r/Filmmakers • u/Weird-Day-8356 • 1d ago

Question Regular LED bulbs instead of Photography bulbs

I’m an amateur filmmaker who makes YouTube roleplay videos, and I want to start incorporating Green screen for some versatility.

I originally had the Lumetristudio lighting kit with 3 x 45W Photography bulbs, but 2 are now broken (I’m clumsy).

I live in a country where I’ll have to ship new bulbs to myself, and that will take some time.

Will regular LEDs properly light my green screen? If yes, what Wattage do you recommend?

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u/knight2h director 1d ago

regular bulbs will cause color shifts and scan lines to appear at times, if you dont care for either then use any bulb bright enough

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u/Weird-Day-8356 10h ago

Thank you!

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u/wrosecrans 1d ago

Avoid the bottom-tier garbage level cheapest bulbs. Outside of that, you should be fine with almost anything these days. If you are ordering online, there will usually be some sort of reviews you can read about the bulb model.

The cheapest bulbs have very "spiky" color spectrum. So they can have weird color cast on camera where the bulb is putting out some "red" light, but the sensor in your camera is most sensitive to a slightly different shade of red. Then everybody looks like a smurf. Anything off that bottom tier will have better color reproduction. Look for the "CRI" if the packaging of the bulb lists it. Bigger number is better.

The cheapest bulbs will also have some weird flicker in sync with the electricity frequency because they cheaped out on the power supply to smooth out the voltage. Again, you don't need super exotic specialty bulbs. Just the really crappy ones tend t have these issues these days. It was much harder to find a good bulb 10+ years ago.

You can always shop around a little bit and buy one of each of whatever is cheap locally to see if you can tell any difference.

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u/Weird-Day-8356 10h ago

Great info, thank you so much!