Question regarding Softboxes, model lamps & heat -- is it a concern?

[sirhawkeye64]

So I just purchased a Godox MS300 monolight with a 150W modeling lamp (which is a halogen bulb) which may be irrelevant for this question....

Question is: inside of a softbox, is heat generated by the modeling lamp at full power going to be a concern regarding? The softbox I'm using is a 36" Glow Octa and from what I can see, the model lamp bulb is at least 4-5 inches from any softbox material. I just know halogens put out a lot of heat. The softbox does have a zipper (mainly for assembly) but I can leave it open at the top I guess if I needed to maybe...

Thoughts? Or should I maybe look into an LED bulb replacement that fits the light?

 

[BAK]

My rule, with Dynalite heads, is to use one of my heads with a fan built in when using my softbox, and use my other fan heads and my one head without a fan when using umbrellas.

Some softboxes are made for flash and continuous light, and are fine with modeling lights.

BAK

 

[sirhawkeye64]

My rule, with Dynalite heads, is to use one of my heads with a fan built in when using my softbox, and use my other fan heads and my one head without a fan when using umbrellas.

Some softboxes are made for flash and continuous light, and are fine with modeling lights.

BAK

OK. I mean this one has a bult in fan but it's towards the rear (to cool the electronics inside--I imagine it sucks air through the front and blows it out the back).

 

[RDKirk]

So I just purchased a Godox MS300 monolight with a 150W modeling lamp (which is a halogen bulb) which may be irrelevant for this question....

Question is: inside of a softbox, is heat generated by the modeling lamp at full power going to be a concern regarding? The softbox I'm using is a 36" Glow Octa and from what I can see, the model lamp bulb is at least 4-5 inches from any softbox material. I just know halogens put out a lot of heat. The softbox does have a zipper (mainly for assembly) but I can leave it open at the top I guess if I needed to maybe...

Thoughts? Or should I maybe look into an LED bulb replacement that fits the light?

I can't speak for all softboxes and umbrellas, but I've been using flash units with 250 watt halogen lamps in Westcott Apollo softboxes and Paul C. Buff umbrellas with diffusion covers (octobox style) for many years.

The only time I've had a problem has been once when I let the diffusion fabric fall into direct contact the lighted bulb.

Softbox manufacturers used to provide explicit information on the maximum wattage of incandescent light they could handle. Usually the cutoff was 250 watts for softboxes intended to be used with electronic flash with modeling lights as opposed to incandescent main lights that ranged 500 watts and up.

Remember that the use of LEDs for main lighting and even modeling lighting is really still quite recent and by no means ubiquitous, so I'd expect most any softbox can handle a 150 watt incandescent as long as it doesn't directly touch the fabric.

 

[Ellis Vener]

As long as air can circulate around the flashtube and modeling light you’ll be good.

does the fan on your new monolight work as an exhaust, pulling air from front to back or as an intake fan? Most monolights are the first type.

 

[sirhawkeye64]

As long as air can circulate around the flashtube and modeling light you’ll be good.
does the fan on your new monolight work as an exhaust, pulling air from front to back or as an intake fan? Most monolights are the first type.

I'm not sure. I know it exhausts out the back so I would think it would pull air from the front (the part that is inside the softbox) to help with cooling.

 

[Ellis Vener]

As long as air can circulate around the flashtube and modeling light you’ll be good.
does the fan on your new monolight work as an exhaust, pulling air from front to back or as an intake fan? Most monolights are the first type.

I'm not sure. I know it exhausts out the back so I would think it would pull air from the front (the part that is inside the softbox) to help with cooling.

either way, as long as air can circulate around the flashtube and modeling light (you might want to leave it slightly unzipped) you'll be fine.

 

[photolando]

As long as air can circulate around the flashtube and modeling light you’ll be good.
does the fan on your new monolight work as an exhaust, pulling air from front to back or as an intake fan? Most monolights are the first type.

I'm not sure. I know it exhausts out the back so I would think it would pull air from the front (the part that is inside the softbox) to help with cooling.

either way, as long as air can circulate around the flashtube and modeling light (you might want to leave it slightly unzipped) you'll be fine.

I'll second that. When I firs started some 30 years ago I shoot commercial. Products mostly. We use to use not one but two 2000 watt strobes with 250 watt modeling lights inside a large Chimera softbox. Shooting large format you needed a lot of light. It was our go to lighting. It would be on for hours and we never had any problems of any concern.

Like Ellis said, as long as air can circulate. And if you have a built in fan.

 

[Gato Amarillo]

Largely I agree with the others, but a couple of things --

- LEDs do not play well with some monolights. Apparently some dimming circuits don't like them. So you'd want to be sure your lights are compatible before you try that.

- You can check the airflow with smoke from something like a stick of incense or cigarette.

Beyond that you should be OK, although it you have an internal diffusion panel be sure it is at least a few inches away from the bulb.

Gato

 

[Southern Gent]

All of my strobes have built in cooling fans and i have the modeling lights set to track with light settings, so heat build up in soft boxes has never been a problem. However, even at reduced power snoots or gridded reflectors can get pretty hot, so I will cycle them on and off as needed.

 

[RDKirk]

All of my strobes have built in cooling fans and i have the modeling lights set to track with light settings, so heat build up in soft boxes has never been a problem. However, even at reduced power snoots or gridded reflectors can get pretty hot, so I will cycle them on and off as needed.

That is definitely a point. Snoots and grids are practically an optimal design to get hot.

 

[tugwilson]

All of my strobes have built in cooling fans and i have the modeling lights set to track with light settings, so heat build up in soft boxes has never been a problem. However, even at reduced power snoots or gridded reflectors can get pretty hot, so I will cycle them on and off as needed.

That is definitely a point. Snoots and grids are practically an optimal design to get hot.

In theory at least this should be a lot more of a problem with incandescent bulbs than with LEDs. This is because a large proportion of the heat produced by an incandescent light source is in the form of radiation whereas that's not true for LEDs. Of course, you will get less heat in total from LEDs as they are more efficient but it's the radiated heat that makes the grid hot.

There's also an issue with reflector/snoot design. My genuine Bowens deep or gridded reflectors and snoot are vented at the rear. My cheap Chinese ones are not or, in the case of the snoot, has very small vent holes..

 

[sirhawkeye64]

So the unit has a cooling fan but I'm not sure if it pulls air from the front to the back (I would assume this would be the case because it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to blow hot air into a softbox.

Any softbox material is at least a few inches (3" min) from the front of the bulb element. The only thing that is 2" fron the element is the metal piece where the metal "ribs" come together as this softbox is one of the Glow Pop ones which works like the Westcott RapidBoxes.

 

[Krav Maga]

So I just purchased a Godox MS300 monolight with a 150W modeling lamp (which is a halogen bulb) which may be irrelevant for this question....

I used this light last night with a 70 degree magnum reflector; the modeling light only to put a little more light on the model's face to help with focusing. We changed to another set up in which it wasn't really needed, but the model asked that I leave it on as it was a nice source of heat for her