Back stage lights - adviseable to use CFLs?

[JLNorthGA]

Usually use incandescent PAR 30s with "blue" bulbs in the clip on fixtures with metal "shades".

Saw the blue CFLs, so I was thinking about using them. That way I wouldn't have to worry about them running all night when the stage manager leaves them on after a show. The amount of heat generated would be much less. We have three switched receptacles in the backstage and side stage area. They also have PAR CFL bulbs in colors.

I've looked through the other postings on back stage lights and I've seen that many use other fixtures and gel them. What can I say - I'm cheap, lazy and I don't trust volunteer stage managers. So absent a compelling reason, I'll probably stick with what I've been using.

 

[Les]

I've seen the blue CFL's in use backstage and they look very nice. I don't think there would be any problem with it, and they look a lot cleaner than a gel taped to a clip light.

 

[gafftapegreenia]

I think blue CFL PAR 30's are a great idea.

What about some blue LED PAR 30's? Welcome to Action Lighting - Your One Stop Lighting Shop!

 

[bdkdesigns]

I love them but it took a little BlackWrap to mask them because they were much too bright and created great blue-outs without it. After a little playing around, we get great light coverage backstage without it bleeding out onstage.

 

[rochem]

We got blue CFLs as worklights backstage at the roadhouse as part of a recent renovation, and they work great, although they can be a little bit too bright. Head Carps always get really confused when there's a small blue glow in the corner of their scenic stack drops, so we've started just covering the blues on the upstage wall.

 

[mstaylor]

Personal choice, I don't use CFLs for anything. They will work fine, nothing wrong with it, I just hate them.

 

[cprted]

I tried a blue CLF in the lamp on my prompt desk once and it gave me a blinding headache by the end of the rehearsal. Needless to say, I'm not a fan. Walmart in my area stocks 25w blue incandescents, so that is my go-to blue bulb.

 

[gafftapegreenia]

As a side note, the darkest incandescent ceramic blue lamps I have ever found were from my old industrial supplier in Michigan. They were 11 watt S14 lamps made by the Sadokin company out of Brazil. How my supplier had them I have no idea, but the transmission rate has to be similar to the congo blues.

Anyway the problem with using blue CFL is some applications is that the smallest ones I have found that are widely available are 13 watts, thus equaling about a 60 watt incandescent lamp in output. (There are 9 and 11 watt examples, but they are much harder to find) As most people typically use a 40 watt, 25 watt or smaller lamp in blue, the CFL is thus "too bright". Not to mention, there is much more blue light present in the spectrum generated by any CFL than there is in the spectrum of an incandescent. I guess one could put some ND on their clip lights that use blue CFL's, but then that kind of defeats the purpose, doesn't it? At that point one might as well gel some 5 watt white CFL's in Apollo Clip Lights blue.

 

[Beans45601]

I switched all of our run lights out with blue CFLs a while ago and then switched them out again with incandescent 7.5w s11s. The CFLs were too bright for my purposes and were so close to UV that everything was glowing more than I was happy with.

 

[zmb]

I've seen blue LED rope light strung along the wall backstage and that puts out enough light without being obtrusive.

 

[MarshallPope]

Just a few weeks ago, I switched out my church's backstage choir entrance areas to the Walmart $7 blue CFLs. Holy crap, are they bright! I'm normally extremely opposed to the use of CFLs, but these seem to work great for the application. I wouldn't want to be directly under one for a while as they seem to have a bit of an annoying, headache-inducing flicker, but I wouldn't foresee that being much of an issue for general illumination backstage blues. (Also, in my case, they are reflecting off of white walls. Once i get approval to paint them black, it shouldn't be much of an issue.)

 

[Cadmium6855]

From my experience CFLs are extremely powerful and bright, which is great.... but the downside is, in my small theater they bleed on the stage when turned on in the wings, I had to fashion top hats out of black foil to prevent the blue light from bleeding on to our stage during blackouts...