find what im talking about. Once you select a fixture you can go to a company called Rosco and select from 100's of different colored "gels" which go in the front end of the fixture-- it will then "throw" that color you select onto your house or display. I work as a lighting designer so if you have more specific questions let me know.


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## Richie

halloween71 said:


> Here ya go http://www.theledlightbulbs.com/product/PAR38-120
> I really have had great service with this company.
> I got free shipping with using the postal service to ship.
> I am very thrilled with the product so far.


Thank you!


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## meltdown211

Thanks a million to everyone!! I think I have some great ideas and enough time to make this happen! I will post some pics when I have the "final" equipment up and running!!

We got some DAMN smart people here....


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## HallowEve

*twisted flourscent bulbs?*

I haven't used the led floods yet but, I do use the twisted flourscent colored bulbs placed in the "menards" clip lamps. I believe they are tagged "party bulbs" but these have a real deep and bright color. In this picture I used 1 blue, 1 orange, and 1 green. I imagine that if you used all blue it would be extremely powerful color on the house.


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## HallowEve

sorry here is the picture.


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## HallowEve

ok I finally figured out what I was doing wrong


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## halloween71

That is some awesome light.I have never seen those bulbs we don't have a menards.Do you have a picture of the bulb?And what was the price.


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## The Watcher

Walgreen's sold some of the party bulbs last year. I just came from HD and they now have a good selection of them. Blue, Green, Orange, Red, and UV.


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## krough

I use a very dark blue (gel) par64 floods from up above my display.

Then we side light everything with very dark purple par56's.

This creates very dark shadows on the side of things.

This gives my display serious blue lighting.


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## Gory Corey

here, look at my test pics of the 72 and 120 leds bulbs on this faq page to give you an idea of what to expect with LED bulbs, plys output comparisons to halogen bulbs and a reference chart for figuring out what you may need (this applies to Minions Web bulbs, I have not seen anything else remotely comparable to what we produce)

We do not only offer clear and red in 120 LED bulbs, you missed a page! We offer 10 different bulbs in 120 format including orange, purple, warm and cool white, and 2 UV bulbs.

http://www.minionsweb.com/osStore/led-bulb-specs-i-17.html

and some other info

http://www.minionsweb.com/osStore/led-bulb-faqs-i-14.html

and the bulbs pages

http://www.minionsweb.com/osStore/led-spots-all-purpose-led-spots-c-1_4_43_44_75.html


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## halloween71

krough said:


> I use a very dark blue (gel) par64 floods from up above my display.
> 
> Then we side light everything with very dark purple par56's.
> 
> This creates very dark shadows on the side of things.
> 
> This gives my display serious blue lighting.


Love the lighting and the prop do you have your etsy shop up?


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## Gory Corey

Par56?
That would be a gigantic bulb
Is it a can light?


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## krough

halloween71 said:


> Love the lighting and the prop do you have your etsy shop up?


Thank you.

I do have my etsy shop up

http://grimvisions.etsy.com


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## krough

Gory Corey said:


> Par56?
> That would be a gigantic bulb
> Is it a can light?


Yes I use can lighting.

Looks something like this

http://www.bulbamerica.com/PAR56-Black-44-prod.htm?category_id=19

Everything is plugged into DMX dimmer packs so we can control each light independently, from a 16 channel controller.


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## Zombies R Us

In theatre we use Roscolux gels that give the effect of whatever colour wash you want. The website lists all the swatches and their uses. Basically you project a clear light (can) with the gel frame in front of it and it turns into the ideal effect. Gobos can enhance this by projecting a pattern such as leaves or foliage. Gels are about $3.50 each and you can buy them in rolls as well. From the website I initially think this one might be what your looking for:

Roscolux #359: Medium Violet 
Midnight and moonlight illusions. Enforces mysterious mood. Useful for evening cyc wash.

http://www.theatricalshop.com/rosesweb/gels.htm has all these supplies I mentioned.

Hope this helps


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## Aquayne

I wonder how these look. CF bulbs do have lots of blue in the spetrum so this may be a cheap and easy way to get the blue you want. http://www.bulbamerica.com/Compact-Fluorescent-13w-Mini-Twist-Blue-Light-Bulb-3904-prod.htm

They even have a black light version.
http://www.bulbamerica.com/Compact-...ight-Blue-Bulb-5088-prod.htm?category_id=1897


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