@vicharris --- inspired, I just ordered a lantern and some 90CRI LEDs !

edited

@vicharris very cool!

These CUs, about what distance was the fixture from your face? Doing a quick look at the Amazon pages it was a little hard to judge what the effective wattage might be, assuming the whole strip is used in there.

I imagine you're doing a fair amount of experimentation on how to arrange the strip inside the ball. I'm wondering if orientation of the strips inside matters much, like feeding the strip in and letting it randomly clump versus something labor intensive like trying to do controlled loops, hanging in the center or run along the edges.

I've actually been looking into China Balls as well. I'm using the same Ikea ones you are, too.

I really, really hate low CRI lighting. Even HMIs look off to me - I'd rather go with gelled tungsten, even though output is drastically reduced. The only thing that comes close, in my opinion, is remote phosphor technology - what Area 48 and Cineo Lighting is doing. But the tech is currently a little expensive.

Because of that, I've been looking for the best standard incandescent bulbs I can find. Photo floods are probably best, but I was trying to find something that lasted longer, since they're being used for a cheap photo studio, and that I could find locally (which ended up being Home Depot.) The best I found were these: http://www.homedepot.com/p/GE-200-Watt-Incandescent-A21-Soft-White-Light-Bulb-200A-W-TP1-6/100140577# - 3400 lumens and 2900k (although mine I rated at about 2725 in Resolve) with soft light. And also this one: http://www.homedepot.com/p/GE-300-Watt-Incandescent-PS25-Crystal-Clear-Light-Bulb-87847/100493736# - 6100 lumens at 130 volts (you'd need a step up transformer) or 4650 lumens at a longer lasting 120 volts (normal outlet voltage ranges from 110-130v). It ended up being brighter than the 200w, but it was also harder (as it was clear) and warmer.

I've tested 2x of both of them in 2x balls and they didn't get very hot at all (which is what I was worried about) although they were completely stationary. Also, based on scant info online (don't trust me on this), it seems that standard incandescents might not get hot enough to combust rice paper

If you do end up trying this out, don't use Ikea's socket for the bulbs, as they are only rated up to 75 watts. Filmtools has sockets for China Balls, but you could also use this: http://www.homedepot.com/p/Leviton-White-Outlet-to-Socket-Light-Plug-R52-00061-00W/100170446# combined with a locking extension cord adapter, which Home Depot sells. I ended up going with a brown Leviton adapter right next to the white one (as I didn't realized there was such a thing as a locking extension cord adapter) but that requires you to (somewhat easily) wire it up yourself. It is a better socket, though - rated up to 240v - but the white one seems to be just fine.

Since the balls didn't get very hot, what I'm thinking I might do next is maxing everything out with this: http://www.homedepot.com/p/Leviton-Socket-with-Outlets-White-R52-01403-00W/100184555# and two more of the white sockets. Since I liked the 200w better, all three of them would give me just over 10,000 lumens and be just under the 650w max.

I'm also thinking I might just get this: http://www.filmtools.com/e.html - this would let me use standard halogen bulbs - which get closer to 3200k or higher (which should be better for color) and give me 60-100% more lumens. However, they will run much hotter (as halogens do), and would most likely be hot enough to burn the rice paper if it touched it. They will also last less than 1/10 of the time the incandescents should last.

I'll stick with the incandescents for now.

Digging these tests, thanks for doing this.

Now obviously the first one is what we might call a tad bit green :) It's odd because on the vectorscope, it's really not learning towards green too bad. And the second one is a little too red. I'm trying to figure out how to build a housing inside the china globe to allow me the ability of wrapping the whole interior with some 1/4 minus green.