melting gels with hotlights

[michaelnotar]

on a recent video shoot, one set of gels on a light melted ( a part of it did).

it was on a lowel 250w pro light and the gel was in their gel frame, approx 8" from the light. i had 5- 1/2ND filters in it. the light can go from flood to spot and it was on flood. the light was on for about 3hrs, and we turned them off when ever we took a break.

all the lights had a similar situation, NDs on them, but of differing amounts. in retrospect the gels that melted had the most NDs on it.

so would it be better to use a single sheet of denser ND to prevent melting?

[James Haba]

Michael:
The more I read your post, the greater was my confusion on what you were doing. I can't wrap my brain around why you might be using all of this diffusion. A 250 Watt light is a small fixture and if you had a gel and 5 ND filters on it you must have been knocking it way back. Was it right next to the object in a confined space?

Now, to answer your question. This is a hot running fixture so I clip gels to the barn doors with C47's (wooden clothespins). This gives the gel a convex shape away from the lamp and helps keep the heat away from the gel. If you use this type of fixture a lot, you might like an the small Arri Fersnel fixture. . . very cool running and better control of the light.
James Haba

[James Haba]

Here is an example:

20/20 Communications, Inc. - Pictures Of Us

8th picture down on the left . . . kind of small but you get the point.
James Haba

[michaelnotar]

im a photographer, i was helping out on a video shoot. we kept all the lights at full wattage, no dimmers, do color temp wouldnt change. i have a the lowel pro light gel holders, its kind of T shaped, with the larger part of the T mounting to the light, but on the shorter end of the T there is a rectangle with clips to hold a gel.

it holds the gels in the same position and about the same distance from the light as your method.

[James Haba]

Yes, I have the gel holders as well but I don't really use them. The melting probably has more to do with how the fixture was positioned and the air flow between the fixture and the gel.
If the ND was between the gel and the lamp, did it melt?
James Haba

[michaelnotar]

it was an ND gel, rosco.

[Ed Gerson]

Additional considerations:

ND filters absorb a huge amount energy, that's how they reduce subject illumination. You've got to have air circulation between the bulb and the gel.
Quartz lights are dangerously intense light sources.
They will easily burn through an adult or an infant's flesh or eyes if touched; if they explode they can fire filament and glass like a rocket, and quartz bulbs can simply fall out, and onto, whatever if the sockets are worn.

Keep quartz light bulbs covered with heat glass or wire screen is my opinion, gels or no gels.

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