Design Dimming a fluorescent light as a practical fixture

[Shimshon Zeevi]

Hello All,

I am doing a show at the end of January and we start tech-ing in about 2 weeks.
I am the lighting designer and technician and have been given a request from the director. The show is called Push Up and it takes place within an office building. Going for a minimalist set design, the director wants to have a fluorescent 2ft X 2ft lighting fixture to hang in the office "space".
I have obtained the fixture and gutted it. I am wondering what kind of lights to put inside of the casing so that i can plug it into a stage pin circuit to dim the fixture.

I tried today to put a strand of 400 clear Christmas lights inside. The output was much too dim and almost amber in color. I was thinking about trying 800 white colored Christmas lights to achieve the intensity and color that i'm looking for. Any suggestions?

 

[dbaxter]

This LED tube might work with your dimmer - at least maybe to 10%. I've not tried it. Maybe in conjunction with a Doug Fleenor dimmer?

 

[JD]

One of the problems is that dimmers don't behave well if loaded at less than 50 to 100 watts. That said, I have found the Cree bulbs (home depot) appear to play well. Maybe 4 or 5 of these:
http://www.homedepot.com/p/Cree-60W...F-12DE26-2U100/204476611?N=5yc1vZbm79Z1z0vvrd
They are daylight color, which is closer to office florescent, and they do not yellow-shift when dimmed (LED's if anything tend to blue shift.)
Of course, like all LED and CFL solutions, the low end of the dimmer curve below 10% is basically missing. How far down are you going to dim them?

 

[Shimshon Zeevi]

Unfortunately, the tubes wouldn't work anymore since i've gutted the fixture. I am looking for a stand-alone bulb with an edison (or some way to make it plug into a stage pin female) that i could mount (with tape is fine) onto the metal interior of the fixture.
I was planning on dimming them all the way to out for some of the scene transitions, but i might be alright with keeping them right at or right above 10% to avoid the dimming issues because i will have the rest of the space lit with a color wash of some kind. might play well together.
The cree bulbs are a little out of my price range considering i'd need 4 of them. I'm looking for an under $20 solution.
Please keep the ideas coming!

 

[WooferHound]

You could use Fluorescent Correction gel
http://leefilters.com/lighting/technical-list.html

 

[icewolf08]

Unfortunately, the tubes wouldn't work anymore since i've gutted the fixture. I am looking for a stand-alone bulb with an edison (or some way to make it plug into a stage pin female) that i could mount (with tape is fine) onto the metal interior of the fixture.
I was planning on dimming them all the way to out for some of the scene transitions, but i might be alright with keeping them right at or right above 10% to avoid the dimming issues because i will have the rest of the space lit with a color wash of some kind. might play well together.
The cree bulbs are a little out of my price range considering i'd need 4 of them. I'm looking for an under $20 solution.
Please keep the ideas coming!

I doubt you will find too many solutions that are going to give you usable light for $20 or less. Generally when one uses a practical like this, we aren't looking for it to be the actual light source, just the motivation for the lighting. Thus you hang a lighting system the mimics the look and feel of the practical, but actually provides the illumination you need. Then you can turn the practical on and the scene light, and life is good.

However, since you have gutted the fixture and need a working solution, there are many things you can do. You could install some medium or candelabra base sockets in the fixture, assuming that you have a cover for it so that no one will see the sources. If you mount them such that the lamps are horizontal, you could probably get some tubular lamps. Probably going to cost more than $20.

My favorite solution would be LED ribbon. The high density SMD, self-adhesive ribbon would give you lots of light. One roll is about 16' and $25 on Amazon. You would also need a 12v dimmer and power supply, which is where this project would then start costing more than $20. However, you could lay rows of ribbon in the fixture, wire it all up and get a pretty good, dimmable solution. You could even run it on a battery!

You could get LED retrofit tubes for your fixture, they are easy to put in as they don't require a ballast, they just connect to mains power. I don't think many of them are dimmable as they are not designed for such an environment. Also, they are like $30 per tube.

 

[gafftapegreenia]

@icewolf08 already gave my answer. Cool white LED tape. You can even get DMX controlled power supplies for it. More than $20 but you can always use the power supplies on different projects.


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[Shimshon Zeevi]

Thanks for all your help! I bought a 5 dollar fluorescent fixture casing, gutted it, and laid RGB led tape inside. I'm currently wiring it to be dmx controllable. I think this solution will work for my purposes.

 

[Shimshon Zeevi]

 

[theatricalmatt]

If it doesn't disturb the director's vision, you could also look into getting some diffusion or egg crate across the face of it, which would keep the actual light source (rope light?) out of direct view of the audience.

 

[Shimshon Zeevi]

Here is the fluorescent light in the space. thanks for all the help!